Xan Brooks
@XanBrooks
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Novelist, journalist. THE CATCHERS (October 2024). Now mostly at the other place.
The West
Joined May 2010
Making like Crazy Eddie this morning to point out that for a limited time only you can buy The Catchers for £0.99 on Kindle, a price so low you’ll think we’ve got brain damage etc
amazon.co.uk
Spring 1927. The birth of popular music. John Coughlin is a song-catcher from New York who has been sent to Appalachia to source and record the local hill-country musicians. His assignment leads him...
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My review of Gary Shteyngart's coming-of-age tale VERA, OR FAITH, which is a vital mongrel of a book if you're feeling generous, & a discombobulating curate's egg if you're not.
theguardian.com
Set a decade from now, this coming-of-age caper offers a child’s-eye view of family troubles in a ‘post-democracy’ USA
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The vanishing of Daniel Day-Lewis: How a great actor lost the will to go on | The Independent
independent.co.uk
As the three-time Oscar winner’s breakthrough film, ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’, is re-released in cinemas, Xan Brooks looks at the career and apparent retirement of the totemic actor – and the project...
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Honoured to have a clownish walk-on role in @owenslot's epic look back at Isner, Mahut & the longest match in tennis history (zombies optional).
thetimes.com
Fifteen years on from when history was made on Wimbledon’s No18 Court, the chair umpire, commentator and live blogger recall the contest in which time stood still
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Fortnightly column for @Independent: how I learned to stop worrying & love Barry Lyndon.
independent.co.uk
Critically lambasted on its release, and so commercially unsuccessful that the filmmaker signed onto ‘The Shining’ for an easy box-office win, 1975’s ‘Barry Lyndon’ has only been embraced – then even...
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RT @frankcottrell_b: The history of the 19th and 20th century is partly the story of people fighting for rights and protections. The story….
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My interview with Danny Boyle - an irrepressible optimist who's just made a zombie horror film about a quarantined ruined Britain.
theguardian.com
In 28 Years Later, zombies maraud over a Britain broken by more than Brexit. Its director discusses cultural baggage, catastrophising – and why his kids’ generation is an ‘upgrade’
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Excellent interview with the undersung Brad Dourif - obviously great in Cuckoo's Nest, but also fabulous in Ragtime, & utterly sublime as Wise Blood's flayed & furious Hazel Motes.
theguardian.com
He was Oscar-nominated for his unforgettable work alongside Jack Nicholson in one of the greatest films of all time. It was the start of his career as the ultimate character actor. He discusses David...
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For ���@Independent, what Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague has to say about the cult of the great director
independent.co.uk
Cannes organisers adore a Cannes shout-out in the films they programme, with the latest being ‘Nouvelle Vague’, Richard Linklater’s jaunty dramatisation of the making of a French classic. But it’s no...
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RIP Marcel Ophuls. The Sorrow and the Pity: one of the greatest documentaries ever made
nytimes.com
He was best known for “The Sorrow and the Pity,” a landmark film that debunked ideas of vast French resistance to the Nazi occupation.
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Delighted for Jafar Panahi, Palme d’Or-winner. Here’s our exclusive interview with him from last week #Cannes2025.
Jafar Panahi's first interview in 15 years. We talk about his time in prison, his life in Iran & the art of making illegal films #Cannes2025.
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Wrapping up the choppy, stirring second week of Cannes for @ObsNewReview #Cannes2025 .
observer.co.uk
A musical field trip to rival Brokeback Mountain and a post-apocalyptic freakout in the Moroccan desert were among the knockouts in a great second week t...
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Well, Kelly Reichardt's The Mastermind is a thing of beauty: an unhurried 70s-set crime drama that drifts like late autumn leaves through New England. Shot through with sadness & a longing for home. Loved it #Cannes2025
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One for the Cannes crowd: a playlist of songs from this year's festival. One track per film, sketchy & incomplete, so do feel free to pitch in.
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My review of Eugene Jarecki's hugely impressive Julian Assange documentary, The Six Billion Dollar Man #Cannes2025.
theguardian.com
Focusing on the rogue’s gallery of hypocrites and crooks surrounding him, Assange himself is in the background of a pretty definitive examination
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So much to cherish about Oliver Hermanus's The History of Sound, a big, sweeping 20s-set love story with shades of a certain film by Ang Lee & a soundtrack of primitive American folk. Paul Mescal & Josh O'Connor both on song & in harmony #Cannes2025
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Jafar Panahi's first interview in 15 years. We talk about his time in prison, his life in Iran & the art of making illegal films #Cannes2025.
theguardian.com
He’s been jailed, gone on hunger strike and been forced to sell his house for bail. In his first newspaper interview for 15 years, the great director explains why every film is worth the consequences
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My review of Madeleine Thien's extraordinary The Book of Records, a novel that is still wandering - very pleasingly - around my brain.
theguardian.com
The adventures of great voyagers echo across centuries as a father and daughter flee from flooding in near-future China
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First boos at the festival for the Lynne Ramsay, apparently, which naturally counts as a vote in its favour. It's good: fierce, gorgeous, hard going, everything we'd expect. Here's.@PeterBradshaw1's review.
theguardian.com
Lawrence excels as a woman whose bipolar disorder is exacerbated by husband Robert Pattinson’s infidelity, with super-strength direction from Lynne Ramsay
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