Start the Week - The Arts and politics: Rory Bremner, Peter Kosminsky and Iwona Blazwick

On Start the Week Andrew Marr asks how the arts tackle politics and current affairs. The performer Rory Bremner turns his comedic eye to opera, in an updated version of Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld. Originally written to satirise Napoleon III's Paris, Bremner draws present day parallels with a spin-filled, celebrity-obsessed world. For the last 30 years the film maker Peter Kosminsky has turned conflicts from Bosnia, to the Falklands, and Israel/ Palestine, as well as the story of New Labour, into drama and documentaries for television. In 1939 the Whitechapel gallery in London was the space chosen to show Picasso's overtly political work, Guernica. The gallery's present director Iwona Blazwick talks about how artists have reflected the political and present day concerns. And the singer/ songwriter Sarah Gillespie argues that the key to a good protest song is to harness the experience of the individual.

producer: Katy Hickman.

Start the Week - The Arts and politics: Rory Bremner, Peter Kosminsky and Iwona Blazwick

On Start the Week Andrew Marr asks how the arts tackle politics and current affairs. The performer Rory Bremner turns his comedic eye to opera, in an updated version of Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld. Originally written to satirise Napoleon III's Paris, Bremner draws present day parallels with a spin-filled, celebrity-obsessed world. For the last 30 years the film maker Peter Kosminsky has turned conflicts from Bosnia, to the Falklands, and Israel/ Palestine, as well as the story of New Labour, into drama and documentaries for television. In 1939 the Whitechapel gallery in London was the space chosen to show Picasso's overtly political work, Guernica. The gallery's present director Iwona Blazwick talks about how artists have reflected the political and present day concerns. And the singer/ songwriter Sarah Gillespie argues that the key to a good protest song is to harness the experience of the individual.

producer: Katy Hickman.

Motley Fool Money - Motley Fool Money: 11.18.2011

The European crisis escalates. Sears reports slumping sales. Heinz gets squeezed. Pepsi considers splitting itself into two. Amazon considers making a smartphone. And the new GM celebrates its first anniversary as a public company. Our analysts talk about those stories and share three stocks on their radar. Plus, Wall Street analyst Mike Mayo shares some insights from his book, Exile on Wall Street: One Analysts Fight to Save the Big Banks from Themselves.

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