Tribune – Comment, news and reviews from Britain's democratic left

For me, 2009 was as much about the films I didn’t see as the ones I did. Take The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke’s third comeback movie. I was around for the first, Francis Coppola’s The Rainmaker, then the second, his appearance in Sin City. But I’ve also seen documentary footage of steroid abuse and was not keen to watch a former film star succumbing to it.

Tribune readers will know this year marked the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution, one of the great political developments of the 20th century, but it also gave jazz aficionados cause to look back five decades to 1959, to a coup d’etat in the music’s history, a year which saw a quintet of releases which proved seismic in its future evolution. Miles Davis’ timelessly minimalist Kind of Blue, Charles Mingus’ magnificently raucous Mingus Ah Um, Ornette Coleman’s revolutionary avant garde debut The Shape of Jazz to Come, Dave Brubeck’s sweeping Time Out and John Coltrane’s dazzling Giant Steps, were five pillars on which so much which followed came to rest.

Darker Shores
Hampstead Theatre, London

“Why don’t the working classes see ghosts?” asks a character in Michael Punter’s seasonal chiller, Darker Shores. “Because”, comes the reply, “they’re too busy”. Yes, there is a link between the traditional ghost story and the leisured classes. And this one is no different.

The Charles Dickens Collection: The Pickwick Papers; Oliver Twist; A Christmas Carol; Martin Chuzzlewit; David Copperfield; A Tale of Two Cities; Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend
BBC, £99

Kim by Rudyard Kipling read by Madhav Sharma
Naxos, £10.99

The French Revolution in a Nutshell by Neil Wenborn read by Rory McMillan
Naxos, £8.99

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Naxos, £10.99

It is a fact, universally acknowledged, that the BBC does adaptations of Charles Dickens rather well. Yeah, right. I have even heard it said that Dickens was made for television, because there are so many Dickens TV serials. But arithmetic is seldom usefully employed in aesthetics; by the same token Haydn is a greater symphonist than Brahms because he wrote more than 100 symphonies while Brahms managed only four.

Seth Lakeman
Oxford Town Hall

There is a clear gender divide among tonight’s audience at Oxford Town hall to see Seth Lakeman, the man credited with saving British folk music. While the men look as though they are dressed for a Green Party conference, the women – or should that be girls? – are definitely dressed for a night on the town. This might have something to do with Lakeman’s undoubted status as the uncontested pin-up of folk music. And I mean uncontested. With his boyish good looks and casual appearance, jeans and a black tee-shirt, Lakeman wouldn’t look out of place on The X-Factor, although his brand of folk-rock, with its roots in Cornish folklore certainly would not win him any fans on the talent contest – or should that be musical impressions show? – where your chances of winning decrease in direct proportion to your originality. And Lakeman is certainly an original, despite the centuries-old musical tradition behind him.

According to Chinese astrology, the Year of the Rat ended on January 25 and the Year of the Ox started on January 26. However, in terms of new releases in British cinemas, the “Year of the Ram” had already begun on January 16 – the day on which Darren Aronofsky’s masterpiece The Wrestler power-slammed its way onto our screens, setting a standard which nothing in the intervening months has threatened to match, never mind surpass.