Five of the best … films
Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood (18)
(Quentin Tarantino, 2019, UK/US/Chi) 161 mins
Is Quentin Tarantino the last Hollywood auteur? Or is he a nostalgia-fetishising relic of the pre-#MeToo Tinseltown? However you feel, this latest – about a washed-up TV star and his stuntman pal in an LA soon to see the grisly Manson murders – is a high-powered, affecting offering, with heavyweight performers bringing their A game. Out on Wednesday.
Blinded By the Light (12A)
(Gurinder Chadha, 2019, UK) 117 mins
Sometime Guardian journalist Sarfraz Manzoor’s memoir – about growing up in Luton the son of a Pakistani immigrant factory worker and becoming obsessed with Bruce Springsteen – has been turned into a crowdpleasing film by Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha.
Animals (15)
(Sophie Hyde, 2019, UK) 109 mins
This Dublin-set adaptation of Emma Jane Unsworth’s novel about two twentysomething women’s hedonistic lifestyle has become a flagwaver for empowered post-Fleabag cinema, with Holliday Grainger and Alia Shawkat as the BFFs whose friendship is turned around when one of them gets sidetracked into a serious relationship with a man.
Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love (12A)
(Nick Broomfield, 2019, UK) 102 mins
Kurt and Courtney director Nick Broomfield outlines another celebrated music industry relationship: that of Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ihlen, the woman who inspired his songs So Long Marianne and Bird on a Wire. In truth, it’s not an especially dramatic story, but it’s capped by Cohen’s wonderful deathbed letter, and Broomfield’s surprising revelations of his proximity to it all.
Apocalypse Now: Final Cut (15)
(Francis Ford Coppola, 1979, US) 183 mins
After the redux version, now the last ever (promise?). Coppola has trimmed 20 minutes from the extra-long version of his madness-of-war epic that he put out in 2001; that one had added nearly an hour of deleted material to his 1979 original. The director has said this new version is “just right”, although it still contains the divisive “French plantation” scene.
AP
Five of the best ... rock & pop
Sophie
If you were quick you might have snapped up the limited-edition remix version of professional noise merchant Sophie’s debut album Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides, which came housed inside a clutch bag. No, seriously. The price? A snip at just $285. For everyone else, here is an opportunity to hear that album, and many more of her synapse-snapping sonic experiments, at a one-off show as part of Nile Rodgers’s Meltdown series.
Royal Festival Hall, SE1, Saturday 10 August
We Out Here festival
The brainchild of DJ and label owner Gilles Peterson, the inaugural We Out Here festival promises to join the dots between soul, hip-hop, electronica and jazz. As well as a host of DJs with immaculate record collections, it also boasts a smörgåsbord of genre-agnostic live acts, from the lo-fi R&B vignettes of Tirzah to rapper/spoken word artist Kojey Radical’s epic communions.
Mill Hill Field, Huntingdon, Thursday 15 to 18 August
Liz Lawrence
After years of being part of someone else’s story – be it as one half of electro duo Cash+David or touring with Bombay Bicycle Club – DIY indie pop experimentalist Liz Lawrence is stepping out on her own. The title of her new album, Pity Party, sums up her creative dichotomy; for example, jaunty, loved-up single Navigator opens with a lyric about being covered in blood.
The Social, W1, Tuesday 13 August
The Cure
The Cure’s Sunday Glastonbury slot was so long it has probably only just finished – which is perfect timing, really, as they’re also booked to play in Glasgow as part of the Summer Sessions series (your dad’s faves the Foo Fighters headline on 17 Aug while your younger sister’s faves the 1975 play a week later). Robert Smith et al will be joined by fellow miserabilists Mogwai and the Twilight Sad.
Bellahouston Park, Glasgow, Friday 16 August
MC
Brad Shepik Trio
One of the most intriguing contemporary guitarists is the American original Brad Shepik, once a protege of cross-genre guitarist Ralph Towner. Shepik has worked in Dave Douglas’s Balkan-leaning Tiny Bell Trio, with the late drummer Paul Motian, and with musicians from many cultures. This is a rare UK chance to catch him.
Nottingham, Saturday 10 August; Manchester, Monday 12 August
JF
Three of the best ... classical concerts
Pictured Within: Birthday Variations for MCB
On his 60th birthday, Martyn Brabbins will be conducting a Prom with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra that includes Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music, Brahms’s Song of Destiny and Elgar’s Enigma Variations. But no Brabbins concert would be complete without new music, and here it is a work commissioned by the BBC to mark his big day. Pictured Within is an Enigma-inspired collective piece from 14 composers: an international lineup ranging from Kalevi Aho to Judith Weir. However successful, it certainly won’t lack variety.
Royal Albert Hall, SW7, Tuesday 13 August
Eugene Onegin
Four years ago, the Komische Oper Berlin brought Barrie Kosky’s inventive production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute to Edinburgh. The company is returning this year with his restrained version of Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece, first seen in 2016. Then it featured the soprano Asmik Grigorian as Tatyana, and she returns to the role on Thursday and Saturday, with Günter Papendell as Onegin.
Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Thursday 15 to 17 August
Clandeboye festival
Although Camerata Ireland appear at the end of the programme, the focus of the Clandeboye festival is very much on chamber music. Resident artists include pianists Barry Douglas and Finghin Collins, violinist Elina Vähäla, viola player Nobuko Imai and cellist Andrés Díaz, and the opening concert sets the tone with Schubert, Brahms and Fauré.
Clandeboye Estate, Bangor, Friday 16 to 24 August
AC
Five of the best ... exhibitions
Beyond Landscape
The Pier Arts Centre is one of Britain’s most picturesque galleries as well one of the northernmost, literally balanced on a pier in Stromness harbour. That makes it a perfect venue for this exhibition examining landscape artists such as Winifred Nicholson who venture into the abstract and question reality itself. Sublime art in a sublime setting.
The Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney, to 9 November
Seaside: Photographed
If you’re heading for the seaside, why not take in this pictorial history of a British institution? Sea bathing started in the 18th century and was popularised in Victorian times. This exhibition starts with 1850s beach photographers and explores the salty tang of seaside fun in pictures by Martin Parr, Jane Bown, Chloe Dewe Mathews and more.
Turner Contemporary, Margate, to 8 September
Cut and Paste
This hugely enjoyable exhibition claims that collage was not invented by Picasso and Braque in their cubist art in 1912, but was already a popular medium in Victorian times. Surrealist Max Ernst was obsessed with cutting up 19th-century magazines to create dream images with a Victorian feel, and that nostalgia persists in the pop collages of Peter Blake and the fantasies of Terry Gilliam.
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Two, Edinburgh, to 27 October
Natalia Goncharova
The artist who designed the Ballets Russes production of Stravinsky’s The Firebird emerges here as a magic realist painter of Russia’s peasant society, customs and beliefs. Her rollicking cubistic homages to Russia’s predominantly rural people portray a past that was effaced by the 1917 Revolution. Goncharova was famous as a futurist but there is much more sadness than optimism in her city scenes, while the primitive power of Orthodox icons thrills her.
Tate Modern, SE1, to 8 September
Secret Rivers
Under the capital flows a hidden network of buried rivers with names that sound like charms in stories of the city: Effra, Fleet, Neckinger, Lea, Wandle, Tyburn, Walbrook … and the less romantic-sounding Westbourne. This exhibition resurrects these subterranean ghost rivers with paintings, maps and archaeology: a boat ride through lost Londons of the imagination.
Museum of London Docklands, E14, to 27 October
JJ
Five of the best ... theatre shows
Oedipus
Robert Icke has become the unofficial master of rewiring classic plays for the modern day. Now he’s rebooting Sophocles’s devastating Greek tragedy Oedipus and putting a modern political spin on things. Directed by Icke and performed in Dutch with English subtitles, the show will star Hans Kesting and the brilliant ensemble cast of Internationaal Theater Amsterdam.
King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, Wednesday 14 to 17 Aug
Anguis
Olivier award-winner Sheila Atim was the very best thing about Girl from the North Country – and that was a musical packed full of very brilliant things. Now she has written her first show, which will be a contemporary and sideways glance at the Cleopatra myth, set in a broadcast studio. The production includes original music and is directed by Lucy Atkinson.
Gilded Balloon Teviot, Edinburgh, to 26 August
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Nicholas Hytner is a true maestro when it comes to sprucing up Shakespeare – and his immersive take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream has received superlative reviews. The seating is wrapped round the set, and the audience are plunged into the heart of this mischievous show, which feels more like a party than a play. The cast is packed with stars and includes Gwendoline Christie, Oliver Chris, David Moorst, Hammed Animashaun and Felicity Montagu.
Bridge Theatre, SE1, to 31 August
The Doctor
Robert Icke is having a busy month. The Doctor marks his final collaboration with the Almeida, the venue that helped make his name. The play is a loose adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s Professor Bernhardi, which is about a Jewish physician who – after trying to protect the feelings of a fatally ill woman – finds himself embroiled in scandal and racially fuelled suspicion. Icke’s long-time collaborator and all-time top thesp Juliet Stevenson stars.
Almeida Theatre, N1, Saturday 10 August to 28 September
Les Misérables: The Staged Concert
The Queen’s Theatre is undergoing renovation (and will return renamed the Sondheim Theatre), so producer extraordinaire Cameron Mackintosh is mounting a staged concert of hit musical Les Mis at the Gielgud. He has pulled together an absurdly talented cast, including Michael Ball, Alfie Boe, Carrie Hope Fletcher and Matt Lucas, plus an ensemble and orchestra of over 65 members. Here’s hoping we can sing along.
Gielgud Theatre, W1, Saturday 10 August to 30 November
MG
Three of the best ... dance shows
Trisha Brown Dance Company: In Plain Site
Two treats for the price of one. Not only is this a performance from the late, great choreographer Trisha Brown’s company, it takes place in the inspiring sculpture park Jupiter Artland, where Brown’s dancers will be responding to the art and landscape, floating on rafts in the lakes and other surprises.
Jupiter Artland, nr Edinburgh, Saturday 10 & Sunday 11 August
ZooNation Youth Company: Tales of the Turntable
Perfect for entertaining bored kids (and adults) in the summer hols, ZooNation specialises in a kind of wholesome but cool, joyfully feelgood hip-hop that riffs on popular culture, in this case a Bill and Ted/Back to the Future-style journey through music history.
Queen Elizabeth Hall, SE1, Thursday 15 to 26 August
Nikki & JD: Knot
The trend for intimate circus shows that use thoughtful acrobatics to embody personal stories continues with Knot, a dance-circus duet created in collaboration with the brilliant Ben Duke of Lost Dog. The theme: how can we be honest with ourselves without hurting those we love?
Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh, to 25 August
LW
Composite image: Allstar/Columbia Pictures; Redferns; Succession Picasso/DACS; Caroline Mardok
