Alessandro Algardi
Bio
"She was a girl who knew how to be happy even when she was sad” and that's important you know.
Stories (42/0)
The fairytale world of photographer Tim Walker
The exhibition is named after the phrase used by an awestruck archaeologist in 1922 on seeing for the first time the glittering contents of Tutankhamun’s tomb: “wonderful things”. And the trademark Walker-wonderland preoccupations are all here – the English countryside, fairy tales, male nudes, and his influences in art and photography, from Beaton and Lartigue to children’s book illustrator Arthur Rackham.
By Alessandro Algardi2 years ago in Geeks
The French icon who revolutionised women's clothes
In fashion folklore, Gabrielle Chanel is famously credited as the designer who popularised trousers, making them a key piece in women's wardrobes, and also for helping to liberate women from the tyranny of the corset. Instead of caging them in stuffy, superfluous designs, her clothes prioritised freedom of movement, mobility and comfort. She broke down sartorial codes by borrowing elements of men's fashion, such as pockets and tweed, and erased waistlines and bustlines to create androgynous silhouettes. Like any good trailblazer, Chanel's defiance of societal and gender norms early in her career befuddled some, and inspired others.
By Alessandro Algardi2 years ago in Styled
The Nordic look that defined freedom and joy
Marimekko, the Finnish brand famed for its fabrics printed with splashy, outsized motifs, arose just as Finland was regaining its autonomy and forging a new national identity in the postwar years. It clearly expressed optimism but a little-known fact about the label is its bohemian pedigree. Starting out as a textile brand that soon morphed into a globally successful fashion and home-furnishing label, its fan base numbered artists and fashion icons who represented progressive values, from the glamorous Jackie Kennedy, who snapped up seven Marimekko dresses, to artist Georgia O’Keeffe.
By Alessandro Algardi2 years ago in Styled
Stunning images of elegance and strength
When I was a teen I travelled from the US to Scotland with my family. On our first night in Edinburgh, we sat in a pub across from several Nigerian couples, resplendent in bell bottoms and African prints, paired with plaids and Harris tweeds. They were spinning the traditional textures into something chic, subversive and all their own. One woman wore a Shetland sweater under her embroidered dress, a wool scarf wrapped stylishly on her head. I couldn't take my eyes off of her. It was a simple new logic – style and self definition over everything.
By Alessandro Algardi2 years ago in Styled
Film review: Us
he underclass is coming to destroy us, and we will deserve it. That is the simple, overarching message of Jordan Peele’s witty meta-horror film, Us. The ‘us’ he aligns viewers with is a middle-class American family of four, the Wilsons, and ‘they’ are their doppelgangers. The disenfranchised doubles have been living somewhere mysterious, cut off from the comforts of society. This other mother, father and two children appear one night in the Wilsons’ driveway wearing blood-red jumpsuits and wielding large golden scissors, the better to slice up their counterparts. Class warfare has rarely broken out with such frightening panache.
By Alessandro Algardi2 years ago in Geeks
Film review: Pokémon Detective Pikachu
Pokémon may be one of the biggest multi-media franchises ever, having featured in video games, card games, comics and cartoons by the lorryload since 1996. But if you haven’t consumed any of those, the whole enterprise is pretty much unfathomable. After all, you don’t have to have read a Batman comic to follow the concept of a masked-man beating up bank robbers. Pokémon, on the other hand... well, it’s set in an alternate reality in which people go around stalking big-eyed, super-powered monsters, trapping them inside metal orbs like high-tech genies and then releasing these monsters so that they can have gladiatorial battles with each other. It isn’t clear what the monsters get out of this violent slavery, and the first live-action Pokémon film, Pokémon Detective Pikachu, doesn’t make things much clearer. If anything, viewers who aren’t already familiar with the franchise will stumble out of the cinema even more puzzled than when they went in.
By Alessandro Algardi2 years ago in Geeks
Film review: Yesterday
Richard Curtis writes romantic comedies – Four Weddings and a Funeral and Love Actually are the best – so enticing that we wish they were real. His films are believable enough emotionally to be both joyful and heartbreaking, while their characters and situations are more colourful and exciting than everyday life. And they flow with the effortless charm of, say, early Hugh Grant.
By Alessandro Algardi2 years ago in Geeks
Venice Film Festival review: The Truth
Hirokazu Kore-Eda has been writing and directing supremely humane, insightful dramas for 20 years, to greater and greater acclaim: last year’s Shoplifters won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and was nominated for the best foreign language film Oscar. Now, he’s made his first film outside of Japan, The Truth (or La Verité), which opens this year’s Venice Film Festival. Not much has been lost in translation. It’s certainly lighter and breezier than usual: more likely to make you laugh, but less likely to make you cry. In his Japanese work, the characters tend to be one wrong move away from destitution and/or death, whereas in his new laidback farce they don’t seem to risk anything worse than a hangover brought on by too much expensive brandy. But Kore-Eda’s understanding of the complexities of familial love and the disappointments of middle age is as wise as ever.
By Alessandro Algardi2 years ago in Geeks
Film review: Downton Abbey
If you’re going to elevate the social world of Downton Abbey’s aristocratic Crawley family, you really have nowhere to go but up to the king and queen. As this cheerful movie picks up from the hugely popular television series, King George V and Queen Mary visit Downton. It is 1927, soon after the show’s story ended. There is no mention of the royal guests’ then-baby granddaughter, who would grow up to be Elizabeth II.
By Alessandro Algardi2 years ago in Geeks
Film review: Ad Astra
his article was originally published on 30 August 2019, when Ad Astra premiered at the Venice Film Festival. The Venice Film Festival has launched three of Hollywood’s most thoughtful space-travel movies recently, with last year’s First Man following Arrival and Gravity. This year, it’s the turn of Ad Astra, written and directed by James Gray, and starring Brad Pitt as Major Roy McBride, astronaut extraordinaire. Ad Astra is almost as intelligent as those other films, but it shares too much of their imagery to seem entirely original. And, like them, it veers towards questions of parenthood and loss, a trajectory that is starting to become irritating. Isn’t anyone allowed to journey to the final frontier without getting choked up about their relatives along the way?
By Alessandro Algardi2 years ago in Geeks
Film review: Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
She’s bad, she’s good, she’s bad again. It’s hard to keep up with Maleficent, but one thing is certain: when making plans to meet the future in-laws, no one wants to hear, “Maleficent is coming to dinner”. That is an actual line of dialogue from Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, a vibrant if scattershot sequel to the 2014 hit. As a character piece, the sequel short-changes Angelina Jolie’s heroine/anti-heroine, of the glaring green contact lenses, black horns on her head and ultra-sharp prosthetic cheekbones. But as a fairy-tale action film, it is more colourful, energetic and absorbing than the first Maleficent.
By Alessandro Algardi2 years ago in Geeks
The King review: ‘Diary of a wimpy king’
This story was originally published on 3 September 2019, when The King premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Timothée Chalamet’s Oscar-nominated turn in Call Me by Your Name made him the poster boy for masculinity at its most delicate and sensitive: his cry-athon over the closing credits made sure of that. But he is even more delicate and sensitive as King Henry V in David Michôd’s sombre historical drama, The King. Never mind that the Prince Hal in Shakespeare’s plays started off a hard-drinking party animal. In The King, he is updated to become Emo Hal.
By Alessandro Algardi2 years ago in Geeks