Saturday Review - 03/04/2010

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by writer Bidisha, the director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts Ekow Eshun and poet Cahal Dallat to review the cultural highlights of the week including the film Kick Ass and tv drama A Passionate Woman Kick Ass, directed by Matthew Vaughn stars Aaron Johnson as Dave Lizewski, an unnoticed high school student and comic book fan who one day decides to become a super-hero, even though he has no special powers or training. Naomi Alderman's new novel, The Lessons, features student Mark Winters, the owner of a crumbling Oxford mansion. His chaotic trust-fund upbringing has left him as troubled and unpredictable as he is wildly promiscuous. He gathers around him an impressionable group of students including James, already damaged by Oxford and looking for a group to belong to. But university is no grounding for adult life, and when, years later, tragedy strikes they are entirely unprepared. Leighton House, the London home and studio of Victorian artist Frederic, Lord Leighton, has reopened following its £1.6 million refurbishment, accompanied by a special exhibition of paintings from Leighton's own collection. The stunning Arab Hall is the centerpiece of the house, designed to display Leighton's priceless collection of over a thousand Islamic tiles. Kay Mellor's play, A Passionate Woman, has been adapted into two complementary stories for television. Set in Leeds, the first focuses on a mother's affair in the Fifties and the second is set in the Eighties and looks at the consequences of that affair 30 years on. A Passionate Woman is a personal look at the changing role of women over the last 50 years. David Byrne and Fatboy Slim have paired up for a 22-track song cycle. Here Lies Love is about the extraordinary life of former First Lady of the Philippines Imelda Marcos and her childhood servant, Estrella Crumpas. Producer - Anne-Marie Cole.