Mark Shenton from The Stage seems to think so…

The National has another monster comic hit on its hands.

And although it’s a wild and a bit over the top, Sarah Hemming from the Financial Times says any silliness in the production isn’t an insult to the play:

A play, after all, about pretence, in which the characters spend much of the time talking to the audience in asides and in which people rejoice in names such as Mrs Oddfish and Colonel Wallop. But while Lloyd laces it all with sight gags, chirruping servants and even the occasional wink, the tone is affectionate and the production finds the sincerity in the play.

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Homosexual writers seem to be much better than straight ones at combining high literary style with vastly enjoyable descriptions of really filthy sex. Edmund White is a master of both. This novel is like one from the French 18th century, where passages of intricate social comedy alternate with carnal episodes of Baroque detail … All of this is tremendous fun. It is impossible not to like Jack and to be amused by the exploits brought about by his enormous penis, almost a character in itself, a sort of penile Candide.

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There are so many references to high culture that college baseball comes to resemble some sort of offshoot of Mensa. Mike Schwartz quotes Schiller in a pre-game pep talk. Owen reads Kierkegaard in the dugout. Introduced to Pella, Schwartz correctly identifies her name as that of a city sacked by the Romans in 168BC. Even Henry’s point of view dwells on Homer rather than Homer Simpson. All of this would be laughable if it was done with less conviction.

On the book’s first page there’s an elementary slip in the point of view, with a reference to Mike Schwartz letting “his huge aching back” relax against a chain-link fence. Any creative-writing instructor would point out that Mike may feel the ache but hardly the hugeness, which is information aimed squarely at the reader. Perhaps Harbach has let it stand with the affectionate confidence of a driver who decides, after passing his test, not to respray the scratch in the coachwork that happened the first time he took the wheel.

Read all the reviews for THE ART OF FIELDING.

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In a world full of cinematic junk food, this is haute cuisine.

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THE ARTIST, THE DESCENDANTS, THE HELP, EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE, HUGO, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, MONEYBALL, THE TREE OF LIFE, WAR HORSE

Director

THE ARTIST - Michel Hazanavicius,  HUGO – Martin Scorsese, THE DESCENDANTS – Alex Payne, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS - Woody Allen, THE TREE OF LIFE - Terrence Malick

Leading Actor

BRAD PITT – Moneyball, GARY OLDMAN – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, GEORGE CLOONEY – The Descendants, JEAN DUJARDIN – The Artist, DEMIAN BECHIR – A Better Life

Leading Actress

ROONEY MARA – Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, MERYL STREEP – The Iron Lady, MICHELLE WILLIAMS – My Week with Marilyn, GLEN CLOSE – Albert Nobbs, VIOLA DAVIS – The Help

Supporting Actor

CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER – Beginners, NICK NOLTE – Warrior, JONAH HILL – Moneyball, KENNETH BRANAGH – My Week with Marilyn, MAX VON SYDOW - Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Supporting Actress

BÉRÉNICE BEJO - The Artist, JESSICA CHASTAIN – The Help, JANET MCTEER – Albert Nobbs, MELISSA MCCARTHY – Bridesmaids, OCTAVIA SPENCER - The Help
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This is a tale about “the beauty and mystery of what is most ordinary”, whether those ordinary things are prized by the hero or not. Miller lingers up close on details: sour breath, decaying objects, pretty clothes, flames, smells, eyelashes. He is a close observer of cats. He is also alive to the dramatic possibilities offered by late-18th-century Paris, a fetid and intoxicating city on the brink of revolution.

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Marvellous novels have been written about such innocence-ending moments, most famously LP Hartley’s The Go-Between. Generally the narration of such stories, looking back at the events described, puts them in some kind of perspective. Unfortunately, the device chosen by Urquhart to frame her story is a clanger. In a sentimental and wildly implausible 20-page epilogue she brings on dead Mandy’s lover, and reveals that Liz is telling the story of her youth to him. Worse, she uses her novel’s final section to offer her thoughts on Islam, for Mandy’s “Mister Military” turns out to be a Canadian Muslim who, when they were lovers, was on the road to becoming an imam. Like Liz with Teo, the relationship ended in tragedy, leading Liz, back with her butterflies, to compare the people who undertake “those difficult migrations, over great stretches of open water, and across vast tracts of land, to and from Mexico, or America, or Kandahar” with the migrating monarchs who live for just six weeks.

And so Urqhuart, the Canadian descendant of Irish immigrants, appears to suggest that human migrations are doomed to fail. In Afghanistan the Canadian Muslim finds prayer is the only comfort, while relations between the Ontario farmers and their Mexican workers are a disaster. I knew her sensibility was conservative, romantic, but I was dismayed by the moral of this melancholy story and taken aback that such a distinguished novelist could be so narrow-minded.

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Latest to arrive is THE THIRD REICH, which is, according to Michael Wood in The New York Times, an interesting early addition to his canon:

But knowledge of the later work almost certainly improves the latest Bolaño novel to appear in English: The Third Reich, written in 1989, which against every tenet of the New Criticism offers a richer reading experience once you have seen the signature. Indeed, I kept responding to it like a person living in two times. Mainly I was reading the novel now, and finding it thoroughly, weirdly absorbing. Partly I was reading as if I were an unfortunate editor in around 1990, wondering how I was going to tell Bolaño that this wasn’t quite a finished book yet, that his plot led nowhere, that his characters kept trailing off into incoherence. That earlier reader would have been wrong even then, but without hindsight it’s easy to be wrong.

In case it all seems like hard work and his masterpiece, 2666, at nine hundred pages is a bit of a stretch (its most famous section is an inventory of hundreds of the corpses of murdered women), Giles Harvey in The New Yorker prepared a users’ guide to Bolaño. This is what he had to say about THE THIRD REICH:

A moody and uneven novel … should join that shelf marked “For Completists Only,” on which also sit Antwerp, Monsieur Pain, The Romantic Dogs, Between Parentheses, and The Skating Rink. Although The Third Reich, which seems to represent Bolaño’s first attempt at novel-writing, is not without certain characteristic charms—black comedy, idiomatic vigor, a looming and ineffable sense of doom—its power is only intermittent and its prose is often as flat as old seltzer water.

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Opera House, Manchester, 8th Feb – 11th Feb

King’s Theatre, Glasgow, 14th Feb – 18th Feb

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A weird, brown-nosing and slightly vile movie … Decorous, swirling and time-hopping,‘W.E.’ – Wallis and Edward’s first initials, combined – looks good, wears its clothes well and has a rhythm free of fustiness. But it also has all the credibility of a fan stamping their feet and insisting their idol be understood.

Chris Tookey in the Daily Mail also questioned Madonna’s grip on reality…

 Making this film may be worthwhile therapy for Madge, but it’s a colossal, narcissistic bore for the rest of us.

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