documentary
Personal BestFriday, 25 May 2012
Of the rash of Olympic-themed films lining up on the startline, there is a double entry from Chariots of Fire, digitally remastered on film and freshly rebooted for the stage, as well as a forthcoming feelgood drama about young women in a relay... Read more... |
Hitler's Children, BBC TwoThursday, 24 May 2012
Did Magda Goebbels do her children a favour by murdering all six of them in the bunker? Her rationale, as reported in the film Downfall, was the impossibility of imagining a life after Hitler for anyone called Goebbels.Most descendants of the Nazi... Read more... |
Harlots, Housewives and Heroines, BBC FourWednesday, 23 May 2012
Ooh look, she’s at it again. Fresh from hurling insults at David Starkey (well, he started it) and provoking the ire of historian Alison Light - who presumably didn’t make it through BBC casting - for daring to try on a bonnet on the box and thus “... Read more... |
Tales of Television Centre, BBC FourThursday, 17 May 2012
“It’s like Big Ben. It’s like the Houses of Parliament. It’s like St Paul’s,” observed Susan Hampshire, reflecting on the iconic properties of Television Centre, the BBC’s 52-year-old nerve centre. Steady on, Susan, you thought, let’s not overdo it... Read more... |
56 Up, ITV1Tuesday, 15 May 2012
For most of us, life is what happens to you when you’re looking the other way. For the participants in 7 Up it’s what happens in seven-year segments between the visits of Michael Apted. First interviewed in 1964, they are all 56 now, and as usual... Read more... |
George Harrison: Something in the VaultsMonday, 14 May 2012
My, what strange and wondrous treasures await the record producer given exclusive access to the private vaults of a Beatle. He will, for instance, find entire radio programmes preserved on multi-track tape, and recordings of F1 cars roaring past at... Read more... |
Sporting Heroes: After the Final Whistle, BBC OneThursday, 10 May 2012
It’s a funny old game. Sport rewards the talented when they are young and their bodies responsive. A profession which requires the reflexes to work in instant harmony with the brain means that beyond a certain age, the gifted become instantly... Read more... |
Two Years At SeaFriday, 04 May 2012
He trudges about in the snow somewhere. He cooks. He sleeps. He chops wood and saws branches. He reads. He looks like Darwin. He makes hot drinks. He does not do spring cleaning.This is a more-or-less complete synopsis of Ben Rivers’ Two Years at... Read more... |
Beautiful Minds, BBC FourThursday, 26 April 2012
Apart from the fact that it’s a razor-sharp piece of writing, what most delights and impresses me about Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion is how it gets under people’s skin. It has generated several books in fevered opposition to it and, needless to... Read more... |
DVD: The Story of Film: An OdysseyTuesday, 24 April 2012
It would be an impossible to do a comprehensive global history of cinema in just 15 hours. You could attempt it by throwing hundreds of thousands of second-long clips at the viewer in a firework display of celluloid. But film-maker and critic Mark... Read more... |
theASHtray: Arafat/Peres, Orhan Pamuk and Zombie Ass: Toilet of the DeadSaturday, 21 April 2012
Next week sees the release of Shimon Peres, the second instalment in Spirit Level Film’s The Price of Kings series. A president of Israel who refers to leadership as “not a very happy engagement,” a Nobel Peace Prize-winner who says he has never... Read more... |
Louis Theroux: Extreme Love, BBC TwoFriday, 20 April 2012
In Louis Theroux: Extreme Love, a film about the realities of looking after children with autism, a mother of twin girls from New Jersey confessed: “I just try and make them happy because, God forgive me, I don’t get a lot of enjoyment from them.”... Read more... |
