Review of Lightning Strikes, a concert at London’s ICA in which Joey Arias and Kristian Hoffman pay tribute to their late collaborator Klaus Nomi, and keep a particular flame of queer culture alive
RoboCop-out
Gosh, but I love me some Paul Verhoeven. To my mind, the brilliantly perverse Dutch director is one of the greatest satirists in film history – certainly one of the finest ever to have worked within the Hollywood machine. He is consistently interested in wrongfooting audiences – challenging them to question their own engagement in […]
Uncover Her Face – 1950s London’s secret queer and trans lives
Sexual intercourse, as Philip Larkin famously noted, began in 1963, “Between the end of the ‘Chatterley’ ban / And the Beatles’ first LP”. By those lights – the ones that take something’s beginning as being the point at which its reality broke undeniably and irreversibly into all levels of public consciousness – queerness began a few years […]
The Worst of Scottee Q&A for Run Riot
I did a quick Q&A with Scottee about his solo show, The Worst of Scottee, for Run Riot. I reviewed the show in Edinburgh last year (read the review here) and thought it was extremely interesting. In the Q&A, he says he doesn’t want to do a show that’s him wanking into a mirror. Fair […]
JCVD, VHS and movies as folk art
As soon as there were VHS home-movie cameras, there were people remaking their favourite films at home. Maybe people were doing it before video, though no examples come to mind (tell me if you know of any…), but my hunch is that it’s to do with youth and timing. Home-movie technology on film was usually […]
Cabaret article in the Guardian
Just a quick heads-up about a piece I did for the Guardian online earlier this week about the adaptive possibilities of cabaret compared to more conventional theatre models – special forces rather than regular army, if you like. Here’s the opening: Dripping with rococo ornamentation and covered in mirrors, the Café Royal’s Grill Room in […]
Review: Mat Fraser – Cabinet of Curiosities: How Disability Was Kept in a Box
Review of a galvanising and heartbreaking performance lecture by Mat Frasier at the Science Museum about the historical representation of disability in museums
Always crashing on the same couch – Inside Llewyn Davis review
J.M. Tyree and I reviewed the Coen brothers’ latest film, Inside Llewyn Davis, for the February 2014 issue of Sight & Sound. Josh and I co-wrote the BFI Film Classic on The Big Lebowski in 2007 and have covered a bunch of Coen pictures for S&S since then. (Here’s our take on No Country for […]
Remembering the gay Butlins – Derek Jarman: Pandemonium exhibition
And so Jarmania 2014 begins! This year, the twentieth anniversary of Derek Jarman’s death, sees a whole bunch of events dedicated to the artist and filmmaker. First out of the traps is Pandemonium, an exhibition by the Cultural Institute at King’s, where Jarman studied from 1960 to 1963, at the Inigo Rooms in Somerset House’s […]
‘What better role model to put out on the streets?’ Street artist Pegasus brings Tom Daley to the RVT
Not that we needed one, but there’s a whole new reason to love the Royal Vauxhall Tavern: a life-size street-art stencil of Britain’s fave Olympic medalist/smiley twink/Speedo-model/same-sex-love poster boy, Tom Daley, brandishing a groin-level declaration that ‘All We Need Is Love’, complete with rainbow-hued love-heart. Created on Friday (January 17, 2014) by street artist Pegasus, the […]
