Triple bill of films starring Russell Crowe. ' State of Play' (2009) is a political thriller based on the acclaimed 2003 BBC mini-series. With the action transposed from Westminster to Washington, the film follows the investigations of journalist Cal Mc Affrey (Crowe) as he probes into the suspicious death of the mistress & former research assistant of ambitious up-&-coming Congressman & potential presidential candidate Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck). As he works alongside the police on the case, Mc Affrey becomes romantically involved with the Congressman's estranged wife, Anne (Robin Wright Penn). Ridley Scott's Roman epic ' Gladiator' (2000) draws its inspiration from Anthony Mann's ' The Fall of the Roman Empire' (1964) & Stanley Kubrick's ' Spartacus' (1960). After the death of Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris), Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) betrays the Emperor's beloved General Maximus (Crowe) & takes the throne for himself. Maximus is sold as a slave & then trained as a gladiator, keeping himself strong with thoughts of revenge. Eventually he is taken to the Colosseum, where he prepares to fight in a contest presided over by the corrupt Commodus. Will he suffer the ultimate humiliation & die for the entertainment of his enemy or will he survive the rigors of the arena & find a way of exacting his revenge? Ridley Scott also directs ' American Gangster' (2007), a biopic of 1970s Harlem drug baron Frank Lucas. When his boss dies, underworld driver Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) seizes his chance & begins to build his own criminal empire. Utilising the bodies of dead US soldiers, Lucas begins importing heroin direct from South-East Asia, increasing purity on the street, & undercutting his rivals in one swoop. Before long he's amassed a fortune, bringing him to the attention of maverick policeman Ritchie Roberts (Crowe), an honest cop in an otherwise corrupt force, who makes it his business to shut Lucas down. ...

Complete first series of the BBC's controversial television drama about corporate & government conspiracy, starring Bill Nighy & John Simm. When a teenage drug-dealer is shot dead & a high-profile MP's lover is killed falling under a Tube train, investigative journalist Cal Mc Caffrey (Simm) is asked by his editor to find out if there was any connection between the two deaths. Cal's discovery of a missing briefcase that may contain information sensitive to the government puts his life in danger, & with a hitman on his tail he needs police protection. At the same time, Cal's growing involvement with the MP's wife begins to compromise his objectivity, & when he discovers a link between the dead girl, the government & the sinister U-Ex Oil company, his position at the newspaper is abruptly terminated. Trying to stay one step ahead of the people after him, Cal is able to expose the person responsible for ordering the killings, unleashing a controversy that could bring down the government. ...

Based on the true story of Alwyn Peter, a Queensland Aboriginal charged with murder in 1979; his case created legal precedent when he was released on parole after his lawyers argued that men, like Peter, were shaped & destroyed by their artificially created environments on Queensland reserves (2 acts, 3 men, 2 women). ...

Looks at post-war Britain from a theatrical perspective. This book examines the constant interplay between theatre & society from the resurgent optimism of the Attlee years to the satire boom of the Sixties & the growth of political theatre under Tony Blair in the post-Iraq period. ...

Describes post-war Britain from a theatrical perspective. This book examines the constant interplay between theater & society from the resurgent optimism of the Attlee years to the satire boom of the Sixties & the growth of political theater under Tony Blair in the post-Iraq period. ...

Over three programmes David Attenborough travels from Kenya to California, investigating the contesting claims about the current state of our planet. In the first programme he examines the extinction crisis, measuring the disappearance of some species against the mass of life that still remains undiscovered; in the second, he explores this crisis further, examining its causes; & finally, in the third, he looks at the possible courses of action open to us in the coming century. ...

Looks at the different ways in which 'realism' & reality have been understood in art history, with a focus on debates about the real within photography. Emphasising the role of art in shaping, as well as reflecting, notions of the real, this book features contributions from a number of contemporary artists. ...

Hannah Buchan thinks herself ordinary. She is not the revolutionary child that her painter mother & famous radical father had hoped for. Raised in the creative chaos of 1960s America, Hannah vows to reject her parents' liberal lifestyle, & settles instead for typical family life in a nondescript corner of Maine. ...