The Conformist

The Guardian, 8 March
Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist is a hypnotic, puzzling film about private life and political commitment
The mood generated is one of fascinated perplexity. Bernardo Bertolucci is marvellously faithful not just to Alberto Moravia’s novel, on which this film is based, but to the spirit of all Moravia’s work, where, infallibly, the more vividly [...]

‘One of Us’:the New Labour story through the frame of Antigone, the classic Greek tragedy

The Guardian, 8 March
While the 9/11 attacks have spawned a number of recent novels, the decision ot go to war against Iraq has received relatively little attention in fiction. Melissa Benn’s second novel puts that disastrously decisive event at its moral centre as well as locating it within the wider context of the Labour party’s [...]

Asa: hot new music

The Independent, 9 March
The Franco-Nigerian singer explains why Lagos has got the funk.
One of the biggest stars in Nigeria right now is a masked singer known as Lagbaja, a Yoruban word that roughly translates as ‘somebody, nobody, anybody, everybody’. Asa, who was born in Paris but grew up from the age of two in the [...]

Yoko Ono live as Liverpool’s Bluecoat gallery reopens

The Guardian, 5 March

Ono – returning more than 40 years after her notorious performance there in 1967, in which she invited her audience to ‘fly’ from a stepladder and handed them a broken vase – will be inviting visitors to write down their ‘wishes’, as well as giving a typically unpredictable performance on April 4.
Ono [...]

Tate modern serves a super-salad

The Sunday Times, 16 March
Many chefs regard their dishes as a work of art. Now the concept is to be turned on its head by an artist who plans to prepare a giant salad, dress it, mix it, and dish it up for 300 people in an event at the Tate Modern.
Alison Knowles, an American [...]

Review: ‘The Angel of Grozny: Inside Chechnya’, Asne Seierstad

The Scotsman, 15 March
Who is Asne Seierstad? A journalist, chasing the truth? A danger-junkie, thriving on the thrills? An agent of revelation, exposing political crimes and atrocities across Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Chechnya? The man at the heart of her previous book The Bookseller of Kabul accuses her of simply being a meddler in other [...]

Cliff Ashby: beauty from a veteran’s pen

The Scotsman, 15 March
‘Probably the most powerful spare poet of his generation; recognition of his genius cannot be much longer delayed’. It is now almost a quarter of a century since Martin Seymour-Smith pronounced this accolade in his Guide to Modern World Literature.
Born in 1919, Ashby is hardly yet a household name, but he ought [...]

Exhibition Alert: Klimt Frieze on show in Liverpool

The Guardian, 4 March
A full-scale recreation of the Beethoven Frieze, the huge 34 metre long installation by Gustav Klimt, which can only be seen in Vienna, is to be one of the highlights of the first comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s work in the UK.
Tate Liverpool announced on 3 March that the frieze copy, made [...]

Rhythm Nation

The Guardian, 7 March
With little more than cow horns, 8ft drums and hollow shells, Guinea-Bissau throws one of the best parties on earth.
A chiming melody rings through the crumbling streets of the city of Bissau, the capital of the west African Republic of Guinea-Bissau. An old man, dressed in a Rafia skirt with strings of [...]

Listen Up – Bands to Watch Vol.1

Welcome to the music section of The Supplement
Here we plan to showcase the best newly signed and unsigned upcoming bands and DJs that would be a great addition o everyone’s iPod. It is done in conjunction with TheBlueWalrus, which offers downloads of a variety of the bands and artists featured. So without further ado, enjoy:-
Noah [...]