Bristol-based Aardman Animations made their reputation with short films and adverts using plasticine models brought to life with stop-motion animation. In 2000, they released Chicken Run, their first full feature-length film, a gargantuan task and a huge success. Twenty-three years later, they made a sequel! Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget picks up where the … Continue reading “Chicken Run 2: Dawn of the Nugget”
Poor Things, adapted into an award-winning film from the novel by Alasdair Gray, imagines a female Frankenstein’s monster who is fundamentally human, and her creator, who much like Dr Frankenstein, is perhaps more monstrous himself. Yorgos Lanthimos’s previous films such as The Lobster and The Favourite were far from mainstream, even if The Favourite won … Continue reading “Poor Things: Frankenstein Revisited”
The new Netflix TV series The Fall of the House of Usher is inspired by the famous Edgar Allan Poe story but in a pretty tangential way. The horror mini-series keeps the Usher twins Roderick and Madeline but far from being the last members of a dying family they are the heads of a family … Continue reading “Edgar Allan Poe 21st Century Reboot”
Gertrude Stein is probably best known for her “salon” in Paris where she nurtured artistic talents as diverse as Matisse and Braque, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and James Joyce. But her experimental, minimalist writing has been highly influential on generations of creatives right up to today, as is shown in the Gertrude Stein and Picasso: … Continue reading “Gertrude Stein Multi-talented”
We were sad to hear of the death of Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt at the age of 95. He had been taking photos for 80 years. The retrospective exhibition he curated himself at the Musée Maillol in Paris last year is currently on show in Lyon, till 17 March. It is a rich record of … Continue reading “Elliott Erwitt: A Life in Photos in Lyon”
The Booker Prize 2023 was awarded to Paul Lynch for his dystopian novel set in his native Ireland, Prophet Song. Chosen from a longlist of 13 and a shortlist of six, Lynch’s is the fifth Irish novel to win the U.K.’s most prestigious literary prize. And it’s the former film critic’s fifth novel. Prophet Song … Continue reading “2023 Booker Prize Goes to an Irish Dystopia”
Posy Simmonds is a British cartoonist and writer. She is best known for her work in the field of comics and graphic novels, particularly her contributions to The Guardian newspaper. She is currently being celebrated at the Bibliothèque Publique d’Information (BPI) at the Centre Pompidou (Paris) in a retrospective exhibition until April 1st, 2024. The … Continue reading “Posy Simmonds: Drawing Literature”
Black Legends is a musical comedy that traces more than a century of African American music along with landmarks in the civil-rights movement and Black American history. We know some of you took classes when it was on last year. It’s back on in Paris until at least the end of January. The musical doesn’t … Continue reading “Black Legends”
The Booker Prize shortlist 2023 contains books by two Irish, two American, a Canadian and a British author exploring identity, family dynamics and societal collapse. All of them have been shortlisted for the first time, and two of the books are debut novels. The winner of the U.K.’s most prestigious literary prize will be announced … Continue reading “Six Books for the Booker”
34 years after the beginning of the saga, British author Ken Follett returns to Kingsbridge, an imaginary town in the south of England, with a fifth installment, The Armour of Light. With this book, Follett completes a period of more than 800 years, from the end of the Dark Ages to the time of the … Continue reading “The Armour of Light: Ken Follett returns to Kingsbridge”
