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THE WHITE RIBBON IS CURRENTLY SCREENING AT THE BELCOURT THEATRE, NASHVILLE
DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:
THE WHITE RIBBON / ONE HOUR FANTASY GIRL / FLIGHT FROM DEATH / F FOR FAKE
‘I think that man is not going to change, and the sea going to be dead, because man is crazy’. – ‘The End of the Line’ (That’s not a photo of the ‘end’ – it’s actually a picture of Ira Levin, but that’ll make sense if you read on.)
The first time I had a tuna sandwich I was eleven years old. It was October 1986, and my mum had cast me in a staged reading of Ira Levin’s play ‘Critic’s Choice’, in which, if memory serves, I played the 12 year old son of an unpleasant theatre reviewer, who advises his dad on how to respond to a play written by his wife that he doesn’t like. I was terrified, having neither developed a sense of being comfortable on stage, nor having had more than an hour or two to peruse Mr Levin’s script. Well, he went on to write ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ and ‘The Stepford Wives’, and I went on to eat more tuna. I never really thought about where my food came from until the fair trade movement of the late 1990s convinced me to change coffee brands in a neat inverse colonisation move; and since then it seems that every five minutes there’s a new documentary about what’s wrong with the world’s supply-and-demand chains, and what to do about it. Thus far, Al Gore has made me switch off lights that I’m not using, Michael Moore has made me avoid certain banks, the Francis Brother’s ‘Black Gold’ has reinforced what I’d already become convinced of where coffee’s concerned. Now it’s Nemo’s turn. (more…)
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DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:
SHUTTER ISLAND / A SINGLE MAN / ASK THE FILM TALK/ NIGHT AND THE CITY
Joe Biden appeared on the Sunday morning talk shows last week to defend the Obama administration from Dick Cheney’s disgraceful attacks, which appear to suggest his earlier bloodlust has not yet been satisfied, despite everything his time in the White House accomplished. The current Vice-President had the opportunity to set out a genuine alternative to the war-first, don’t-even-ask-the-questions-later policies that Cheney had pursued; but regrettably did not. Instead, he actually seemed to play a game of ‘who has killed the most terrorists?’, citing the current ‘success rates’ against the Taliban. When Joe Biden is pressured to define success on the basis of how many human lives have been taken in a conflict in which open diplomacy has hardly been attempted, never mind exhausted, it’s time to lament.
I knew nothing about ‘Revanche‘, other than it was the kind of film people tell you you’re supposed to like, but they say it so often, and the acclaim is so overwhelming that it makes you wonder if it’s going to be a rehearsal of the time you didn’t get to see ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ on its first release but it seemed as if every four paces you took in town or every third hyperlink you clicked on you’d bump into someone telling you that ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ was not only the Greatest Film Ever Made™ but would make a supermodel fall in love with you and have you develop a six-pack within a matter of days after watching and so by the time you finally did go to see ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ it couldn’t possibly measure up to the standard that had been set for it and anyway the cinema you saw it in was forced to LEAVE ITS LIGHTS ON DURING THE MOVIE because of an absurd local government health and safety injunction ordering it to get new dimmer switches despite the fact that in thirty-five years of operating NO ONE had ever fallen over and sued or lost their soul or even stubbed a toe so it was difficult to engage with ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ cos it’s kinda hard at the best of times to suspend disbelief when watching a fantasy film even moreso WHEN THE LIGHTS IN THE CINEMA HAVE BEEN LEFT ON but it didn’t really matter because…
