Film review: Out Of The Furnace (15)

ENTERTAINMENT

Out Of The Furnace
(15) 117mins
★★★✩✩

If Out Of The Furnace were a song, it would be a Bruce Springsteen song. The cover would be a man in a jacket and hoodie, head lowered, walking down a blue collar street of dilapidated cars, peeling paint and rundown bookies.

Spiral Notebook: The mayor, the Murk and an embarrassment of riches

COMMENT

By Giles Broadbent

Sometimes the presentational contortions required to keep Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman on the road are so convoluted, you wonder why it's worth the effort.

You can imagine his back room team, the Thunk-Tank, writing Big Ideas on small Post-Its and then writhing around the shagpile in constipated knots agonising over the good, bad and ugly of their latest wheeze.

Film review: Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (12A)

ENTERTAINMENT

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
(12A) 105mins
★★★✩✩

In the weeks of angst and meditation that is pre-Oscar season, it's easy to forget the frantic pleasure of fast-administered popcorn.

TV blog: 5 reasons to relish the new Mob City

ENTERTAINMENT

1. The style
We should be thinking Boardwalk Empire, but this LA-set series pushes us towards Mad Men. Men wreathed in smoke (cigarette or gun), collars and ties, titfers cocked, turn-ups sharp. The jazz makes the whisky smooth as a barman's nod.

Spiral Notebook: Why learning to code should be an essential part of a child's education

Canary Wharf Group sponsors a coding club network across Tower Hamlets.

This nationwide network of volunteer after-school clubs aims to let children rip the screen off their computers and tablets and let them rummage around with the gubbins inside.

TV blog: What do our new small screen heroes tell us about who we are

Deep breath. Morning after time. Sherlock wakes up a stone-cold killer but without the fiddly legal consequences. Walter White (Bryan Cranston) clutches a Golden Globe for his (considerable) pains.

For breakfast, alongside the flat champagne, a talking point. What does it all mean?

Spiral Notebook: How we're handing bacteria the advantage in the Battle of Wounded Knee

War drives innovation. Copper sheathing for hulls was first suggested in 1708 to tackle the problem of weed growth that slowed and hobbled ships of the line.

But it wasn't until decades later the practice was pushed and perfected.

Spiral Notebook: Why London's Left will be keeping an eye on New York Mayor Bill de Blasio

It's Eyes Left as Bill de Blasio takes up residence in New York City Hall with the promise of the kind of new socialism that Labour's Ed Miliband has been test-driving.

Combining tax-the-rich rhetoric with redistributive zeal, De Blasio, a former aide to the last Democrat Mayor (David Dinkins), arrived from nowhere in the 2013 primaries to take the most important municipal post in the US on the promise of aggressive remedies to close the "affordability gap".

Spiral Notebook: To speak or not to speak

Little wonder Tower Hamlets Mayor Lutfur Rahman is so exercised by statements put out in his name which seemingly gave cover to radical preacher Anjem Choudary's visit to Brick Lane a week ago.

Choudary - the Katie Hopkins of hate preachers - threatened hellfire and whippings to Muslims selling alcohol along the traditional stretch of curry houses and bars.

Books: David And Goliath, Difficult Men, Two Girls, One On Each Knee

David And Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits And The Art Of Battling Giants
Malcolm Gladwell (Allen Lane)
★★★★✩

David and Goliath. Great story. That David. Beat the odds. didn't he. with his sling and stuff against the big bruiser Goliath. Every loser wins, as TV's Nick Berry once said.

That's not how it was.

Doink! You what?