Pomona Rewind

  If you haven't been watching Aisling Bea's Channel 4's sitcom 'This Way Up,' you really ought to be. As the show prepares to air its second series, you really need to binge watch the first which brilliantly walks the tightrope between laugh out loud comedy and touching family drama. Bea and Sharon Horgan play Aine and Shona, two Irish sisters living in London whose mum, Sorcha Cusack's Eileen was a weather presenter back home. Their mum found fame in Ireland wearing a different hat on TV every night. In the first episode, Shona is collecting Aine as she checks out of rehab after suffering a nervous breakdown. As Aine says her goodbyes, she and Shona complain the facilities were not up to scratch and certainly not as advertised. Indeed, Aine was expecting more of a spa. For the rest of the first series, Shona behaves like she is Aine's mother, fretting about her sister's whereabouts, her state of mind and tracking her movements on her smartphone. Aine, ...

The United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan famously said the tragedy of Srebrenica would "forever haunt the history of the United Nations.” Eight thousand Muslim men and boys were massacred in 1995 by General Ratko Mladic's Serbian forces in one of the most shocking acts of genocide of the post Second World War era. 25,000-30,000 other people were also displaced despite initially being under the protection of United Nations forces. Judge Fouad Road would later observe at the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague that "a truly terrible massacre of the Muslim population appears to have taken place. "Thousands of men executed and buried in mass graves, hundreds of mem buried alive, men and women mutilated and slaughtered, children killed before their mothers' eyes, a grandfather forced to eat the liver of his own grandson. "These are truly scenes from Hell, written on the darkest pages of human history." Bosnian filmmaker Jasmila Zbanic recre...

  As cinematic debuts go, Ned Beatty's first film role was an eye watering experience. The Kentuckian was cast as Bobby Tripe in John Boorman's 1972 hit thriller 'Deliverance' alongside Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds and Ronny Cox. But his character also had the misfortune of being subjected to rape by two Apalachian mountain men in one of the most disturbing moments of 1970s cinema. Even in this era where we have grown accustomed to screen violence, the rape scene in 'Deliverance' still has the power to shock and disgust. But it also set Beatty on a path where he became one of Hollywood's most reliable supporting actors. Born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1937, he sang in the gospel halls and barbershop quartets of St Matthews and landed a scholarship as an acapella group singer in Transylvania University in Lexington in his home state. However he fell in love with theatre, working in Virginia, Kentucky and Indiana in the 1960s. It was a long apprenticeship before ...

  Charles Grodin was the king of deadpan. If you want proof, just look at his performance in 'Midnight Run' which is still the best comedy Robert de Niro has ever starred in. In particular take a look at the sequence where de Niro's bounty hunter Jack Walsh frantically tries to purchase bus tickets for him and his prisoner, only to realise a rival has had his credit cards cancelled. Grodin doesn't say a word as a flustered de Niro demands that the cards be checked again by a woman staffing the ticket counter. However it is the way his disgraced accountant Jonathan Mardukas' knowingly looks at the woman that is a masterclass in deadpan acting. The same applies to another sequence where Mardukas pretends to be an FBI agent in a bar sifting out dodgy dollar notes, so he and Walsh can buy food and medicine in a nearby store. Grodin was born in Pittsburgh in 1935 into an Orthodox Jewish family. His father sold wholesale supplies while his mother was also employed in the ...