our top story: north babita sharma. our top story: north korea has asked malaysia to hand over the body of a man thought to be the half brother of its leader, kim jong—un. kim jong—nam is the half brother of its leader, kim jong—un. kimjong—nam is thought the half brother of its leader, kim jong—un. kim jong—nam is thought to have been poisoned as he waited to board a flight on monday. local authorities are carrying out an autopsy to establish the exact cause of death by pyongyang has reportedly objected. residence of the indonesian capital of jakarta have voted for a new governor in an election overshadowed by the incumbent‘s blasphemy trial. private polling suggests the man known as ahok has a narrow lead. this story is trending on bbc.com. excessive weddings in india could become the new normal after the wedding of a businessman‘s daughter cost $74 million sparked outrage. stay with us. now on bbc news it's time for hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk.

i'm stephen sackur. the oscars are upon us and as ever, hollywood is awash with speculation, spin and yes, self—importance but this year, with donald trump in the white house and america deeply divided, real life has thrown up a melodrama which makes the movies look tame. my guest today isjohn madden, and oscar—winning director whose my guest today isjohn madden, an oscar—winning director whose latest film is set in the murky world of washington politics. but is hollywood doing justice to the times we're living in? john madden, welcome to hardtalk. thank you.

let's start by discussing the process of making your most recent movie. it's called miss sloane. but perhaps the most striking thing about it is that you were working in washington, making a film about the underbelly of washington politics at the very time america was experiencing a political earthquake. how disconcerting was that? well, you know, it was really like, i suppose if i use a movie metaphor, it's two trains kind of colliding. but we had no idea this other train was on the track. i'm sure i'm explaining the obvious here but obviously when you start to make a movie, you don't necessarily know exactly when the movie is going to be shot, you don't know when that movie is going to be released and it's about a very hot—button topic which is the issue of gun control, gun legislation.

and it centres around the female lead character who is a brilliant, ruthless and not altogether sympathetic character. she is one of the top lobbyists in washington. yes, yes. it was a dive into the swamp, to appropriate a phrase which was not actually current at the point we were making the film. it is about a lobbyist and a rather interesting parenthesis to say how this film came about. the script is written by a first—time writer called jonathan perera, who lives in malaysia, who was given the idea of the film by this programme and by you, actually. i have no idea what you're talking about. i deliberately didn't tell you before the programme started. you did an interview with jack abramoff. i don't know if i'm pronouncing his name right. the former super lobbyist... the person who changed the face of lobbying, yeah, exactly.

and he, ithink, was on your programme talking about an autobiography. yes, because he fell foul... he did fall foul. he underwent a congressional hearing and went to prison. and johnny perera, the writer, wasjust beginning to flex his muscles as a writer and he watched the programme and thought, this is interesting, that's an aspect of politics i've never seen, or certainly never been examined in fictionalform, and that was actually the genesis of the film. i want to bring it back to the process of making the movie and the political climate. yes. i put it to you that most liberal, progressive, creativ people working in the film industry, like yourself, had no time for donald trump and didn't for a second believe he was going to win and were extraordinarily taken aback when he did win. would that be true? that would be a fair

valuation with the that would be a fair evaluation with the one exception, that we had experienced brexit in the middle of june and those of us over there who had had the experience of the brexit ‘bouleversement‘, you know, the upending of everybody‘s expectations, it felt very much that the same thing could be happening there. but i guess what i'm getting to is this. the film — and i confess i haven't seen it because it is not out in the uk but it is out in the states — the film, as i understand it, looks at the gun lobby and it doesn't portray those who advocate gun ownership, the national rifle association and others, in a particularly positive light and many people around donald trump and who supported donald trump and who voted for donald trump have looked at this movie and said, there you go again. it is another hollywood movie which doesn't get america, which belittles and casts a negative light upon all those americans who don't live in the big cities, who love their guns and who are upholders,

as they would see it, of american values. yeah, yeah. yes — the constitution is key to the argument here, quite clearly. look, there are several things to say about it. one is, the film is not and was never intended to be a polemic. not that it doesn't have a point of view — clearly it does have a point of view — and i would say the topic of the film is more political process, actually, than the gun issue, per se. it's about how you take an argument and make an argument. it's about persuading people to take points of view and so on. understood, but here is one conservative commentator, tony oliva. "you know who the gun lobby actually is? "never mind this movie. "it's the 80+ million gun owners "who don't want their rights infringed upon. "it is not the nra, it's ordinary american people." and he says your movie did not reflect that at all. it is about lobbyists

and what a lobbyist does in order to get people to sign up to a particular, in this case, a fictional amendment that is going through congress. so it's not, as i said, it's an examination of a political process. i completely accept. ., the film is more balanced in terms of the arguments than you might think. i'm not saying that it adopts a particular point of view but what it does do, is say... let's put it this way — the whole issue of gun ownership and gun legislation in america is about narratives, it's about competing narratives and the key voice in legislative terms is the nra and the nra habitually relates every single issue to do with that to the basic issue of, well, the fiction of confiscation. i'd like to give people a flavour of the movie. we've talked a lot about it.

it stars jessica chastain in the lead role as this very powerful and somewhat unsentimental, ruthless lobbyist who, in a sense, flips sides. she normally often works the corporate america but this time she takes on the brief of working for the anti—gun campaign against the nra. let's take a look at this clip. you want to lead the fight on gun control? any head case can buy an assault rifle from the bowl—o— rama without so much as an id. and i will change it. you can't possibly win this! wellbeing is about foresight. about anticipating your opponent's moves. there are five million of us, and we're armed. it's about making sure you surprise them. and they don't surprise you. let's talk a little, not just about guns but about the role of women in hollywood. ‘cause it's very interesting, this jessica chastain characterisation, the role she plays.

it is deeply unsentimental but she's in control from beginning to end, pretty much. in one sense, she is and in another sense, she's not. true. events spin out of her control but she's a controlling person. yes. and she is unsentimental and her emotional life is not given much room in the movie at all which i would say is quite unusual for female characters. her emotional life is given a little more room than you might imagine. the emotional backstory, to use an industry term, is not given much room because it's not relevant to the story that we're watching but it's also important to say that it's called miss sloane for a reason. it's actually a study of a very, very extraordinairy character, an obsessive, an outsider in an insider's job. somebody who... whose stated desire is to win. you've a long career in movies now, going back to the ‘90s.

you won a best picture oscar for shakespeare in love. you had reat success with the best exotic marigold hotel series. you've worked with a lot of the very best female actors. is it important for you, when you read a script, to feel that the female characterisations are just as strong as the males'. there is so much debate about whether women, older women, get a fair shake when it comes to scripts and parts. yes — it's been observed several times, not particularly by me, because it was not an agenda that governed by choices that i have made, a lot of films with women smack in the centre of them. about women in power, to some extent, and about, i suppose, the emotional and political intersection of those two things.

i think women are fascinating, to me. so i don't make any apologies for it. i was very sympathetic to obama's characterisation of his first lady as being superior in more or less every respect, so i probably take that particular point of view. it's interesting, as we talk now, with donald trump very firmly in the white house and the oscars approaching, the relationship between trump and his closest political advisers and liberal hollywood, if i can put it that way. yeah, we're all overrated. it is very sour. yes. we saw meryl streep at the golden globes making a very high—profile statement of deep dislike and discontent of what she hears from donald trump. do you think that's helpful, do you think that's wise for actors or directors to grandstand in that way? i think we are very easily disqualified as being people who are just using our

celebrity to kind of beat you about head and shoulders. it is kind of hard not to engage in this particular circumstance. it's more than any of us could have imagined even 12 months ago, really. it is a riveting to behold as political theatre. i would say that people's engagement, particularly people who live outside the united states who i think are still reeling and probably very fearful about exactly what is going on. on the one side... but do we need more luvvies dumping on trump? it is so predictable. you know, matthew mcconaughey, one of hollywood's leading actors at the moment, he thoughtfully said just a short time ago on this subject, "we have to face it that he is our president and it is time to embrace that fact. shake hands with the fact, be constructive with trump over

the next four years." that is a message you do not hear from too many actors. that is true. it's a point of view. i have to say, it's hard to think of a politicalfigure who has been more provocative and more divisive than the current president of the united states. you know, meryl streep, i read an interview with her last night, i think she was speaking at another engagement and obviously, she has endured a lot of very visceral attacks of one sort of another since she spoke out about it. and her view was, i don't have a choice, i have to. because she is so affronted, i think, by the values appearing to be represented. so i don't think it's... i don't see that there's any harm in it. i realise... but the funny thing is, it's not as though hollywood has a great record when it comes to things like diversity itself. yes, some high achievers like meryl streep can make their big

statements as they receive another award... but what is the alternative? the alternative is not to say anything, not to engage? what i'm saying is, on the one level, hollywood generates this voice which is so liberal and so attacking and everything that they believe trump represents but at the very same time, if you dig deep into the structure of the movie industry, the industry you have been in so long, it is totally lacking in diversity. it is not open to people of all colours and all economic classes. it's learning some hard lessons right now, yeah. i think that's absolutely true. however, no individual person who stands up says, we are perfect. they're simply taking issue with some of the policy statements that are being made and i suppose the way, the way their country is being driven, portrayed, given an account of, as far as the rest of the world is concerned... we talked about the fact that this movie is talking about a political

argument, and it was made by the british — you're british, the screenwriter was british, the producers are british. do you think movies get made that represent the views or sort of are sympathetic to white working—class american gun owners living in the middle of america? do those movies get made? look, i have to sort of defend one presumption here, which is that the presumption is somehow to attack the gun lobby with this movie. that's not the case. i would say the movie is a political thriller, it's not an earnest polemic about a subject... i accept that point. and that doesn't bail me out in any way, it's just... i suppose it is about different

voices represented in one of the key culturalforms, that is moviemaking. we've learnt a lot about the anger, the resentment, the disillusion of white working—class people over the coming months, notjust in the us but around the world. with your experience in the movie industry, are those sorts of voices ever represented in moviemaking? thankfully we have somebody over here who has just won best british film who has been doing it all his life, ken loach, and i think there are people in america who do similar things and, you know, there's a multiplicity of voices. can you think of any off the top of your head? there's a wonderful movie out called loving, which is made by a very fine director called jeff nichols. that's about an interracial marriage in georgia. a very quiet film about blue—collar life. yeah, a very, very low key examination of people in a situation, in a highly politicised subject, which doesn't take a political point of view and doesn't raise its voice.

there's another one called hell on high water, which is more of a thriller, i suppose. again, very trenched. a dark texan thriller — i think i saw that one. brilliant, with jeff bridges playing a retiring cop. so the answer is, yes, those films do get made. it strikes me that sometimes hollywood reacts and responds to criticism and tries to sort things out perhaps a little bit superficially. last year there was a lot of attention on the fact that when it comes to the making of movies and the movies that are given the plaudit, black actors and directors are not well represented. this year we've had some great black stories, moonlight, fences and others, but when you look at the stats, still only 4%—5% of films over the last ten years in america have actually been made by black directors. yeah, but the truth of the matter is you have to set that

against the larger picture which is that 90% of movies that get made in america, or the most succesful ones, aren't even about human beings. i don't know really where you go with that. there's a tiny, little independent sector that is struggling to make films, orfind a place forfilms, find an audience for films, that are actually about people and the way they behave. so i think you have to see it in that context. that's an interesting point. there's a massive amount of work to be done in that regard, there's no question about it. it's interesting you raise the point

about the bottomline and the commercial realities in the us. i mean, you've made movies in the us and the uk. how damaging to you, i'm going to try to put this politely, but it's a blunt question, how damaging to you is it when you make a movie that... i think miss sloane may have cost about $i2—13 million and so far in the states it has grossed about $3—4 million, so it's a massive loss maker. how damaging is that to you and your brand as a director? i think...it‘s not great. but equally everyone knows the way movies work, so, you know, the last couple of movies i made nobody thought anybody would go and see and they did extraordinarily well. the marigold hotel films? yeah. so you can't make the kind of movies i make knowing the film will be successful or not. but is your gut a good signal of whether it will be a success or not? as you say, the marigold hotel movies weren't tipped to be huge successes, but they made the film companies loads of money and shakespeare in love wasn't looking like a massive commercial

hit, but it did great and won loads of plaudits. so can you tell? do your waters tell you whether you have a hit on your hands or not? no, absolutely. i don't believe anybody who says that. occasionally you come across people who say, "from now on we are just going to make successful movies", and you think, "oh, yes, of course! "what were we thinking about!" famously, no one knows anything. what have you learnt? there's a distinction. you can make a movie and think, you know what? i think this movie is strong, is the way i would say it, if i feel like a movie is really working but it is biting and it has traction. then i'm using that not necessarily about a film with a political subject, just you think a movie is clicking in some way and sometimes that manifests itself in an audience wanting to go and see it and sometimes it doesn't.

i think with this movie in particular, miss sloane, we literally collided with the biggest political upending that there's been in my politically conscious lifetime and i think we hit a sort of... what one of the actors in my film called a "nauseated aversion" to anything political. and i think actually a political film has to get through a very narrow aperture, anyway, much narrower than for example a political television series does, which can prove very addictive. maybe there's a case for saying some of the most creative forms of storytelling on video right now are not in the movies, but are actually on television, where you can tell a story over a longer period. that's a perfectly reasonable observation and a lot of people in the industry generally, and by that i mean people working in filmed fiction, are splitting their time between the two anyway, because the long form story,

which is television milieu, is an extraordinarily powerful and in many ways less reductive creative process. which do you prefer? well, i think... here's what i would say. i think there are certain stories that have the perfect weight for a movie. that actually can tell a story over that 90 minute, two—hour time frame and that can be immensely satisfying. it can create an impression that is very, very strong. you too often see movies that are way too long for that format or way too small for that format and so when you get it right it's something very memorable that can come out of it. there are some good examples of that currently, films in competition this year. i want to end with this thought from alan parker. he talks about that too, telly against movies, and he's conflicted, because he says some of the best work is on telly. in the end he said this: "the cinema is still the locomotive that pulls everything else along with it, because it creates and establishes the reputations of our best actors, directors writers and technicians.

it is more ambitious and more creatively fulfilling." do you buy that? i think that's fair. i don't know whether that still will remain true, because i think the creative surge in television right now is pretty extraordinary. the only worry that i would have about television is that it may burn itself out, because there's so much product nobody can keep up with it. i don't know a single person in the world who says, oh, no, i meant to see that i haven't caught up with it yet. the answer is they will never catch up with it because there will be something else to see. that is an incredibly satisfying form, i think, the long form, because you simply don't have to resolve it. i did a pilot for an american cable network show about masters and johnson, the sex therapists, and the studio head came to see the pilot and said, i don't understand what makes him behave the way he is behaving.

we really need to know. you know, we're 20 minutes in, we need to know. and i said, well, that's a movie perspective. because if you know what the issues around the main character are within 20 minutes in, you haven't got a movie. whereas in television, you should simply be unpacking that person probably over the whole of the first season, so that people then become powerfully engaged in what's going on. so movies can be a hard needle to thread, but when it works i think they can be powerful and they lodge themselves in people's minds in a way that a television show can't moment for moment, hourfor hour. well, we on hardtalk only have 25 minutes to unpack everything, so i'm afraid we have

run out of time. john madden, thanks very much for being on hardtalk. thank you. hello. wednesday was a real mixed bag right across the british isles. for some, after a dull start, it turned out to be a glorious day. dare i say, almost springlike. for others, my word, you had to wait. eventually in the east some saw some brightness after a thoroughly miserable day. it depended on where you were in relation to the weather front which started

life in the south—west with the weather going north—east. into the channel islands, eventually brighter skies into the south—east. it won't be a cold start to the day. given all the cloud around, the front has not quite disappeared. we still have a vigourous area of low pressure close by scotland. notice the isobars squeezing together. that could well signify some gusts of wind around 30, if not, 40 miles per hour, to start off the day. and you will have some rain and blustery showers, especially so in northern and western parts of scotland, and maybe the off bit in northern ireland. the odd rogue shower getting across the border into the north of england. further south, some brightness in the heart of wales, the midlands, and getting into lincolnshire. further south, again, lots of cloud around and hill fog. that will give you a grey and murky start. that will take some time before it lifts away. but things improving widely in western england and wales. rain returning to northern ireland eventually push into the north—west of wales.

maybe the odd shower may get into the south—western part of england and scotland. all the while, the breeze will be noticeable in northern areas. the top temperatures, 10—11 degrees or so on the day. and that's a trend we will see continuing on into the weekend. that puts us above the average for the year, closer to 8—9 depending on where you are. through the course of the evening and overnight, a ribbon of cloud going across the irish sea into england. then, come friday, it will leave behind a tale of cloud south—west to it diagonally, the best of the brightness on either side. on into the weekend, staying mild. there will be some sunny intervals around. quite a bit of cloud as well. rain at times, especially in the north. this is how we start the weekend. quite a few isobars. so, breezy. this weather front will weaken as we go further south. it is this area of cloud and rain

that gives that wet prospect for northern areas. i'm rico hizon in singapore. the headlines: north korea asks malaysia to hand over the body of a man thought to be kim jong—nam, the half—brother of north korea's leader. we have the latest on the investigation. millions have voted across indonesia but jakarta election‘s been overshadowed by the governor's blasphemy trial. i'm babita sharma in london. president trump re—ignites a public feud with his own intelligence agencies over the resignation of his national security adviser. i think it's very very unfair what's happened to general flynn, the way he was treated and the documents and papers that were illegally — i stress that — illegally leaked. and a helicopter pilot is killed and hundreds of homes in southern