Saturday Review - 09/05/2009

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by journalist Andreas Whittam Smith, writer Catherine O'Flynn and artistic director of the South Bank Jude Kelly to discuss the cultural highlights of the week - featuring a blockbusting trip to the final frontier, two very distinguished tramps and five musical stories. The USS Enterprise gets taken out for another spin around the block in JJ Abrams' blockbuster Star Trek. Chris Pine is Kirk and Zachary Quinto is Spock in this prequel which also features the original Ol' Pointy Ears, Leonard Nimoy. A previous incumbent of the bridge of the Enterprise, Patrick Stewart, can currently be found at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, playing opposite Ian McKellen in Waiting for Godot. Directed by Sean Matthias, this production of Beckett's classic, nearly 55 years after its London debut, also features Simon Callow and Ronald Pickup. A new book by Kazuo Ishiguro is always an event and Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall distinguishes itself by being his first collection of short stories. These are thematically linked and take the reader from the piazzas of Italy to the Malvern Hills, a meltdown in a London flat and plastic surgery in Hollywood. Channel 4's The Big Art Project began back in 2005 when people across the country were invited to nominate sites they felt would benefit from an art installation. Close to 1,400 nominations were received, from which seven sites were selected. Big Art reveals how the aspirations that people had for these sites became solid reality and unearths the inevitable tensions between those who create public art and those who have to live in its shadow.