Paul Klee at work in Weimar, 1924. Photograph: Felix Klee/Klee Nachlassverwaltung, Bern

Interview

Kwes: why I love Paul Klee

Interview by Andrew Dickson

‘I have synaesthesia, so I hear music as colour. And it’s as if Klee senses what colour feels like’

My hero / Paul Klee by Philip Hensher

Drawings by Cézanne and Klee among works gifted to Courtauld Gallery

Wednesday 11 March 2015

I

first came across Paul Klee while I was studying art at school in London. I was 15 and read a book featuring lots of painters from the early 20th century, Kandinsky and Franz Marc among them. It was Klee I kept coming back to, though. His paintings struck me as almost childlike, like someone discovering their surroundings for the first time. Perhaps that was the way I was feeling, too.

 

Robin Wright

Why I love… Robin Wright

Resolve, strength, practicality, vulnerability. It’s all there in her eyes, her jaw, her smile. It’s what makes her so compelling

Bim Adewunmi
Sat 17 Jun 2017 05.59 BST

M

y love of movies and television is matched only by my love of books, so nothing makes me happier than when screen and page collide. The other week, I found myself rereading one of my favourite books-turned-movies, William Goldman’s The Princess Bride. I adore the film, which I watched as a child, as much as I adore the novel, which I discovered as a teen. And even though she is underwritten, I’ve always loved the character of Buttercup. I suspect that was down to the actor who played her on screen, the luminous Robin Wright.

Why I love… Michaela Coel

‘Michaela Coel’s presence on British telly is thrilling.’ Photograph: John Phillips

Why I love… Michaela Coel

Coel is fearless. No joke is too risque, no comedic situation too outrageous to explore in pursuit of the funny

Bim Adewunmi
Sat 7 May 2016 06.00 BST

G

enerally speaking, I love being surprised. It’s an increasingly hard thing to do, because the world is so predictable and my cynicism is a hard shell to breach. But sometimes along comes a breath of fresh air that cracks it just a little, before coaxing it wide open.

 

Joan Didion

Why I love Joan Didion

Our pop culture expert on the lessons she’s learned from one of America’s greatest living writers

Bim Adewunmi
Sat 16 Dec 2017 06.00 GMT

T

he glamour of Joan Didion, 83, lies not in the many incredible photographs of her during her long life. Nor is it in that horrible quasi-sheen that we associate with surviving terrible loss. It’s not in the lifestyle choices she made – living in New York one year, relocating to a home right on a California beach another – and it’s not in the interactions she had with Hollywood royalty, from Warren Beatty (who had a crush on her) to Harrison Ford (who worked as her carpenter for a time). It does not lie in the era-defining work she published in the 1960s and 70s, solo or co-written with husband John Gregory Dunne. No, the glamour of Joan Didion is merely in her willingness to try things. Truly, there is nothing more luxe than that: the decision to dip your toe, your foot, your leg and eventually your enitre body into a new endeavour, and just do it.

Crush of the week / Why I love… Emily Blunt

Emily Blunt

CRUSH OF THE WEEK

Why I love… actor Emily Blunt

My favourite thing is her ‘steel magnolia’ voice: on first impression, slightly tremulous, but carrying an undercurrent of something hard

Bim Adewunmi
Saturday 25 March 2017

W

here do we stand on revamps? I can’t help but feel somewhat fatigued by the idea that Hollywood is so devoid of new ideas that it has to pilfer its past. Sometimes, though, you hear of a “reimagining” that makes you hopeful: the cast feels so right, you think: it would take a miracle to balls this up. I’m thinking of next year’s Mary Poppins sequel and its star, English actor Emily Blunt (who is joined in the reboot by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Meryl Streep).

London-born Blunt, 34, started on the stage, but I first paid attention to her in the 2006 film adaptation of The Devil Wears Prada (she was Bafta-nominated). Her character (also called Emily) is a delightful tyrant: a dead-eyed bitch with lashings of eyeliner and a drolly wicked tongue.

My favourite thing about Blunt is her “steel magnolia” voice: on first impression, slightly tremulous, but carrying an undercurrent of something hard. Her CV is a mix, with some baffling choices (romantic sci-fi The Adjustment Bureau), some bad ones (horror The Wolfman) and some real corkers (crime thriller Sicario). But my favourite Blunt performance is in Edge Of Tomorrow, in which she plays a war hero who repeatedly kicks Tom Cruise’s ass – and you never doubt she could do the same in real life.

It’s a wonderful duality, because in real life Blunt (along with her husband, US actor John Krasinski) projects a supremely chilled-out vibe: appealingly down-to-earth, self-deprecatingly funny and, above all, staunchly practical, in a very British way.

And since that is basically Mary Poppins in a nutshell, I have faith. Don’t let me down, Emily.

THE GUARDIAN