Kirk Douglas in Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 classic Spartacus. Photograph: Cine Text / Allstar/Sportsphoto Ltd. / Allstar “Oh, that’s what I want to do,” I remember thinking when I watched Spartacus for the first time. I must have been about 11 or 12 at the time, so I suspect... 

Bass exploration … Charles Mingus in 1960. Photograph: Corbis “My music is evidence of my soul’s will to live,” Charles Mingus once said, and the evidence of that life-force amounts to some of the most dramatic and powerful jazz composed in the 20th century. A volcanically... 

Ageing playwright and young upstart: Simon Russell Beale and Jonathan Groff in Deathtrap by Ira Levin. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian The stage thriller was almost killed off by Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth. It enjoyed a profitable resurrection in 1978 with Ira Levin’s... 

Unappetising fare … Dinner for Schmucks Inception’s impressive run – it just scored a .5m number one hold in its third weekend – is taxing the powers of headline writers who have already exhausted their supply of dream references. The film’s rip-roaring start is the stuff...