Salem’s Lot review - listless King remake

★★ SALEM'S LOT King's small-town vampires suffer vicious edits amidst tantalising folk magic

King's small-town vampires suffer vicious edits amidst tantalising folk magic

A boy’s dead friend scratching at his first-floor window, Nosferatu-like vampire Barlow rearing up with heart attack shock…The Texas Chain Saw Massacre director Tobe Hooper’s 1979 TV take on Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot scared a teen generation out of their skins.

This new film exists first as a failed franchise equation, adding Conjuring Universe producer James Wan to IT screenwriter Gary Dauberman as writer-director (he also wrote The Conjuring’s Annabelle series), but suffering heavy cuts prior to this much delayed release.

Lygia Clark: The I and the You, Sonia Boyce: An Awkward Relation, Whitechapel Gallery review - breaking boundaries

Two artists, 50 years apart, invite audience participation

Brazilian artist Lygia Clark is best known for taking her abstract sculptures off the pedestal and inviting people to interact with them. Dozens of constructions named Bichos (Beasts or Critters) (pictured below right) are hinged along the joins to allow you to rearrange the parts in seemingly endless configurations.

French Toast, Riverside Studios review - Racine-inspired satire finds its laughs once up-and-running

 FRENCH TOAST The English and the French, the men and the women, the young and the old, lock horns in Seventies farce  

Comedy gains momentum when characters are rounded out

It’s always fun jabbing at the permanently open wound that is Anglo-French relations, now with added snap post-Brexit, its fading, but still frothing, humourless defenders clogging up Twitter and radio phone-ins even today. So it’s probably timely for Gallic-Gang Productions to resurrect Jean (La Cage aux Folles) Poiret’s farce Fefe de Broadway, adapted as French Toast.

Music Reissues Weekly: The Devil Rides In - Spellbinding Satanic Magick & The Rockult

THE DEVIL RIDES IN - SPELLBINDING SATANIC MAGICK Pop & rock embrace the dark side

When pop and rock embraced the dark side

Just over two weeks before Christmas 1967, The Rolling Stones issued Their Satanic Majesties Request. The album’s title appeared to serve time on the peace-and-love, flowers-for-everyone good vibes of the psychedelic era. A year later, the Stones’ next LP, Beggars Banquet, went further. It opened with "Sympathy for the Devil." “Just call me Lucifer…or I'll lay your soul to waste,” sang Mick Jagger.

Michael Craig-Martin, Royal Academy review - from clever conceptual art to digital decor

★★★ MICHAEL CRAIG-MARTIN, ROYAL ACADEMY From clever conceptual art to digital decor

A career in art that starts high and ends low

Michael Craig-Martin was the most playful and provocative of the conceptual artists. His early sculptures are like visual puns, a play on the laws of nature. On the Table, 1970 (pictured below right), for instance, appears to defy gravity. Four buckets filled with water stand on a table; so far so ordinary. But the table has no legs and is suspended from the ceiling by ropes and pulleys.

Music Reissues Weekly: Peter Baumann - Phase by Phase: The Virgin Albums

The surprising solo adventures of a core member of Tangerine Dream

When the first solo album by Tangerines Dream’s Peter Baumann was released in the US in 1977, its promotion was striking. Press advertising (pictured below left) said “he possesses the infinite vision that has made his group one of the most important contributors to mystagogic lore.”

A Chorus Line, Sadler's Wells review - high-kicking fun that's low on pathos

Michael Bennett's 1975 hit has plenty of pizzazz but not enough emotional oomph

A Chorus Line reigned supreme on Broadway from 1975 to 1990, a bold, bare-bones piece that for once put musical theatre’s hoofers in the spotlight. “As welcome as a rainbow after a thunderstorm” was Clive Barnes’s summation in the New York Times.

Music Reissues Weekly: Sex Pistols - Looking For a Kiss in Kristinehamn

SEX PISTOLS - LOOKING FOR A KISS IN KRISTINEHAMN When Dionysian irrationality and divine insanity came to small-town Sweden

When Dionysian irrationality and divine insanity came to small-town Sweden

After Sex Pistols have played “New York,” the fourth song in their set, someone from the audience shouts “Anarchy in the U.K.” "We've already played it, you fucking idiot" responds Sid Vicious. They have. It was the first song they did at Kristinehamn’s Club Zebra.

The request begs the question of whether the person calling out knew what “Anarchy in the U.K.” sounded like. They may have known of “Anarchy in the U.K.” but not actually heard it. Considering where the particular show was, the information gap is possible.

Album: X - Smoke & Fiction

Final album from Los Angeles punks offers ebullient reflections on a career to be proud of

X, although beloved of music journalists, are one of American punk’s most under-acknowledged. They took a tilt at fame in the mid-Eighties with the radio-friendly Ain’t Love Grand album and its lead single “Burning House of Love”, but it wasn’t to be. They remained a connoisseurs’ choice (inarguable evidence of their abilities is the stunning 1983 tune “I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts”).