Front Row - 25/08/2009

Arts news and reviews with Mark Lawson. The latest film from the Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, Broken Embraces, stars Penelope Cruz and tells the story of a writer who has lost his sight and the love of his life in a car crash. The critic Mark Eccleston gives his verdict. The playwright Lee Hall found huge commercial success with his screenplay of Billy Elliot, the feature film for which he received an Oscar nomination and which has since become a long running West End musical. His latest play, The Pitmen Painters, tells the story of a group of miners who take up painting and is set to return to the National Theatre after its first highly successful run. Hall is also set to present a series of films at the British Film Institute celebrating a century of British coalmining on film. The novelist Justin Cartwright joins Mark Lawson to discuss the latest book from South African author and Nobel Prize-winner JM Coetzee. Summertime is the third in a series of fictionalised memoirs and has been longlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize for fiction, which Coetzee has won twice before. The violinist Jennifer Pike won the BBC Young Musician of the Year at the age of 12 in 2002, and has subsequently established a full-time career as a performer. She is taking part in a series of BBC concerts to celebrate 10 years of their New Generation Artists scheme, aimed at developing and nurturing exceptional young musical talent. Jennifer comes to the studio to discuss life as a professional musician when she's not yet 20 years of age.