This week's Newsnight Review - BBC Two, 2300GMT - is presented by John Wilson.
THE PANEL:
Sarfraz Manzoor |
Jeanette Winterson |
Peter Whittle
In the Valley of Elah
Tommy Lee Jones received an Oscar nomination for his role as Hank Deerfield, a retired military policeman whose son Mike goes AWOL after returning from a tour of duty in Iraq.
When the army seems to have no answers for him, Hank pushes detective Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron) to take on the case.
The film is Paul Haggis' directorial follow up to the Oscar winning Crash. Haggis also wrote the film, basing it on a true story, but will the panellists find it convincing?
In The Valley of Elah is at cinemas nationwide, certificate 15
The Second Plane by Martin Amis
Martin Amis wrote his first reaction to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 just a week after the events.
Since then he's returned to the subject repeatedly in the form of short stories, essays, reviews and reportage, exploring the resulting political developments in Iraq and trying to refine his thoughts on the terrorists' motivation.
His views have drawn criticism from other commentators but does drawing the articles together in book form make Amis' journey, and attitudes, clearer?
The Second Plane by Martin Amis is published by Faber
The Vertical Hour
Another British artist who has felt the need to explore Iraq in his work is playwright David Hare.
His 2005 play Stuff Happens mixed fact and fiction to portray the run up to the invasion.
In The Vertical Hour, liberal American academic Nadia Blye finds her support for the war and her whole way of life, under attack when she and her English boyfriend visit his sceptical father Oliver in rural Shropshire.
The play had its world premiere on Broadway in 2006 with Julianne Moore and Bill Nighy in the lead roles and now gets its British premiere at the Royal Court Theatre, London with Indira Varma as Nadia and Anton Lesser as Oliver.
The Vertical Hour continues at the Royal Court Theatre, London until 1 March
From Russia: French and Russian Master Paintings 1870–1925 from Moscow and St Petersburg
Before Christmas it was doubtful this exhibition would go ahead.
The Russians were concerned that British law was too lax to prevent the seizure of loaned works.
New legislation was hurried through and now the Royal Academy hosts over 120 paintings by Russian and French artists working between 1870 and 1925, borrowed from Russia's four major public collections.
Many of the works have not been seen before in the UK. It's a treasure trove of paintings by Renoir, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin and Matisse together with the Russian artists they influenced - Kandinsky, Tatlin, Petrov-Vodkin and Malevich.
From Russia is at the Royal Academy, London until 18th April 2008
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