Picnic in the park with a butler: An indulgent alternative to afternoon tea July 24, 2015 A summery lunchtime alternative The butler is a British institution both ridiculed and revered in equal measure. A complex figure, sitcoms have parodied the butler, but he is also powerful, and his omnipresence has been portrayed in period dramas and twee murder mysteries for decades. It is no wonder, then, that butler services prove a [...]
Film review: No knock-out blow for Southpaw July 23, 2015 Cert 15 | ★★☆☆☆ There’s an exchange that takes place in every boxing movie ever, in which the trainer takes his hot-headed young buck aside, points to his fist and says, “it’s not about this” and then taps his temple and says,“it’s about this.” The message: mind over muscle. Thought over fight. Well, what [...]
Film review: Maggie is a nuanced entry to the zombie canon July 23, 2015 Cert 15 | ★★★★☆ There are no one-liners or knowing winks in this Arnold Schwarzenegger zombie movie; it’s a bleakly plodding, quietly affecting drama that’s not so much interested in moments of terror, but what happens when they subside. On the face of it, the premise is familiar: a “necroambulist” virus that turns people into [...]
Film review: The Legend of Barney Thomson July 23, 2015 Cert 15 | ★★★☆☆ Robert Carlyle’s directorial debut is a grotesque carnival of murder and excess that consistently entertains but eventually trips up on its own wild ambition. It follows the titular Barney, a spiritless Glasgow barber guilty of the only sin that’s beyond redemption in his home-town: having nae banter. When he accidentally murders [...]
Theatre review: American Idiot July 23, 2015 Arts Theatre | ★★☆☆☆ Green Day and musical theatre seem like odd bedfellows until you consider that both are fun, infantile and the kind of thing that no self respecting adult would confess to enjoying. When the two came together for 2010’s Broadway production American Idiot, the show won two Tony awards and a Grammy; [...]
Film review: Inside Out July 23, 2015 Cert U | ★★★★☆ Kids are notoriously difficult to read. Try asking one whether they like school or turkey dinosaurs and all you’re likely to get is a non-committal shrug. But Disney Pixar’s latest animated feature will make you completely reassess the way you talk to pre-teens as it fires you right into the turbulent [...]
Perfect Saturday July 23, 2015 COFFEE COME-UPS THE BLACK LAB If you can’t function in the morning without a cup o’ joe then head to Clapham’s endlessly trendy Coffee House ‘The Black Lab’. Once you’ve had your morning fix of liquid gold head over to nearby Clapham Common for a Saturday morning stroll. Visit blacklabcoffee.com SUMMER COCKTAILS TOWN HALL YARD [...]
Restaurant review: Be prepared to shell out for Crab Tavern July 21, 2015 Crab Tavern is the tenth restaurant to open at the City’s newest dining destination, Broadgate Circle. It’s now overflowing with the kind of high-end, high-turnover gastro-chains that private equity guys go nuts for: opening branches in the City completes a perfect capitalist ouroboros in which we can literally get rich off of our own appetites. [...]
Lessons in wine: When is the ideal drinking window? July 21, 2015 Like any food product, wines have an ideal window of time in which they should be consumed. Unlike food, however, wines don’t come with a sell-by date. How, then, to determine when to pull the cork? Generally speaking, wines not intended for aging are priced at the low end of the spectrum, probably bottled under [...]
Mix it up: London cleans up at Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards July 21, 2015 The cocktail industry has come an awful long way in the last decade or so. Back in the day, I was tending bar part time in some of London’s best bars to pay my way through university. I was the last of dying breed: an amateur. Top bars and restaurants are now dominated by [...]
