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

There is a growing movement of people who want to get off the merry-go-round of modern life and just enjoy things. Joining this chorus against over-consumption is Andrew Price, Professor of Biosciences at Warwick University, who believes that while the modern world may boast ever more ingenious technologies, they are fragile and often cause more problems than they solve.

Slumming It
Channel 4

Dispatches: The Slumdog Children of Mumbai
Channel 4

As part of Channel 4’s Indian winter season, Kevin McCloud in Slumming It cast an architect’s eye over the slums of Dharavi where more than one million people are crammed into a single square mile of open sewers, rats and hazardous chemicals. What McCloud discovered was an engine room of industry – from cobblers and potters to bakers and luggage makers, plus a conundrum common to many slum communities. One the one hand, there are housing and amenities desperately in need of improvements; on the other, there is a community rich in history, resourcefulness and social networks.

Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire
Director: Lee Daniels

OSS 117 – Lost In Rio
Director: Michael Hazanavicius

The Book of Eli
Directors: Allen and Albert Hughes

The Princess and the Frog
Directors: Ron Clements, John Musker

Diamond Star Halo by Tiffany Murray
Portobello Books, £12.99

Tiffany Murray was brought up at Rockfield Studios, a little slice of rock’n’roll glamour on what used to be a farm in rural Monmouthshire, where her father was a record producer and her mother was the in-house chef. It was there, on the border between England and Wales, that Dave Edmunds recorded I Hear You Knocking – the studios’ first number 1 hit – and a pile of stones in the paddock inspired Noel Gallagher to write Wonderwall.

This is not a book about China, its history, society or culture, but rather a book about how the West superimposed its imagination on reality. About how people who had barely visited the country and had the most cursory knowledge of its people – in some cases had never been there at all – shaped the country and its inhabitants in the eyes of Europe. It was, at best, looking at an elephant with the telescope the wrong way around and detail turned into definition. At worst it was to impose Western prejudices and racism on a population that had little say in the matter.

Progress
Union Theatre, London

Sexual politics has always been fertile (oops) ground for comedy and Doug Lucie’s vigorous 1984 satire, Progress, is now revived on the London fringe. For us older lefties, it’s a bit of a nostalgic trip into the past. We are in Kilburn during the Margaret Thatcher era and the local right-on Labour Party members have turned inward. As 30-something Will and his wife Ronee decide to experiment with radical sexual politics, the men’s group that he hosts explores, often hilariously, the subject of sexism and what it might mean to be a “new” man.

Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2009
National Portrait Gallery, London

The problems of painters who produce portraits in a genre that seems to be dominated by photography may be mild in comparison to those facing photographers who also set out to produce “portraits” that must catch and hold our attention, despite the fact that we know little about the subject shown. Such is the task faced by the photographers competing for the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize last year, who responded impressively. Some 2,451 international photographers submitted a total of 6,413 prints, from which 60 were selected.

Greta Garbo Came to Donegal
Tricycle Theatre, London

If a peacock is mysteriously inhabiting the surrounds of a big house in Donegal, theatre convention states that use must be made of it. The same principle applies to a loaded gun appearing in act one. Then place a reclusive movie star by the name of Greta Garbo into this big house close to the Irish border, set it in 1967 just as the Troubles are about to kick off and you expect her to have a significant affect or be significantly affected by the local situation.