In this week's programme presented by
Kirsty Wark:
THE PANEL:
Germaine Greer |
Ian Hislop |
Ekow Eshun |
Comment on this programme
3:10 to Yuma
There's a wave of westerns coming out of Hollywood in the next few months including Brad Pitt in The Assassination of Jesse James, and the Coen brothers adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. This week director James Mangold reworks the 1957 classic western 3:10 to Yuma.
Based on a short story by Elmore Leonard, the film stars Russell Crowe as the outlaw, Ben Wade, a role originally played by Glenn Ford, and Christian Bale as penniless rancher, Dan Evans. Evans struggles to feed his family as the South Pacific Railroad threatens to seize his land, whilst Ben Wade rolls in the $400,000 he and his gang have looted from the company. Their paths cross when Wade is arrested and Evans takes the opportunity to pocket a reward by delivering him to the 3:10 prison train to Yuma.
Also escorting the errant Wade to justice are a morally varied group of men, including veteran bounty hunter Byron McElroy (Peter Fonda), and railroad representative Grayson Butterfield (Dallas Roberts). They are constantly pursued by Wade's gang led by the fiercely loyal and vengeful Charlie Prince (Ben Foster), who has developed a callous disregard for human life to survive in this tough landscape.
The film plays out in the stark, barren setting of the American West, and Mangold bumps up the action in this remake with brutal shoot outs, some spectacular escapes and even an Apache attack. Dan Evans has lost a leg in the Civil War, and, losing the battle to make his drought stricken land profitable, feels he has also lost the respect of his wife and eldest son, William.
Classic western themes of the showdown between good and evil are present as Evans tries to steer his ambivalent son towards a moral path and away from his admiration for the gun toting Wade. 3:10 to Yuma boldly attempts to revive the Western genre. Will the panel feel it was worth the remake?
CERTIFICATE 15
3:10 TO YUMA IS RELEASED BY LIONSGATE
Up in Honey's Room by Elmore Leonard
Elmore Leonard wrote the short story 3:10 to Yuma at the age of 27 and now at the age of 81 he's still producing a book every couple of years.
His snappy dialogue has meant his work has always been popular with film makers with other recent adaptations including Out of Sight, Be Cool and Rum Punch which became Jackie Brown. He initially started out writing westerns but over the course of his career has written of murderers, crooks and psychopaths of every description.
In his new work, Up in Honey's Room he delves into new territory by setting his tale in the closing years of World War II. Daring US Marshall Carl Webster, who was the star of Leonard's 2005 novel The Hot Kid, is here on the trail of escaped prisoners of war. He tracks them to Detroit, Leonard's favourite milieu to write about, and taps up femme fatale Honey Deal for information on their whereabouts. Honey's ex husband Walter is a Nazi sympathiser with delusions of grandeur. A Himmler look-a-like born on the same day and in the same hospital as the Nazi leader, Walter believes he is his twin, destined for glorious action in the Nazi cause.
As Honey attempts to help the attractive marshal make his capture she finds herself drawn into a ring of German spies who are trying to work out whether to choose fight or flight as the war draws to an end.
UP IN HONEY'S ROOM BY ELMORE LEONARD IS PUBLISHED BY WEIDENFIELD AND NICOLSON
The First Emperor: China's Terracotta Army at the British Museum
Qin Shihuangdi is possibly the most famous man in Chinese history. Born Ying Zheng in 159BC, he was just thirteen when he became King of Qin and then proceeded to unite the warring states, create the modern nation we know as China and thereby become the First Emperor.
Among his achievements were to standardize the script, weights and measures and the monetary system and this exhibition aims to shed light on those accomplishments. However, it is his amazing vision for his afterlife which has gripped the world ever since a farmer digging for a well in 1974 found a terracotta head.
Obsessed with immortality, Qin's ambition was everlasting rule over the entire universe and to do that he ordered 700,000 workers to build an underground empire across 56 square kilometres including a burial mound 30 metres high and pits containing an estimated 7000 terracotta warriors and 1000 horses to guard him. Only 1000 of these figures have been excavated to date and are on display at the onsite museum in Xi'an.
This new exhibition, which has been two years in the planning, brings us face to face with 20 terracotta figures - the greatest number to be lent to a single exhibition outside China. In addition to the warriors and horses are some striking recent discoveries including terracotta musicians, acrobats and bureaucrats as well as bronze birds.
Qin died just 11 years into his reign, with work on the pits still unfinished, and has been painted as a tyrant by some historians. Curator, Jane Portal says, "Of course his rule was strict, authoritarian and centralized control but a lot of the stories about him are unreliable so this exhibition shows the archaeological evidence about the First Emperor for people to make up their own minds."
THE FIRST EMPEROR: CHINA'S TERRACOTTA ARMY CONTINUES AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM UNTIL 6TH APRIL 2008
Stuart: A Life Backwards
Tom Hardy plays Stuart Clive Shorter in a BBC Two adaptation of Alexander Masters' critically acclaimed biography, Stuart, A Life Backwards. This one off drama chronicles the unlikely friendship which springs up between Alexander Masters (Benedict Cumberbatch), a Cambridge charity worker, and Stuart Shorter, a homeless alcoholic and heroin addict.
Set in a leafy Cambridge, the story follows Alexander and Stuart's campaign to free two charity workers, contentiously imprisoned for the drug use of the homeless who use their shelter. Alexander, intrigued by the unkempt, slurring yet eloquent Stuart, decides to record his life in an attempt to dissect what shaped the young Stuart into the troubled adult we see in the programme.
As Stuart recalls stories of unimaginable horror and tragedy, Alexander is able to see into an entirely alien world. The imaginative use of animated sketches and re-creations of Stuart's childhood allow the audience to visualise the turning points in Stuart's life, and how Alexander interprets them, in a unique and shocking way.
This drama is directed by David Atwood, executive produced by Sam Mendes and scripted by Masters himself. While it encourages the viewer to laugh at the disparity between the two characters, it also aims to illustrate some pertinent social issues and the plight of the homeless. Will our panel think the balance is right?
STUART: A LIFE BACKWARDS IS ON BBC TWO ON SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 23RD 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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