The road ahead is under construction. There’s a 50ft gap in the intersection and if the bus drops below 50 miles per hour the passengers will be blown up by the bomb planted on board

The road ahead is under construction. There’s a 50ft gap in the intersection and if the bus drops below 50 miles per hour the passengers will be blown up by the bomb planted on board. Sandra Bullock grips the steering wheel, accelerates hard and the bus takes off.
Will the bus make it? Of course it does ­ in the Hollywood movie Speed. In real life, however, Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves should have been blown to bits.For anyone who has ever sat in the cinema or in front of the television and found themselves thinking or yelling “No way”, help is finally at hand.Dr Jonathan Hare, a scientist at the University of Sussex, has embarked on a programme debunking some of Hollywood’s most famous sequences by recreating them in the unlikely setting of the back garden of a house in Harpenden, Hertfordshire.Using toy soldiers, toy cars, bits of string and Lego and applying the fundamental principles of mechanics, biology, chemistry and physics, Dr Hare’s team has discovered the truth behind some of the most famous scenes in cinema.Take, for example, Paul Newman’s performance in Cool Hand Luke, the 1967 prison drama.

Could he really have eaten 50 hard-boiled eggs in under an hour without throwing up? By filling a replica stomach ­ using a water carrying bag ­ with 50 eggs and a litre of something resembling gastric fluid, Dr Hare discovered that, in reality, Paul Newman’s stomach should have burst open.Then there’s Die Hard, the all-action movie in which terrorists take control of a Japanese bank. Could Bruce Willis, a fire hose tied around his waist, really have leapt to safety from the roof of the Nakatomi Plaza as a helicopter takes shots at him and a bomb blows the building’s roof off?The answer, alas, is a resounding no. Using an Action Man, a cardboard tower and pieces of string, the programme discovered the pull of the hose on his waist should have snapped Mr Willis in two.Both experiments will be shown on a new Open University television series, Hollywood Science, starting this Friday on BBC2, and it looks set to become cult viewing. What the programme makers discovered was that some of cinema’s most endearing sequences just never could have happened.Other films did pass the programme’s plausibility test, however. John Mills could have cranked his truck up a sand dune to escape the Germans in Ice Cold in Alex, while Pierce Brosnan’s aluminium boat really would have been eroded by an acid, volcanic lake as he rowed to safety in Dante’s Peak.Most incredibly, a stunt in which Jackie Chan urinates on his shirt allowing him to bend back steel prison bars in the comedy western Shanghai Noon actually does work Now who would have believed that?. Ballet classes are more popular than ever, thanks to the hit film Billy Elliot, but few British hopefuls are making it to the stage.

Ballet classes are more popular than ever, thanks to the hit film Billy Elliot, but few British hopefuls are making it to the stage. This week, when the Queen visits the dancers of the Rambert dance company to help celebrate its 75th birthday, she will be surrounded by accents from France, Spain, Hungary, Japan and South America, among others.
Only a third of the Rambert’s dancers are British, as are those at English National Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet. At the Royal Ballet, the upper ranks are overwhelmingly dominated by foreigners including Sylvie Guillem, Miyako Yoshida and Irek Mukhamedov. Paris Opera Ballet is 95 per cent French.Christopher Bruce, leading choreographer and the artistic director at Rambert, blamed poor teaching and training for the failure of British dancers, and questioned their stomach for rigorous training.

“Too often British candidates don’t have what it takes,” he said. “There’s a lack of the basic technique and strength that’s required to be a Rambert dancer ­ and versatility, too. Australian and American academies seem to be able to turn out dancers who can switch easily between classical and modern, and take on anything that’s thrown at them. The British kids can’t adapt.”Inadequate training may even influence their shape. Derek Deane, the outgoing artistic director of English National Ballet, notoriously complained that British girls are “too bummy and too titty” to make the grade with ENB. Among the company’s 13 principals and senior soloists, only three are British.The French and Italians are exporting spectacularly good dancers “In dance, not everyone has to be skinny,” said Mr Bruce. “What interests me is quality of movement, and training that shows a bit of rigour.

I sometimes wonder if British kids nowadays have the stomach for the mental as well as physical discipline. But if you can do it in football, cricket and athletics, there’s no reason why you can’t do it in dance.”Jeanette Siddall, director of Dance UK, which ministers to dance professionals, believes the drastic decline in discretionary grants from local authorities ­ they began to be cut in the early Nineties and have dwindled to almost nothing ­ has had a direct impact on the numbers and quality of British students in our dance schools.”Many families can’t afford to fund their child’s training, which means the schools are taking the kids who can get the money, not the most deserving,” she said. “They make up the shortfall with overseas students, who often pay higher fees, and bring in more revenue.”True-life Billy Elliot stories still happen. At a handful of academies, including the Royal Ballet School, successful applicants on lower incomes automatically get Department for Education and Employment funding. That may explain why the Royal Ballet has a higher proportion of British dancers than others.Ms Siddall noted: “When I was training, you turned up at class at 8.30am, worked hard all day, then went home to rest. Nowadays, dance students are in class all day then have to cook burgers or stack shelves at night to support themselves. Tiredness is a major injury factor in dance, and it can’t be helping the standard of learning either.”Luke Rittner, chief executive of the Royal Academy of Dance, which is on a drive to improve teaching standards at all levels, believes the solution is a matter of attitude as well as cash.