Front Row: Archive 2012

Martin McDonagh won the 2008 Best Original Screenplay Oscar for In Bruges, starring Colin Farrell as an unlucky hit-man. In McDonagh's new film, Seven Psychopaths, Farrell is a struggling screenwriter dragged into the Los Angeles crime world when his quirky friends (Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken) kidnap a dog belonging to a gangster (Woody Harrelson). Kamila Shamsie reviews.Novelist Beryl Bainbridge, who died in 2010, won the Whitbread Prize twice and was nominated for the Booker Prize five times. But she was also an accomplished and prolific painter, whose subjects include The Titanic, Napoleon, and Captain Scott's journey - as well as Liverpool memories and portraits of her children. As The Museum Of Liverpool prepares to open the exhibition, Beryl Bainbridge: Painter, her longtime friend A.N Wilson talks about her paintings and their relationship to her writing.This week Young Voices launches its latest national arena tour in Birmingham NEC, with 7,000 UK schoolchildren. To discuss the pros and cons