Orson’s sketches for early television

19th March 2013

Early television programmes do not get anything like the attention they deserve. In part this is because very few such programmes - and I am thinking here of television before the mid-1950s - have been preserved. But even those that more

A cage of one’s own [from Tempo]

18th March 2013

In 1964 Studio Vista published a handsome hardback celebrating the ABC TV arts series Tempo. With a profusion of plates on high quality photographic paper, plus a quirky text from critic and novelist Angus Wilson (on yellowy-beige interleaving), more

Yes to No (from Curzon on Demand)

15th March 2013

Film fans, happiness is coming (this to be sung to a jaunty tune with optional hand-clapping). If you've seen Pablo Larraín's remarkable film No, about the rival media campaigns in the 1988 referendum in Chile, you might perhaps pick up the more

Small is beautiful

11th March 2013

The best - and best-value - show of modern painting in London right now is not the overblown and distinctly patchy Manet: Portraying Life at the Royal Academy (until 14 April; entrance fee £15). Rather, it is more

Links for the weekend

10th March 2013

Let's start with the first trailer, released this week, for Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing (a still from which is above). Might he just have pulled off something truly special? For further background on the film, which opens in more

… and the bands play on (a bit)

6th March 2013

Listen up. Let's talk about The Sound and the Fury, the final part of which remains on BBC iPlayer until 9 March. Let's talk about it because it has been one of the best BBC arts and music offerings of more