News, comment, links and observations

theartsdesk an essential site of 2009: BBC Radio 5 Live

Five Live rates theartsdesk one of its five sites of the year

radio 5theartsdesk received a New Year's gift last night when we were given a significant accolade from BBC Radio 5 Live. In Web 2009 with Helen and Olly, the station's podcasters and self-styled "internet obsessives" Helen Zaltzman and Olly Mann recognised theartsdesk as one of the five "essential sites of 2009" in a series of awards to the "cream of weblebrity".

New Year Birthdays on the Tube

Pablo Casals, Marianne Faithfull, Bo Diddley, two Monkees, Paul Bowles

A series celebrating musicians' birthdays.

30 December 1910: Enough of all the seasonal jollity. With any luck, yours was more real than forced. The other side of New Years is, for many of us, a certain existential panic. What happened to the last year? How did we do? How the hell did it go so fast? And, more scarily, though hopefully invigoratingly, how many more do we have left?  Paul Bowles, best known as author of The Sheltering Sky, wasn’t a musician exactly, but was a musicologist (the peerless collections of the Moroccan music he recorded are in the Smithsonian). In 45 seconds, he sums up the feeling. “How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20? Maybe less.”

A Merry Little Christmas Eve: theartsdesk recommends

Our writers recommend selected DVDs and CDs to pick up today

As we all have only one shopping day left, theartsdesk hopes to make Christmas Eve a little easier by offering a few enlightened recommendations. From our writers on new and classical music, opera and ballet, film and comedy, here is a list of CDs and DVDs that we hope will enhance your 11th-hour shopping experience. Happy Christmas from all at theartsdesk.

 

DVDs


Noche de Rabanos, Oaxaca, Mexico

The Night of Radishes is a sculpture exhibition with a difference

Tonight, 23 December, is a significant night for culture in Oaxaca, Mexico – it’s the Noche de Rabanos. The Night of the Radishes. Thousands of people descend into the zocalo to witness sculptures carved from extremely large radishes, especially grown for the occasion.  It was certainly one of the most memorable Christmas exhibitions I’ve seen.

Richard Wright wins the 2009 Turner Prize

An imposing gold-leaf fresco takes the artworld's top award

Richard Wright's work celebrates impermanence but his election last night as the 2009 Turner Prize winner - an award which brings with it a purse of £25,000 - has guaranteed it a sort of immortality. The Glasgow-based painter's major piece currently on display at Tate Britain is an enormous, luxuriant and ornate symmetrical fresco painted in shimmering gold leaf which commands the otherwise virtually empty room it occupies.

British Independent Film Awards

The cream of British independent cinema at the 2009 BIFA Awards

Sir Michael Caine and Daniel Day Lewis were the headline honorees at the 12th British Independent Film Awards in London last night, while Moon, an ultra low-budget sci-fi movie directed by Duncan Jones, David Bowie's son, was named Best Film. The full list of nominees and winners follows below. The winning candidates are in bold typeface.

Birthdays on the Tube, 6-12 December

Rob Tyner, Sarah Chang, Professor Longhair, Meg White, Booker T Jones and Alan Ward

An ongoing series celebrating musicians' birthdays.

12 December 1944: The unprepossessing-looking Rob Tyner was the lead singer of the MC5, who along with The Stooges were Detroit's finest rock bands. The best evocation I've come across of the era is Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain's Please Kill Me, an oral history of punk and its origins, which graphically tells the whole story by interviewing a cast of hundreds. Most of whom should have known better.

{youtube width="400" height="300"}iM6nasmkg7A{/youtube}

Subscribe to Buzz