A blog on Newcastle Arts and Culture, Cinema and Life.
The best cinemas show more than just films. Cinema auditoriums are now spaces in which to enjoy the latest plays and operas, experience live music alongside silent classics and, thanks to Mamma Mia, indulge in karaoke sing-a-longs. Ever a passionate advocate of the versatility of the cinema screen, Newcastle’s Tyneside Cinema played host to Manet: [...]
It may seem strange for a film about genocide to open with a sex scene, but for historical drama Lidice it couldn’t be more fitting. A film that ends with mass murder, Lidice is for the most part bursting with life. In memory of the hundreds of men, women and children murdered by Nazi’s in [...]
From the moment you settle into your posh velvet seat, you have a pretty good idea of what to expect from the lively new production of The Ladykillers, currently showing at the Theatre Royal. The dignified warbling of wartime radio stars fills the auditorium and on stage a gloriously twee English suburban house sits expectantly, [...]
It’s seven o’clock on a Wednesday evening and three hundred people have assembled in the particularly apt location of Newcastle’s Assembly Rooms. On the speaker’s table sits writer Lee Hall, novelist Ann Cleeves, Paul Gilroy from NCU, playwright Peter Mortimer and library worker Rachel Kirk. People settle into their seats with notebooks at the ready [...]
I feel privileged to have grown up amongst what is commonly described as the North East’s Cultural Renaissance. Over the past fifteen years or so, Newcastle has thrived creatively, blooming into a significant hub of arts and culture outside of our country’s capital. Our home is also home to the Baltic, the Theatre Royal, National [...]
Prohibition in the USA lasted from 1920 to 1933 during which time it was illegal to make, sell or transport alcohol anywhere in America. It was a time of bootleggers; gangsters; private detectives; flappers; bank robbers and corrupt lawmen, in short, it was total anarchy. Imagine the government had succeeded in imposing that pasty tax? [...]
I try very hard not to tell lies, even those tiny little white ones. LIE: “I’m sorry I’m late for work, there was a problem with the metro” TRUTH: “I’m sorry I’m late for work, I’m dangerously hungover.” LIE: “An unexpected bill has come out of my account, I’m skint.” TRUTH: “I spent all our [...]
I’m just going to admit it, straight up; I didn’t know who Stewart Lee was until last week. I had a vague idea – glasses, cool hair, big in the nineties – but, really, I was completely unprepared when I rocked up to The Stand last Monday to see his latest show Carpet Remnant World. [...]
Last Tuesday I went to my first ever book launch. Although, it wasn’t a book launch in the traditional sense because it was actually a film screening, with the bookish parts squeezed in before the film began. Nevertheless, it was my first time, and unlike another memorable first, I really enjoyed it and look forward [...]
On the release of Moonrise Kingdom, some random London-based film critic made the following comment on Twitter, “Oh, I see Wes Anderson has made ‘his film’ again.” Ordinarily, a theatrical grimace and a swift tap of the ‘unfollow’ button is enough to remove Twitter-based annoyances from my life, but for some reason this bloke really [...]
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