Up
Directors: Pete Docter, Bob Peterson
Ong Bak – The Beginning
Directors: Tony Jaa, Panna Rittikrai
I was initially tempted not to review the latest Pixar Animation film, Up, because I expected it to gain a series of five-star reviews to which I could add nothing. But then I heard a noted presenter of a Radio 4 arts programme declare that he would not be taking his 10-year-old son to see it owing to its dark subject matter and I thought: “No wonder the BBC is in crisis”.
Comedians
Lyric, Hammersmith
What are the politics of comedy? Is laughter always subversive, or do some jokes just support the status quo? The great thing about veteran radical Trevor Griffiths’1975 classic, Comedians, is that this subject is debated with grace as well as humour. As six apprentice comedians attend a night class run by the veteran stand-up Eddie Waters, they find that their hunger for stardom clashes with his desire to use comedy to make a difference – to change society.
The Red Flag: Communism and the Making of the Modern World by David Priestland
Allen Lane, £35
Once in every several hundred years mankind experiences a momentous cry from the rooftops; a cry of hope and optimism in the name of a newly observed social/philosophical vision attached to a conviction of fresh certainties. All history carries the footprints of such experiences. From the earliest scrolls of the ancient Hebrews through the birth of Christianity, via Greece and Rome, and so much more mankind has searched for the perfect formula enabling self-rescue. The endless challenge has always been and remains: how can we persuade mankind to accept some form of rational co-operation?
British Ceramic Biennial 2009
Stoke-on-Trent
In an imaginative and enterprising initiative, Stoke-on-Trent is currently staging the first British Ceramic Biennial – an event taking place in all the six towns of the city. Using local and European funding, the BCB is intended to increase popular awareness of Stoke’s rich ceramic heritage at a time when many factories are closing and production moving overseas. The aim is also to play a part in the regeneration of the city by introducing other ways of approaching ceramics.
Le Donk & Scor-Zay-Zee
Director: Shane Meadows
Le Donk & Scor-Zay-Zee, the latest offering from the indefatigable Shane Meadows, was shot in five days as part of a do-it-yourself digital-cinema initiative pioneered by Meadows and his pals. It’s supposedly the chronicle of a week in the life of Nicholas, a scruffy, self-regarding Midlands roadie known to all and sundry (for reasons never specified) as “Le Donk” and played by long-time Meadows collaborator Paddy Considine.
The dividing lines between the parties’ economic policies are stark, says Stephen Beer
Is Gordon Brown right to sell state assets to pay off the national debt? Yes: 18% No: 82%
A new group of Labour MPs says the party can still confound expectations, writes Malcolm Wicks
Members of Parliament are aggrieved at the “rough justice” meted out to them by Sir Thomas Legg. Apparently, animosity towards the Prime Minister boiled over at a recent meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party. He was heckled by Labour MPs who are angry at his decision to pay back cash claimed for cleaning while urging them to follow his example.
I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this, but I’m very fond of London Zoo. So fond of it, in fact, that I’ve spent nearly two decades actively involved in its governance and administration, ever since, as a member of a group of rebellious members of the Zoological Society of London, I played a part in an insurrection against the decision, in the early 1990s, to close the place. Well, we won that one. Not only didn’t London Zoo close, but we also succeeded in shifting its whole ethos away from being merely another “visitor attraction” to being a global centre for the conservation of wildlife and the natural world.