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BBC TwoNewsnight Review
Page last updated at 15:24 GMT, Thursday, 5 March 2009

Newsnight Review: 6 March 2009

This week, Review is all about reinterpretations of history.

Kirsty Wark and her guests will give their take on a film adaptation of a graphic novel; read a fictional memoir of a former Nazi officer; watch a dance production about a transvestite spy; and see a movie which tells the story of Queen Victoria's early rule.

FILM | Watchmen

It's taken 20 years of wrangling over scripts and budgets, and a legal dispute between rival Hollywood studios for Watchmen finally to make it to the big screen.

The film adaptation of writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons' 1986 comic book series, is a dark, dystopian tale set in an alternative 1985, where Superheroes are real and America is heading towards nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

Director, Zack Snyder, adapted another graphic novel, Frank Miller's 300, in 2007.

The Watchmen stars Patrick Wilson, Jackie Earle Haley, Billy Crudup, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, British actor Matthew Goode, and Carla Gugino.

Their mission is to watch over humanity... but who is watching the Watchmen?

Ekow Eshun, Director of the Institute for Contemporary Arts thinks the graphic novel version of The Watchmen is still a powerful social commentary, two decades after it was published.

Alan Moore is unhappy about the book being made in to a film, so do those themes endure?

Watchmen, certificate 18, is released on Friday, 6 March, 2009.

DANCE | Eonnagata

Dancer Sylvie Guillem, theatre director Robert Lepage and choreographer Russell Maliphant have joined forces to create this highly original work about an 18th century French transvestite spy.

The panel's verdict on Eonnagata

The new work is about the life of the Chevalier d'Éon, a diplomat, writer, swordsman and a member of the King's Secret, a network of spies under the control of Louis XV.

The performance charts his gender-swapping life.

He begins work as a man dressed in women's clothes employed at the French court, then as a man in the dragoons in France, followed by life as woman when there's a London Stock Exchange bet about whether he's a man or a woman.

Dressed in costumes designed by Alexander McQueen and using dance, theatre, mime and the art of onnagata, a practice where Kabuki (a style of Japanese theatre) actors perform female roles, the three practitioners act out various aspects of the chevalier's psyche.

Eonnagata is at Sadler's Wells, London until Saturday, 8 March, 2009.

BOOK| The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell

The fictional memoirs of an SS officer in World War II and on the Eastern Front provide the narrative of Jonathan Littell's first novel.

The panel's verdict on The Kindly Ones

The book was first published in France in 2006 selling more than a million copies and winning both the Prix Goncourt and the Grand Prix du Roma.

Jonathan Littell, a Jewish American who grew up in France and wrote the original book in French, was inspired to write the novel after seeing Claude Lanzmann's film Shoah, an acclaimed documentary about the holocaust.

The protagonist, Max Aue, an SS Obersturmbannfurher on the Eastern Front, has escaped war crimes charges by creating a new identity for himself as a family man and factory-owner in Northern France.

Over 900 pages, he reflects on his time in the war, the grim specifics of his crimes, and his motivations.

Is Jonathan Littell right to have written from the perspective of a Nazi, or does this book act as a brutal reminder of some people's unshakeable convictions about their horrible deeds?

The Kindly Ones is published by Chatto & Windus and out now.

FILM | The Young Victoria

The Young Victoria is the story of the early, turbulent years of Queen Victoria's rule.

The panel's verdict on The Young Victoria

Directed by French Canadian Jean-Marc Vallee and written by Julian Fellowes, it stars Emily Blunt as Queen Victoria and Rupert Friend as Prince Albert.

The film depicts the power struggle between Victoria and her mother the Duchess of Kent in the early years of her reign; Victoria's courtship and marriage to the young Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha; and the political intrigue of the early Victoria era.

The Young Victoria co-stars Paul Bettany, Jim Broadbent, Rupert Friend and Miranda Richardson.

The Young Victoria, certificate PG, is released on Friday, 6 March, 2009.



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