Archivist and critic Catriona Crowe, crime novelist and playwright Declan Hughes, Irish Times Features Editor Hugh Linehan.

Written by George Crile, the book 'Charlie Wilson's War' has just been reissued to coincide with the release of the movie, which stars Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Crile, who died last year, was a producer on the CBS News programme '60 Minutes' and worked for 13 years on this extraordinary tale of Charlie Wilson, a Texas Congressman credited with running the biggest covert war in history and ultimately bringing down the Soviet Union. The problem of course, as we all now know, is that the people he armed to fight on America's behalf - and funded to the tune of hundreds of millions - are now firing all they've got at Americans. Because 'Charlie Wilson's War' took place in Afghanistan, and the good guys then are the bad guys now.

And so to the movie. Directed by Mike Nichols, 'Charlie Wilson's War' stars Tom Hanks as Wilson, Philip Seymour Hoffman as the CIA operative and extremely rough diamond Gust Avratokos and Julia Roberts as Joanne Herring, the rightwing Houston socialite.

'4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days' is set in Romania during the Ceausescu era and it deals with the subject of abortion - and the dangerous trade in backstreet abortion at that. In 1967, a Ceausescu decree prohibited abortion but by the 1970s a black market in abortion was thriving and the secret police were put on the case. The film follows a day in the life of a student called Otilia and her pregnant friend Gabita as they risk imprisonment in an attempt to secure an abortion. On paper this couldn't be any grimmer, and it might not be the kind of movie to tempt you out of the house, but it has already been something of an unlikely success, winning the Palme d'Or at Cannes.

Stefan Brüggemann is a half-Mexican and half-German artist now based in London. 'Soapbox' is his first Irish solo exhibition and it's now on at the Kerlin Gallery. Brüggemann creates works, some in neon, that are either based on text or text which is no more. This exhibition features some new pieces where images are digitally printed onto canvas, and then, obliterated in the gallery itself, so they become like abstract paintings.

From Belfast, Michael McHale is the recipient of the National Concert Hall's Rising Star 2008 award. For Michael that means a solo recital at the National Concert Hall on 30 January. He has already performed at a very high level both at home and abroad and recently in Washington DC in a performance of Mozart's 'Concerto for Two Pianos' - Michael played one piano and Barry Douglas played the other one. Tonight he performs for us Debussy's 'Estampes No III - Jardins Sous la Pluie'.