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| | | Jim Whitepresents the weekly film programme. Join in the discussion by visiting the Radio 4 Arts message board. | | | | | LISTEN AGAIN | | | |
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| | PRESENTER | | | |
|  | | | | Listen to Jim White reveal his own celluloid highs and lows in a slideshow | | | | Jim White attended Manchester Grammar School and read English at the University of Bristol, though maintains most of his education came on the terraces at Old Trafford.
A founding member of staff at the Independent in 1986, he moved across to the Guardian ten years later, where his contributions have won the sports columnist of the year. A regular on Saturday Review and Front Row, he can also be frequently heard on Radio 5, where he was awarded a Sony Gold award for a documentary about the demise of Wembley Stadium.
Cinema has been a lifelong passion since his dad took him to see Lawrence of Arabia when he was a child and he returned twice a day every day for the next week to see the film over and again. After a youth largely spent oscillating between the football pitch and the local flea pit (his first date was at, bizarrely, 101 Dalmatians: it was all that was on) these days his favourite movies depend on his mood. The Godfather Part Two if in need of an epic, High Society for an uplift of the soul, This Is Spinal Tap when jokes are required. Though his children have shown him that there is not a lot wrong with Toy Story.
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|  | | Ewan McGregor with Alison Lohman in Big Fish
Back Row's interviewee is Ewan McGregor, who stars as the younger incarnation of Albert Finney in Tim Burton's BAFTA nominated Big Fish. The latest movie from the director of Batman, Edward Scissorhands and Sleepy Hollow, tells the picturesque story of Edward Bloom, a magnum spinner of yarns, now reconstructing his life on his death bed through a series of unlikely tales.
Sylvia: Fact or Fiction?
The makers of the new BBC films release Sylvia tell us they are portraying the true story of the relationship between Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, played by Gwyneth Paltrow and Daniel Craig, from the day they met in Cambridge through marriage, separation and Plath's eventual suicide. Surviving relatives of the movie's subjects however have questioned the movie's accuracy. Back Row investigates with the producer of Sylvia Alison Owen, Law Editor of the Daily Telegraph Joshua Rozenberg and film director Anand Tucker.
Elephant
Gus Van Sant's Elephant, which picked up the Golden Palm in Cannes last year is based on the Columbine high school shooting in Denver in 1999. Filmed in twenty days in a school in Oregon, it features local kids, improvising dialogue and basing the characters on their own lives. American writer Irma Kurtz joins Back Row to talk about her feelings on this highly imaginative and powerful work.
Donnie Darko
Donnie Darko the flop turned cult that gave us not only Britain's Christmas number one single, but also some memorably sharp teenage dialogue is about to be re-released on DVD. Film critic Antonia Quirke joins Jim White to unravel the mad world of Donnie Darko.
Please note audio for this edition of Back Row will not be available on this website until after the programme's transmission on Radio 4 on Saturday 24 January at 5.30pm.
In the multi-plex
Big Fish
In the art house
Tokyo Story
On DVD and video
Whale Rider
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RELATED LINKS
This week at BBCi films: Sundance Film Festival
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