Saturday 5th November 2011
| The Honest Musician's Fear of Accidental Plagiarism |
Many musicians have found themselves accused of stealing from another artist. It's every songwriter's biggest fear - that really great phrase or lyric you thought was all your own creation turns up in another song. There are few musicians who would admit to stealing even if caught red handed, but what happens if the theft was unintentional? And what if you heard lines from one of your songs in someone else's work? Would you immediately reach for the lawyers phone number or would you let it go without complaint if the offending writer 'fessed up? Musicians assimilate what is around them and even the finest tunesmiths derive inspiration by drawing on and re-adapting existing popular music. So is any song really original?
As Noel Gallagher put it rather bluntly when confronted about his musical influences: "There's twelve notes in a scale and 36 chords and that's the end of it. All the configurations have been done before."
Singer and songwriter Guy Garvey, with the help of fellow songwriters Sir Tim Rice, Paul Heaton and John Bramwell, explores the legal pitfalls that can befall the honest musician and how to avoid them.
Archive on 4: The Rise and Fall of Robert Maxwell
Radio 4, 8.00pm - 9.00pm
As a companion piece to his archive hour on Rupert Murdoch, Steve Hewlett presents this programme on Murdoch's late archrival: Robert Maxwell. Unlike Murdoch's, Maxwell's life is a classic 'rags-to-riches' story.
However, Maxwell's character appears less like that of a happily-ever-after Cinderella tale and more like that of Genghis Khan, born in poverty to become an infamous, charismatic head of a vast empire only to die in uncertain circumstances.
Steve speaks to former Union leader Brenda Dean, Roy Greenslade who edited the Daily Mirror, Maxwell's former 'chief of staff' Peter Jay, Maxwell's 'other woman' Wendy Leigh, the Mirror's former political editor Alastair Campbell and Pandora Maxwell, who married into the family and intimately witnessed Robert's relationship with his son Kevin.
Robert Maxwell was born Jan Ludvik Hoch in Czechoslovakia to a poor Orthodox Jewish family, claiming that he didn't own a pair of shoes until the age of seven and only received three years of education. He somehow fled from the Carpathian Mountains to Britain at the age of seventeen while the rest of his remaining family were killed in Auschwitz. Maxwell changed his name and entered the British Army, rising to the ranks of a decorated captain.
With Maxwell Communications Corporation, he sat atop a vast trans-continental publishing empire. That is, until his body was found in the Mediterranean Sea.
| The Story of Film: an Odyssey |
The story of the movies that tried to change the world in the 70s, from Wim Wenders in Germany to Ken Loach in Britain, and the big, bold questions being asked in Africa and South America.
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Sunday 6th November 2011
| File on 4 |
The Justice Secretary Ken Clarke wants more jobs for convicts. He told his party conference: "If we want prison to work, then our prisoners have got to be working". He encourages private companies to open workshops inside prisons, where inmates would be 'properly paid' for hard work, would pay their due of taxes and help fund victims' support.
Mr Clarke points to a metal factory in a Merseyside prison where prisoners work a 40 hour week and learn skills which could make them more employable on release. He argues that this will also make then less likely to return to crime.
But is this plan practicable?
Prison Governors say that two-thirds of their inmates were unemployed before they started their sentences and that they are generally reluctant to engage in meaningful work. They say many of them can hardly read and write.
Governors also fear that moving jobs inside prison would mean taking opportunities away from law-abiding job-seekers outside. And they complain that it would prove costly in terms of staff time.
One prison reform group which set up a pioneering graphic design studio inside prison says the project was popular and effective among prisoners but was forced to close following hostility and obstruction from officers.
Gerry Northam asks if the government is overstating the possible advantages of its policy, and investigates whether it can be made to succeed at a time when the Ministry of Justice faces funding cuts.
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Monday 7th November 2011
| What's Fuelling Your Energy Bill? - Panorama |
Panorama investigates the inconvenient truth behind the UK's rocketing energy bills - that government policy is stoking much of the rise. Your money is being staked in the country's biggest energy gamble ever. As power stations are closed down, due to old age or high carbon emissions, 200 billion pounds are needed to keep the lights on. Fuel poverty now threatens one in four households yet the government remains committed to expensive alternatives like offshore wind and nuclear power: greener but, so far, dearer.
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Tuesday 8th November 2011
| Law in Action |
With political pressure mounting for far-reaching reform to the Human Rights Act, Joshua Rozenberg explores how this might be done. More than ten years after the incorporation into UK law of the European Convention on Human Rights, how far has the Convention re-shaped our law? How far do the provisions of the Human Rights Act affect the day-to-day decisions of our courts? And if Parliament were to amend the law, what could - and should - be changed and why?
Joshua Rozenberg explores the legal issues underlying this controversial legal and political debate.
| Imagine... Simon and Garfunkel: the Harmony Game |
Arts series. In Jennifer Lebeau's film, Simon and Garfunkel: The Harmony Game, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel talk openly and eloquently about an extraordinarily creative period in their career - the making of Bridge Over Troubled Water. The story behind what was to become their final album has long been shrouded in rock and roll mythology and is told in gripping detail in these rare interviews. Archive footage is used to reveal technical breakthroughs and the emotional feelings the two artists had for each other.
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Wednesday 9th November 2011
| Peter Jones: How We Made Our Millions |
Dragons' Den star Peter Jones meets two of the country's most well known and successful entrepreneurs to get into the DNA of what made them millionaires.
Peter gets to grips with Richard Reed - co-founder of Innocent, the smoothie company with a 165 million pound turnover, and Michelle Mone, the self-made inspiration behind the multimillion pound Ultimo lingerie business. He finds two very different characters as he takes them back to their childhoods, examines their personalities, studies their business models, asks what they are like to work for, and discovers what it was that drove them to be entrepreneurs.
Having built up his own multimillion pound empire, Peter knows how to get inside the minds of these inspirational business leaders who don't take no for an answer, as he attempts to find out if there really is a blueprint for success.
| The Highest Court in the Land: Justice Makers |
They are the UK's most powerful arbiters of justice and now, for the first time, four of the Justices of the Supreme Court talk frankly and openly about the nature of justice and how they make their decisions. The film offers a revealing glimpse of the human characters behind the judgments and explores why the Supreme Court and its members are fundamental to our democracy.
The 11 men and one woman who make up the UK Supreme Court have the last say on the most controversial and difficult cases in the land. What they decide binds every citizen. But are their rulings always fair, do their feelings ever get in the way of their judgments and are they always right?
In the first 14 months of the court they have ruled on MPs' expenses, which led to David Chaytor's prosecution, changed the status of pre-nuptial agreements and battled with the government over control orders and the Human Rights Act.
They explain what happens when they cannot agree and there is a divided judgment, and how they avoid letting their personal feelings effect their interpretation of the law. And they face up to the difficult issue of diversity; there is only one woman on the court, and she is the only Justice who went to a non-fee-paying school.
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Thursday 10th November 2011
| Alamar |
In director Pedro González-Rubio's beautifully shot semi-documentary, a Mexican father and his son spend time together on the coast before the child returns to Italy with his mum.
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Friday 11th November 2011
| Pearl Jam Twenty |
In 1990 they started a band, their first album went gold, then sold 13 million copies. The band would go on to sell more than 60 million records worldwide and perform in nearly every major city in the world. Now they have opened their vault, with 20 years of rare and never-before-seen footage to tell their extraordinary story. From one of the great directors of our generation.
Told in big themes and bold colours with blistering sound, this is the definitive portrait of Pearl Jam - part concert film, part intimate insider-hang, part testimonial to the power of music and uncompromising artists.
Carved from more than 1,200 hours of footage, live performances and recent interviews, the film chronicles the years leading up to Pearl Jam's formation, their rise to fame and the chaos that ensued soon thereafter.
Academy Award-winning director Cameron Crowe has assembled the best-of-the-best from Pearl Jam's past and present in a compelling narrative that recreates the visceral feeling of what it is to love music and feel it deeply.
After 20 years, nine bestselling albums, 60 million record sales and thousands of live performances across the globe, Pearl Jam has a devoted fanbase often compared to that of music legends like the Grateful Dead, Bruce Springsteen and the Who, propelling them into superstardom and solidifying their position as one of the biggest, most magnetic touring acts in the world
| No Nirvana: The Late Show |
Music and arts magazine programme presented by Tracey MacLeod, with items on American rock including: Pearl Jam - Alive; Belly - Gepetto; Jane's Addiction - Been Caught Stealing; Dinosaur Jr - Get Me; Sonic Youth - Drunken Butterfly; REM - Half a World Away; Screaming Trees - Dollar Bill; Sugar - Helpless; Rage Against the Machine - Bullet in the Head; and Smashing Pumpkins - Rhinoceros.
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