The shipyard painter, political activist and razor-sharp cartoonist Bob Starrett has just written a new book The Way I See It on his eventful life and times. Below we reprint one of his stories and review an essential read
ENO's production of La Boheme is a triumph,
VIVE LA France, "the cheese-eating surrender monkeys" have shown the US how to combine US ingredients with a French flavour and produce a chic cinematic confection to satisfy any cineaste.
JEFF SAWTELL ponders over a film that sets out to alienate it's audience.
AN award-winning hit in Germany, this Bavarian film by Marc Rothemund celebrates the life of Sophie Scholl - a 21-year-old woman who was guillotined by the nazis having been discovered distributing anti-war leaflets in Munich University in 1943.
THUMBS down to yet another US teenage angst movie about a needy nerd who throws tantrums and sucks his thumb because he's got an over-protective mother and finds it difficult talking to his macho father.
IN A week when one sequel, The Legend of Zorro, sucks, welcome another, which, while not art in any sense of the word, delivers the scary goods to horror-flick aficionados.
ANTONIO Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones make a disappointing return as Mr and Mrs Zorro forced out of retirement to battle a bunch of Old European bad guys, led by Rufus Sewell, who are intent on California securing statehood inside the good ol' US. But you might imagine that the script was written by David Blunkett, with its inconsistencies on just about everything.
JEFF SAWTELL looks on as Bill Murray's past catches up with him in Jim Jarmusch's polished, patient move into the mainstream.
ALTHOUGH brilliantly conceived and exceptionally well animated, Tim Burton's attempt to create a necrophiliac fantasy tale is spoiled by being ever so sweet and nice and not naughty at all.
PUBERTY with the added pain of maturing super powers provides the satirical scenario of this silly skit about a high school for the progeny of supercilious super heroes.
SUPPOSEDLY based upon a true story about a horse-breeding family in Kentucky, Dreamer is yet another tear-jerker from the National Velvet stable, featuring Dakota Fanning as the little girl who dreams of owning and racing a horse.