Nick Hasted

Journalist at The Independent

Featured in: Favicon

independent.co.uk Favicon

theguardian.com Favicon

yahoo.com

ft.com

flipboard.com Favicon

inews.co.uk Favicon

loudersound.com Favicon

lwlies.com Favicon

uncut.co.uk Favicon

theartsdesk.com + 3 more

Articles

Strange Life

1 week ago | uncut.co.uk | Nick Hasted

“I’m not sure we should have agreed to this,” Stephen Malkmus muses during the extraordinary new documentary Pavements. “Has there ever been a good movie about a rock band?” There certainly hasn’t been a rock doc like this one, which eschews convention at every stage in favour of meta-realities and roleplay, echoing the band’s own approach on albums like Wowee Zowee.
When the Light Breaks review - only lovers left alive

1 week ago | theartsdesk.com | Nick Hasted

Grief takes unexpected turns over the course of a long Icelandic day in Rúnar Rúnarsson’s romantic tragedy, a Prix Un Certain Regard contender at last year’s Cannes. It starts with Una (Elín Hall) high on love with fellow Reykjavik art student Diddi (Baldur Einarsson), wandering the shoreline together at dusk then comfortably falling into bed. Diddi just has to head west the next morning to dump hometown girlfriend Klara (Katla Njálsdóttir), then life together can officially begin.
DVD/Blu-ray: In a Year of 13 Moons

1 month ago | theartsdesk.com | Nick Hasted

A longshot of transgender Elvira (Volker Spengler) circled by gay men, assignation turning to assault as dawn mist rises from Frankfurt’s Main river, suggests Pasolini’s brutal 1975 assassination. Rainer Werner Fassbinder instead had in mind the suicide of his lover Armin Meier in May 1978.
Blu-ray: Lifeforce

2 months ago | theartsdesk.com | Nick Hasted

Tobe Hooper changed cinema with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) for pennies in rancid Southern heat, but came closest to a mainstream Hollywood career a decade later, following the hit Spielberg collaboration Poltergeist (1982) with his biggest budget from hack mavericks Cannon Films. He characteristically determined to “make it as wild as I can”.
theartsdesk Q&A: director François Ozon on 'When Autumn Falls'

2 months ago | theartsdesk.com | Nick Hasted

François Ozon is France’s master of sly secrets, burying hard truths in often dazzling surfaces, from 2005’s Swimming Pool’s erotic mystery of writing and murder to the teen prodigy cuckooing his way into his middle-aged mentor’s life in In the House (2012).
Filmmaker Sandhya Suri on Santosh: ‘She’s not a good cop in a bad system — everybody’s morally grey’

2 months ago | ft.com | Nick Hasted

“There was always going to be rhetoric about: where do you live, and what are you going to say about India?” Sandhya Suri knew that her...
Giving you The Chills

2 months ago | uncut.co.uk | Nick Hasted

When The Chills’ songwriter and sole constant Martin Phillipps died in July 2024, he left behind a last testament. His band’s eighth and final album, Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs, comprises fresh takes on demo tapes from the ’80s and ’90s. “These were things that he was supposed to record back in the day, but never got around to because he had so much material,” explains Todd Knudson, The Chills’ drummer since 1999.
Blu-ray: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

Mar 7, 2025 | theartsdesk.com | Nick Hasted

Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) was uniquely disturbing, with its monster Leatherface’s first primal eruption to hang a victim on a meat-hook rivalling Psycho’s murders for shock and fright. It was only as the bludgeoning effect faded on subsequent viewings that the film’s pitch-black comedy became clear.
Chuck Prophet, Mid Sussex Music Hall, Hassocks review - the good American

Mar 3, 2025 | theartsdesk.com | Nick Hasted

Forty years ago, Chuck Prophet was the Keith Richards-like guitar hotshot in Green On Red, peers of R.E.M. and among the raw country-punk architects of what became Americana. Now he’s 61 and playing in a sold-out pub back-room in Hassocks, a downland commuter village near Brighton, still giving his all during two hours of humour and humane passion as if this is the biggest stage, and this crowd a community clearly worth serving.
Chuck Prophet, Mid Sussex Music Hall, Hassocks review - the good American

Mar 3, 2025 | theartsdesk.com | Nick Hasted

Thirty years ago, Chuck Prophet was the Keith Richards-like guitar hotshot in Green On Red, peers of R.E.M. and among the raw country-punk architects of what became Americana. Now he’s 61 and playing in a sold-out pub back-room in Hassocks, a downland commuter village near Brighton, still giving his all during two hours of humour and humane passion as if this is the biggest stage, and this crowd a community clearly worth serving.