The British Museum’s Reading Room is an imposing space. It takes quite an impressive exhibition to live up to that high domed structure. And the latest collection of objects to occupy the space is nothing if not impressive, including pieces by Michelangelo, Botticelli, Da Vinci and Titian. A collaboration with the renowned Uffizi Gallery, the exhibition features original, restored drawings by the masters of Italian Renaissance Art.

What is first apparent about the exhibition is that it has been designed with a certain intimacy in mind. A one way maze through the circular space prevents excessive over crowding around the more popular pieces and encourages visitors to examine each drawing. More importantly, an intimacy is achieved simply by the fact that as an observer, you are allowed to stand extremely close to the sketches, separated only by an unobtrusive glass frame.

This means that each crack and fold and even the small holes pierced in the paper used to “trace” the sketches are visible. All of this lends a personal aspect to the exhibition, giving the viewer a chance to put aside the superhuman status of the featured artists and instead see their work as the result of practice, error and redraft. Looking at the pencil studies of hands, the repositioning of limbs and the occasional erased line, many of which were never meant to be seen, you feel as though you are seeing the raw secret of each artist’s talent.

The exhibition is full of interesting and noteworthy pieces. There are many sketches which include writing, such as indications of the colours to be used in a finished painting or Leonardo Da Vinci’s descriptions of the curious tortoise-like war machines he had designed. There are also sketches of women by Botticelli which foreshadow his iconic painting, The Birth of Venus. These drawings are able to humanize a work of art that had become iconic and far from detracting from the masterpiece, they add an extra dimension.

You may find yourself looking far closer at these sketches than any great masterpiece and you’ll find that each piece has a sense of fragility and humanity. And although the British Museum has gathered an extensive collection of drawings, brimming with sketches made by numerous artists, mediums and depicting different subjects, this endearing frailty is the common theme. Simultaneously impressive, subtle and deeply affecting, this is a very different experience than that offered by most exhibitions and it is undeniably worthwhile.

Fra Angelico to Leonardo: Italian Renaissance Drawings is at the British Museum until July 25. £12 fully price, £10 concessions

‘As great as you are man you’ll never be greater than yourself’

So Dylan sung on ‘High Water’. I guess this sums up the aging Bob Dylan. He is the most iconic figure in popular culture who is still actually alive, and this brings its problems. While other icons become posthumously idolised, ol’ Bobo just trundles on, reminding everyone how good he used to be, and how bad by comparison he is now. This would most probably be the case even if his live shows were actually all right, but, combined with his penchant for massacring his most beloved classics, it wasn’t without some reservations that I headed to Kent to see one of my all-time idols.

And in the wake of his performance, the usual rhetoric about how Dylan should give up and stop trying has resurfaced. However, having actually now seen him, I’ve realised how unfair it is – at least nowadays. Sure, in the past, for example on the much derided Budokan, he did try his best to destroy the spirit of his songs with sax solos, pan pipes, and gospel choirs. But in actual fact, his band is very good, and from swinging numbers like ‘Honest With Me’ to the heartfelt ‘Simple Twist of Fate,’ the expected instrumental abomination that I’d anticipated never transpired.

‘Christmas In The Heart thankfully didn’t feature’

This may have something to do with my second point – that is recent stuff has actually been… good. The last decade saw him produce some of the better albums of his career, again, with some of the best backing bands he’s had since Blonde on Blonde. He hasn’t recently found God, or headed into gospel, or ’80s production, or featured cameos from Slash. So he wasn’t tempted to go back to all of that. Playing a ‘new’ one meant actually a good song, and not a travesty. Moreover he eschewed tracks from his latest release Together Through Life for the better Modern Times and Love and Theft, which was welcome. Oh, and also Christmas In The Heart thankfully didn’t feature.

Otherwise, he just played some of his all time best songs. There were notable omissions, such has ‘Tangled Up In Blue’, and in fact he only played one song from Blood on the Tracks (which, as some of you may know, is an album I quite like…). But the band’s setup lent it more to the fuller sound of Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, and even outside of that the setlist was well-chosen – with even an outing for bootleg ‘Blind Willie McTell’, a brilliant song and the sole representative of his ’80s repertoire (thankfully).

‘He puts on a show which is as good as it can be’

Most of the criticisms of Dylan’s live shows nowadays seem to be centred around his singing voice, which is admittedly dire. But it’s not as if he was ever particularly good, and at least he knows it, so doesn’t try to hit the long notes. Instead, he tends to split each line roughly halfway down the middle, and mutter words at the beginning and end of the bar. It makes singing along hard, and only for the encore of ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ and ‘Forever Young’ did the crowd really get involved. But Dylan his just doing what he can, and in fact the crowd were very sterile, especially for a festival (rather than theatre) audience, and they could’ve got more involved if they wanted to. Incidentally, another bonus of the recent songs is that they were written with his voice in mind, so the effect is less noticeable.

So I thought it was great. But what about that perennial problem? As great as he was live, he’ll never be greater than the folk singer who made waves on the Civil Rights march to Washington, or greater than the rock-star who showed a proverbial two fingers to the folkies at Newport, or greater than the man who rolled into a New York studio in 1974 and laid down some of the most beautiful recordings of his career. How can he confront this? As Dylan himself continues, ‘I told him I didn’t really care.’ And he doesn’t. He doesn’t spend his live shows trying to recapture that anger, that beauty, that emotion. There’s no point, as he would fail (mainly because his voice is shot). So instead of worrying about it, he puts on a show which is as good as it can be. It doesn’t have the emotional investment of Mumford & Sons (‘this is the most people I’ve seen ever’) – that would clearly be disingenuous. It doesn’t have the attitude of Ray Davies (‘I’ll play all night if I want to!’) because frankly, it’s Kent, and Dylan probably has better things to do. All he needs is a cowboy hat, minimal amounts of chat, and, as the crowd carry the chorus of ‘Just Like A Woman’, a wry, knowing, but kinda creepy smile (a bit like a waxwork in a warm glasshouse). He knows all too well that he can no longer sing it properly, but the crowd can, and will. Of course, they might not, but then, either way, he doesn’t really care. And if you take a similar attitude, then you might actually just enjoy yourself as much as he does.

Elvis Costello has had to adjust with age. Known for his New Wave snarl, as the years have passed he has changed his tune significantly, working with everyone from Allen Toussaint to the Brodksy Quartet. Therefore, seeing him solo, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Normally he is backed up by a band of some description, be it the Attractions, the Imposters, the Confederates, or any number of other groups, and much of his work seems dependent on his backing. Indeed, one of his stand-out albums, This Year’s Model, is notable for its incredible drumming, basswork, keyboards… in short, everything that Costello didn’t have when he came to the New Theatre.

However, seated among one of the most middle-class audiences of my life, it is clear that Costello knows how to play to his strengths. For starters, he ignored large sections of his back-catalogue, including the entirety of This Year’s Model. Armed with an array of guitars, he has perfected his troubadour act, impishly bouncing around the stage, tilting his hat, taking about twenty bows, the whole bit. More importantly though, his stripped down set reveals the strength of his songwriting, with opener ‘Red Shoes’ rendered in a much more delicate manner than on his seminal debut My Aim Is True. Already poignant songs such as ‘Alison’ and ‘Either Side Of The Same Town’ become even sadder, and playful songs like ‘Sulphur to Sugarcane’ become more fun. His father was a big band leader, and his influence becomes more apparent on Costello’s performances as he grows older – at one point he introduces a ‘rock song’, before qualifying it as what would be a rock song ‘in the twenties’, unplugging his acoustic and performing ‘Slow Drag With Josephine’ without any amplification whatsoever. There was even a whistling solo.

But while Costello could have kept the whole show at the same comfortable and homely tone, he did reveal some of the edge which defined his early career. The very next song he even plugged in his electric (*gasps*) guitar to play breakthrough single ‘Watching The Detectives’, and rediscovers his snarl, accompanied by an oppressive, distorted, and effects-laden guitar line. It nearly collapsed underneath its own weight as Costello arguably had a bit too much fun with his delay pedal, but given how easily he could have impishly bounced through his whole set, a touch of the more ambitious was certainly welcome. It’s what sets him apart from other singer-songwriters with acoustic guitars. Of which it’s fair to say there are a few.

Typical. The music industry spends the best part of four decades seeking out ways to record the crispest, clearest sound. The research is exhaustive; the technology polished and perfected; the gizmos and gadgetry ever more intricate. How, then, can it not be technological blasphemy for a ramshackle bunch of teenagers from Chicago to come along and record a great album on outdated equipment in a basement?

Thus are Smith Westerns; four lo-fi garage-rockers whose jangling, disjointed sound has already signed them to small-time scourers of the Illinois underground scene, HoZac Records. A band that embraces, nay, exploits the ‘unwanted’ scuzz and noise, and hurls in a jumble of rusty ‘60s rock-and-roll influences and fraying glam-rock inspiration.

The eponymous first album kicks off with the fuzzy ‘Dreams’, a clanging, sing-along number oozing adolescent desire, and the laddish ‘Boys Are Fine’, characterised by nigh-on indecipherable lyrics and a wailing, testosterone-fuelled chorus. From there, the album progresses to ‘Gimme Some Time’, which sounds like the Velvet Underground performing in a phone-box; this whirlwinds into ‘Girl In Love’, the insistent drumming and sparse guitar work of which evokes T. Rex’s ‘Bang A Gong’.

The sixth track is surely the standout, ‘Tonight’. Like most other Smith Westerns songs, it sounds like it’s played from inside a vat of crude oil, and behind the practically inaudible lyrics lies a thrusting but tuneful guitar riff and forceful drumming. On ‘The Glam Goddess’, lead singer Cullen Omori’s voice resonates with molasses-sweet, youthful yearning, and the record concludes with the similarly-themed clamour of ‘My Heart’.

Smith Westerns’ clattering, blaring din is bringing back some tarnished glitz and glamour to the rock and roll scene. Rarely do you hear a new band with such an idiosyncratic, primitive and deliberately blemished sound, and seldom have I related so much to an act on first listen. Smith Westerns juxtapose the unsolicited and pervasive with the charming and addictive, and the result is an album of abrasive, coarse beauty.

At some point in the last decade, a tradition emerged amongst film critics: every time a new Woody Allen film comes along, speculation must be made as to whether it is ‘a return to form’ or ‘a colossal disappointment signalling the irreversible cinematic demise of the wit and intelligence of a once great filmmaker’. And, given the astonishing rate at which Allen churns out new films (his newest, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, premiered at Cannes in May, before Whatever Works was even released here), the tradition is pretty much an annual one. It’s also a tradition which requires hysterical overreaction from critics, whether it’s orgiastically fawning over the decent but unremarkable Vicky Christina Barcelona or gleefully condemning Cassandra’s Dream to be the worst film of Allen’s career. In reality, while Woody Allen seems destined never to reach the heights of Annie Hall, Manhattan and Love and Death again (he’s certainly had some recent clunkers – Scoop didn’t even get a theatrical release in the UK), the 74-year-old writer/director still produces the occasional gem. It’s gratifying, then, to find that Whatever Works is clever, extremely funny and even a little moving. Just don’t call it a return to form.

Larry David stars as Boris Yelnikoff, a retired quantum physicist and self-proclaimed genius, whose intelligence has led him to attempt suicide in despair at life’s utter pointlessness. Having failed to kill himself (the jump out of the window landing him with a permanent limp instead), Boris leaves his wife and instead passes the time either in a café, delivering misanthropic and pessimistic monologues to his patient friends, or in the park, angrily instructing and berating young children on how to play chess. At this point, a 21-year-old girl from the Deep South called Melodie (Evan Rachel Wood) appears on his doorstep, and after much pleading, he eventually allows her to live with him. If the plot sounds like old school Woody Allen, that’s because it is – he wrote the script in the 1970s as a vehicle for Zero Mostel as Boris, but following Mostel’s death, the script was shelved until now. As a result, the film has a strangely timeless feel to it, and, aside from the occasional topical references, wouldn’t look out of place sitting amongst his work of thirty-five years ago. It’s knowingly farcical, fully embracing its caricatures of both Southerners and New Yorkers, and as such is at odds with some of his more serious recent work.

Although the only acting he’s known for is the improvisation of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David is impressive as Boris, and it is a testament to David that the character remains thoroughly sympathetic and likeable, despite his continual condescension and verbal abuse towards others. He occasionally addresses the audience directly in a manner reminiscent of Woody himself in Annie Hall, and, despite David’s skill, one can’t help but wonder why the director didn’t take the role himself. He’s disappeared behind the camera for most of his recent films, and they are that much weaker for his onscreen absence. Still, the rest of the cast hold the film together admirably, especially Evan Rachel Wood, whose naïve Melodie could well have been an irritating presence. The romance that soon blossoms between her and Boris is also particularly well handled, neatly avoiding any notions of creepiness – no mean feat when she is young enough to be his granddaughter.

It’s also amusing to see life imitating art here, as since writing the script all those decades ago, Allen fell in love with his then-partner Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, despite a thirty-four year age gap. His defence of their relationship was simply to say, “The heart wants what the heart wants. There’s no logic to these things.” The film continues this philosophy rather nicely, instructing its audience to find happiness and love wherever you can – “whatever works”, as Boris keeps repeating – and championing New York, with its liberal-minded inhabitants, as the place to do it. Yet if this sounds in any way sentimental, that would be doing the film a disservice; Allen’s sharp script never tires of reminding us of life’s pointlessness and the utter meaningless of each person’s existence, and it’s in the face of such depressing nothingness that we’re told to grab life and love while we can. Nihilism has never been so uplifting.

Originality is an increasingly rare commodity in filmmaking these days. Studios are ever more reluctant to gamble on new talent and, as a result, untried and untested directors seldom get the necessary freedom to take the creative risks that spawn exciting and original cinema. Rian Johnson, however, is a notable exception. In 2005, he took critics and audiences by surprise with his breakthrough hit, Brick, a high school drama told as film noir starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. A fresh new voice had emerged in filmmaking, and this was confirmed when Johnson won the Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision at the Sundance Film Festival. Now he’s back with The Brothers Bloom, a joyously inventive con man film with a big budget, bigger stars and a rather more mainstream sensibility. It tells the story of the titular brothers, Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) and Bloom (Adrien Brody), who embark on one last con, intending to trick Penelope (Rachel Weisz), a lonely millionaire, out of her riches. Needless to say, all does not go according to plan. While this may not seem a particularly original concept, Johnson has somehow resisted the stranglehold of studios and has retained the urgent creativity of his debut feature. He still seems surprised at his luck: ‘We were entirely unrestricted; it was really nice and kind of miraculous. We had just a private, independent financer who really trusted us and left us alone. I’ve been really privileged to have two filmmaking experiences where I haven’t had a lot of overbearing oversight. So touch wood. I hope I can carry that on a lot longer, because it’s pretty nice.’

It’s all the more surprising given that Bloom stars two Oscar winners, Rachel Weisz and Adrien Brody – I remind him of the danger of having such big name actors in his film and the horror stories that have emerged of the stars taking over the production. Rumour has it even Stanley Kubrick’s vision for Eyes Wide Shut suffered under the demands of Tom Cruise. ‘Yeah, that’s just another thing where I feel like I’ve got very very very lucky. With Bloom, we just had a group of people who were not only really talented, but also just really cool. It felt very similar to when I was making movies as a kid. It felt like just a group of people all focused on the right things and having a good time and trying to tell a story.’ Indeed, it’s interesting to note that the script had creative input from the very same Tom Cruise, who is even acknowledged in the credits. It doesn’t get any bigger for a film than having Cruise, but Johnson is quick to dismiss it, laughing, ‘Oh well, I met with him at one point… But I never had him.’

This is typical of his lack of interest in Hollywood and its celebrities; for Johnson, the size of the budget and the wattage of the stars matter little when compared to the story he wants to tell. The budgets of Brick and The Brothers Bloom may differ quite considerably – $450,000 and $20 million respectively – but he regards them as, to a certain extent, much of a muchness: ‘Brick was definitely more insular than The Brothers Bloom by its very nature, because we had a lot less time to shoot it, we had a lot less resources, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing… But with Bloom it was just another set of challenges – I was working with a whole new group of insanely talented people on this much bigger scale. But at its heart, it also felt very similar to Brick in terms of the experience, because at the end of the day it’s just a group of folks trying to tell a story with a camera and a couple of actors. And so no matter what the scale of the endeavour, it’s really doing the same thing with the same basic tools.’

It is perhaps surprising that his films are so original, particularly given that he embraces genres so willingly and overtly. I ask if he feels restricted by genre, but instead he is positively excited by the idea: ‘Yes, it’s restrictive, but that, I think, is really helpful. That’s actually why I love genre: it gives you a chessboard to play on, and it gives the audience certain expectations, so it’s almost like a contract between yourself and the audience. And that’s interesting to try and fulfil that contract in a unique way. It’s also interesting when you decide at certain points to break the contract, because you and the audience both know that you’re doing it… I feel like in some ways having the restrictions of a genre means you can take bigger risks. It definitely is restrictive, but that’s part of what’s fun about it.’ It’s true that much of the uniqueness of both Brick and The Brothers Bloom is the ways in which Johnson upsets our expectations. In general, modern audiences are clued up to the traditions and conventions of a certain genre, and, as a result, Johnson relishes the opportunity to surprise the viewer. The Brothers Bloom might be a con man movie, but it’s anything but predictable: ‘Audiences are so savvy about con man films these days, and so that ultimately led to deciding that the real thrust of the film is not a big plot twist that’s going to fool the audience, but it’s more trying to work towards an emotional payoff with the characters. That was really interesting for me, trying to take this genre of film where, in the con man film, you’re just waiting for the characters to just screw each other over, and then making it more about what these characters end up going through and where they end up. Hopefully it gets the audience to a place where they actually care about these folks.’

To a certain extent – and this might count as a spoiler – the biggest twist of the film is just how emotional and heartfelt it is. Johnson freely admits that this was his plan all along: ‘It seemed weirdly subversive to me to do a con man movie that actually ended on a sincere and emotional note.’ While the cool glamour of Ocean’s Eleven is present and correct (albeit in an unconventional form), Bloom has characters far more memorable and real than the handsomely bland inhabitants of Steven Soderbergh’s Las Vegas heist. For Johnson, con films don’t necessarily have to be soulless. Indeed, much of this emotional weight comes from Rachel Weisz’s expertly judged performance as Penelope, the naïve wealthy orphan who is the intended target of the brothers’ con. Indeed, so central is this character to the film that Johnson had originally intended to have it titled Penelope – unfortunately a Christina Ricci ‘comedy’ got there first.

Still, regardless of the title change, I suggest that the film’s success is due in part to Weisz’s performance, perfectly balancing comedy and pathos, and Johnson agrees. ‘Yeah, oh God, I felt so lucky to get her. And that’s a really tricky character, because there’s so much eccentricity in that character that it really could have so easily been a lifeless pile of quirks, and it takes a lot of work to breathe life into character that outrageous and that big. And Rachel’s just such a talent that she worked her butt off for the whole film to make sure that every moment just felt real and actually lived in, no matter how outrageous it was. I really think the whole movie lives or dies on her performance, and she really pulled it off.’ One of her most impressive scenes arrives fairly early on, wherein she recounts a moving tale of her lonely childhood whilst performing a baffling and complex card trick, and Johnson is quick to point out its authenticity: ‘There are no camera tricks there, she actually learnt that trick and we shot that in just one take with her doing it. And the fact that she’s able to do this fairly complicated sleight of hand trick and also give this monologue during it just amazed me. It was one of those moments on set where everyone applauds at the end. She’s pretty incredible.’

In many ways, The Brothers Bloom is a far more accessible and – to be quite honest – enjoyable film than Brick. I was surprised to find that Johnson agrees wholeheartedly with this assessment: ‘It seems to me that it’s just on a broader scale, and it doesn’t have the weird language that Brick had, so maybe it appeals to a broader base of people. I think all you can do with anything you can make is make something you really care about and put it out there. And I’m optimistic in that I really believe that the people who are going to love it will find it eventually. It’s kind of all you can hope for.’ This is certainly the case with Bloom – when it opened this time last year in the USA (initially in just four cinemas), it recouped less than a fifth of its budget. As such a financial flop, it’s not only gratifying but surprising that it’s being released in the UK at all, and Johnson seems aware of his unusual luck: ‘I’m really happy that it’s getting released here and that people are going to get a chance to see it.’

It’s frustratingly common for talented filmmakers not to have their films seen by enough people, and it often puts an abrupt end to what would have been a dazzling career. Orson Welles never again gained the freedom from studio interference that he had on Citizen Kane, despite being convinced that he could make a better film if he was given the money and then left alone by the studio. Similarly, Andrew Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford made back only half its budget, despite its high quality, and as a result, the director hasn’t been able to get a film off the ground since. Nonetheless, Johnson remains optimistic about the potential of Dominik’s film to outlive a disappointing box office taking: ‘I loved that movie, it was really beautiful, but I just feel like it did not get its due at all. I just hope it’ll continue to have a life, because it’s such a great film.’ Is it frustrating as a filmmaker to have no control over whether people see your work? ‘Yeah, it’s frustrating, but if you allow yourself to kind of think on that and get frustrated, you’ll do nothing but band your head against a wall. And I think the great thing about DVDs and now digital distribution is the fact that movies stick around and they are out there. I really do feel, like I said before, that if you make something that’s unique and that’s good, I think that, like water running down a hill, it’s going to find its way eventually to the right people. And I think if you make something good, sooner or later it’ll find its audience and it’ll get recognised, whether it’s now or ten years from now. I just have to believe if you make something that’s truly unique and good, eventually people will find it.’

His optimism is impressive, as is the lack of bitterness that he expresses towards his paymasters and their marketing teams. I remind him that Shia LaBeouf openly criticised Steven Spielberg and Michael Bay for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Transformers 2 respectively at Cannes last month, but he has conflicted feelings about such honesty. ‘It seems like interviews these days tend to be so pasteurised, so part of me was cheering a little bit. But the other part of me was cringing a little bit. I don’t know.’ I ask him if there’s anyone he’d like to take the opportunity to slag off, but he turns it down, laughing, ‘No, I have no slagging to do. I’m not the slagging type.’ Perhaps it’s because he’s been so damn lucky. From writing to directing, he remains the key creative force behind his films, and this creativity has rarely suffered from interference. For the most part, he seems to just be having fun: ‘It’s just like making movies when I was a kid… When we did that it was just telling a story, so in many ways it’s nice to try and maintain that perspective on it.’ Not that his films don’t have a certain amount of complexity; aside from the twists and turns of the plot in The Brothers Bloom, he throws in sly literary and cultural references, from Herman Melville to James Joyce. He grins and admits, ‘filmmakers love to get pretentious and have their symbols hidden throughout the film, so there’s a bunch of that tossed into Bloom. Not like that really even matters for anyone but me, but it’s fun for me to bury hidden meanings in the names and whatnot. It just keeps it interesting.’

Despite the financial failure of The Brothers Bloom, the positive reaction of the critics has clearly had an effect, and Johnson is now preparing his next film, Looper. When I mention it, he’s eager to talk about it. ‘I’m really excited about this film. It looks like we’re putting it together and hopefully we’ll be shooting later this year. Tonally it’s very different from The Brothers Bloom – it’s quite dark and violent, actually. It’s a time traveller movie, but it uses time travel kind of in the way that the first Terminator film used it: time travel sets up a dramatic situation and then gets out of the way. Time travel doesn’t make sense, so it’s all about giving it the appearance of making sense. Tricking an audience into not thinking about it too much basically.’ His enthusiasm is rather infectious, as is his unabashed optimism that his films will find an appreciative, intelligent audience. His supremely skilful ability to surprise and delight is a joy, as is his vast knowledge and love of movies; one can only hope that his audience will find him.

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Wednesday – Bengali Car wash – Sonali Campion

Tuesday – Route 66 – Lauri Saksa

Monday – Action in the Edinburgh College of Arts – Will Granger

Sunday – Happiness is a choice which requires effort at times – Ursa Mali