My decision to embrace the world of hot yoga post-christmas was met with some hilarity, and quite frankly, malicious disbelief, by friends and family. I am not flexible. The last time I engaged my quadraceps fimoris was squatting in the Gladstone Link to reach the lowest shelf of books. I ended up sitting on the floor anyway. Nor am I of the ‘zen’, ‘dedicate your energies to the person you love’ spiritual persuasion that ‘yogis’ tend to be. But I was beginning to feel like those American kids who forget what being hungry is like – something drastic had to be done.

So I signed up to a twenty day introductory offer at my nearest hot yoga centre and decided to embrace the heat. Hot yoga rooms are heated to 40 C and the heat is supposed to make you more flexible, regulate your appetite, and detox your toxins. The website showed a man with a Herculean figure doing a handstand on his elbows, which was nice. Perhaps strange parts of my body, like elbows and these ‘sit bones’ that kept being mentioned would be imbued with super-human strength.

For my first session, I don an outfit I imagine is appropriate for hot yoga: leggings and a crop top that just screams ‘I do sun salutations in my sleep’. The room the session is to take place in is mirrored and hot, but not steamy. Mats are laid out on the floor, and people are rolling around doing stretches. I don’t know any stretches but I don’t want to be the odd one out, so I flail my limbs around unconvincingly until the instructor walks in. He introduces himself as Mike.  ‘Namaste, Mike’. Mike is topless, heavily bearded and resembles Jesus, if Jesus had a pot belly and could hook his foot around his head. This is his last day before he goes to India for three months to learn from the masters.

We begin with some basic yoga poses: tree pose, warrior two, downwards facing dog. I’m amazed at how difficult it is. Almost immediately I begin to sweat, and as we progress everyone is pouring with perspiration. Each pose has three levels of difficulty, 1 being the easiest, 3 the hardest. I get cocky and transition into position 2, and Mike gently taps me on the shoulder, whispering, ‘I think we should stick to position 1 today.’

It quickly becomes apparent that I am the worst in the class, even the very elderly woman next to me (she doesn’t even have a crop-top combo!) can do the tree pose better than I can. I leave my first session traumatised and on the brink of cardiac arrest. In the changing rooms a woman asks me if this is my first go and I pant the affirmative. ‘You just need to get your ujjayi breaths right!’, she sparkles, ‘it’s easy really.’ I wince politely and internally vow never to come back to this hot hippy hell ever again. However, after I escape into the cool night air, I do feel strangely cleared and light, as if my toxins really have been flushed out. By the third session I’m addicted; I leave invigorated, slurping on coconut water triumphantly. The next session, I am able to do something that has evaded me since I was ten years old. I can touch my toes, even the floor. I weep a sweaty tear, or a tear of sweat, it’s hard to tell. I am Gaia. I am part of the yogi cult. I want go and learn from the masters with Mike.

The next time I go I bump into an old acquaintance. It’s her first go and like most people, she comes out hot and disillusioned. I turn to her and smile benignly. ‘It’s all about getting your ujjayi breaths right. It’s easy really..’

Each performance of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, currently at the Donmar, begins with staff shooing away a heaving returns queue. The crowd’s demographic is evenly split, between white-haired punters who make up the bulk of most matinee audiences, and swarms of teenage girls. The reason for this is Tom Hiddleston, who plays Coriolanus and has previously starred in Thor and The Avengers. Hiddleston gives a stellar performance and his cut-glass abdominals are fully capitalised on by the play’s direction. His torso is showcased in all its blood-stained, sweaty glory in a gratuitous ‘wound-washing’ scene which elicited gasps from the junior half of the audience and prompted my grandfather to comment in the interval that Hiddleston was ‘quite a dish’.

This sexing up of Shakespeare by playing on an existing TV or film fanbase is not unprecedented and and has arguably brought Coriolanus to a younger audience. However, it is interesting to see how such sexing up works differently for women. The decision to cast Birgitte Hjort Sørensen (Katrine in Danish TV series Borgen) as Coriolanus’ wife was probably based on the fact that she has a broad and loyal UK fanbase. Hjort Sørensen’s talent did not survive the transition to stage and her British accent, though good, is not perfect. Her part – one of Shakespeare’s most wooden – entails kissing her husband and crying when he is away at war. As with Hiddleston, the costume department capitalised on her looks, but while Coriolanus’ bare-chested virility was both well-pitched and impressive to a modern audience, his wife was left to totter around in badly fitting four-inch shoeboots and a laser-cut bodycon dress.

While Coriolanus was the picture of masculinity, his wife’s sexy get-up was incongruous and made me suspend my disbelief. Coriolanus was written 500 years ago and it is depressing that the gender roles filled by its characters don’t need to be updated for a modern audience or a modern wardrobe.

As soon as I open the photos, every fibre of my being screams that I should shut down Google Chrome, hurl my laptop into the bin and then set fire to the kitchen. Yet I find myself inexorably drawn back to the Facebook album entitled “LADYS NITE @ SHITTY PROVINCIAL CLUB”.

The image which is seared permanently on my retinas is a tableau of despair and whipped cream. It is impossible to accurately guess the age of the male stripper who fills the bulk of the frame: his hairless torso and barbed-wire tattoo put him in his early thirties, but he has the sagging jowls of a man twice as old again and his cold, fishlike eyes are filled with millennia of misery. He is naked, his penis hanging limp like the last Bratwurst in the butcher’s shop. A canister in his hand, he has evidently just finished covering this (admittedly impressive organ) in Mr Whippy’s Own-Brand Cream. This is night-club photography as reimagined by Francis Bacon; saggy, fleshy, entirely devoid of hope.

As a whole, the album is a Dantean descent into a 21st-century inferno of WKD, inflated condoms and grotesquely veiny dildos. It would be nice to see the night as a celebration of liberated, modern female sexuality, to interpret the dance a nuanced piece of post-modern performance art critiquing traditional notions of masculinity. But the vaguely haunted look in the eyes of the female punters and the palpable despair of the stripper speak for themselves. No-one is being liberated here. It would be a terrible dereliction of my integrity as Culture Editor to name Central Square Nightclub in Newport as responsible for this god-forsaken evening of entertainment, so I won’t. Happy New Year.

★★☆☆☆

Two Stars

To begin by explaining the concept, twenty-five cooks try to impress three judges with just one spoonful of the dish they have put their all into preparing. Each judge can choose just four cooks to join their kitchen and the rest go home. The judges will then go head-to-head in fierce competition.

The pilot episode of this new series opened like almost every other cooking show, with lots of intense music and shots of stressed hopefuls sweating over stoves. Once again we were presented with the idea that cooking is something incredibly dramatic, as contestants declared ‘my life is in this spoon’, tears were shed, and the judges became increasingly vitriolic towards one another. There was also the standard spate of innuendo that seems to accompany all food nowadays, as the beautiful Nigella Lawson, in typical fashion, described James from Shrewsbury’s dish as ‘instantly seductive’ and said ravenously, ‘I really want you’. Despite the initial sense of excitement, however, the show soon became quite repetitive as spoon after spoon was placed before the judges with little to maintain interest apart from the occasional amusing comment from the judges.

The combination of personalities on the judging panel was the same you might find on any reality TV show: the brutally honest, the eccentric, and the mother-figure. Predictably, Nigella couldn’t resist comforting the tearful eighteen-year-old, whilst Anthony Bourdain asserted that he needs to ‘toughen the f–k up’.  Ludo Lefebvre, the surly Frenchman, provided the laughs with his occasional outbursts and indecipherable rants, but in general the show lacked the intensity of MasterChef, the light-heartedness of the Great British Bake-off, and the mouth-watering images of food we all love, leaving it awkwardly somewhere in the middle. Hopefully the next stage will be more engaging… 

Chances are that if you went to the cinema last year, you didn’t see something original. You saw a sequel. Admittedly, it was hard to avoid the second installment of The Hobbit or The Hunger Games, Anchorman 2, Iron Man 3, Thor 2, Despicable Me 2 or Fast and Furious 6 (that’s right, 6) amongst many, many others.

However, as infuriating as this onslaught of sequels can be, to repeat the age-old cinema-purist’s lament against such a glut of films followed by number two or three or six now seems pointless. The lack of original films last year is entirely understandable in terms of the simple economics of sequels. Of the ten highest grossing films of 2013, six were sequels or prequels. Iron Man 3 already has, and Despicable Me 2 soon will, pass that magical one billion dollar mark at the worldwide box office. It’s simple: sequels mean easy money (though I doubt even Universal Pictures executives can believe quite how successful Despicable Me has become).

With critics forever decrying the state of modern cinema, the question I’d pose is what exactly is wrong with sequels? If audiences enjoy them, and clearly the finances reflect that they do, where is the problem? The argument goes that money invested in sequels means less funding available for new, interesting, diverse films that expand the creative vision of Hollywood. After all, where would we be if Citizen Kane had been canned in favour of Dumbo 2? Spending money on existing franchises, just to bag easy ticket sales, won’t necessarily push the boundary of what film can achieve.

But it is a fundamentally snobbish argument, an argument which says cinema is the territory of ‘artists’ and ‘critics’ instead of people who just want to watch a decent movie. Who decides what is creatively significant or not? Few would argue for the high cinematic merit of Monsters University but if people enjoyed it then why should it matter if it is a sequel? 

Furthermore, to say our cinemas have become solely occupied by sequels and franchises isn’t just pessimistic and snobbish, it’s also not true. 2013 saw a number of fantastic original big screen outings. Gravity, hotly-tipped for Oscar success, was not only unlike anything we’ve ever seen before, it was the seventh highest grossing film, a sure sign that audiences will lap up new ideas as long as they are done well. The Wolf of Wall Street, an original Scorsese production starring the ever-bankable Leonardo DiCaprio, is another example of a captivating film that broke the string of summer blockbuster sequels.

What we should hope for now is that the success of original films like Gravity and The Wolf of Wall Street will give studios more confidence to move away from tried-and-tested formulas and venture into the creative unknown. While a reliance on sequels is nothing new in Hollywood, it is also evidently seen as a smart move a post-Credit Crunch mind-set of easy films for easy returns — bums in seats before novelty.

But the fact that the American box office enjoyed its most successful year ever last year, with revenues of £6.6 billion, surely now presents an ideal opportunity for something different to superhero sequels and animated follow-ups. 12 Years a Slave, a sure-fire Oscarwinner if ever there was one, and Christopher Nolan’s newest project Interstellar are hopeful hints that 2014 might be a year of genuine originality at your local Odeon.

But even if they’re the exception to the rule, even if it is a year dominated by franchises, and Captain America 2, The Expendables 3 and Paranormal Activity 5 are more representative of 2014’s film offering, so long as you enjoy them
then who cares? Despicable Me 2 was genuinely funny, Star Trek: Into Darkness was suitably shiny and even Fast and Furious 6 was… bright.

Ultimately, whether this year is a year of unbridled and unprecedented cinematic originality, or whether (more likely) it isn’t, sequels shouldn’t be derided as inherently destructive for Hollywood’s creativity; it’s just that seeing something a bit different a little more often would certainly not go amiss.

★★★★☆

Four Stars

Christian Bale’s orb-like belly and elaborate comb-over have become an iconic part of American Hustle. Bale’s commitment to modifying his body for screen rolesis well known and in this film he stands out in a story that places huge emphasis on the physicality of its characters. Through the eyes of Bale’s simian con-man Irving Rosenfeld, we watch an FBI operation to sting New Jersey’s benevolent mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner) veer from one disaster to another.

The film is studded with performances that remind us that we’re really watching a comedy. Bradley Cooper’s Richie DiMaso, the FBI agent who brings in Rosenfeld to take down Polito, is a character that gloriously pricks Hollywood’s ‘rookie’ cliché. His swaggering often tips into neurosis, joining Rosenfeld’s partner and mistress Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) in a rollercoaster of building and spent tensions.

Jennifer Lawrence gives an Oscar-worthy performance as Irving’s wife Rosalyn, breathing new life into a potentially tired role as a con-man’s hair-in-rollers spouse. Roselyn’s conceit is a real strength of the film, and Lawrence drives it home with panache. Louis C.K. plays DiMaso’s befuddled mentor, and meetings between the two should be taken as lessons in deadpan.

American Hustle takes place in late ’70s New Jersey. It’s about con men, but devoid of any Oceans glamour and pumped full of the burger-vendor grime that defined the era. Depicting the 1970s can preoccupy directors telling a story set at that time: Tomas Alfredson claimed it was his mission to infuse the smell of damp tweed into Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, set in Edward Heath’s Britain.

Tinker Tailor was almost too sweaty, though; there were only so many times I could watch Gary Oldman discuss national security through steamed-up glasses whilst sipping murky whiskies. Russell vividly paints us the garish, post-Vietnam Garden State, full of melting snow and faulty electrical goods.

Director David O. Russell subverts this genre well because his cast depict the stress of being on both sides of the law so vividly. It’s a subversion of the ‘American hustle’ genre that makes American Hustle, the film’s title, seems so deviously self-conscious after viewing — a successful comedy. Imagining how complex and stressful conning congressmen must be is funny, particularly when watching a film billed as a glitzy look at Carter-era fraudstering.

A recent Guardian article claimed that Sean Connery’s James Bond drank something like ninety units a day in From Russia with Love, but Russell might claim that you’d need at least that to get through the business of taking on the KGB. American Hustle should be commended for taking a step back to contemplate the paranoia, despair and monumental highs of being a con artist. This makes the film not only an effective satire of Catch Me If You Can and the like, but really any film featuring unrealistically smooth protagonists. Smooth is one thing the characters ain’t in this film, and quite rightly so.

The Curious Incident of the Apollo roof tumbling down at the end of December brought media attention to Marianne Elliot’s production of Mark Haddon’s best-seller for all the wrong reasons. Fortunate enough to experience this slick West-end production a week before the disaster, I was struck by the incredible attention to detail which saw the seats with prime numbers (the protagonist’s mathematical love) accentuated with white seat-covers and his outfits consistent with his colour preferences (red, never brown.) Shame, then, that the £1-a-head ‘restoration’ levy for the theatre was not put to better use.

 It is undoubtedly challenging to stage a novel which provides a touching insight into an autistic boy’s confusion as he investigates a murdered dog, but this production allows the audience to appreciate Christopher’s misunderstanding without losing sympathy. Tackled by Luke Treadaway, who never leaves the stage, with impressive stamina, the performance is convincing and the humour frequent.The decision to use Christopher’s teacher as the narrator verges on the patronising at times, although also allows the adaption to be pleasingly loyal to the novel.

From deafening white noise when characters accidentally touch Christopher, to coloured stage blocks which multi-role as ovens, seats and even suitcases, the technologies and staging used are bold and relentlessly different. Although regular black-outs and bright lights create the assault on the senses that the protagonist faces, some of these innovations feel dramatic for their own sake. This is a shame, when so much of the production is praiseworthy.

Nothing detracted from the phenomenal quality of acting. Christopher’s parents were particularly commendable, providing moving and believable portrayals of the frustrations and complications of raising any child. The supporting cast, too, were impressive, remaining anonymous when being props for Christopher but bursting into life during snippets of dialogue. Treadaway is a strong lead throughout, although seems to ease into the character more in the second half: by his triumphant final explanation of his A Level Maths question as an unconventional encore, Treadaway is positively vibrant.

Lucky enough to get 4 front row seats on the day for only £12 apiece, the experience was certainly excellent value for money. Largely deserving of its 7 Olivier Awards in 2013, including Best Play, this production is undoubtedly worth a visit. I hope to see the Apollo theatre reopening this month to continue to treat audiences to this hilarious yet poignant production.