Love, Death and Seasonal Favourites...

On the site today...

The most wonderful time of the year? Seasonal favourites are set to colonise our theatres as of December and here’s three ready for booking…

Matthew Bourne’s Tchaikovsky trilogy continues to show the classics no respect whatsoever as he stages Sleeping Beauty minus the whole ‘love at first sight’ thing…

For more traditional fare, try Ashley Page’s version of The Nutcracker, which eschews Dumas’ syrupy re-write for Hoffman’s darker original story…

…or Will Tuckett’s Wind in the Willows which is an impressive decade old this year...

Decidedly less festive is the Wellcome Collection’s new show, which opens today. We’ll be running a full review next week, but for now the critics are mildly impressed by Richard Harris' morbid collection... 

Its publisher Faber claim that Peter Murphy’s new novel has shades of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, James Marsh’s Wisconsin Death Trip and Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides. We’re intrigued. Shall We Gather at the River is out in January…

Two new records that we’re very much looking forward to, but can’t decide which is likely to make us feel more uneasy. If Scott Walker fell from the record buying public’s grace with the release of the fantastic Scott 3 in 1969, imagine how they would have reacted if confronted with the operatic, discordant and very dark Bish Bosch…

…or Broadcast’s soundtrack to sinister art horror flick Berberian Sound Studio. The news that this was getting a full release was always going to be bittersweet, due to Trish Keenan’s tragic passing and the reality that this will be the band’s last completed album…

And it’s a genuine three-way tie for cinema event of the week. The end of Twilight (long live Twilight?) meets with little critical acclaim, but that's unlikely to affect its success too much...

... The Master also gets a full release this week, and Michael Haneke’s Amour currently holds a relatively satisfactory 100% on the Critometer. To celebrate the release, it looks like the acclaimed director has decided to join twitter (the best parody account we’ve seen for a while)…

Finally, Yo La Tengo are back with a new full length album in January, which is cause for celebration in our book. Here's a new video for 'Before We Run'...