Five of the best ... films
The Favourite (15)
(Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018, Ire/UK/US) 119 mins
Yorgos Lanthimos is a long way from his “Greek freak” days, with this excellent comic satire set at the court of Queen Anne in the early 18th century. It focuses on the shifting sands of intrigue as one favourite (Rachel Weisz’s Sarah Churchill) is threatened by the arrival of newbie Emma Stone. True Oscar bait, with Olivia Colman as Anne looking most likely to clean up awards-wise.
Out New Year’s Day
Mary Poppins Returns (U)
(Rob Marshall, 2018, US) 130 mins
Disney’s big family number for the holidays is not so much a sequel as a facsmile of its celebrated 1964 hit. Other than a sterner Poppins, courtesy of a headmistressy Emily Blunt, and a notional shuffling of the generations, this is an identical experience to the original; quite possibly what the world wants right now.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (PG)
(Peter Ramsey, Bob Persichetti, Rodney Rothman, 2018, US) 117 mins
It is not exactly seasonal but this is the most credible cross-generational film for the holidays: kids, teens and grownups can all get something out of it. Cranking the Spider-Man mythos up a few notches, this takes Spidey into areas of diversity that less nimble superhero yarns can only dream of, with a tale involving parallel-dimension versions of the webslinger in a variety of new forms.
Bumblebee (PG)
(Travis Knight, 2018, US) 113 mins
This looks like a new beginning for the Transformers franchise, long renowned as lucrative but idiotic. Without headbanger Michael Bay at the helm, this spin-off – featuring the yellow bot that morphs into a VW Beetle – tries for Spielbergian outsider bonding, with Bumblebee meeting and greeting alienated teen goth Hailee Steinfeld. There are still plenty of fighting robots, though.
Holmes & Watson (12A)
(Etan Cohen, 2018, US) 90 mins
Not, as may have appeared at first sight, the third in the series featuring Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law; instead we get Will Ferrell as the celebrated detective, revisiting the Step Brothers vibe via a reunion with John C Reilly, who plays Watson. Their task: to save Queen Victoria from Moriarty (Ralph Fiennes).
AP
Five of the best ... rock & pop
Concert in the Gardens
As part of Edinburgh’s Hogmanay celebrations – other treats include a torchlight procession, a ceilidh near the castle and something called Symphonic Ibiza – Metronomy Franz Ferdinand play this year’s Concert in the Gardens. Hearing Take Me Out before the clock strikes midnight should be a moment, so make sure you are at least partially sober.
West Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh, New Year’s Eve
Yungen
It has been something of a mixed year for south London rapper Yungen, AKA CJ Brooks. In February, his summer 2017 Top 10 hit Bestie was certified platinum but then his follow-up single, Mind on It, missed the Top 40 altogether despite featuring omnipresent chart catnip Jess Glynne. Still, seeing in the new year as the headliner at MTV Base’s big blowout is not bad going.
O2 Ritz Manchester, New Year’s Eve
Wolf & Moon
How much you will enjoy the music of Dutch duo (and couple) Wolf & Moon, AKA Stefanie and Dennis, depends on your reaction to this bio on their website: “Travelling duo, making folky pop with electronic sprinkles.” To be fair, it is pretty accurate. Also, bonus points for their decision to film their wedding and turn it into a video for 2017’s loved-up single Home to Me.
The Bird’s Nest, SE8, Thursday 3; The Slaughtered Lamb, EC1, Friday 4; touring to 11 January
Joe Goddard
If you’re up for a big night out as 2019 approaches but can’t be doing with dancing on a Monday, then Joe Goddard might have the answer. Not content with being one fifth of every broadsheet’s fave dance act, Hot Chip, Goddard is also one half of music polymaths the 2 Bears, so expect a sprawling DJ selection of house, rave, soul, garage and 2-step sounds.
Phonox, SW9, Saturday 29 December
MC
Scott Hamilton Quartet
US saxophonist Scott Hamilton has been making subtly swinging mainstream jazz sound as easy as a stroll in the park for 40 years. He brings fresh radiance to the most familiar of standard songs, plays ballads with a canny eloquence, and will play this
Pizza Express season with his regular deft and musical UK trio.
Pizza Express Jazz Club, N1, New Year’s Day to 7 January
JF
Three of the best ... classical concerts
National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain
Every tour from the remarkable National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain nowadays seems to bring an innovation; something to challenge this unfailingly gifted band and take them into new territory. This time it is video. Kirill Karabits conducts a programme that includes John Adams’s Doctor Atomic Symphony and Sibelius’s Second Symphony, but begins with Rick Dior’s Science Fiction, in which clips from classic sci-fi movies are underpinned by electronica and minimalist riffs.
Coventry, Friday 4; London, 5; Nottingham, 7 January
Baroque at the Edge
This is the second year that Baroque at the Edge has challenged leading instrumentalists to take pieces from that era as the starting point for their own explorations. Pianist Gabriela Montero starts things off with Bach transcriptions by Liszt and Busoni alongside her own improvisations. Later in the weekend, violinist Elicia Silverstein juxtaposes Bach and Biber with Berio and Sciarrino, and Liam Byrne brings together viola da gamba and electronics.
LSO St Luke’s and Saint James, Clerkenwell, EC1, Friday 4 to 6 January
Ilker Arcayürek
The Austrian tenor Ilker Arcayürek first attracted British attention three years ago in the Cardiff Singer of the World competition. Since then, he has established himself as one of Europe’s finest younger lieder singers. He devotes this Wigmore recital with pianist Simon Lepper to Schumann. The complete Kerner Lieder takes up the first half of the programme, followed by a selection of later songs, including the Op 90 Lenau settings.
Wigmore Hall, W1, Wednesday 2 January
AC
Five of the best ... exhibitions
The Clock
What could be more perfect than a film about time passing as the world clocks in the New Year? OK, the timing is corny. But you could spend the last hours of the Christmas holidays in many worse ways than watching this addictive montage of film clips that all feature clocks. Christian Marclay’s living timepiece is sublime.
Tate Modern, SE1, to 20 January
Turner in January
There’s nothing like a bracing blast of JMW Turner’s visionary landscape art to clear your head and prepare you for a fresh year, as the Scottish National Gallery gives its collection of his watercolours their ritual January airing. Winds howl, the sea roars, mountains tremble with power. The very air is alive.
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, Tuesday 1 to 31 January
Courtauld Impressionists
If you are revelling this New Year’s Eve, spare a thought for the barmaid. She stands alone in Manet’s painting A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, her eyes numbed. In a big mirror behind her swarms a blurred chaos of nightlife. This modern masterpiece is the shocking star of an exhibition that reveals the radical edge and raw power of the art made in Paris from the 1870s to 90s. A scintillating trip to the birthplace of modern art.
The National Gallery, WC2, to 20 January
Early Gainsborough
The landscape of eastern England flits like a country breeze through Gainsborough’s early art. He paints clouds that are dark with promised rain and fields that anticipate its wetness. No one had ever before shown so well what Britain looks like. His portraits are equally acute and real records of unpretentious local people. Gainsborough is such a vivid and humane artist that they are all our contemporaries.
Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, to 17 February
I Am Ashurbanipal
The world this exhibition recovers is rich and strange but you wouldn’t want to live there; not unless you were Ashurbanipal himself, king of the Assyrian empire. This highly centralised, incredibly brutal state was a machine for conquest whose crushing of peoples is depicted in reliefs of torture. Yet Assyria deserves the name “civilisation” because Ashurbanipal’s library preserved the Epic of Gilgamesh.
British Museum, WC1, to 24 February
JJ
Five of the best ... theatre shows
Pinter at the Pinter: Party Time & Celebration
More stars clamour to get in on Jamie Lloyd’s season of Pinter one-acters: Celia Imrie, Tracy-Ann Oberman, Abraham Popoola and Ron Cook are the luminaries in this sixth double bill, revealing Pinter’s leftwing leanings. Party Time takes some well-aimed pot shots at the super-rich, while Celebration highlights the vulgarity of excess.
The Harold Pinter Theatre, SW1, to 26 January
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
One of the National Theatre’s biggest hits returns to the West End. The Curious Incident – based by Simon Stephens on Mark Haddon’s novel about an unusual and inquisitive boy’s journey into the outside world – has won numerous awards here and on Broadway.
Piccadilly Theatre, W1, to 27 April
The Dame
Having performed it at the Edinburgh fringe, former Blue Peter presenter Peter Duncan brings The Dame (by his daughter Katie) to London. He plays Ronald Roy Humphrey, an old pro who returns to his native north of England to play in panto once again. On the day of the final show, ghosts from his past reappear and he is forced to reassess his life in a piece that delves into the mind of the entertainer, the man beneath the makeup.
Park Theatre: PARK90, N4, Wednesday to 26 January
Sweat
US playwright Lynn Nottage frequently writes about marginalised people: her drama Ruined, about Congolese women surviving civil war, won a Pulitzer prize. As did this play (she is the only woman to win two drama Pulitzers), for which she spent two years in Reading, Pennsylvania, one of US’s poorest towns. It is set in a steel factory, where layoffs and cutbacks have a devastating effect on a group of hitherto close friends.
Donmar Warehouse, WC2, to 26 January
A Christmas Carol
Being a leftwing writer, David Edgar’s take on Charles Dickens’ story is a Brechtian affair, looking at episodes in the Victorian author’s early life and how they explain his horror at child poverty, seen here and in Oliver Twist. If that sounds dry, this production was first seen last year and was a big hit thanks to director Rachel Kavanaugh’s lively staging and some magic effects. Aden Gillett plays Scrooge.
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, to 20 January
MC
Three of the best ... dance shows
English National Ballet: Swan Lake
Artistic director Tamara Rojo has been on a mission to push forward her thriving company with new contemporary commissions but they still dance the classics too. You may have seen the in-the-round version of this Tchaikovsky production by Derek Deane, but here it gets the traditional proscenium treatment.
London Coliseum, WC2, Thursday 3 to 13 January
Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake
A Bourne show for the holidays is now as much of a festive tradition in the capital as a Nutcracker. You’ve still got a few weeks to catch this revamped return of his all-male Swan Lake, with hot talent Matthew Ball moonlighting from the Royal Ballet as the Swan.
Sadler’s Wells, EC1, to 27 January
Russian State Ballet of Siberia
The hard-working Siberian ballet troupe and their orchestra set out on a mammoth UK tour, bringing Swan Lake and Cinderella to Cardiff, The Nutcracker to Manchester, La Fille Mal Gardée to Buxton and much more.
Cardiff, Saturday to Monday 31 December; Manchester, Wednesday 2 & Thursday 3; Buxton, Friday 4 to 6 January; touring to 16 March
LW
