Angelina Jolie takes on Sleeping Beauty while Terry Gilliam tackles Berlioz as the stars come out to confound our expectations in the coming year
Film
Angelina Jolie in Maleficent
Hollywood's most formidable leading lady is back after a relatively quiet spell, in a role playing on her scariness and seniority. This reinvented fairytale is a twist on The Sleeping Beauty, and Jolie is not playing the insipid dormant heroine with her crybaby attitude to finger-pricking but the evilly magnificent Maleficent, the sorceress who casts a spell on the demure young Princess Aurora. How did she get that way? Everything will depend on the script – but Jolie is always a great turn. Peter Bradshaw 30 May.
Natalie Portman in Jane Got a Gun
Natalie Portman is a Hollywood A-lister who first came to prominence in George Lucas's Star Wars prequel trilogy. She was compellingly vulnerable in Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, but is also no snob, cheerfully appearing in the stoner comedy Your Highness. Now Portman has a cowgirl role in this western about a woman who has to ask an ex-lover's help in defending her husband against a gang. The title calls up memories of Doris Day in Calamity Jane. Sleek, sexy Portman will undoubtedly be a quite different proposition. PB 29 August.
Timothy Spall in Mr Turner
"National treasure" status is perhaps bestowed indiscriminately these days; you can get it by making consecutive weekly appearances on 8 Out of 10 Cats. But Timothy Spall earned it long ago, particularly in association with the director Mike Leigh. This uniquely generous British actor makes a powerful impression without ever showing off or stealing scenes. Audiences respond to his emotional warmth, and he can play comedy, tragedy and anything in between. His performance in Leigh's film about the artist JMW Turner looks set to be a hot ticket. PB 26 September.
Hugh Grant in The Reluctant Professor
Grant's Hacked Off activism has almost overshadowed his movie-star profile, and his brilliant investments in property and contemporary art mean he doesn't exactly have to take any old role to pay the bills. Hugh Grant is a smart, elegant romcom lead, and he's back in what looks like a classic Grant role, playing a washed-up screenwriter who is reduced to teaching. Naturally, he falls for one of his wide-eyed pupils: Marisa Tomei, who may well cure his cynicism and depression. A must-see for his fans, which includes me. PB
Pop
Bruce Springsteen
If new Springsteen material gets you excited then prepare to be … well, semi-excited. The Boss's 18th studio album, High Hopes, is due on 14 January, though it won't include fresh songs. Rather, Springsteen is looking back for the first time in his career, with an album of cover versions, reworked classics and outtakes. Of note: Tom Morello performs on several songs, including a new version of The Ghost of Tom Joad, and the Boss delivers his take on 70s avant-electro punk with a cover of Suicide's Dream Baby Dream. Tim Jonze
Beyoncé
Fresh from catching the entire pop world by surprise with her self-titled fifth album, Beyoncé's Mrs Carter tour hits UK shores in February. Fans can expect a visual spectacular – the album Beyoncé featured more videos (17) than tracks (14), after all – with previous tours having sparkling catsuits, lasers and a shower of golden fireworks. TJ
Lily Allen
Allen's return to the world of pop was certainly eventful, though perhaps not quite as she had intended. First she made her barnstorming entrance with, er, a Keane cover for a John Lewis advert. Then she released Hard Out Here, an attack on music industry sexism that ended up – along with its video – being accused of racism. With a Glastonbury performance and her third album – apparently featuring a track responding to her feud with Azealia Banks – 2014 looks to be a big year for Allen. Whatever she does, she probably won't do it quietly. TJ
Prince
After a pretty eventful year – new songs, a mini tour, hosting a pancake party – Prince is rumoured to make his big return in spring. The tracks he released in 2013, such as Breakfast Can Wait, sound like his strongest material in years. Best of all, his new deal with Kobalt lets him control distribution, so hopefully he'll be giving it away free with, say, a box of Weetabix. TJ
TV
Tubby and Enid
Victoria Wood, originally a writer of contemporary comedy, has recently turned to historical pieces: the TV drama Housewife, 49 and the stage play That Day We Sang. This play with songs – about the famous 1929 recording of Nymphs and Shepherds by the Manchester Children's Choir – becomes a 90-minute television film, written and directed by Wood, with Imelda Staunton and Michael Ball as former members of the choir who meet again in middle age at a reunion. There is a sense that the 2014 Christmas schedule and the 2015 Bafta nominations may have already filled some of their slots. Mark Lawson BBC2.
Castles in the Sky
Unsurprisingly, the 2014 schedules will be filled with first world war stories. But this bio-drama about a discovery – radar – that may have changed the course of the second world war, flies in under the cover of a BBC series of science programmes. Comedian Eddie Izzard, an increasingly good character actor, plays Robert Watson-Watt, Scottish-born descendant of James Watt, creator of the steam engine, who led the team that developed the first working radar. ML BBC2.
Theatre
Thomas Cromwell
Hero or henchman; Tudor genius or traitor to the crown? There are so many sides to Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell it's hard to know which to believe. How fitting, then, that we'll get two incarnations of him, on stage and screen: Mark Rylance in the BBC's six-part TV version of Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies (expected in 2015); and Ben Miles in a double bill for the RSC. Andrew Dickson Swan, Stratford-upon-Avon (0844 800 1110), until 29 March.
The Duchess of Malfi
Gemma Arterton began her stage career at the Globe, and she returns to star as Webster's imperious heroine who risks all for love and loses everything – except her dignity. It's also the first chance to peek inside the theatre's new candlelit indoor playhouse – a space that should give this macabre tragedy the intensity it needs. AD Shakespeare's Globe, London SE1 (020-7401 9919), 9 January to 16 February.
The Testament of Mary
Fiona Shaw as the Virgin Mary? It sounds unlikely, but this collaboration with Deborah Warner, adapted from Colm Tóibín's 2013 Booker prize shortlisted novel, was a hit on Broadway last year. In this retelling Mary becomes a subversive figure, torn apart by grief. Lyn Gardner Barbican, London (0845 120 7511), 1 to 25 May
King Lear
Star actor Simon Russell Beale and even starrier director Sam Mendes have finally found space in their respective diaries for Shakespeare's tumultuous study of madness and desolation. It's the role of a lifetime, but will the show live up to the billing – and the hype? AD National Theatre, London SE1 (020-7452 3000), 14 January to 25 March.
A Streetcar Named Desire
Nominated for an Olivier award four years ago for her fiercely passionate take on Ibsen's Nora, Gillian Anderson gets her teeth into another trapped heroine: Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams's whiskey-sodden study of desire and self-deception. Benedict Andrews, best known for drawing a blistering performance from Cate Blanchett on stage in 2012, directs. AD Young Vic theatre, London SE1 (020-7922 2922), summer.
The Last Days of Troy
Gods and heroes are resurrected in poet Simon Armitage's reworking of Homer's The Iliad. One of the great stories of all time, this re-examination considers our own attitudes to war, cycles of revenge and what it really means to be a hero. AD Royal Exchange, Manchester (0845 450 48080), 8 May-7 June, then touring.
Henry IV, Parts I and II
The never-knowingly-underacted Antony Sher marks his return to the RSC with the beefiest character in the canon, the wench-and booze-guzzling Sir John Falstaff.Sher's challenge will be to find the lingering pathos of the role, and director Greg Doran's to highlight the kaledoscopic vitality of Shakespeare's richly observed scripts. AD Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon (0844 800 1110), 18 March-6 September 9 (Part I) and 28 March-6 September (Part II).
Dance
Natalia Osipova in Sleeping Beauty
Former Bolshoi star Natalia Osipova has already danced her first performances as a full member of the Royal Ballet. But the real test of her fit with the company style will be her debut in The Sleeping Beauty, the Royal's signature work. Judith Mackrell Royal Opera House, London WC2 (020-7304 4000), 27 March, 5 April and 9 April.
Art
From the lens of David Lynch, William Burroughs, Andy Warhol
Industrial interiors from David Lynch, snapshots by William Burroughs and stitched-together photographs from Andy Warhol form this intriguing group show across three floors of the Photographers Gallery. Lynch's factory interiors, which were shot across eastern Europe and the US, are the most formally unified photographs here, while Burroughs' scattergun approach reflects a mind in thrall to the chance encounter. Most intriguing are Warhol's black-and-white shots of his daily life – interiors, streets, signage and, inevitably, celebs at parties – taken over the last 10 years of his life. Each series casts new light on their more well-known works of fiction, film and silkscreened art. Sean O'Hagan Photographers Gallery, London W1 (020-7087 9300), 17 January to 30 March.
The enduring Marina Abramović
Performance artist Marina Abramović has become a global phenomenon. She has, for her art, walked the Great Wall of China, sung lullabies while sitting on a heap of rotting cow's bones, been sung at by Jay Z, and served as the subject and star of Robert Wilson's opera The Life and Death of Marina Abramović. For three months in 2010, she sat at a table in New York's Museum of Modern Art, all day, every day, in silent communion with her audience. This summer at the Serpentine, she will present a new "endurance" performance. Expect enormous queues. Adrian Searle Serpentine Gallery, London W2 (020-7402 6075), dates tbc.
Richard Hamilton
The founding father of pop art, pop culture observer, painter, draughtsman, collagist and illustrator, who died in 2011 at 89, will have three simultaneous shows in London dedicated to his inquisitive career. The ICA is restaging two seminal installations, Man, Machine and Motion (1955) and an Exhibit (1957), to coincide with Tate Modern's retrospective, while Alan Cristea Gallery is showing a large selection of his prints. Hamilton's work digs at Thatcherism, examines the Northern Irish dirty protests and Orange marches, lampoons Tony Blair and recoils at the Iraq war; there was much more to him than pop art. AS ICA, London SW1 (020-7930 3647), 12 February to 6 April; Tate Modern, (020-7887 8888), 13 February-26 May; Alan Cristea Gallery (020-7439 1866), 14 February to 22 March.
Civilisation according to Kenneth Clark
Not only did the art historian Kenneth Clark run the National Gallery and write definitive books on topics like Leonardo da Vinci and The Nude, he also showed how beautiful and serious arts television can be with his legendary 1969 series Civilisation. Yet Clark became a figure of fun, too; in a democratic age, his aristocratic persona stuck out like a sore thumb. Monty Python satirised him as an art critic raving about "the nude in my bed". He was a convenient straw man for radical art historians who attacked him as a posh conservative lover of beauty. Today, Clark is rightly being rediscovered and this exhibition is an encounter with a dazzling intellectual star who put big ideas in clear words and gorgeous images. Jonathan Jones Tate Britain, London (020-7887 8888), 20 May-10 August.
Classical
Richard Strauss's 150th anniversary
The big questions to ask about Strauss at 150? Did his music atrophy into late-romantic obsolescence after his first, aggressively modernist operas? And was his close relationship with the Third Reich near the end of his life about personal pragmatism, or something more troubling? The best way to find out is to get stuck in to the music. Covent Garden's new staging of his longest opera, Die Frau ohne Schatten, directed by Claus Guth, will be one of the grandest and most opulent Straussian offerings of 2014, with a great cast, a thoughtful but controversial director, and conductor Antonio Pappano at the helm. Tom Service Royal Opera House, London (020-7304 4000), 14 March to 2 April.
Piotr Anderszewski
Over the last 10 years, Piotr Anderszewski has emerged as one of the great pianists of our time. He first attracted attention at the 1990 Leeds Piano Competition, when he walked off the platform during the semi-finals because he felt he was not playing well enough, and since then his rise has been characterised by that same meticulous self-criticism, resulting in playing of crystalline transparency and penetrating musical insight. Anderszewski strictly rations his recital appearances: this short UK tour in February with a programme of Schumann, Bartók, Szymanowski and Schubert, is one that every keyboard connoisseur will want to catch. Andrew Clements Turner Sims Concert Hall, Southampton (023 8059 5151), 11 February, then touring until 19 February.
Jonas Kaufmann's Die Winterreise
Though Kaufmann performs regularly in London, there's never the risk of him becoming the kind of circus act that great tenors sometimes become: he brings a freshness to everything. This spring, there are opportunities at Covent Garden to hear him both in Lieder and on stage – singing Schubert's song cycle Die Winterreise with pianist Helmut Deutsch, and in Jonathan Kent's new production of Puccini's Manon Lescaut, in the role of Des Grieux. AC Die Winterreise, 6 April and Manon Lescaut: 17 June to 7 July, both at the Royal Opera House, London (020-7304 4000).
Terry Gilliam does Berlioz
The film director and Python member made his opera debut when he staged The Damnation of Faust for the English National Opera in 2011. Its success brought another invitation to direct Berlioz. This time, unlike Faust, it's a work the composer actually wrote as an opera. Even so, Benvenuto Cellini is rarely seen on stage – the last British production was at Covent Garden in the 1970s. Berlioz's dramatisation of the Florentine sculptor's memoirs has its problems, but it will provide ample opportunity for trademark Gilliam spectacle. AC Coliseum, London WC2 (020-7845 9300), 5-27 June.
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/jan/01/arts-preview-2014-star-turns
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