Five of the best ... films
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
(15) (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2018, US) 132 mins
Catch this in cinemas while you can, before it permanently retreats to Netflix. The Coen brothers’ latest about-turn is a western anthology – six alternately funny, gruesome and melancholy short pieces – that individually may not add up to all that much, but collectively bottle the duo’s unique humour and sensibility. Brilliant stuff.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
(12A) (David Yates, 2018, UK/US) 134 mins
The Wizarding World franchise gets into its stride with the second (of a projected five) Fantastic Beasts films. Here, Johnny Depp’s Gellert Grindelwald takes centre stage as JK Rowling delivers a warning from history about dictators and elites. Commendable, but definitely less fun than last time.
Suspiria
(18) (Luca Guadagnino, 2018, It/US) 152 mins
Maverick Italian director Luca Guadagnino reunites with two of his A Bigger Splash stars, Dakota Johnson and Tilda Swinton, for a remake/reworking of Dario Argento’s lurid giallo classic. Johnson is the American girl in late-70s Berlin who joins a ballet school that happens to be a front for a witches’ coven. Guadagnino directs in a restrained, measured fashion before cutting loose with a freakout finale.
Outlaw King
(18) (David Mackenzie, 2018, UK/US) 121 mins
Another full-scale cinema feature that headed swiftly to Netflix. Scottish director David Mackenzie re-established himself with Hell or High Water, and here casts that film’s star Chris Pine in a rousing epic of Scottish independence: the story of Robert the Bruce. Unlike Braveheart, this ends in success for the rebels, but it’s yet to be seen whether Mackenzie’s likable, handsome film will have the same cultural impact as Mel Gibson’s.
Wildlife
(12A) (Paul Dano, 2018, US) 104 mins
Actor Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood, Love & Mercy) has accrued considerable goodwill with his directorial debut, an adaptation of the Richard Ford novel about a marital breakdown in 1950s small-town America, starring Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal.
AP
Five of the best ... rock & pop
Unknown Mortal Orchestra
It has been a busy year for Ruban Nielson and his band of art-rock recluses. April gave us the expansive semi-concept album Sex & Food, while last month they released the instrumental collection IC-01 Hanoi, led by a 10-minute ambient mood piece. Fingers crossed that they mix in some of the “hits” on this tour.
Birmingham, Monday 19; Royal Albert Hall, SW7, Wednesday 21; Brighton, Thursday 22; Sheffield, Friday 23; touring to 26 November
Tirzah
After skirting around the fringes of dance with 2013’s appropriately titled I’m Not Dancing EP, Tirzah Mastin moved closer to hushed post-R&B on this year’s excellent debut full-length, Devotion. Produced alongside former school friend and regular collaborator Mica “Micachu” Levi, it’s an intimate suite of perfectly imperfect pop that often feels as if it’s collapsing in on itself.
Village Underground, EC2, Monday 19 November
Yung Lean
Sweden’s Jonatan Leandoer Håstad, AKA Yung Lean, already has a fair few strings to his bow. As well as being a rapper (he is often lumped in with the cloud rap micro-genre), a singer, producer and fashion designer, he has now ventured into art-show curation. This one-off event, titled Wings of Desire, will feature art, music (experimental noise artist Yves Tumor will also play) and a pop-up shop.
O2 Academy Brixton, SW9, Wednesday 21 November
The Japanese House
Over the course of four EPs, Buckinghamshire’s Amber Bain (the Japanese House moniker was created to preserve an anonymous feel to her music) has honed her soft-focus take on pop. The lilting, gently unfurling emotion of current single Lilo – complete with a surprisingly cinematic video – feels like her most realised work to date.
Glasgow, Sunday 18; Newcastle upon Tyne, Monday 19; London, Wednesday 20; Bristol, Thursday 22; touring to 25 November
MC
The Boy’s Doin’ It
As an irresistibly musical tale-spinner, and the fiercest of political campaigners during South Africa’s infamous apartheid years, the late trumpeter, flugelhornist and composer Hugh Masekela was one of world jazz’s best-loved visionaries. Vocal stars Sibongile Khumalo and Oliver Mtukudzi and former Masekela band members celebrate his life at this London jazz festival highlight.
Royal Festival Hall, SE1, Sunday 18 November
JF
Four of the best ... classical concerts
Le Villi
Mark Elder gives a rare outing, if only in concert, to Puccini’s first stage work, an opera-ballet premiered in 1884. The central roles in this tale of the supernatural are taken by Ermonela Jaho and Arsen Soghomonyan, while Elder prefaces the hour-long Le Villi with the first of Bizet’s L’Arlésienne suites and the ballet music from Verdi’s Macbeth.
Royal Festival Hall, SE1, Wednesday 21 November
Harriet
Muziektheater Transparant presents the UK premiere of Hilda Paredes’s musical and theatrical portrait of 19th-century slave-turned-abolitionist Harriet Tubman. Claron McFadden and Naomi Beeldens provide the vocals, and the Hermes Ensemble supply percussion, violin, guitar and electronics.
Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield, Tuesday 20 November
O Hototogisu!
What was planned as a showcase of new and recent commissions has become Birmingham Contemporary Music Group’s tribute to the late Oliver Knussen, the composer-conductor who devised it. Stefan Asbury conducts the first performance of David Sawer’s Caravanserai, alongside Birtwistle’s Three Songs from The Holy Forest and Knussen’s own bejewelled set of haiku settings, O Hototogisu!.
CBSO Centre, Birmingham, Sunday 19 November
Faithful Journey
Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conducts the CBSO in the first British performance of this “Mass for Poland” by Roxanna Panufnik, composed to celebrate the centenary of the country’s independence. Panufnik’s father, Andrzej, was the CBSO’s chief conductor in the late 1950s.
Symphony Hall, Birmingham, Wednesday 21 November
AC
Five of the best ... exhibitions
Fernand Léger
The modern world is a curvy metallic utopia in the shiny happy art of this great French visionary, showing here alongside his 1924 film Ballet Mécanique. Léger faced the horrors of the first world war but, instead of despair, came home with an evangelist passion for the beauty of modern life. His art is sensual, heroic and feminist in its dreams of a new age.
Tate Liverpool, Friday 23 November to 17 March
Gainsborough’s Family Album
Thomas Gainsborough was an enlightened 18th-century parent who hoped his daughters, Mary and Margaret, might follow him into artistic careers. It was not to be, but his portraits of them growing up are great studies of childhood; their faces glow with intelligence and curiosity.
National Portrait Gallery, WC2, Thursday 22 November to 3 February
Julian Trevelyan
European modernism made little impact on early 20th-century Britain but one movement that took root was surrealism, which chimed with British traditions such as the gothic novel. Trevelyan was a fully paid-up member yet his paintings don’t so much set free the psyche as dwell on details of everyday life in 1930s Britain. Flashes of dreamy, unreal colour and Chagall-like whimsy enliven his pictures of mill towns.
Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, to 10 February
Bojan Sarčević
This artist’s adolescence in 1980s Yugoslavia and its transition from communism to capitalism are suggested through pop music, domestic appliances and the ice of the cold war. This is an installation of freezers that accumulate layers of frost and ice as their mechanisms hum under the sounds of Spandau Ballet and George Michael. Fridges were images of American luxury to 1950s British pop artists; here they regain that strangeness.
Modern Art, E2, Thursday 22 November to 21 December
Brent Wadden
This show of new works by Canadian artist Wadden reveals how closely textiles and painting interweave in the art of today. He combines thread and acrylic in canvases reminiscent of Anni Albers and her Bauhaus textile designs. He also draws inspiration from US folk traditions. The results are calm grids and patterns that suggest the great open spaces of north America. Quietly compelling abstract art.
Pace London, W1, Thursday 22 November to 11 January
JJ
Five of the best ... theatre shows
Witness for the Prosecution
This version of Agatha Christie’s whodunnit, staged at County Hall in a courtroom setting, has a while to go before it catches up with the same author’s The Mousetrap – 65 years, in fact. From Tuesday, a new cast will tell the tale of the young, down-at-heel Leonard Vole, accused of murdering a wealthy widow, in Lucy Bailey’s atmospheric production.
County Hall: The Debating Chamber, SE1, to 1 September
Oedipuss in Boots
The Wardrobe Theatre is at it again with another unique mash-up for its seasonal offering at its Bristol base. Greek tragedy meets panto, as the royal kitten of Mount Olympus is – as in the Sophocles original – destined to kill his father and marry his mother. Cue a colourful journey of mother love and self-discovery.
The Wardrobe Theatre, Bristol, Thursday 22 November to 20 January
Caroline, Or Change
Sharon D Clarke, recently seen in Doctor Who and due to appear next May in Death of a Salesman at the Young Vic, reprises her starring role in the Chichester Festival Theatre production of this gutsy musical by Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori. It is 1963 in Louisiana and the start of the civil rights movement. Black maid Caroline works in a white, liberal Jewish household (the score combines klezmer and Motown), yet feels that change is passing her by.
Playhouse Theatre, WC2, Tuesday 20 November to 6 April
Billionaire Boy: The Musical
There seems to be no stopping David Walliams and the burgeoning number of stage adaptations of his children’s books. From the same team as Fantastic Mr Fox comes Jon Brittain’s version of the story of a boy whose factory worker father becomes mega-rich after inventing a multi-purpose loo roll. Here’s the message bit: while Dad spends, spends, spends, Joe gets nothing, apart from grief at school, proving money can’t buy you happiness.
Nuffield Theatre: City, Tuesday 20 November to 6 January; touring 14 February to 2 March
The Model Apartment
Set in the early 1980s, this black comedy by Donald Margulies finds two elderly Holocaust survivors, Lola and Max, retiring to Florida from Brooklyn. But things start to go wrong when their condo is not ready. They have to temporarily stay in a show flat and history begins to catch up with them and they face demons from their past. Directed by Laurence Boswell.
Theatre Royal: Ustinov Studio, Bath, Thursday 22 November to 22 December
MC
Three of the best ... dance shows
Estonian National Ballet: Triple Bill
There are two UK links in this all-Estonian three-parter. Company director Thomas Edur, a former dancer with English National Ballet, presents Silent Monologues, a one-act ballet about relationships. And Eve Mutso, much loved ex-principal with Scottish Ballet, choreographs a new work called Echo. The third piece, Time, comes from Tiit Helimets.
Tramway, Glasgow, Saturday 17 November
Lucy Suggate: Pilgrim
The gallery launches its first BALTIC Late event with a performance from Lucy Suggate. Pilgrim sees Suggate immersing herself in an electronic score by James Holden for an eclectic, hypnotic solo of “pagan sensibilities” and asking herself the fundamental question: why do we dance?
BALTIC, Gateshead, Friday 23 November
The Royal Ballet: The Unknown Soldier; Infra; Symphony in C
First world war tributes have been plentiful, and impressive, in dance, and here Alistair Marriott makes a final commemoration. The Unknown Soldier is based on first-hand experiences of the conflict, at home and in the field.
Royal Opera House, WC2, Tuesday 20 November to 29 November
LW
