THIS WEEK'S PANEL:
Kwame Kwei-Armah | Mark Kermode | Rowan Pelling | Sarah Churchwell

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The Black Dahlia

Brian de Palma, whose previous credits include Scarface, The Untouchables and Mission: Impossible, directs this noir adaptation of James Ellroy's novel.

Based on a real life murder case which was never solved, Ellroy wrote the story of Elizabeth "Betty" Short to exorcise the demons of his mother's 1958 strangulation.

An aspiring actress, Short was bludgeoned to death in 1947 at the age of 22. Nicknamed "The Black Dahlia" by the LA press for her gothic good looks, she was found drained of blood, with all her internal organs removed and her mouth carved into a clownish grin.

De Palma's version has Mia Kirshner as Betty Short but centre stage is Josh Hartnett as Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert, a young cop trying to keep his nose clean while partnering the increasingly erratic Lee Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart) in investigating the murder.

Although in love with Lee's partner Kay Lake (Scarlett Johansson) Bleichert is also drawn to rich girl and Dahlia look-alike Madeleine Linscott (Hilary Swank). He's drawn into high society through Madeleine and LA's underbelly through the murder investigation and finds the two worlds coalescing in disturbing ways.

The film was a hit at this year's Venice Film Festival but does it live up to the standard set by Curtis Hanson's 1997 Ellroy adaptation, LA Confidential?

Restless
By William Boyd

Restless is set in Oxfordshire in the heatwave of 1976 as Ruth Gilmartin, a single mother and English teacher, discovers the shocking truth about her mother Sally.

Sally was born Eva Delectorskaya and in 1939, as a Russian émigré living in Paris, was recruited by Lucas Romer, a mysterious, patrician Englishman, into the British Secret Service.

Novelist Boyd, previously acclaimed for A Good Man in Africa, Brazzaville Beach and Any Human Heart, places his female spy in a little known corner of WW2 history - the Black Propaganda effort by the British in the USA to convince the Americans to join the war.

Under Romer's tutelage, Eva learns to become the perfect spy: to be keen, quick, alert, and most importantly to trust no one, not even the people she most loves.

Danger is everywhere and Eva inhabits and abandons several identities throughout her work.

Forty years on Sally has decided, for reasons initially unclear to Ruth, to tell her daughter her story in a series of written instalments and Boyd intertwines the two narratives - Sally's account of her life and Ruth's reactions to it.

Ruth comes to realise that once a spy, always a spy and Sally/Eva has a final job to undertake.

Scissor Sisters
Ta-Dah

The Scissor Sisters' self-titled debut was a huge hit in the UK in 2004, gathering two million sales, critical acclaim and, uniquely, all three International awards at the Brit Awards.

Curiously, the US band, who draw inspiration from the New York gay and cabaret scenes, have had much less recognition on their home turf and there may be some acknowledgment of this on the new album Ta-Dah, as they sing, "it's a bitch convincing people to like you".

Responsible for the band's high energy, glam rock-disco sound are Jake Shears, who fronts the group with his distinctive falsetto vocals, Babydaddy, Ana Matronic, Del Marquis and Paddy Boom.

They've claimed Duran Duran are "the reason they got into music" and the new album shows their other influences - Billy Joel, Bee Gees, Supertramp, Queen and Elton John who collaborated with them on "I Don't Feel Like Dancing", the first single from Ta-Dah which looks set for a second week at Number One this weekend.

Leonardo Da Vinci:
Experiment, Experience, Design
V&A

Leonardo da Vinci: Experience, Experiment and Design explores the most fundamental aspect of Leonardo's work - how he thought on paper.

The pages of Leonardo's notebooks, with multitudinous ideas, are arguably unparalleled in the graphic work of any other thinker from any age.

They deal with mighty inventions, great visions of the earth in age-long transformation, the mysterious governance of mathematical proportion in the design of the universe, the most detailed observations and theories of the motion of waters, meticulous reconstructions of the operation of heart valves, the arts of peace and the science of war.

In addition to the drawings, the V&A has commissioned nine animations from Da Vinci's written plans from Cosgrove Hall and created some models from his drawn plans - including a miniature tank, a parachute and a hand glider, for this exhibition looking into the mind of Leonardo Da Vinci.

Rupert Everett
Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins

Actor and writer Rupert Everett is in the Newsnight Review studio to read an extract from his forthcoming autobiography Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins.

Everett first swept to fame after appearing in the stage and then film version of Another Country.

He has spent his life surrounded by extraordinary people, and witnessed extraordinary events. He was in Moscow during the fall of communism; in Berlin the night the wall came down; and in downtown Manhattan on September 11th.

By the age of 17, he was friends with Andy Warhol and Bianca Jagger, and since then he has been up close and personal with some of the most famous women in the world: Julia Roberts, Madonna, Sharon Stone, Donatella Versace, Joan Collins and Shirley Bassey.

Newsnight Review is broadcast after Newsnight every Friday at 11pm on BBC Two.

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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