SIMON DUFF recommends a new album from renowned composer and oud player Anour Brahem.
Fancy a TV binge?
Among upcoming TV series available globally, DENNIS BROE picks out the good, the bad and the interesting
(L) Disko 76, Liberation on the dance floor; (R) Ben Gazzara’s mob boss pontificating in Il Camorrista
JAMES WALSH has a great night in the company of basketball players, quantum physicists and the exquisite timing of Rosie Jones
A New Awakening: Adventures In British Jazz 1966 - 1971, G3, and Buck Owens
JAMES WALSH is moved by an exhibition of graphic art that relates horrors that would be much less immediate in other media
RON JACOBS welcomes the translation into English of an angry cry from the place they call the periphery
GUILLERMO THOMAS recommends a useful book aimed at informing activists with local examples of solidarity in action around the world
HENRY BELL is provoked by a book that looks toward, but does not fully explore the question of who gets to imagine the shapes of cities to come
The Good:
Machine (ARTE/Amazon Prime)
This series, written by Thomas Bidegain (A Prophet), currently available to be streamed for free on the Arte website, crosses the always vibrant French social realist tradition with kung fu sequences.
A young woman, escaped most likely from the French military, hiding out in a small town and counselled by a Marxist worker of colour, combats factory goons intent on breaking a strike in support of keeping the factory in France instead of the buyer’s intention of moving it to Poland to save money.
The male-female camaraderie and the concealed power of the female combatant echoes the Gina Davis/Samuel L Jackson film The Long Kiss Goodnight and makes for a compelling ride.
Similar stories
New releases from The Tenementals, Nik Bartsch’s Ronin, and Kuunatic
Concert of the Year? No doubt, Pat Metheny at the Barbican in late November...
Hallucinogenic homosexuality, a quantum thriller, airport shenanigans and feminist Tolkein: MARIA DUARTE reviews Queer, The Universal Theory, Carry On and Lord of the Rings: The War of The Rohirrim
DENNIS BROE picks his highlights