BBC Radio 2

In an unforgettable collection of programmes, six well-known figures each choose their favourite movie - one that might have even changed their life. Their choice alone reveals something about them, but through the course of each programme, they also reveal more about their preoccupations, aspirations and obsessions at different times in their lives.

Suzanne Vega chooses Funny Face: a stylish, romantic musical starring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire. Mousey intellectual Jo Stockton is discovered in a Greenwich Village bookshop by Dick Avery, the
photographer for New York fashion magazine, Quality. Crowned the reluctant new face of the magazine, she is flown to Paris where she is to model the latest collection by France’s leading designer. Jo, however, has her own motivation for visiting Paris: she wants to find Professor Flostre, the man behind the Empathicalist philosophy she follows. But when Jo finds she has to choose between Flostre and Avery, which way will she go? Directed by Stanley Donen with songs by George and Ira Gershwin and clothes by Givenchy, Funny Face is as charming today as when it was first released in 1957.

Lenny Henry chooses the 1946 classic Powell and Pressburger film A Matter of Life and Death. The film, intended to soothe post war animosity between Britain and America, stars David Niven as Peter Carter, a fighter pilot who escapes his burning 'plane as it crashes in the Channel. He finds and falls in love with the American wireless operator (Kim Hunter), the last voice before he bailed out. But Carter is troubled by hallucinations...the powers in Heaven have slipped up and want him there…he must flight for the right
to live. Listeners will be enthralled by Lenny Henry’s passion for this film - a film buff though and through, his reading of the film makes compelling listening. With film historian, Ian Christie, Powell's widow Thelma Schoonmaker and director Martin Scorsese.

Siouxsie Sioux chooses Hitchcock’s Psycho. She vividly recalls watching it with abject horror, but ultimately its profound influence on her ideas about style and music. She shares with Hitchcock a flair for the subversive, always wanting to shock and disconcert the repressive suburban community in which she grew up. She regards Hitchcock as a genius whose strong visual sense is second to none - “He used 70 or more frames for that single 45 seconds in the shower and you feel as though you can remember each one - the way the water spirals down the plug - incredible.” Bernard Herrmann’s score for Psycho was a direct source of inspiration for a number of her songs - “Suburban Relapse was made with aggressive strings, discordant, jarring stabs and Staircase Mystery is a tribute to both Herrmann and Hitchcock”. Contributors to Siouxsie Sioux’s Psycho include Alan Parker, Peter Bogdanovich and Paul Morley.

The film that women roll their eyes over, Spandau Ballet’s Martin Kemp is obsessed with this landmark martial arts film. It was the first kung fu film to have been made by a major Hollywood studio and paved the way for a genre of films which have developed into the supernatural modern legends which include Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Enter the Dragon is largely set in Hong Kong in the 1980s “an impossible place” in the mind of the young Kemp, then a teenager. The film called on the best stuntmen in town the Seven Little Fortunes including Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung. In this programme, Kemp kicks and flips his way through his life changing film.

Honor Blackman chooses the 1950 classic All About Eve, in which aging actress Margo Channing (Bette Davis), sees her career threatened by young devotee and aspiring star, Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter). The film, which includes among its cast a young Marilyn Monroe, won six Academy Awards, and its screenplay by director Joseph Manciewicz is a sharp and witty take on the ruthless world of celebrity. Honor recalls when she first saw the film as a rising star herself, and the affect it had on her own acting life.

British rock’n’roll legend and self styled ‘cheeky chappy’, Joe Brown, chooses one of the pioneering films of British comedy. Directed by Ken Annakin this is an hilarious burst of British humour following the war - full of European stereo types and slap stick humour with an all star cast which includes Peter Cook,  Tony Curtis, Dudley Moore, Willie Rushton and Susan Hampshire…this is the precursor to the cartoon Wackey Races and will have listeners laughing out loud.

"A cracking little series" Time Out

"Just sit back and wallow in the enthusiasm" Radio Times