http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/?service=Rss http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/tom-sutcliffe-its-about-as-good-as-it-gets-1823812.html http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/tom-sutcliffe-its-about-as-good-as-it-gets-1823812.html ]]> <p> Goodness, notoriously, writes white – that is, it won't show up on the page. Evil, no problem at all – the ink flowing black and creating a contrast so sharp that you could read it from across the room. And one of the reasons for this disjunction is that we take evil to be a more active principal than goodness. </p> Thomas Sutcliffe Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/tom-sutcliffe-the-overcomplicated-life-of-belle-de-jour-1821768.html http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/tom-sutcliffe-the-overcomplicated-life-of-belle-de-jour-1821768.html <p>I wonder how many men looked at the photograph of Dr Brooke Magnanti – who outed herself the other day as the real Belle de Jour, blogger horizontale – and thought to themselves, "Yeah ... well I reckon I'd pay £300 for that". I know I did – and it's not because I'd pay £300 for that. </p> Thomas Sutcliffe Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/tom-sutcliffe-the-very-model-of-a-modern-museum-1819469.html http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/tom-sutcliffe-the-very-model-of-a-modern-museum-1819469.html <p>I don't quite know how I'd managed to avoid the Ashmolean Museum all my life, but until just the other day I had. "Avoiding" isn't quite the right word of course; it wasn't that I crossed the road to steer clear every time I visited Oxford and at all other times the chances of falling through the front door was non-existent. A museum doesn't follow you around, pleading for a relationship, after all, and the Ashmolean could have been said to have been shyer than most in some respects, an institution that kept itself to itself. In fact, a dim sense of it as a dusty and superannuated place may have been one of the reasons I never went, though I'm ashamed to say (it's a formulaic phrase but it's actually true in this case) that I never really thought about it that clearly. Anyway, I've broken my duck now – visiting to see what the architect Rick Maher has done to the building for its £61 million refit and departing a bit startled to see what treasures I'd unwittingly ignored. </p> Thomas Sutcliffe Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/tom-sutcliffe-a-massacre-that-may-or-may-not-be-art-1818178.html http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/tom-sutcliffe-a-massacre-that-may-or-may-not-be-art-1818178.html <p> A few months ago the Mexican film-maker Guillermo Del Toro, the director of Pan's Labyrinth, gave an interview to Wired magazine in which he predicted that "in the next 10 years there will be an earthshaking Citizen Kane of games". </p> Thomas Sutcliffe Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/tom-sutcliffe-its-good-to-be-strung-along-1815323.html http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/tom-sutcliffe-its-good-to-be-strung-along-1815323.html ]]> <p>There was a brief theatrical vogue, some years ago now, for travelling toys. The scene would shift from one geographical area to another in the play and to illustrate this fact the designer would contrive to have a model train or airplane or steam-ship trundle jerkily across the stage. I quickly grew to loathe the fashion partly because it was just a fashion and went round like measles but also for two paradoxically opposed reasons. The first was that audiences were so easily gratified by the effect. Almost invariably they would give one of those collective moos that cuteness always squeezes out of a crowd and then applaud as if it was an act of unprecedented genius to put a teeny-weeny train on stage. The second reason was that I wasn't nearly as immune to the charm of such moments as I would like to have been. There was something about the sudden shift of perspective, the reverse zoom it imposed on your point of view, that had delight in it, and I didn't like it, in much the same way that you can fiercely resent being made to cry by a cheap tear-jerker, even as the tears roll down your cheeks. </p> Thomas Sutcliffe Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/tom-sutcliffe-lets-be-clear-about-what-were-eating-1813656.html http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/tom-sutcliffe-lets-be-clear-about-what-were-eating-1813656.html <p>It hasn't really been a good few days for this Government, when it comes to the relationship between simple scientific facts and public health. Their commitment to giving the people the facts doesn't apparently extend to giving them facts that might contradict current political orthodoxies. But they do have a modest opportunity this week to show themselves to be on the side of useful scientific intelligence. Tomorrow, the House of Commons debates a 10-Minute Rule Bill put forward by the Labour MP Helen Southworth, in which she calls for a legal requirement for a uniform system of food labelling on the front of packaged food.</p> Thomas Sutcliffe Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/tom-sutcliffe-its-time-for-tough-love-at-the-tate-1807185.html http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/tom-sutcliffe-its-time-for-tough-love-at-the-tate-1807185.html <p>I tend to think of Bullets Over Broadway when I hear about collaborative artworks, Woody Allen's 1994 comedy being a near-perfect parable of the ruthlessness necessary for high artistic achievement. In the film, a mob enforcer with only rudimentary education (he burned his school down) is given the job of looking after a gangster's moll who has been given a starring part in a Broadway play in return for a hefty investment. </p> Thomas Sutcliffe Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100