Front Row - 27/03/2009

Presented by Kirsty Lang. Tony Blair's former Director of Communications Alastair Campbell has signed up to be a mentor for teenagers competing in a new TV series, The Speaker, which sets out to find the best young public speaker in the UK. He discusses his involvement in reality TV and how the powers of persuasion can be taught. The first stage of a new 11.3 million pound museum and art gallery complex is set to be unveiled in Bedford. Kirsty takes a look and talks to Director John Moore and Head of Collections and Exhibitions Tom Perrett about how they hope to unite the town's museum with its art gallery, which, for the past 60 years, has held a personal collection of ceramics, glass and works of Bedford brewer and art lover Cecil Higgins. The collection also includes diverse works from Turner and Constable, to Wyndham Lewis, Lucian Freud, Picasso and David Hockney. In Two Lovers, a romantic drama set in Brooklyn, the Oscar-nominated Joaquin Phoenix plays a damaged young man who falls for his volatile neighbour, Gwyneth Paltrow, while a family friend's daughter falls for him. Critic Antonia Quirke reviews what Phoenix has said will be his last film.