Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe
BBC 4
arts
In the newsrooms and corridors of power
Friday, March 12th, 2010FILM: Good Bad builds bridges on return path
Thursday, March 11th, 2010Crazy Heart
Director: Scott Cooper
Our Beloved Month of August
Director: Miguel Gomes
BOOKS: A country ready for Reform – remember 1830 when the winning candidates, Carrington and Piggott, entered Parliament with 13 votes each
Thursday, March 4th, 2010The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1820-1832 edited by DR Fisher
Cambridge University Press, seven volumes, £135
Famously, Tony Benn insisted that politics was “about issues, not personalities”. What he meant, reasonably enough, was that the conflicts of the late 1970s and early 1980s were not about Denis Healey versus Tony Benn. They earnestly concerned social democracy contested by full dress socialism. Reasonable enough, indeed, but the personalities made it interesting.
TELEVISION: Piers’ show suggests it may not be PM’s end
Thursday, March 4th, 2010Piers Morgan’s Life Stories
ITV 1
The FA Cup
ITV 1
Politicians need to choose their media vehicles with care. The likes of Jeremy Paxman, David Dimbleby, John Humphrys and Terry Wogan all take a different approach when it comes to interviewing party leaders; some softer, others tougher.
BOOKS: Drinking deep at the wells of Washington’s exceptionalism
Thursday, March 4th, 2010Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana and Washington by Ann Louise Bardach
Scribner, £18.99
I am engaged in writing a short and, hopefully, clear and simple biography of Fidel Castro and I therefore feel under some obligation to get up to date about what else is being written about him. Nevertheless, I do trenchantly claim the Tribune medal of honour, first class, or at the very least a Michael Foot special certificate of merit, for my intellectual heroism in having got to the end of this book.
VISUAL ARTS: Stylish Penn shone his light on sitters, not setting
Thursday, March 4th, 2010Irving Penn: Portraits
National Portrait Gallery, London
Images of the clever, talented and famous continue to attract attention. The look of a person may reveal aspects of their character that inform us about the work they do, which might seem unlikely, but can happen. Sure, we can see the appearance of the sitter – their age, state of youth, wrinkled old age or suspicious glower – but a sharp, tenacious photographer waits to capture the decisive moment when suddenly a look or gesture tells us more about the sitter than maybe they intended to show.
BOOKS: Looking for a broad manifesto – so where do we go from here?
Thursday, March 4th, 2010The Left Alternative by Roberto Mangabeira Unger
Verso, £7.99
On November 9 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. With astonishing speed this dramatic event was used by the corporate elite and their hired hands in the political mainstream to announce the global triumph of political and economic neo-liberalism. This theme was fast developed by Francis Fukuyama in his controversial book The End of History and The Last Man in 1992 which absurdly declared “what we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such… That is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government”.
THEATRE: Cultures clash, English and Scots on the rocks
Thursday, March 4th, 2010Dunsinane
Hampstead Theatre, London
What happened in Scotland after the death of Macbeth? Dunsinane, the engrossing new play by David Greig which looks at the aftermath of the 11th century English invasion of the northern kingdom, offers a fine mixture of contemporary resonance and a thrilling account of culture clash. Starting off with the attack of the English, disguised as Burnham Wood, and Macbeth’s last stand, the play rapidly opens out on a far more interesting landscape.
BOOKS: Ozzie detective draws readers to the Temple
Thursday, March 4th, 2010Truth by Peter Temple
Quercus, £12.99
The Australian author Peter Temple is known in this country, if at all, for the series of novels featuring the private detective Jack Irish. Because this series revolves around horse racing, and because I am decidedly not a gambler, I have tended to avoid these books. All of which means that Truth came out of the blue as an absolute revelation to me. It is, quite simply, the best thriller I have read in years.
CLASSICAL MUSIC: High water marks and supreme seriousness
Thursday, March 4th, 2010Prokofiev – Romeo and Juliet: Eikanger-Bjorsvik Band/Bjarte Engeset
Naxos
Moviebrass: Gomalan Brass Quintet
Naxos
Beethoven – Fidelio: Crista Ludwi/Gottlob Frick/Philharmonia Orchestra/Otto Klemperer
EMI Classics
Beethoven– Egmont Incidental Music and Ah! Perfido: Madeleine Pierard/New Zealand Orchestra/James Judd
Naxos
This is a thoughtful and on the whole charming arrangement of Prokofiev’s subtle and dramatic ballet score and is particularly pleasing in the more lyrical parts such as “Morning Dance” and “Juliet as a Young Girl”. The weakness appears mainly at those times when the composer calls so dramatically on colour and authority that only an orchestra can provide, such as the rhythmic drive of brass and lower strings in “Montagues and Capulets” and the “Death of Tybalt”.
