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At 23, Sinéad O’Connor was a chart-topping international superstar. By the time she turned 26, she was fodder for jokes. She was hardly the first and wouldn’t be the last female pop artist to be derided for coloring outside the lines, but as a sympathetic and perceptive new documentary reminds us, O’Connor wasn’t vilified simply for being erratic or unclassifiable, though that surely didn’t help.

“Everybody felt it was Ok to kick the shit out of me,” O’Connor recalls in a new interview for Kathryn Ferguson’s Nothing Compares. “I regret that I was so sad because of it,” she adds, her crystalline voice deepened by the years. The fallout from what she endured, and her retreat from the limelight and ensuing struggles, are alluded to but not explored here; the focus of Kathryn Ferguson’s first feature-length film is O’Connor’s ahead-of-the-mainstream courage, and her outrage.

The only way to start talking about Nicholas Ray’s We Can’t Go Home Again is to first search for the words to describe how the film appears on screen. For the most part, a black rectangle appears over a matte – a shifting series of still images of the Binghamton University campus, where Ray was a professor for part of the film’s production – and that rectangle in turn houses multiple cinematic superimpositions. Those competing images come in 8, 16, and 35mm formats and are not always well defined in relation to each other, as they often collide, overlap, and shift positions. There is a rough texture to the visuals with everything slightly washed out with a bluish tint, but still amazingly vivid, especially the skin of the film’s subjects. And sometimes the images explode into seas of color, made possible through Ray’s use of a video synthesizer, with waves of green,...

Peter Lennon (obituary, 21 March) existed in a constant state of activity, always embarking upon new projects. I don't know of anybody else who, starting to write their first film script at the age of 77, and basing it on their own rich and varied life, would decide it could only be a diptych of paired feature films. I was asked to read the (excellent) first draft and advised Peter that maybe he should lower his sights a bit, to just one film. He politely ignored me and continued doing exactly what he had done all his life – whatever he thought was right.

In the period that I filmed Peter for my 2004 documentary about his groundbreaking 1968 film Rocky Road to Dublin, he never at any point seemed like somebody whose life was nearing its end. He didn't seem to think of things ending: he was always beginning something. In the nature of such endeavours,...

It's musical chairs in key positions at British theatre, plus BBC Philharmonic cut short Japan tour, and Peter Lennon's rocky road

All change in theatreland

They're playing musical chairs at some of Britain's most creative playhouses – and at quite an interesting time for all our subsidised theatres, as the funding landscape changes. Josie Rourke's departure for the Donmar Warehouse leaves a vacancy at London's the Bush; meanwhile, Dominic Hill, artistic director at the Traverse in Edinburgh, is hopping over to run the Citizens theatre in Glasgow, where his talent for punchy reinvention of the classics (think of his production of Peer Gynt for the National Theatre of Scotland) ought to prove an asset in his bid to make the Citz "the most exciting and provocative theatre in Scotland". That leaves an intriguing vacancy at the Traverse – an extremely important theatre for its nurturing of the brilliant Scottish playwrighting scene,...

Updated through 3/22.

"Peter Lennon, who has died of cancer at the age of 81, was at the same time a Dubliner, an honorary Parisian and a Guardian man," writes Ian Mayes. "The honesty and integrity of his writing during two lengthy periods on the newspaper were also reflected in his one excursion into film, Rocky Road to Dublin (1968), which was both an indictment of and an impassioned plea for his native Ireland, and quickly came to be recognised as a documentary masterpiece. 'If one is a true patriot, you criticise your own country,' he later wrote when reflecting on the uproar it caused."...

In The Rocky Road to Dublin, the widely-admired Guardian journalist leaves behind a glorious film of enduring relevance

The death of Peter Lennon, Guardian journalist and documentary film-maker, causes a complicated kind of sadness. I met him first on joining the Guardian in 1999; he was at the paper on a freelance writing contract. Peter was funny, charming, and self-deprecating. He would occasionally participate in office discussions about how we should cover the Cannes film festival, without ever attempting to pull rank — as he was arguably entitled to do, given that he was a real live film-maker who had had something selected at Cannes.

Peter was the director of The Rocky Road to Dublin, a sensational movie anatomy of Ireland which was entered for the festival in the tumultuous year of 1968. The film grew out of a series of articles he had written based around interviews with priests, politicians, sportsmen and artists,...

A Guardian journalist, he returned to his native Ireland to make the masterly film Rocky Road to Dublin

Peter Lennon, who has died of cancer at the age of 81, was at the same time a Dubliner, an honorary Parisian and a Guardian man. The honesty and integrity of his writing during two lengthy periods on the newspaper were also reflected in his one excursion into film, Rocky Road to Dublin (1968), which was both an indictment of and an impassioned plea for his native Ireland, and quickly came to be recognised as a documentary masterpiece. "If one is a true patriot, you criticise your own country," he later wrote when reflecting on the uproar it caused.

His relationship with the Guardian was not always smooth. During budget cuts in 1969, the paper, which had been struggling financially, suddenly let his contract lapse after a decade of distinguished freelance service in Paris. He successfully sued,...

A Rocky Road to Independence Ireland in the 1960s was a nation frozen in time. While Beatlemania, Vietnam, hippies and free love gripped the west, we had Father Michael Cleary (the singing priest) and the Irish Censorship Board. Our church-controlled educational system produced young students who fretted about original sin years before they were capable of conceiving one. Our government acted as if church and state were indistinguishable. We were shut-in’s, defiantly turning our backs against the 20th century and the modern tide. In Rocky Road to Dublin, Peter Lennon’s recently restored and re-released 1968 documentary about the state of Ireland in that transformative decade, Lennon captures a nation teetering on the cusp of enormous social change. It makes for startling viewing, and the Irish Film Institute is to be commended for placing this groundbreaking film before the public again. It’s a true saying -- prophets are never recognized in their own land.

The weekend’s here. You’ve just been paid, and it’s burning a hole in your pocket. What’s a pop culture geek to do? In hopes of steering you in the right direction to blow some of that hard-earned cash, it’s time for the Fred Weekend Shopping Guide - your spotlight on the things you didn’t even know you wanted…

(Please support Fred by using the links below to make any impulse purchases - it helps to keep us going…)

Sadly, you don’t get the 3-D experience of their recent theatrical re-release, but the high definition versions of Toy Story & Toy Story 2 (Walt Disney, Rated G, Blu-Ray-$39.99 Srp each) are still an eye-popping treat that look and sound really, really good on your massive HDTV. Many of the bonus features are ported over from the most recent DVD special editions, including audio commentaries, featurettes,...