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Protecting the lives of the people they love, as well as their entire community, is a powerful motivator for the firefighters of the London Fire Brigade. That’s certainly the case for the members of the brigade, who are part of the Blue Watch at the Blackwall fire station, on the popular British television drama series, […]

The post Clive Wood Becomes a Hero When Blue Watch Fights a Fire on London’s Burning appeared first on Shockya.com.

Experience the thrill of watching theatre at Shakespeare’s Globe from the comfort of the Tivoli Theater (6350 Delmar Boulevard, in The Loop, St. Louis, Mo, 63130) thanks to ‘Shakespeare’s Globe on Screen’. These productions of Shakespeare’s plays are shown on the Tivoli’s big screen in their entirety, giving you the opportunity to enjoy the world famous Globe Theatre and these critically acclaimed performances. Shakespeare’s Globe is a reconstruction of the theatre in which Shakespeare worked. With performances of Shakespeare, his contemporaries and new writing, productions play to over 300,000 people from around the world each summer.

We Are Movie Geeks has teamed up with the Tivoli Theater for a special giveaway! We have Five pairs of tickets (a $30 value) for the next installment of ‘Shakespeare’s Globe on Screen’, which will be Antony And Cleopatra. The date is next Thursday, June 4th and the show begins at 7pm.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

(Warning: Significant spoilers follow!)

The current season of The Lost Stories reaches its climactic conclusion with this, a story originally created for the Second Doctor. For a variety of reasons, it never reached the screen, which is too bad, because it would have made for a dandy adventure. Luckily, it still works fairly well here on audio.

The story features Jamie (Frazer Hines), Zoe (Wendy Padbury) and the Doctor (here voiced by Hines, doing his usual excellent job channeling Patrick Troughton), arriving at a research station. There they encounter a xenobotanist (David Warner, who acted alongside Troughton in The Omen), and the station’s commander, an alien from Rosa Damascena named Rugosa (Clive Wood). Naturally not all is as it appears, and it’s up to the Doctor and crew to save the day.

I’ve complained before, most notably in my review of “The Masters...

Chicago – In the second HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film with our new social giveaway technology, we have 40 admit-two movie passes up for grabs to the advance screening of the highly anticipated new comedy/romance film “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen”! The new film, which opens on March 9, 2012, stars Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt.

“Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” also stars Kristin Scott Thomas, Amr Waked, Catherine Steadman, Tom Mison, Rachael Stirling, Tom Beard, Jill Baker, Conleth Hill, Alex Taylor-McDowall, Matilda White, Otto Farrant, Hamish Gray and Clive Wood. The film is from the director of “Chocolat” and “The Cider House Rules” (Lasse Hallström) and the Oscar-winning screenwriter of “Slumdog Millionaire” (Simon Beaufoy) based on the novel by Paul Torday.

To win your free passes to the advance Chicago screening of “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” courtesy of HollywoodChicago.com, get interactive with our new Hookup technology directly below. That’s it!

Anna Friel

N Conrad

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Episode one of ITV’s Without You was very good. Episode two was thrilling. Ellie (Anna Friel) found herself being offered the job that previously belonged to the woman who her husband was seemingly having an affair with. No one knew who she really was but she sailed close to the wind a few times by badgering all of her colleagues with questions about Milena’s love life. As in the first episode, Friel was thoroughly convincing as the grieving widow trying to cope with loss, anger, jealously, rage and fear whilst playing the role of a temp named Gwen. Equally impressive was Pippa Haywood (Brittas Empire) as an unhappy soul trapped in a loveless marriage. For his part, Marc Warren made the best of an unconventional role as ghost.

Trevor Nunn's latest Shakespeare doesn't impress the critics much – even with a movie star at the helm (although they do at least like Ralph Fiennes's Prospero)

This again: Shakespeare made marketable with the presence of a movie star. On the specials board today – Ralph Fiennes as Prospero in a Trevor Nunn Tempest. But wait! Here's a turn-up. Fiennes is actually the best thing about this production, in the view of half the critics. The other half – actually more like three quarters – would say he is the only good thing it has.

"Oh, that this Tempest were a monologue!" Karen Fricker declaims to the groundlings at Variety. "While Fiennes is a major artist in full command of his powers, once-great helmer Nunn is currently sucking fumes." I'll leave you to speculate on what that last bit actually means.

The Standard's Henry Hitchings, to everyone's relief, is not a man...

Writer whose novels signalled a sea-change in British literature

Stan Barstow, who has died aged 83, belonged to a generation of working-class writers who became famous in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Like his peers Alan Sillitoe, John Braine, David Storey and Keith Waterhouse, he was born in the depression years of the interwar period and flowered as a novelist in the booming welfare state of postwar Britain. Barstow and his fellow, primarily northern, writers were products of this remarkable transformation in the social landscape of Britain, and their creativity was fuelled by the opportunities and anxieties that such an enormous process of change inevitably generated.

Barstow arrived on the literary scene in 1960 with his first published novel, A Kind of Loving. An unsentimental and unpatronising portrayal of an unhappy marriage, it struck a new note of sombre and sensitive realism. He was riding the crest of a wave: Braine's...

Theatre Royal Haymarket, London

Sienna Miller may be the box-office draw, but Trevor Nunn's magnificent revival of Terence Rattigan's 1942 play is an ensemble achievement. And that seems appropriate for a play that is a tribute to the collective spirit of wartime bomber crews and their partners. Given the circumstances, you'd hardly expect a debate about the morality of the air offensive: what the play provides, with Rattigan's characteristic flair for understatement, is a deeply moving portrait of people at war.

The action is set in a Lincolnshire hotel lounge in the autumn of 1941: it's where the Raf pilots and crews hang out before and after their raids on German territory. But Rattigan uses a personal dilemma as a way of exploring the group ethos. Peter Kyle, an ageing Hollywood star, has turned up in the hope of reclaiming the one true love of his life, the recently married Patricia.

The BBC has revealed details of the cast for the second series of Land Girls. The daytime drama, set in the 1940s, focuses on a group of women working for the Women's Land Army during the Second World War. Jo Woodcock will return to the show as Bea, while Becci Gemmell will appear again as Joyce. Sophie Ward, Mark Benton, Danny Webb, Susan Cookson, Mykola Allen and Liam Boyle will also reprise their roles in the new series. Meanwhile, the BBC revealed that a number of new characters will feature in the show. London's Burning star Clive Wood will join the cast as American businessman Jack Gillespie, while Liam Garrigan will appear as Rev Henry Jameson. Raquel Cassidy, who has previously featured in Lead Balloon and Teachers, will play Lady Hoxley's sister (more)...