World War Two
DVD: The Complete Humphrey Jennings, Volume Two: Fires Were StartedFriday, 11 May 2012
Like many 20th-century Britons, the documentarist Humphrey Jennings was inspired to do his greatest work by World War Two. The crisis elicited not only his genius as a poetic propagandist but as an unofficial sociologist who demonstrated that the... Read more... |
After Miss Julie, Young VicThursday, 22 March 2012
In 1888, the extremely weird Swedish playwright and novelist August Strindberg, the radical lefty son of a shipping merchant and a housemaid, wrote a play called Miss Julie about the conflict between the classes, between love and lust, between... Read more... |
Arena: The Dreams of William Golding, BBC TwoSunday, 18 March 2012
If you’re one of those readers who likes to believe that a novelist’s work and the life he leads have little or nothing to do with one another, then I trust you were watching last night’s Arena: The Dreams of William Golding.After an upbringing of... Read more... |
Revealed: The Nazi Titanic, Channel 5Wednesday, 07 March 2012
With the smoke from Julian Fellowes' upcoming Titanic mini-series for ITV becoming visible over the horizon, Channel 5 nipped in with this startling new spin on the tale of the doomed liner. It's not widely known that when the Nazis were riding high... Read more... |
The Return of Upstairs DownstairsMonday, 06 February 2012
The BBC's updated Upstairs Downstairs is not a lucky show. Its three-night debut in December 2010 brought unflattering comparisons to Downton Abbey, a fate also likely to greet the imminent series two thanks to Downton's booming national-treasure... Read more... |
TatsumiMonday, 09 January 2012
The Western image of manga comes from the thick volumes of knicker-flashing schoolgirls and lurid s.f. teenage boys pore over, and the anime (cartoon films) which adapt them. Singaporean director Eric Khoo’s animated adaptation of five stories by... Read more... |
Doctor Who Christmas Special: The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe, BBC OneSunday, 25 December 2011
Next time you glance up at the stars, spare a thought for your Christmas tree. It’s probably topped by a star, but some of those in the sky might just be the spirit of the tree itself. By helping free the spirits of the trees in a forest, the Doctor... Read more... |
Graham Sutherland: An Unfinished World, Modern Art OxfordTuesday, 20 December 2011
Graham Sutherland and George Shaw have two things in common. They are both painters and both are associated with Coventry: Sutherland made his famous altarpiece work – a tapestry – for the city’s rebuilt cathedral, while Shaw grew up in... Read more... |
DVD: The Cranes Are FlyingFriday, 09 December 2011
The Cranes Are Flying begins with the literal rush of young love, as Boris and Veronica skip down a street, giddy with endorphins. They could be infatuated young Americans in the rock’n’roll year of its making, 1957. But this is Moscow in 1941, as a... Read more... |
Digging the Great Escape, Channel 4Tuesday, 29 November 2011
The archaeological documentary is becoming the obligatory format for tackling legendary tales of the British at war. Someone seems to recreate the Dam Busters raid every six months, the wrecks of battleships HMS Hood and the Bismarck have been... Read more... |
DVD: The Theo Angelopoulos Collection Volume 1Friday, 25 November 2011
There’s a scene in Theo Angelopoulos’s The Travelling Players where those gathered in a square hear “the wind of freedom is blowing” being sung. The wartime Nazi occupation is over. Greek, Russian and American flags are aloft. A bomb goes off. In... Read more... |
Britain's Greatest Codebreaker, Channel 4Tuesday, 22 November 2011
I had misgivings before watching Britain's Greatest Codebreaker last night on Channel 4: the advertised mix of drama and documentary tends to send a signal that neither half is sufficiently well done. And within a minute, it was clear that this was... Read more... |
