Front Row - Oliver Stone reviewed; crime writer RJ Ellory

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Mark Lawson has the verdict on Oliver Stone's new political documentary and interviews RJ Ellory, who has just won the Crime Novel of the Year award.

Director Oliver Stone's long-standing interest in political leaders resulted in the Hollywood films JFK, Nixon and W, about George W. Bush, and also a documentary centred on Fidel Castro. His new film South of the Border is another political documentary, in which he interviews South American leaders including Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Stryker McGuire reviews.

R J Ellory has just won won the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award for his book A Simple Act of Violence. Ellory was born in Birmingham but sets his fiction in the United States. He discusses his childhood as an orphan, and the sources for his writing.

In a new three-part TV documentary series, Our Drugs War, award-winning filmmaker Angus MacQueen investigates the global story of drugs from the streets of Edinburgh to the poppy fields of Afghanistan. Angus MacQueen discusses the series, which examines the consequences of the war on drugs, as well as the drugs themselves.

The UK Film Council and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council both face the axe, as the Department of Culture, Media and Sport reduces the number of bodies it funds. Mark reports on the possible effects of this decision, announced earlier today.

Producer Timothy Prosser.