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Last Updated: Monday, 28 February, 2005, 18:33 GMT
Review 25 February, 2005
Presenter Mark Lawson is joined by:

Hotel Rwanda
A tale of hope from the Rwandan genocide
HOTEL RWANDA

Synopsis:

Hotel Rwanda, one of the first Hollywood films to tackle the subject of genocide since Schindler's List, has already received plaudits with three Oscar nominations for Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Screenplay.

It tells the real life story of hotel manager, Paul Rusesabagina, who in the midst of the horror of the Rwandan genocide, saved more than a thousand lives through a mixture of courage, compassion and guile.

While the film has grabbed the limelight at the Oscars it has been criticised by some genocide survivors for being too sanitised. They say the true horror of the massacre in which more than 800,000 people died is not reflected and the guilt of the international community - which failed to intervene to stop the killing - is assuaged by another Hollywood blockbuster.

Credits: Director/Co-writer: Terry George

Cast: Don Cheadle, Sophie Okonedo

Certificate: 12A

On general release from 4 March, 2005.


Guantanamo
A new television series explores torture
GUANTANAMO GUIDEBOOK

Synopsis:

As part of a Channel Four series examining the use of torture in the war against terror, Guantanamo Guidebook looks at the conditions and coercive methods used at the US military base.

Seven volunteers - some of whom began by supporting the Guantanamo regime - agree to submit themselves to some of those techniques in a warehouse equipped with cages and interrogation rooms. The results are shocking.

Viewers are given the opportunity to decide for themselves whether the methods sanctioned by the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, can ever be justified in the war on terror.

The Guantanamo Guidebook will be broadcast on Channel 4 at 11.05pm on 28 February, 2005.


Caravaggio's Salome Receives the Head of St. John the Baptist
The later work of the iconic 17th century Italian painter
CARAVAGGIO: THE FINAL YEARS

Synopsis:

Billed as the first significant British exhibition of the later work of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, it traces the paintings from the final four years of his life, when he had fled Rome after killing an adversary in a duel.

Having been forced to flee Rome in 1606 at the height of his popularity, he travelled to Naples, Malta and Sicily, before his death in 1610.

The exhibition concentrates of just 16 works from the darkest period in the life of the most influential Italian painter of the 17th century.

The paintings are on display in the Sainsbury's Wing of the National Gallery, in London, until 22 May, 2005.


CHARLIE HIGSON

Despite fourteen classic books about James Bond by Ian Fleming and a hugely successful film franchise, little is known about the fictional spy's young life.

Author Charlie Higson, a writer of some of Britain's best-loved television comedy, evokes the formative years of the most famous spy of all time in his new novel, SilverFin.

In a departure from The Fast Show and The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer, Higson sees 13-year-old James as a new boy at Eton school in the 1930s developing his celebrated taste for fast cars and beautiful women.

SilverFin: A Young Bond novel, will be published by Puffin and Ian Fleming Publications on 3 March 2005.


Newsnight Review, BBC Two's weekly cultural round-up, is broadcast after Newsnight every Friday at 11pm.

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