Wadjda is the first feature-length film to come out of Saudi Arabia, and was shot by the country’s first female director – but those aren’t the only things that are great about it, says Deborah Ross. It’s also ‘fascinating, involving, moving, and an entirely excellent film in its own right’. The story might be simple, but it’s the glimpses of how life might be for a woman living in Saudi Arabia make it ‘wonderful’.
Deborah’s second film this week is the The World’s End, an attempt to be humorous that despite its cast (which includes Martin Freeman, Rosamund Pike and Simon Pegg) is completely unfunny, and ‘just boring’. Even the zombies fail to make it more exciting…
Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime used to be the place where you could take your brain to relax, wind-down and escape, says Kate Chisholm. But in recent months, books that ‘would sit better in the morning as Book of the Week’, such as John le Carré’s latest, have been ‘foisted upon us’. But here comes the good part. Book at Bedtime’s latest choice is Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, a 1930s classic based in the Deep South. What Kate made of the reading – and the book – is all there in her radio review this week. And below is episode 1.
If you have young people who need amusing in London this summer, then where better to take them than Shaftesbury Avenue, asks Lucy Vickery in this week’s Culture Notes. It ‘might not be traditional bear-hunting territory’, but now that Michael Rosen’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt has been ‘imaginatively translated to the stage’ by Sally Cookson, it’s a prime location for entertaining some of the younger members of the family. Here’s the trailer for it:
Going on a Bear Hunt Trailer from Nat Habety on Vimeo.
The classic Ealing comedy The Ladykillers is most famous for its 1955 film adaptation, which starred Alec Guinness, Cecil Parker, and Peter Sellers among others. After a lengthy tour, Sean Foley’s production has arrived at The Vaudeville Theatre, compete with ‘a cast of celebs’. But far from having the subtle humour of the film, this show is more like a slapstick routine. Perhaps, says Lloyd Evans, the ‘lengthy tour has taken much of the oomph and freshness from this show’. It might have worked at another time, but in mid-summer, in the West End? ‘Why would an American buy a ticket, let alone a Japanese or a Brazilian’, he asks.
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