Valerian's visuals light up the screen

Valerian and the Planet of a Thousand Cities may not be quite up there with Luc Besson’s camp sci-fi classic, The Fifth Element, but it’s an enjoyable romp for the holiday season.

In part crowdfunded – helping make it both the most expensive European and independent film in cinematic history – it’s based on the iconic French sci-fi comic series, Valérian and Laureline, by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières.

Valerian and Laureline are 28^th-century special agents who have been sent to retrieve the last of a species of animal, known as a converter, from black market dealers.

But Valerian realises that the cute little creature – and an unknown race of aliens who are desperate to get their hands on it – have featured in an apocalyptic dream he had.

Back at a vast space station where millions of beings from across the universe live and work together, Valerian and Laureline are plunged into further danger when the converter is stolen and Commander Filitt tells them that part of this ‘planet of a thousand cities’ has become infected by an unknown force that is spreading.

Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevigne as the leads are perhaps not entirely convincing in terms of holding the film together – certainly at the beginning – but they grow into the roles and also have welcome help from Clive Owen as Filitt, Rihanna as Bubble, a shapeshifting alien chanteuse, and Sam Spruell as General Okto Bar.

Herbie Hancock, Ethan Hawke and perhaps particularly, Rutger Hauer, don’t really have enough screen time to make a great impact.

The plot is entertaining enough, with a nice ethical heart, but where the film unquestioningly wins is in its sumptuous, superb visuals.

There are all sorts of little references, as you’d expect from Besson: I’m not sure I’d be alone in seeing a subtle thread between the K-Tron robot warriors here, the battle droid army in George Lucas’s Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999), the Mondoshawans in The Fifth Element (1997) and Jacob Epstein’s Torso in Metal from The Rock Drill (1913-14).

Nor does it seem too farfetched to feel that in his central alien race, Besson has looked at what James Cameron did in Avatar – and then done it better.

And in the Doghan Daguis – a trio of devious, platypus-like characters – he seems to be saying that he can do irritating characters without going too far, as Lucas did with the legendarily awful Jar Jar Binks.

All in all, eminently watchable – and probably worth seeing more than once if only to play spot the reference and to enjoy the look of it all.

A haunting sense of the ancient and the apocalyptic

With the clock ticking, Friday evening proved the perfect time to catch the Giacometti at Tate Modern.

Much shorter than some of the gallery’s recent blockbusters, this includes sculpture and painting from the Swiss artist most famous for his elongated, highly textured figures.

The opening room is perhaps the most effective though, populated with a series of heads and busts on plinths that provide a perfect illustration of the breadth of Giacometti’s stylistic experimentation.

There are some wonderful, very naturalistic pieces here, including two of his brother, Diego, who was one of his most regular models. 

The second room takes us away from the naturalistic and into the realms of the abstract: Cubism and African art are obvious influences; the artist was almost an engineer at various points, creating constructions with moveable elements, while some of his ‘woman and man’ works do feel a tad obvious in the use of convex and concave.

The next room introduces us to the sorts of small works that Giacometti produced in order to make a living – and his links with Surrealism – and then we move into the realms of the familiar with his elongated human forms.

One reviewer raved about this exhibition as illustrating that Giacometti was every bit as great as “Degas, Picasso and Matisse”.

That is hyperbolic nonsense. First, why on Earth would you tag Degas to the other two? And then why would you tag Giacometti to them – the two superstars of 20th century Western art?

Make no mistake: it is a very, very good exhibition that illustrates how good Giacometti was. But while there is variety here, there is nothing like the variety of style and experimentation within a lifetime of work that marks out both Picasso and Matisse.

What the exhibition gives you, by the end, is something rather haunting: the half-painted plaster works seem to echo the ancient Classical past; there is something about the texture of his stick figures that, for me, evoked a sense of apocalypse; even of Pompeii’s charred dead.

Briefly, as one walks around, there is music. It comes from a film of Giacometti working and talking to interviewer between drags on a cigarette. The music complimented the works perfectly and this is an occasion where it would have been beneficial to have more.

The artist’s stick figures are iconic – including his dog, from 1951 (pictured above). And by the time you exit the final room, you have a sense of the power that they possess: at once primitive and yet strangely futuristic. The paintings are certainly interesting, but they are in an incredibly muted palette and seem more like preparatory works than finished ones.

Giacometti deserves his place in the upper reaches of the artistic pantheon and this is very much an exhibition that is worth seeing: but don’t let anyone kid you – he is not the equal of Picasso or Matisse.

• Giacometti is on until 10 September. Find out more at Tate Modern.

Picasso portraits give a fascinating overview

Self-portrait with Palette

When you live in a large city it’s arguably the way of things that you will not know about every cultural event taking place, but even allowing for that, it was a surprise to realise, at the start of this week, that I’d been unaware of a major exhibition in London.

The National Portrait Gallery, in conjunction with the Museu Picasso, Barcelona, has been staging Picasso Portraits, which ends tomorrow.

With little time left, The Other Half and I booked tickets for last night and duly made our way there after work. And after all, given the Catalan giant’s observation that “art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life,” what better way could there be to begin a weekend?

It’s a career-spanning collection that takes us from the end of the 19th century to the 1970s.

Works on display include a small number of photographic portraits to a sketch on a paper napkin to fragments on cards to works in oil to sculptures. It’s an excellent way to get an idea of the range of Picasso’s work and styles.

Self-portrait in charcoal and chalk

The earliest works include some of the most fascinating, including two self portraits – one, sporting a wig from 1897 and the other, in charcoal and chalk from 1889-1900.

Both have an intensity about them, but the latter (reproduction does not do justice to the light of it) particularly caught my eye.

It is difficult with Picasso – perhaps more than with most other artists – to separate artist and art. There is a sense of raw animal power about the subject in both these; of a force of nature that gives you an insight into what he created.

Close by is a 1901 portrait of the French art critic and writer Gustave Coquiot that seems to nod toward Fauvism in its use of green in the subject’s skin, and with a dollop of impasto at the shirt’s throat drawing the eye.

From a personal perspective, I ‘get’ the early Cubist works, but I can’t say I ‘like’ them, with their de-humanising analysis and the muddy palette, though the Head of a Woman bust is more interesting than the canvases.

Far more revealing, for me, are works such as Self-portrait with Palette from 1906, where we see a recognisable style emerging, that combines the classical and the primitive – and leaves us with a sense of the emotion.

Later rooms include one with a range of portraits of Olga Picasso – from the naturalistic to the Cubist.

Portrait of Olga Picasso

And here is the perfect chance to highlight a prime bugbear about this exhibition: the curator’s notes next to each work.

In one exhibit, sitting next to a sketch showing a friend of Picasso in a brothel, the words talk of the friend “carousing with a drunken prostitute”. Well, “carousing” is one way to put it.

Similarly, in a later work – a drawing of the artist Raphael having sex while the pope draws curtains aside to watch – there is no mention of the act, but we are informed that Raphael was known to have an ‘amorous’ character.

This terror of mentioning S.E.X. is only one aspect of the issue: throughout, we’re told what Picasso was thinking as he worked.

Now, it is a fair bet that, when an artist is, say, in a strained relationship, that might show up in their work, but asserting such connections as fact is irritating at best.

However, that is what happened in the room dedicated to Olga – Woman in a Hat (Olga) from 1935 is pretty much definitively described as making a sarcastic comment on his wife’s love of hats, yet also as showing her in such a way as to pity her even as their relationship broke apart.

Woman in a Hat (Olga)

Portrait of Olga Picasso from 1923 has a generally classical approach, yet the eyes have something of the mask-like look of Self-portrait with Palette – but even here the curator is straining to tell us that the formality suggests the relationship was already in trouble.

It’s hardly rocket science to suppose that a self-portrait from 1972 – effectively a skull with a piece missing – was influenced by a sense of his own mortality (he died the following year) but do we really need this stating as though we are incapable of making the links on our own? Indeed, I’m going to suggest that such notes detract from the power of just such a work.

I never use audio guides in galleries, in the UK or abroad, precisely because I think that they get in the way of you really seeing the works.

It’s entirely possible that I might miss something that the in a painting or sculpture that had not been upmost in the artist had in mind at the time of its creation, but then that personal experience of art is part of the ongoing process of creativity; part of what makes art more than imply objects.

Self-portrait, 1972

Yet on occasion, the notes skate over what many people might not know, which could be said briefly and might add something.

In another room, for instance, two notes mention Matisse, yet with no mention of the sense of rivalry between them – most of it on Picasso’s part (see Hilary Spurling’s excellent biography of the French artist), thus not giving any real sense of the claim that the colours of one painting are a deliberate echoing of Matisse.

The other problem here is the lack of any works from the Blue Period. It feels like an obvious gap in what otherwise is a successful use of one type of art to give that career perspective.

All this said, there is plenty to delight – not least some of the more informal works Picasso executed for friends, including a 1957 sketch of the French composer and pianist, Francis Poulenc, which shows how he could get away with caricaturing his friends.

Unlike some exhibitions, this is also not so long as to exhaust. You still have time – just about – to catch Picasso Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery in London. It finishes tomorrow – and then we have until 2018 for Tate Modern’s just-announced Picasso blockbuster.

National Portrait Gallery

Cultural outings after a bit of a shock

It was a relief to see the back of June, a month that had not started with any sense that it would produce a major ‘event’, but took only a few days to announce that it was going to be memorable.

The event in question was The Other Half having a heart attack. Don’t panic – it sounds more dramatic than it actually was.

There was no clutching at chest and/or keeling over.

And the first responder, the London Ambulance Service paramedics, the medical, ward and support teams at Bart’s were all absolutely magnificent and have my (our) eternal gratitude and appreciation.

I've not personally seen the NHS in action like that, but it makes you very aware of just how valuable it is.

After four nights, he was discharged and is now doing rehab stuff, practising being a cat and feeling faintly embarrassed at having been signed off for two months, because he feels okay in himself.

If we both needed an urgent motive to quit smoking, that was it.

So, it’s all been a tad distracting – hence no posts on this blog for over a month.

Panorama from Queen's Promenade, Ramsey

And in the middle of it all, I had to fly out and back in a day to the Isle of Man for a family funeral – an experience that was more enjoyable than expected, but quite surreal at times.

It’s 40-plus years since I was on the island and, since I was so young then, I have limited memories of it. I had forgotten – or perhaps I had never fully realised – just how rural it is.

The taxi ride from the airport at the south of the island to Ramsey in the north took me over the mountains.

Fog was clinging to the bleak hills, which made one appreciate the dangers of the TT racers who had only recently been speeding along the narrow roads. There have been 243 deaths at TT and Manx Grand Prix races since they were first staged in 1911 – one this year.

'You has chips. We wants chips'

By late afternoon and my return journey, the cloud had lifted, leaving a view from the mountains down to the sea, which also serves to give one a sense of just how small an island it is.

Having arrived in the rain – stepping down onto the tarmac from the plane at Ronaldsway to the smell of manure – I found myself in Ramsey just as the drizzle tapered off. Wandering around in the damp, I recognised elements of the harbour, where my grandfather had taken me to buy fish fresh off the boats when we holidayed on the island.

I had chips for lunch – from a chippy where the menu board advertised “posh coffee” for £2 – and found myself feeding seagulls who had swooped in at the mere smell of chips. It was entirely apt, since my love of gulls stems from those childhood holidays in Ramsey, when I would wake to the sound of their shrieking.

Anyway, all of this means that you won’t be getting lengthy reviews for a number of things that we have seen since ‘The Event’ (as I feel like to euphemise it). As the medical staff made quite clear, rehabilitation does not mean enforced 24/7 bed rest.

Pirates of Penzance – left, Alex Weatherhill 

But I’ll start by mentioning the all-male Pirates of Penzance that we saw at Hackney Empire a couple of weeks ago.

We had booked not knowing that it was be an all-male production, simply that it was G&S, but it was an absolute hoot.

Particular mentions should go to Alex Weatherhill as Ruth and Alan Richardson as Mabel.

Watch out for future productions by Sasha Regan’s company – they’ve done similar productions before and hopefully will do so again.

It’s also worth noting that the Tate Britain’s Barbara Hepworth exhibition has opened.

Not helped by my inexperience in looking at abstract sculpture, I didn’t find it earth-shattering.

Which is not to say I didn’t enjoy it. The guarea pieces, carved from “great logs” have a beauty that seems to radiate something very tranquil.

Corinthos by Barbara Hepworth

Hepworth talked of ‘tunnelling’ through the wood and you can let yourself get lost in the curvaceous channels into and through it.

But in general, the exhibition really only surges into life at the end, with a room that aims to recreate a pavilion where some of her bronzes were displayed in the Netherlands half a century ago, and which the artist herself considered as a perfect way to show them.

Indeed, more generally, Hepworth commented on the link between a work and where it is displayed when she noted that “one of the functions of sculpture is to fulfil the demands and conditions of a given site”. The two should not be divorced if the culture is to fully work.

Suddenly, in this final room, you have the sense of what influenced Hepworth so much – nature: and how much better her pieces work in a setting that reflects that rather than a more sterile room.

Ham from the 'ultimate black pig'

And as if that wasn’t enough cultural hijinks, after a 16-year gap, we were finally lured back into the cinema last Friday.

I say “we”, but I’ve been the particularly reluctant cinema goer over the years; dischuffed with the actual experience of going to the cinema and also with the amount of Hollywood tat aimed at an adolescent male audience.

Don’t get me wrong, that audience deserves being catered for by the industry as much as any other, but not to the exclusion of others.

And with the UK having largely binned our own film industry and decided simply to import whatever Hollywood churns out, I felt disengaged from the entire enterprise.

Admittedly, I then ‘discovered’ foreign-language films – and a present of a DVD player allowed me to watch quite a few.

Where there is tapas, there are pardon peppers

While more recent years seems to have brought some improvements in what’s being made, I’ve waited for the DVDs rather than going to see them on cinema release.

Well, finally there was a film I didn’t want to wait any more months to see.

It has French origins and is the epitome of charm, sophistication and erudition.

I speak, of course, of Minions.

Having booked for the Vue at Islington, we needed to eat first, so tried La Farola a short walk away, where we enjoyed very pleasant tapas.

The Lomo iberico de bellota is apparently the “utimate black pig” and, seasoned with smoked paprika and sea salt, delicate slices are an absolute taste delight, with a good deal of complexity.

Green Gordal olives were huge and tasty; the padron peppers were fine (if not including any surprise hotties), while mushrooms were good too: the boquerones might have been Calabrian, but were a reminder of sunny Collioure, and the pan con tomate came on a scrummy, wafer-light, chargrilled bread.

Hurrah for silliness

Anyway, Minions was also our first 3D film – and that itself was rather enjoyable.

The film itself was great fun – utter silliness, but there’s a place for that. Some critics have been rather snooty about it, complaining that the plot is a bit thin.

It probably is, but it was not the sort of film where that bothered me. I didn’t want to see it for the ‘plot’, but for what it does very effectively, which in essence is a series of gags and sketches.

The opening – marvellously dryly narrated by the wonderful Geoffrey Rush – sees the eponymous yellow characters going through a number of bosses as they seek an evil being to serve.

Not only is that an establishing sequence in terms of giving us the minions’ history, it also establishes the sketch-like nature of the film.

No complaining from me – it provided plenty of laughs.

The initial smell of popcorn was almost overpowering when we entered the foyer, but the seating was as comfortable as anything I could remember.

So perhaps it won’t be another 16 years before I enter a cinema again. In fact, I think Ted 2 has just opened.