An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Derek Malcolm's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Corneliu Porumboiu.
Cast: Ion Sapdaru, Mircea Andreescu, Teo Corban
Description: On December 22, 1989, Nicolae Ceausescu finally bowed down to the will of the Romanian people, relinquishing power amid scenes of mass protests. Sixteen years later, television talk show host Mr Jderescu organises a special panel discussion featuring teacher Mr Manescu and elderly resident Mr Piscoci to examine the effect of the revolution in the tiny village of Vaslui. As Jderescu remember the past, callers to the television show paint a very different picture of events in the village that momentous day.
Country: ROM. 2006. 89mins
Drama: East from Bucharest won the Camera d'Or at Cannes last year
The extraordinary renaissance of the Romanian cinema - served notice by Cristi Puiu's The Death of Mr Lazarescu last year and culminating this year in a well-deserved Palme d'Or at Cannes for Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days - is the result of three different filmmakers hurdling almost insurmountable odds to produce exceptional films.
Corneliu Poromboiu's drama is perhaps the least of the three, but is still good value as winner of the Camera d'Or for best first feature at Cannes in 2006. It harks back to the fateful day when the whole country watched live on television as angry crowds forced the dictator Ceausescu to flee Bucharest by helicopter.
In a small provincial town east of the capital, the owner of a local TV station (Teodor Corban) invites two guests to share their own memories of the glorious moment.
One is an alcoholic and debtridden history teacher (Ion Sapdaru) who claims he went into the town's main square to storm the town hall before anyone else. The other is an retired man (Mircea Andreescu) who is hauled onto the programme just as he was about to play Santa Claus for a local school.
Viewers are invited to comment, and with one voice they suggest that the teacher is lying and the old man a gullible fool: there was no revolution east of Bucharest - and it wasn't safe to shout "Down with Ceausescu" there for a good while after his downfall.
12.08 East from Bucharest is funny, eccentric and a wonderful testimony to the selectivity and frequent hypocrisy of memory. Its performances are eyecatching and its portrait of a provincial town where nothing much happens, and what does is often absurd, is ironic without being unsympathetic.
The only problem with the new Romanian cinema seems to be titles few can easily remember - but some eccentricity is permissible when the films are so good.
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Afternoon:
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