by Gabrielle Schwarz
Wednesday 21st March 2012, 21:23 BST
When I started this blogging series, I set out 'to explore the beauty of books, featuring my favourite examples.' And that is what I have been doing, finding either classic or unexpected examples of beauty in books that somehow combine to form a cohesive group.
Some of these groupings were planned from the start: I was never going to talk about beautiful books without mentioning my all-time favourites such as ‘Alice in Wonderland’ or ‘T...
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by Dasha Lisitsina
Thursday 15th March 2012, 13:45 BST
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) was the Spanish director Pedro Almodovar’s breakthrough film that firmly planted him on the international scene. It has many of the defining characteristics symptomatic of all of his work: melodrama, a complicated but very tight plot, a highly stylized aesthetic, an interest in popular culture, women and sexuality. This film, however, is perhaps his most self-conscious, showing an awareness of th...
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by Gabrielle Schwarz
Sunday 11th March 2012, 13:34 BST
What is ‘symbolism’? Sometimes the word refers to an artistic movement in the late 19th century; elsewhere it defines a philosophical or theological approach. Always, it remains one of the most notorious clichés in a Literature student’s vocabulary. We may not have any of the more practical or visible talents of genius mathematicians or incredible athletes, but we do have a prized gift of our own: realising that when a writer says somethi...
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by Dasha Lisitsina
Monday 5th March 2012, 20:48 BST
Andrei Tarkovsky’s Russian film Solaris (1972) is unlike any sci-fi film I have ever seen: it explores outer space to explore inner space, demonstrating the philosophical and psychological possibilities of the science-fiction genre.
It has to be said that this film, at first, makes for a difficult viewing. It’s long and slow-paced; the shots are sometimes frustratingly drawn out; the dialogue is often more of a monologue which sometime...
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by Gabrielle Schwarz
Friday 2nd March 2012, 11:16 BST
Even when united in the same book, words and images are normally placed in two separate categories. One is the charge of the writer, the other of the visual artist. And one is usually present to serve the vision of the other, from the cursory subtitles of graphic novels or children’s picturebooks to the decorative function of much illustration. Illuminated manuscripts would rarely have been the single work of one person: even the writing itself...
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by Annie Raff
Thursday 1st March 2012, 14:10 BST
Is there a danger, when warning of the ugly side of eating disorders, that those on the path to anorexia or bulimia use such warnings as inspiration?
Take an example;Billie Piper appeared on the Jonathan Ross show quite a few years back and was asked the by the host about the eating disorder from which, it was public knowledge, she had suffered. He wanted her to recall a specific practice which she used to employ in her ‘anorexic-phase’ (s...
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by Alex Hitchcock
Thursday 1st March 2012, 14:10 BST
In an interview with Philipp Sauer in 2010, the ever-outspoken Branford Marsalis takes aim at fellow saxophonist Michael Brecker, 13-time Grammy winner and one of the most influential jazz instrumentalists in the history of the music.
Marsalis attributes Brecker's popularity to the fact that 'what Mike was playing was affirming for [his audiences] because of the style of it... they can go to a reference book, learn the licks, put the patt...
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by Kristina Bugeja
Wednesday 29th February 2012, 22:20 BST
This year, for the first time in four years, I did not buy the Christmas issue of Grazia magazine. Although it was only £1.95 for roughly 100 pages worth of fashion know-how, I just wasn't interested. Perhaps it was the particularly weak cover, (who really asked to see Little Mix in Alexander McQueen?), but it didn’t seem to have anything to offer me.
If you want to know the general consensus of dresses from the Oscars, you’re not li...
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by Dasha Lisitsina
Sunday 26th February 2012, 18:20 BST
Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (with the inevitably less romantic English translation ‘Lovers on the Bridge’), released in 1991, shows the dark, but no less beautiful, underside to the city of love. In this film love takes windy sidewalks, not cosy bedrooms, as it follows the story of two homeless people living on a undergoing construction in the centre of Paris.
The two lovers are an unusual pair. The film suggests that Alex has been homeles...
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by Gabrielle Schwarz
Thursday 23rd February 2012, 16:43 BST
So far in my series on beautiful books I have looked at a range of books every week encompassing a particular theme or idea, but this week my attention has been captured by a single person, in the extraordinary work of Japanese artist and writer Yayoi Kusama, as she captures the madness of Lewis Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland'.
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Week 5 over, we can now breathe a sigh of relief. Because halfway through term, the going starts to get tough(...
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