Film Chat

This week, Danny dons the high-falutin beret of chin-stroking and Sam pulls on the lofty turtleneck of deep thought to review two films that the vast majority of the human race will never see. The Forbidden Room is the latest feature from Canadian director Guy Maddin, who has assembled an eclectic collection of melodramatic short stories nestled within one another like a Russian doll. Fragmented, theatrical, absurd - the film will be an acquired taste for most audiences. But not our extraordinarily discerning listeners. Those guys will love it. Also reviewed this week: The Russian Woodpecker, a concise but sweeping documentary that follows a young Ukrainian artist as he attempts to unravel the mystery of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. It has everything you could want from a documentary - animation, archive footage, spectacular landscapes, interviews, conspiracies, performance art, a captivatingly weird protagonist, and a thick atmosphere of gradual, engulfing doom. The episode also contains ruminations on