Iraq
Dan Cruickshank's Civilisation Under Attack, BBC FourWednesday, 01 July 2015
This was one of the most disturbing, terrifying and informative programmes imaginable, made more so by Dan Cruickshank’s calm demeanour as he interrogated everyone from scholars to fanatics about the actions and rationale of the Islamic State (IS)... Read more... |
This World: World’s Richest Terror Army, BBC TwoWednesday, 22 April 2015
You haven’t had to actually watch the brutal executions staged by Islamic State (IS, or ISIS or ISIL, as it’s also known) to register them: just a single image registered has been more than enough to horrify. Managing to penetrate the world’s... Read more... |
American SniperWednesday, 14 January 2015
First there’s an “Allahu Akbar”, then an American tank’s rumble and clank. It’s an ominous and wearying start, the sound of Islam and invasion intermingled in the Iraq War, a violent conflict that today simply expands. When director Clint Eastwood... Read more... |
DVD: The Unknown KnownFriday, 08 August 2014
Early in The Fog of War, Errol Morris’s first, Oscar-winning documentary about a former US Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara admits that, if the USA had lost World War Two, he would have been convicted as a war criminal for his part in the fire-... Read more... |
We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaksWednesday, 10 July 2013
The story you think you know slides beneath your feet in this rigorous investigation of Julian Assange and Bradley Manning. “I’m a combative person," WikiLeaks’ founder says, setting out his motives. "I like crushing bastards.” Director Alex Gibney’... Read more... |
The Iraq War, BBC TwoThursday, 30 May 2013
Did they get the president? That’s the benchmark question viewers will ask of any new film from documentary house par excellence Brook Lapping and producer Norma Percy ever since they secured an interview with Slobodan Milosevic for their landmark... Read more... |
Bully Boy, St James TheatreThursday, 20 September 2012
The St James Theatre has risen, phoenix-like, almost literally from the ashes of the Westminster Theatre, which was first a chapel, then a cinema and latterly a drama theatre that played host to productions of Oscar Wilde and Harley Granville Barker... Read more... |
The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning, National Theatre WalesThursday, 19 April 2012
Looking at CCTV footage of a school hall in Cardiff through Adobe Flash Player in the corner of a webpage and listening to the attendant interference, bells, buzzes and bleeps might not sound like the cutting edge of theatre. But by the time... Read more... |
Homeland, Channel 4Monday, 20 February 2012
While Homeland is hardly unique in being a TV series born in the shadow of 9/11, it may prove to be one of the most resonant and troubling responses to that ghastly event and its aftermath. Sergeant Nick Brody, who went missing with a fellow Marine... Read more... |
Download: VersA Beatz - ImogenSunday, 22 January 2012
I've seen some genre intersections in my time, but gangsta ambient takes the biscuit. Baghdad born South Londoner VersA Beatz began as a grime producer, but like many has moved from that genre's hyped-up energy into the slower, more menacing... Read more... |
The Comic Strip Presents: The Hunt for Tony Blair, Channel 4Saturday, 15 October 2011
As this rampant return to our screens repeatedly underlined, one of the great joys of watching The Comic Strip throughout its 30-year frenzy of frantic - if intermittent - silliness has been never knowing what precise manifestation of oddness lurks... Read more... |
The Devil's DoubleFriday, 12 August 2011
There are biopics and there are biopics. The process by which an actor is made up to look like the character he has been cast to play gets an intriguing twist in The Devil’s Double. Latif Yahia, who was often confused with Uday Hussein when they... Read more... |
