Gentry style

5. Godzilla (1954)

Ishiro Honda’s Gojira is a snarling dystopia of the present, pre-occupied by Japan’s legitimate anxiety over the nuclear capabilities of the USA. The mutant terrorist lays waste to the towering structures and, in doing so, stems the post-war economic resurrection of the city. Acting almost as an agent for Western forces, Godzilla has a strange place in the hearts of the people: at once an enviable, almost inspirational power but also an uncontrollable one. The urban landscape is a battle-ground and this iconic beast represents the awesome dangers of living in man-made world, substituting the peaceful order of nature with demented human designs. Much copied (see last year’s The Host) – and pummeled into near worthlessness by endlessly inferior sequels – this is a spectacular disaster movie that manages, from beneath the rubble, to tell a thrilling political allegory. (more…)

There are certain steadfast rules which I think ought to guide a man safely through the perilous Scylla and Charybdis that are Fashion and Fad.  They’re all pretty obvious, but still bear repeating, even in our enlightened times: 1) Don’t wear linen or white before the end of May (t-shirts excepted). 2) Be sure the leather of your belt matches your shoes. 3) Only wear natural fibres. 4) Never feature facial hair.

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It has become customary, it seems, to make some kind of connection between what is being shown on the catwalks and what is being shown on CNN. Thus you get endless nonsense, every time a pair of combat trousers appears on the runways, to the effect that this is a reference to “our military times” and that scowly models are some kind of commentary on “the paranoid times in which we live” (yes, those are direct quotes). Maybe I’m a conventional sort but, personally, if I want to talk about the war, I’ll do it orally, not sartorially.

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The chatter stops and a reverential hush falls over the crowded bar, interrupted only by the finest sound known to man: the gentle plop of a cork being withdrawn from a bottle. And this is no ordinary bottle. Johnnie Walker 1805 (birth year of the Ayrshire grocer who founded the brand) is a unique blend of nine rare whiskies, the youngest of which is 45 years old. Only 200 bottles have been produced, it is for sale over the bar of only one establishment in London and a shot of it will cost you £1,000: Famous Grouse, eat your heart out.

The man who withdrew that cork, and who will dispense your grand dram, is Salvatore Calabrese, the dapper little Italian who is the doyen of London barmen and a practitioner of his trade with a worldwide reputation for flair and excellence. He has already fallen in love with the 1805, and not just because of the potential benefits to his cash flow. “This,” he says, “is liquid history” — a mellifluous phrase at the best of times, and all the more impressive from a man whose personal collection includes a cognac bottled in the year before the French Revolution. (more…)

Frida Kahlo spun her own life into a myth. She was so good at it that her art almost got lost along the way.  Her persona, fashioned over almost three decades of self-portraits, fused physical suffering and emotional isolation. Her frank depiction of a woman’s psychic pain made her a feminist icon. She became a Chicana heroine and an unintended purveyor of Mexican kitsch. She is an emblem of confessional painting at a time when nothing is intimate anymore.

But this year, as Mexico celebrates the centenary of her birth, the largest retrospective ever of her work attempts to look beyond what Mexicans call Fridamania. The result is a rich view of her art and her life, one that broadens the perspective on her career beyond the narrow, cultish view that has at times threatened to obscure her work. For the majority who know Kahlo’s painting only from the movie version of her life or the unmistakable power of her face on a T-shirt, the exhibition that opened here last month at the Palacio de Bellas Artes may come as a surprise. (more…)

1. Book a round-trip flight to San Sebastian; British Airways flys direct from London, from the USA fly to Madrid on Iberia (from about $800); there’s a one-hour hop to San Sebastián.

2. Check into the grand nineteenth-century Hotel de Londres y de Inglaterra (from $178; 34-943-44-07-70), an imposing white reminder of the days when Spanish royalty summered here. Watch the sun set from the downstairs Swing Bar.

3. Stake out a spot among the beautiful people on La Concha or Ondarreta beach. Calm bay waters and surrounding mountains provide a perfect backdrop for young Basques and holidaying Europeans. (more…)