The Eurovision Song Contest, that glorious, glittery spectacle that isn’t just out of left field, but comprises the field, had quite the 2014 edition. A televised competition featuring entrants...
Three Diana Wynne Jones books have been published since the author’s death in 2011, and I have bought each and mourned a little anew. There’s something particularly final, though, about The...
Harold Shand is dead. We always knew it in our hearts when the future James Bond drove him off at gunpoint. We always knew it but we couldn’t quite believe. Men like Shand don’t die. They...
In (coastal) America the line between performance art and pornography has long been walked by a plethora of female provocateurs, from Annie Sprinkle right up to Sasha Grey. So in this sense Femen –...
A couple of days ago, English writer, television presenter, and model Peaches Geldof was found dead in her home at the age of twenty-five. The cause of death is as yet unknown, but that hasn’t...
While the world watches the situation unfold in the Ukraine, and pundits argue the legitimacy of Crimea reuniting with Russia, Venice held a historic referendum. On March 21, the province of Veneto...
Wasting no time – and equally wasting no opportunity when it came to official spectacle – Russia has gone ahead and annexed Crimea and Sevastopol. The trumpets blared, a speech clearly meant to...
What are these “Unstable Elements” and why are they lurking in Belarus? Are they housed in nuclear warheads misappropriated after the collapse of the Soviet Union? Is there a race against time to...
Following recent bloodshed, the ouster of President Yanukovych, and new elections set for May, Ukraine is at a crossroads. It will probably remain there for some time, inspiring many overwrought...
In “Disco and Atomic War” Estonian filmmaker Jaak Kilmi approaches what is a pretty dry, well-tread political topic – the power of media to not only prop up totalitarian regimes but to take...
