documentary
Frozen Planet, BBC OneThursday, 27 October 2011
It’s been suggested that, come the revolution, the best possible of outcomes to the question of who shall be Head of State is the man off the goggle box who for innumerable aeons has been telling us about the birds and the bees, the silverbacks and... Read more... |
I Never Tell Anybody Anything: The Life and Art of Edward Burra, BBC FourTuesday, 25 October 2011
What a relief: Andrew Graham-Dixon got the job of presenting this documentary on one of my favourite British 20th-century artists. If it had been Waldemar Januszczak (sometimes interesting but too gimmick-laden and shouty) or Matthew Collings (... Read more... |
Blood in the MobileFriday, 21 October 2011
Maybe it’s a quirk of night-filming that the minister’s eyes look blood-red. But the earth in the Democratic Republic of Congo is Martian too, especially near the hell-hole where many of the minerals that power our mobile phones and laptops are... Read more... |
This World: Spain's Stolen Babies, BBC TwoWednesday, 19 October 2011
The scale of the operation was hard to take in, as was the extent of the cover-up. Between 1940 and 1990, it’s estimated that up to 30,000 babies were trafficked in Spain. It started under the military dictatorship of Franco, but it ended long after... Read more... |
Origins of Us: Bones, BBC TwoTuesday, 18 October 2011
I was possibly not the right person to review this programme. I didn't do biology beyond GCSE, can't bear David Attenborough's Natural World programmes and laugh anytime someone says "homo erectus". Nevertheless, Alice Roberts, an anatomist and a... Read more... |
Colouring Light: Brian Clarke - An Artist ApartFriday, 14 October 2011
My relationship with the artist Brian Clarke, the subject of my forthcoming film, goes back a long way: when I first filmed him for a documentary I made for BBC Two in 1993 - a film about windows as symbols and metaphors in the series The... Read more... |
The Greatest Movie Ever SoldWednesday, 12 October 2011
A movie about advertising and product placement entirely paid for by advertising and product placement? It's a Koh-i-Noor diamond of a concept, and zealous documentarian Morgan Spurlock has applied himself to his task with the efficiency of a... Read more... |
DVD: Cave of Forgotten DreamsTuesday, 11 October 2011
Good cinema can show us the unimaginable, the unknowable. As does Werner Herzog’s documentary, taking us deep into the Chauvet Caves in the Ardèche in southern France. Discovered in 1994, they contain the oldest known cave paintings. Created 32,000... Read more... |
Rostropovich: The Genius of the Cello, BBC FourSaturday, 08 October 2011
How can even a generously proportioned documentary do justice to one of the musical world’s greatest life forces? John Bridcut knows what to do: make sure all your interviewees have a close personal association with your chosen giant in one of his... Read more... |
DVD: George Harrison - Living in the Material WorldFriday, 07 October 2011
Martin Scorsese’s mammoth, authorised survey of the life of George Harrison is a strange old thing. Deeply moving, poetic, full of love, wit and warmth, it's also at times oddly assembled and, at a shade over three and a half hours, runs wide but... Read more... |
Transplant, BBC OneWednesday, 05 October 2011
Sixty-five-year-old Penny was exceptional. Unfortunately, just how exceptional was revealed after her death from a brain haemorrhage. In life, she was in the minority of people - 29 per cent - who have placed themselves on the Organ Donor Register.... Read more... |
DVD: The Complete Humphrey Jennings, Volume One - The First DaysTuesday, 04 October 2011
Because Humphrey Jennings was a director of documentaries, he is never spoken of in the same breath as the greatest British directors of the past - Chaplin, Hitchcock, Powell, Lean and Reed. Another reason is that his career was short, compressed... Read more... |
