Trumbo, Ma Rainey's Black Botton, Vinyl, Martin Parr at Hepworth Wakefield, When Breath Becomes Air
The week's cultural highlights, including Bryan Cranston in Trumbo, Ma Rainey's Black Botton, TV series Vinyl, When Breath Becomes Air and Martin Parr's The Rhubarb Triangle.
Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo's acclaimed career came to a crushing halt in the late 1940s when he and other Hollywood figures were blacklisted for their political beliefs. Starring Bryan Cranston as Trumbo, Jay Roach's film tells the story of the Oscar winning writer's relationship with the US government, studio bosses and Hollywood icons such as John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Edward G Robinson and Otto Preminger.
A new ten part Sky Atlantic / HBO tv series Vinyl, created by Mick Jagger, Martin Scorsese and Terence Winter, is set in the music business in 970s New York City and stars Bobby Cannavale, with the first episode directed by Scorsese himself.
At the age of 36, on the verge of completing eleven years of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. His reflections on doctoring, illness and the meaning of life form the basis of his memoir "When Breath Becomes Air" - which includes an epilogue from his wife.
A new production of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom opens at the National Theatre in London - one of the ten-play Pittsburgh Cycle by August Wilson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright whose work chronicles the twentieth century African American experience. Written in 1982 and set in a recording studio in Chicago in 1927, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom features Ma Rainey, played by Sharon D Clarke, who is determined that 'Black Bottom', the song that bears her name, will be recorded her way.
The Rhubarb Triangle & Other Stories is the largest Martin Parr exhibition in the UK for over a decade, comprising more than 300 photographs that span the past 40 years, and including a new commission The Rhubarb Triangle, focusing on an area of countryside known between Wakefield, Morley and Rothwell in West Yorkshire, which is famous for producing early-forced rhubarb. Parr's photographs capture the back-breaking work of moving the rhubarb from field to shed, the freezing cold and exhausting labour of picking the vegetable by candlelight and the consumption of the rhubarb by coach parties and food tourists.
Last on
Trumbo
is in cinemas now, certificate 15.
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
is at the National Theatre in London until 18 May 2016.
Image: Sharon D. Clarke as Ma Rainey, photo credit- Johan Persson.
Vinyl
begins on Sky Atlantic on Monday 15 February.
Paul Kalanithi
When Breath Becomes Air by is available in hard-back and ebook now.
Photo credit: Gale Gettinger
The Rhubarb Triangle and Other Stories
is at the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield until 12 June 2016.
Image: 聽Martin Parr - The Rhubarb Triangle. 2015. 漏Martin Parr/Magnum Photos Courtesy The Hepworth Wakefield
Broadcast
- Sat 6 Feb 2016 19:1591热爆 Radio 4
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Saturday Review
Sharp, critical discussion of the week's cultural events, with Tom Sutcliffe and guests