Once upon a time in Hollywood, Al Pacino’s name was not a byword for lukewarm thrillers or lacklustre romcoms. Turning 79 today and still in possession of one of the most bankable faces in the movies, Pacino’s popular reputation sentimentally … Continue reading Al Pacino at 80: In praise of Dog Day Afternoon
I distinctly remember the day I filed my feverish review of Gravity – Alfonso Cuarón’s brain-bending 3D space epic – because my boss marched over to my desk and cartoonishly proclaimed “FIVE STARS?!… is this some kind of joke?” It … Continue reading Gravity: five years on… and still deserving all five stars
By titling her 1993 breakthrough Debut, Björk cutely shrugged off the juvenilia of an earlier self-titled solo album – an Icelandic collection of translated covers released some 16 years earlier – and subtly distanced herself from the three LPs she … Continue reading Björk’s Debut at 25: A tantalising tip of the audio iceberg
As the increasingly nostalgic movie geek world embraces another (not-so-new) wave of Godard-fever – sparked both by the belated UK release of Michel Hazanavicius’ bio-drama Godard Mon Amour (AKA Redoubtable), and the recent 50th anniversary of JLG shutting down the … Continue reading Why Godard’s Le Mépris might be my favourite film ever
This week Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories turns an incredible five years old. I grappled awkwardly with the record at the time – penning the below review for Time Out – and was both on and off the money. Yes, … Continue reading Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories, five years on – a future-disco car crash which never stopped flaming
I can distinctly remember the first time I heard the playing of Anouar Brahem, because the circumstances were so cinematically odd. As a wanderlust-struck student, sitting outside a cheap café in Tangier, Morocco – a day after completing a three-week … Continue reading How Jan Garbarek, Anouar Brahem and a Moroccan (mis-)adventure kick started my lifelong love affair with ECM records
The oft-quoted dictum that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” – credited variously to sources from Laurie Anderson to Frank Zappa, but attributed by scholars to comedian Martin Mull – is, of course, clap-trap. Words carry meaning more … Continue reading Why writing about jazz is maybe just a little bit like ‘dancing about architecture’ – @robgarratt on jazz
