In this week's programme presented by
Martha Kearney:
THE PANEL:
Rosie Boycott |
Mark Kermode |
Andrew Roberts |
Ian Rankin
Comment on this programme
La Vie en Rose
Edith Piaf's voice is legendary; her unmistakable delivery invokes equal parts Parisian heartbreak and hopefulness.
Her life, it seems, was equally startling. Abandoned by her parents she was raised in a brothel, then inducted into the circus life by her contortionist father. She ended up literally singing for her supper in Pigalle before being discovered on a street corner and propelled towards stardom.
Marion Cotillard gives a rousing performance as Piaf, portraying her from the youthful urchin years, through the glamour of her international fame where she was feted by Dietrich and Chaplin, to her death, aged 47, crippled by arthritis. It is an unmistakably adoring biopic, concentrating on Piaf's vulnerability and tragedy.
The film glosses over her wartime activities - she is remembered as an important contact for the Resistance, smuggling passports into Prisoner of War camps, but no mention is made of this.
La Vie en Rose, Certificate 12a is released on Friday 22nd June
Hockney on Turner watercolours, Tate Britain
Earlier this week, Tate Britain opened its doors to the largest ever exhibition of rarely shown watercolours by the English artist JMW Turner: a result of the huge bequest left to the nation by Turner himself on his death in 1851. These 165 paintings reveal an extensive range of work from Turner's early architectural paintings to the highlight of the exhibition, the recently acquired masterpiece The Blue Rigi.
To top it off, Tate invited David Hockney, also a renowned water colourist to curate his own selection of Turner's watercolours, and the ones he chose, Turner's "colour beginnings" show an extraordinary awareness of space, a fantastic visual memory and an emotional strength that Hockney says "comes direct from the heart, down the arm. And I like that."
In conjunction with Hockney's selection of Turner watercolours, and to celebrate his 70th birthday, Tate Britain is also exhibiting the fruits of Hockney's recent return to painting the English landscape in David Hockney: The East Yorkshire Landscape. Inspired by Turner and the space and light of East Yorkshire, Hockney has gone back to his roots. Over the course of a year, he has painted a set of oil paintings, 12 ft long and created from six smaller canvases all in situ from the same spot in Woldgate Woods.
A much larger painting by Hockney, 'Bigger Trees Near Warter', using the same technology but made up of 50 canvases, is part of this year's Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy.
BP Summer Exhibition Hockney on Turner Watercolours continues until 3rd February 2008
David Hockney: The East Yorkshire Landscape continues until January 2008, both at Tate Britain
The Summer Exhibition is at the Royal Academy, London until 19th August
The Diana Chronicles
by Tina Brown
Tina Brown's biography is part of a wave of publications and productions about the Princess of Wales released around the tenth anniversary of her death.
With Brown's extensive list of all star acknowledgements, (Tony Blair, Jimmy Choo and Henry Kissinger being just some of the 'names') supplemented by many off the record interviews, it aims to be the most authoritative. The book starts on the day of the fatal car crash and returns to trace Diana's life from before her birth, with a history of the Spencer and Fermoy families, through her debutante days and fairy tale wedding, to a life of parenthood, international adulation and turbulent relationships.
So much has been written about Diana that there is a sense of no stone being unturned in her life story. However, Brown uses the benefits of impeccable contacts and a personal relationship with Diana to unpick myths and set records straight rather than striving for new revelations.
The British born author was just 25 years old and already editor of Tatler at the time of the Royal Wedding. She went on to edit Vanity Fair and The New Yorker and to start Talk magazine, becoming a chronicler of the international high life. Her empathy with her subject is clear but the book relates the faults in Diana's character and actions as much as her more lauded attributes.
Will the panel feel that new light has been shed on the woman who was, in her brother's words, "the most hunted person of the modern age"?
The Diana Chronicles by Tina Brown is published by Century
Jekyll, BBC One
BBC One tackles Robert Louis Stevenson's classic in a new 6 part drama. Jekyll, starring James Nesbitt as Dr Tom Jackman, is about a man desperately trying to tackle his own peculiar demon, and in the meantime removing himself from all he holds dear.
The starry supporting cast includes Gina Bellman as Jackman's wife, Michelle Ryan as the assistant to both Dr Jackman and Mr Hyde, with Meera Syal, Denis Lawson and Mark Gatiss.
The very 2007 specific production makes much use of technology in its explanation of the legendary fable, but will the drama survive the transition to a contemporary setting?
Jekyll starts on BBC One on Saturday 16th June at 9pm
Don't forget that you can watch Newsnight Review online via this website. The programme is available in broadband from 1200 BST on the Saturday after originally broadcast for one week.
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