Arts DVD FILM REVIEW: The Other The Other (Eureka blu-ray). Robert Mulligan’s psychological thriller is a rather bloodless horror about a pair of twin boys, one of whom is – as Hollywood tradition dictates – evil. It has a twist which is officially revealed at the one-hour mark (though if you haven’t spotted it within the first te By Michael Hootman • 1 min read
Arts DVD FILM REVIEW: SHOAH (AND 4 FILMS AFTER SHOAH) This four-disc set starts with Claude Lanzmann’s nine-and-a-half-hour ‘documentary’ about the Holocaust. The word is in inverted commas as it’s a description the director himself rejects. It’s a collage comprising interviews with victims, perpetrators and innocent, and not so innocent, bystanders of By Michael Hootman • 1 min read
Arts Payton Edgar’s Agony to help Sussex Cancer Fund Matthew is a trained nurse who has worked in the Sussex Cancer Centre for 15 years. Currently working in the outpatient clinic department, he has also worked in both the chemotherapy department and the inpatient unit, Howard One. He has been writing seriously for 10 years, and in 2011 was a runner u By Michael Hootman • 1 min read
Arts La La Theatre Company auditioning for local actor La La Theatre Company are seeking a Brighton actor for an exciting new comedy. “Therapy” centres around four characters who embark on a series of unusual holistic treatments at the Orpady School of self-discovery. The course takes the residents on a bonkers journey, only to discover all is not as it By Michael Hootman • 1 min read
Arts REVIEW: Briefs: The Second Coming The acts in this cavalcade of burlesque come fast and furious: one moment a slimmed-down Divine lookalike and a bevy (I think that’s the right collective noun) of muscle boys are fan dancing to INXS, the next Evil Monkey Man in your very lap thrusting his nether regions towards your poor, innocent f By Michael Hootman • 1 min read
Arts FILM REVIEW: The Way He Looks Daniel Ribeiro’s film, based on his earlier short, is a bright, sunny coming-of-age drama. In a Q+A session after the screening the director said that one of the motivations behind making his movie was to empower the gay children who would see it. This is laudable, and absolutely makes for a great t By Michael Hootman • 2 min read
Arts REVIEW: Into the Woods This is a magical production of Stephen Sondheim’s musical set in a fairytale world in which we see familiar characters but in an unfamiliar light. Red Riding Hood is on the brink of discovering her sexuality – with a little help from a certain Mr Wolf; Jack betray’s the giant’s hospitality and late By Michael Hootman • 2 min read
Arts REVIEW: Entertaining Mr Sloane Joe Orton’s play of sex, intrigue and murder amongst the lower middle-class is now fifty years old. Not surprisingly it’s lost some, perhaps most, of its power to shock and is now a respectable classic of English theatre. But of course shock will get you only so far – will its cast of scheming, hypo By Michael Hootman • 2 min read
News REVIEW: Thief As opening scenes go, this one’s quite arresting: a naked man runs through the theatre onto the stage and masturbates to the point of orgasm – those of a nervous disposition will be heartened to learn that this is done with the actor’s back to the audience. It’s an almost comically attention-grabbin By Michael Hootman • 2 min read
Arts REVIEW: Titus Andronicus at Shakespeare’s Globe For most of the last few centuries Shakespeare scholars have relegated Titus Andronicus to somewhere near the bottom of the league table. The very aspects that they deem unworthy of Will – the torture, rape, mutilation and murder – are the kind of qualities that certainly don’t harm its box office By Michael Hootman • 2 min read
Arts REVIEW: Endgame: Emporium Endgame is the bleakest of black comedies, a post-apocalyptic nightmare in which a domestic tyrant presides over his obedient son and his hapless parents – both of whom live in barrels whose sawdust isn’t changed as often as is hygienic. The outside world – ‘the other hell‘ – is a place without Turk By Michael Hootman • 2 min read
Arts STRANGER BY THE LAKE: Review This is an unnerving psychological thriller which takes place entirely in an idyllic lakeside cruising ground. Its characters seem almost unmoored from society – we have almost no idea of how they live the rest of their lives – and so the cruising ground comes to represent a sort of alternative soci By Michael Hootman • 2 min read
