Media reviews

 Can robots fall in love? It's been a common staple of Western art since the 1990s, but this musical has a fresh take on it. To summarise, two helper-bots (a fussy helper-bot-3 and an assured helper-bot-5) live next door to each other for 12 years and have never interacted. One day Clare bot needs help with a charger, which throws Oliver's standard routine into disorder.  It's a classic rom-com formula of mutual attraction which starts with disruption to life and initial dislike. Oliver is insecure about the more advanced helper-bot in his life and desperate to show he can keep up; Clare couldn't care less. Oliver still has hope that his owner (James) will retrieve him from the scrapyard, Clare understands that she's been abandoned. Their different world views collide until eventually they came to terms with each other. So far, so standard.  What's particularly good about this isn't the music (fine, but there are no showstoppers here, the music is helping dr...

 This is a piece of art that has really impressed me. It takes a number of existing shibboleths in modern society and turns them on its head. The story follows an oil company lobbyist who travels round the world finding ways to undermine climate change agreements before they are agreed to buy time for the oil companies to continue their work without binding international legal frameworks obstructing them. The play sets out upfront the point that securing global agreement and consensus was difficult in the halcyon days of the 1990s, let alone now, and that finding ways past our differences is extremely difficult. It is extremely fair to the arguments set out by the fossil fuel industry - the dependence of civilsation on cheap energy, and the ridiculous position of only rich (in 1990) countries controlling emissions and poor countries not needing to is really well set out. With a few twists this could easily have been a drama setting out the fossil fuel industry's whole position on c...

Timothee Chalamet's top lip doesn't move throughout the whole movie. I'm sure there's more to the movie, but that was the most impressive bit of physical acting I've seen in years and it deserves top place in this review.  The film is fine, it's about Bob Dylan's early years, relationships, and emergence before he turns his back on the old folk system to take on the (horror) new music style. The film fails to really set up why folk music people are so horrified by the new up-and-coming music, and the reaction of the purists at various festivals to new types of music is rather difficult to emphasise with. The film would have benefited greatly from a brief explanation somewhere as to why the new music is hated & feared, rather than just reiterating that the old guard hate the new stuff.  Great music, great acting, good singing. Probably wouldn't see again. Watched on Wednesday 29th January at London Tottenham Court Road Odeon