Igor Toronyi-Lalic

Culture House Pick of the Week: Minogue, Mahler, Strauss and Johansson

FILM: Under the Skin (dir. Jonathan Glazer) 

Critics who saw it at the Venice Film Festival thought it either ‘laughably bad’ or a ‘masterpiece’. This week you get the chance to decide whether Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin, in which Scarlett Johansson plays a kind of alien butcher on the hunt for human meat to ferry back to a group of extraterrestrial gourmands, is in the mould of Glazer’s Oscar-nominated Sexy Beast or, like his Birth, will sink without trace.

OPERA: Die Frau ohne Schatten, Royal Opera House

Richard Strauss’ barmy opera about a part-human, part-gazelle Empress whose husband will turn to stone unless she can find a shadow for herself (and you thought you had problems) opens this Friday at the Royal Opera House. With conductor Semyon Bychkov at the helm and a strong cast, it’s sure to be a high point of the 2014 Strauss celebrations.

Die Frau ohne Schatten opens Friday 14 March at the Royal Opera House

TV: I Was There, BBC Two

In what could be one of the highlights of the anniversary year, the BBC are airing never-before-seen interviews with First World War eye-witnesses – testimonies that were filmed in the 1960s but never made it into the landmark series, The Great War.

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I Was There airs Friday 15 March on BBC Two at 9pm

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