Good morning. Last week, on my way to see Michael Gira’s noiseniks Swans play in Brixton, south-east London, I passed through Leicester Square. It was brightly lit up in pink and green, and nestling among the Christmas market and seasonal ice rink were a throng of people eagerly awaiting a glimpse of the stars of Wicked: For Good at the film’s European premiere.
Some say the rise of the second Wicked is a sign that the movie industry is in rude health, but this kind of occasion is increasingly seen as an outlier in an industry that is having something of an annus horribilis. And not just because our film critic Peter Bradshaw is retroactively downgrading some terrible movies to zero-star ratings.
