Spiral Notebook: The wrong Brand of revolution

Russell Brand has suggested that young people should not vote, their collective act of indifference sparking crisis, then revolution.

He delivered his polemic on Newsnight in his usual baroque lexicon, like a child keeping pace with a runaway autocue.

Film review: Gravity (12A)

FILM
Gravity
(12A) 91mins
★★★★★

IN A NUTSHELL
Director Alfonso Cuaron takes CGI to a new level with his spellbinding 3D space adventure.

Bringing children back to the wild

Mason is 10. He looks out on Canary Wharf from his high-rise. He wants to take film-maker David Bond on a tour of his manor, where he takes his dog for a walk to the patch of green that is his meagre playground.

"People moan at us for playing ball games," he says as he heads past the forbidding signs and down the "curly wurly" stairs of his concrete jungle.

Spiral Notebook: Not more cruel, just more of it

There are a lot of us about. Billions in fact. And what with the world opening up to journalists looking for tales of weirdness and cruelty and a healthy appetite for the same on the web, there appear to be more and more of us each day.

Take China. The opening up of the Red Giant has, yes, provided a bigger market for our widgets but, more importantly, it has fed the world with another tranche of human misery of which we were previously ignorant.

Film review: Ender's Game (12A)

FILM
Ender's Game
(12A) 114mins
★★★★✩

IN A NUTSHELL
More intelligent than your average glossy shoot-em-up, Ender's Game has an earnest undercurrent.

Exhibition: Nelson, Navy, Nation at National Maritime Museum, Greenwich

From this distance, Britain's unrivalled national hero Horatio Nelson appears to embody the entire span of glittering age of naval dominance such is his pre-eminence in our cultural consciousness.

And yet, definitive though his actions were, they spanned only a few years at the tail-end of the 1700s through to his victory - and celebrated death - at Trafalgar in 1805.

Stage review: The Commitments, Palace Theatre

STAGE
The Commitments
Palace Theatre
★★★★✩

IN A NUTSHELL
Roddy Doyle has re-created his tale of Dublin soul band as a full-on gig with banter.

Spiral Notebook: Breaking bad news for schedulers

I took to humming last week.

Not the usual dirges that are necessary to keep the skull-headed gorilla safely ensconced in my bedroom cupboard but, instead, a chirpy tune, lacking in melody but delivered with considerable oomph.

Exhibitions: Royal Museums, Greenwich

EXHIBITIONS
Yinka Shonibare / 
Astronomy Photographer of the Year
Royal Museums, Greenwich
★★★✩✩

IN A NUTSHELL
Two contemporary exhibitions of very different visuals ask the visitor to think again about what they see.

Film review: Sunshine On Leith (PG)

FILM
Sunshine On Leith
(PG) 100mins
★★★✩✩

IN A NUTSHELL
Director Dexter Fletcher does it again - courtesty of The Proclaimers - with a life-affirming celebration of love, family and Scotland.