John Sayles has worked at the margins of US cinema – both thematically and financially – for some 30 years now.
Both Eyes BlindThe Tribunessingle out now The Tribunes are a fiercely political up-and-coming jazz act. They combine music with spoken words to create what band member Gary Duke describes as "a head-on collision between The Streets and John Coltrane".
Imagine music that falls somewhere between French cabaret, classical symphony, Latin jazz and pop – and throw in a few touches of Japanese film noir, big band anthems and romantic melodrama.
Pink Martini are a big band with a big sound, a big live presence – and big ideas. Thomas Lauderdale, a classically trained pianist, formed the group in 1994 to play political benefits in his hometown of Portland, Oregon, on the West Coast of the US.
Half NelsonDirected by Ryan FleckFilm out now Heard the one about the sexy, 20-something, crackhead, inner city, history teacher whose star student is his dealer’s runner and whose parents are alcoholic anti-Vietnam war lefties?
Maxwell, the BBC publicity material states, "is a gripping, dramatised account of how greed and ambition destroyed a man and led him to commit one of the world’s biggest-ever frauds".
Change Is Gonna ComeVarious artistsKent Soul CD out now This album brings together two dozen examples of how black America conveyed its fight against racism to the world in the 1960s and 1970s.
On 26 June 1975 Indira Gandhi, then Indian prime minister, declared a state of emergency. She told the nation that it was threatened by "internal disturbances".
Mickey’s, a US fast food giant, has reaped stupendous sales from its new burger, The Big One. The trouble is, there’s shit in the meat.
This exhibition brings together six artist from Britain and the Middle East. The subject is the Iraq war and the paintings and installations range from the abstract to the overty satirical.
The second series of the brilliant US comedy-drama Six Feet Under has just started on Channel 4. Created by Alan Ball, the Oscar-winning writer of American Beauty, the show revolves around the life of a family, the Fishers, and the funeral home they run.
