| 401 |
BBC Proms: Hooray for Hollywood (2011) #623
MUSIC
Main
A celebration of the Golden Age of Hollywood film musicals featuring Annalene Beechey, Charles Castronovo, Matthew Ford, Sarah Fox, Caroline O'Connor, Clare Teal, the Maida Vale Singers, John Wilson Orchestra and John Wilson (conductor). The appearances of John Wilson and his hand-picked, high-octane orchestra have been among the most sensational Proms events of recent years. Joined by a formidable line-up of today's vocal stars, they give what one critic has described as 'the auditory equivalent of a steam-clean' to another cache of show-stoppers. 'Hooray for Hollywood' takes us from the dawn of the talkies and the birth of the movie musical through to the 1960s. An extended sequence pays special tribute to the RKO films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, who was born 100 years ago. |
| 402 |
Imagine: Simon and Garfunkel - The Harmony Game (2011) #627
DOCUMENTARY
Main
In Jennifer Lebeau's film, Simon and Garfunkel: The Harmony Game, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel talk openly and eloquently about an extraordinarily creative period in their career - the making of Bridge Over Troubled Water. The story behind what was to become their final album has long been shrouded in rock and roll mythology and is told in gripping detail in these rare interviews. Archive footage is used to reveal technical breakthroughs and the emotional feelings the two artists had for each other. |
| 403 |
Carmen (2011) #639
MUSIC
Main
Directed by Gary Halvorson. With Trevor Scheunemann, Barbara Frittoli, Roberto Alagna, Keith Miller. It's a familiar story: Act 1, boy meets girl, goes to jail for her. Act 2, boy is out of jail, girl rewards him with special favors. Act 3, girl is bored already, moving on. Act 4, boy kills girl for ruining his life. We've all been there. Metropolitan Opera, New York. |
| 404 |
Carmen (from Barcelona) (2011) #642
MUSIC
Main
From the Gran Taetre del Liceu, Barcelona. In this prestigious production at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, would-famous and highly controversial stage director Calixto Bieito, admired for his raw and evocative stagings, sees in Carmen the embodiment of the mythical gypsy and touches upon sensitive issues such as racism, xenophobia and right-wing politics. Bieito conjures up a sensual and realistic atmosphere full of powerful symbolism. An outstanding quartet of vocal stars, led by a 'splendid and sensual' (El Periódico) Béatrice Uria-Monzon in the title role, delivers one of the most exciting Carmens in recent years: Roberto Alagna as Don José, Erwin Schrott as Escamillo and Marina Poplavskaya as Micaëla. See: http://www.roh.org.uk/products/bizet-carmen-dvd-liceu-2011 |
| 405 |
The Trouble with Tolstoy (2011) #701
DOCUMENTARY
Main
BBC 2 x 1 hour episodes: 1 At War with Himself, 2 In Search of Happiness. Alan Yentob takes an epic train ride through Tolstoy's Russia, examining how Russia's great novelist became her great troublemaker. In this first of two programmes, he reveals a difficult and troubled youth, obsessed with sex and gambling, who turned writer while serving as a soldier in Chechnya and the Crimea. His experiences on the frontline eventually fed into War and Peace, a book now recognised as, 'the gold standard by which all other novels are judged'. They also triggered his conversion to outspoken pacifist. Alan's expedition takes him to the Tatar city of Kazan, where Tolstoy was a teenager, the siege of Sevastopol on the Black Sea and Imperial St Petersburg, as well as the idyllic Tolstoy country estate, the writer's cradle and grave, and home throughout his passionate but brutal 48-year marriage to Sofya - a marriage that began with rape, produced 13 children and ended with desertion and denial. In the second episode... The success of War and Peace brought Tolstoy fame, wealth and a massive mid-life crisis. Alan follows the writer through the tortured second half of his life as he transformed himself from aristocrat to anarchist and turned his back on his novels, his possessions and finally his wife of 48 years. Alan travels east into the remote emptiness of the Russian steppe, through the dark pages of Tolstoy's great romantic novel Anna Karenina, on to the small town where Anna takes her life, and then on the pilgrimage to the spectacular monastery where Tolstoy's spiritual quest began. Using extraordinary early film of Tolstoy, we witness the tumultuous events of Tolstoy's final years and his passionate relationship with his disciple Chertkov, the man his wife called 'the devil incarnate'. Finally, Alan retraces Tolstoy's flight from home at the age of 82, a journey that ended in a remote railway station. Heartbreaking archive footage shows his wife Sofya being turned away from the deathbed of her husband. So great was Tolstoy's influence at the time of his death that the government feared the news would spark revolution. Contributors include Tolstoy's great great grandson Vladimir Tolstoy, AN Wilson and author of a Tolstoy biography, Rosamund Bartlett. |
| 406 |
America in Pictures: The Story of Life Magazine (2011) #737
DOCUMENTARY
Main
Life was an iconic weekly magazine that specialised in extraordinarily vivid photojournalism. Through its most dynamic decades, - the 40s, 50s and 60s - Life caught the spirit of America as it blossomed into a world superpower. Read by over half the country, its influence on American people was unparalleled. No other magazine in the world held the photograph in such high esteem. At Life the pictures, not the words, did the talking. As a result, the Life photographer was king. In this film, leading UK fashion photographer Rankin celebrates the work of Life's legendary photographers including Alfred Eisenstaedt and Margaret Bourke-White, who went to outrageous lengths to get the best picture - moving armies, naval fleets and even the population of entire towns. He travels across the USA to meet photographers Bill Eppridge, John Shearer, John Loengard, Burk Uzzle and Harry Benson who, between them, have shot the big moments in American history - from the assassination of Robert F Kennedy, the Civil Rights struggle and Vietnam to behind the scenes at the Playboy mansion and the greatest names in Hollywood. These photographers pioneered new forms of photojournalism, living with and photographing their subjects for weeks, enabling them to capture compelling yet ordinary aspects of American life too. Rankin discovers that Life told the story of America in photographs, and also taught America how to be American. |
| 407 |
Mark Lawson talks to Tracey Emin (2011) #776
DOCUMENTARY
Main
1 hour. BBC. Mark Lawson talks to the enfant terrible of the British art world, Tracey Emin, famed for her unmade bed and the tent embroidered with the names of everyone she had ever slept with. The 1990s wild child talks in detail about her unconventional childhood and the traumatic adolescent experiences which inspired much of her controversial work. |
| 408 |
Imagine: Books - The Last Chapter? (2011) #786
DOCUMENTARY
Main
With the rise of electronic books, is the final chapter about to be written in the long love story between books and their readers? Will the app take the place of the traditional book? Alan Yentob discusses the subject with writers Alan Bennett, Douglas Coupland, Ewan Morrison and Gary Shteyngart, publisher Gail Rebuck, agent Ed Victor and librarian Rachael Morrison. They also smell books, making precise notes about the distinctive aroma of each. |
| 409 |
Faster Than the Speed of Light? (2011) #804
DOCUMENTARY
Main
1 hour. BBC. In September 2011, an international group of scientists has made an astonishing claim - they have detected particles that seemed to travel faster than the speed of light. It was a claim that contradicted more than a hundred years of scientific orthodoxy. Suddenly there was talk of all kinds of bizarre concepts, from time travel to parallel universes. So what is going on? Has Einstein's famous theory of relativity finally met its match? Will we one day be able to travel into the past or even into another universe? In this film, Professor Marcus du Sautoy explores one of the most dramatic scientific announcements for a generation. In clear, simple language he tells the story of the science we thought we knew, how it is being challenged, and why it matters. |
| 410 |
Natural World: Animal House (2011) #805
DOCUMENTARY
Main
1 hour. BBC. Sir David Attenborough tells the stories of the world's best animal architects. There are house-proud bower birds, who only find a mate if they decorate their homes perfectly. There are hornets, who build electric central heating systems, and the star-nosed mole, whose house is designed so well that worms, his favourite meal, literally drop in for dinner. From larders to nurseries and from high-rises to subway systems, Attenborough shows that the animal architects have designed it long before humans. |
| 411 |
Horizon: Are You Good or Evil? (2011) #806
DOCUMENTARY
Main
1 hour. BBC. What makes us good or evil? It's a simple but deeply unsettling question. One that scientists are now starting to answer. Horizon meets the researchers who have studied some of the most terrifying people behind bars - psychopathic killers. But there was a shock in store for one of these scientists, Professor Jim Fallon, when he discovered that he had the profile of a psychopath. And the reason he didn't turn out to be a killer holds important lessons for all of us. We meet the scientist who believes he has found the moral molecule and the man who is using this new understanding to rewrite our ideas of crime and punishment. |
| 412 |
Who Do You Think You Are? Emilia Fox (2011) #807
DOCUMENTARY
Main
1 hour. BBC. Celebrities trace their family trees to reveal the lives of their ancestors. Emilia Fox, who was heavily pregnant while filming this episode, was intrigued to find out what family traits her baby might inherit. Part of the Fox theatrical dynasty, Emilia wants to find out just how far back the family's acting roots go. Emilia also discovers, in an extraordinary tale of rags to riches, that her great-great-grandfather Samson Fox made one of the most important inventions of the 19th century. Born into an impoverished family, Samson started work in a Leeds textile mill when he was just eight years old, but ended up becoming one of the richest men in Victorian Britain. As Emilia investigates further, she discovers how her illustrious ancestor was later touched by scandal. |
| 413 |
Ancient Worlds: The Republic of Virtue (2011) #809
DOCUMENTARY
Main
How did an insignificant cluster of Latin hill villages on the edge of the civilised world become the greatest empire the world has known? In the fifth programme of the series, archaeologist and historian Richard Miles examines the phenomenon of the Roman Republic, from its fratricidal mythical beginnings, with the legend of Romulus and Remus, to the all too real violence of its end, dragged to destruction by war lords like Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar. Travelling to Sicily and North Africa, Richard tells the story of Rome's century-long struggle for dominance with the other great regional power, Carthage. It was a struggle that would end with the total destruction of this formidable enemy and the transformation of landlubber Rome into a seapower, and the Republic into an Empire. But with no-one left to beat, the only enemy that Rome had left was itself. |
| 414 |
Imagine: Ai Weiwei - Without Fear or Favour (2011) #810
DOCUMENTARY
Main
1 hour. BBC. Arts documentary, first broadcast before Ai Weiwei's arrest by the Chinese authorities in April 2011, and his subsequent release after being detained for 11 weeks. Architect, photographer, curator and blogger, Ai Weiwei is China's most famous and politically outspoken contemporary artist. Alan Yentob explores the story of Ai Weiwei's life and art, and reveals how this most courageous and determined of artists continues to fight for artistic freedom of expression while living under the restrictive shadows of authoritarian rule. |
| 415 |
Imagine: The Man Who Forgot How to Read (2011) #816
DOCUMENTARY
Main
1 hour. BBC. Presenter Alan Yentob meets clinical neurologist and author Dr Oliver Sacks to investigate the myriad ways we experience the visual world and the strange things that can happen when our mind fails to understand what our eyes see. In the course of this investigation, Yentob tells the life story of Dr Oliver Sacks, the man who would become one of the world's most famous scientists. Alan delves into this world by going to meet several of the case studies from Sacks latest book, The Mind's Eye. He meets Stereo Sue, neurobiologist Sue Barry, who always saw the world as a flat 2D image until she suddenly acquired stereoscopic 3D vision in her late forties; Canadian crime writer Howard Engel, the man who forgot how to read, who remarkably continues to write despite a stroke that destroyed his reading ability; Chuck Close, the renowned portrait artist, who cannot recognise or remember faces and Danny Delcambre, an extraordinary and spirited man who, although having a condition which means he was born deaf and is gradually going blind, lives life to the full and uses close-up photography to record the world around him. Often overlapping with these case studies is Sacks' own story. Here, doctor and patient combine as he talks about his childhood, his own struggle with face blindness, and the loss he felt when eye cancer recently destroyed his 3D vision. |
| 416 |
Code-Breakers: Bletchley Park's Lost Heroes (2011) #1316
DOCUMENTARY
Main
1 hour. BBC. Documentary that reveals the secret story behind one of the greatest intellectual feats of World War II, a feat that gave birth to the digital age. In 1943, a 24-year-old maths student and a GPO engineer combined to hack into Hitler's personal super-code machine - not Enigma but an even tougher system, which he called his 'secrets writer'. Their break turned the Battle of Kursk, powered the D-day landings and orchestrated the end of the conflict in Europe. But it was also to be used during the Cold War - which meant both men's achievements were hushed up and never officially recognised. |
| 417 |
Romancing the Stone: The Golden Ages of British Sculpture (2011) #1369
DOCUMENTARY
Main
Romancing the Stone: The Golden Ages of British Sculpture: With Alastair Sooke. Alastair Sooke examines three periods in the history of British sculpture and the masterpieces they produced 3x1 hour. BBC. Series which reveals how sculpture communicates our most cherished beliefs and values - the British soul captured in three dimensions. 1/3 Masons of God. A look at how the era's sculpture casts a new light on medieval times in Britain. 2/3 Mavericks of Empire. Alastair Sooke looks at the maverick sculptors working in the 18th and 19th centuries. 3/3 Children of the Revolution. Alastair Sooke looks at the 20th century's mixture of innovation, scandal and creativity. |
| 418 |
The Gruffalo's Child (2011) #1555
FILM-ANIMATION
Disk
27mins. A little Gruffalo ignores her father's warnings and tiptoes out into the snow in search of the Big Bad Mouse. |
| 419 |
Letters to Juliet (2010) #15
FILM
Main
Directed by Gary Winick. With Amanda Seyfried, Gael García Bernal, Vanessa Redgrave, Marcia DeBonis. Sophie dreams of becoming a writer and travels to Verona, Italy where she meets the "Secretaries of Juliet". |
| 420 |
Predators (2010) #16
FILM
Main
Directed by Nimród Antal. With Adrien Brody, Laurence Fishburne, Topher Grace, Alice Braga. A group of elite warriors are hunted by members of a merciless alien race known as Predators. |
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