Originally, Gustave Eiffel's marvel was scheduled to be demolished after twenty years, but due to its enormous international popularity, it remains standing and will continue to do so most likely in perpetuity. A new film chronicles how, why and with what in mind the tower came to be built

Read More

  Fracture A small thing. Insignificant, really. Out of play, or spite, the crossing of a line no one saw, a slight— imagined or real—a single hairline crack. At first, a bruise, a smart, built-up pressure beneath pushing edges apart. Some space, some denial, some bandaging. Family resumes as before. The mark fades. Out of […]

Read More

The backstory to the making of The Godfather, a movie that pulled off the neat trick of being both a blockbuster and a work of art, was as much a character-driven saga as the Mario Puzo page-turner on which it and its sequel were based. The Offer recounts that novel-to-screen story over ten engrossing, if not entirely accurate, installments

Read More

Netflix's Against the Ice takes its share of cinematic liberties with the actual story of two stranded arctic explorers, up to and including an entirely fictional encounter with a hungry polar bear. But indulge the plotline's embroidery and what remains is a visually striking and largely true story of adversity and endurance

Read More

Villanelle of the Stairs after Dylan Thomas Move surefooted, beloved, through the tears, the couplet is a sonnet’s final grace, climb fiercely into those high elder years. One-by-one bid adieu to stubborn peers, the dimming echoes of that youthful race, move surefooted, beloved, through the tears. Your children, old; your grandchildren, so fair, exalting beauty […]

Read More

'1883' and 'The Power of the Dog' are chalk and cheese in framing the American West. The former, a prequel to the 'Yellowstone' series, takes its liberties but is overall an often moving repackaging of the frontier legend. Jane Campion's effort, on the other had, takes a powerful novel and laces it with her personal input, a curious homoerotic fascination not least of all

Read More

Cut to the Horse Pain under the ribs? Mr Hypochondriac, take a number. 1. Tumor 2. Blocked artery 3. Constipation The familiar roulette wheel of maladies. (1 & 2 get special attention). Should I have a hot bath, or book an x-ray, put my affairs in order, take a nap, or prepare my unfinished oeuvre […]

Read More

'Cornwall is different to anywhere else in the world and it’s that difference that I want to try to explain and tell you what Cornwall means to me,' declares TV chef Rick Stein, whose SBS series makes as fine a meal of the county's often curious history and characters as of langoustines, mussels and prime cuts of wooly pigs

Read More

The Half-light the Low Light The half-light the low light the candlelight match-lit and flickering shadow and suggestion the romantic light the mysterious light the light of Rembrandt and van Eyck the light tempered by darkness a tonal softness the golden light the amber light the burnt-ochre light the light for cuddle and caress the […]

Read More

Before the troubled illustrator produced his thousands of anthropomorphised felines, cats weren't generally regarded as respectable pets. His images of moggies smoking pipes, pushing wheelbarrows, parading on their hind legs and reading newspapers changed all that

Read More