dom.blog

Saw this George Clooney film at the Tricycle Cinema on Saturday night. It’s about the famous journalist Edward Murrow (who I’d actually never heard of before) and his taking on of the infamous Senator McCarthy who orchestrated the hysterical anti-Communist witch-hunts in 1950s America. Oh, and it’s filmed in black and white – something I got used to surprisingly quickly, but I think that’s cause I’ve watched quite a bit of 1960s Doctor Who

So yes – to be honest, I don’t think this film deserves quite the glowing praise it received – but it is nonetheless very worthy and worth seeing if you’re interested in that period of history. Or current affairs, of course, as the obvious metaphor to the role of the media today… although I couldn’t help feeling incredibly uplifted after watching the film about the role the Internet now plays. It’s no longer a question of a few corporations controlling the ability to get your message out there, although of course they still command the mass audiences, anyone has the ability to publish, at least in many parts of the world. Damn the sponsors, we’ve got Google.

The other organisation that came to my mind was the BBC. The speech bookending the film about the role that television plays is a powerful reminder that in Britain, our culture has been shaped by an organisation that is not dependent on advertising revenue and does uphold a public service ethos (at least some of the time!) to inform, educate and to entertain.

Appropraitely we ran into my History teacher on the way out – he was going to see the later showing. And my other cinema anectode was the labelling of the vanilla ice-cream as ‘natural’. That annoyed me. Why is vanilla any more natural than strawberry or chocolate? Stop the organic-natural-reallyreallygoodforyou-food nonsense soon please.

Also – have just completed my first draft of a rather tricky essay on another era in history – Britain’s role in the Middle East. I read it through and realised I know exactly what the teacher is going to say: too much storytelling! How do you avoid storytelling in an essay that stretches from 1917 to 1956 though?

Good night, and good luck blog readers. This blog post was brought to you by the correct spelling of aluminium.*

*(In the film they say aluminum. Aluminum?!)

For anyone studying a Shakespeare play, I always recommend you go and see a stage performance. So it was great to see Black and White Sextet tonight, a modern adaption of Othello (one review here) which made practical use of modern news reports and mobile phones to help tell the story using abridged dialogue.

The small theatre made the emotion of the play very strong indeed and the ending was very well executed – a no holds barred approach to Desdemona’s nasty death which was far more powerful than a cutaway some larger productions might have been tempted to use. Oh, and Othello chased Iago offstage right past where I was sitting brandishing a sword which made me duck!

My experience was even better than simply watching the play, however, because Richard Earthy (Iago) is a friend of the family so he joined us for a drink afterwards with Fliss Walton (Desdemona) and the young university student in charge of lighting. This was amazingly and very useful as we discussed the play and various interpretations of it. Fliss completely changed my view of the meek Desdemona who was rather feisty and strong in this adaption, which is supported by considerable evidence in the text itself. The same goes for Emelia, Iago’s wife, who was also much stronger than we had imagined when reading in class. Shakespearian women have got guts, it appears.

It was slightly surreal as well. We mingled with Cassio and Emelia. Desdemona bought a round of drinks. Iago got some crisps and talked about his ‘gay wedding’ onstage in one scene with Othello. (See! I was right!) So I feel much closer to these characters now and how cool is that?

Well it’s true. On Valentine’s Day I went to see Munich, which is hardly the most romantic film in the world and probably not the thing to take your girlfriend too. It’s the story of the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972 by Palestinian terrorists and the subsequent vengeance killings organised by Golda Meir and Israel’s government. Essentially the message was the futility of such a plan because for every person you assassinate there will be plenty more to take his or her place, all you’ve accomplished is more death, more bloodshed and more bitter revenge. Both sides believe they’re fighting for the right to call a land their home, a feeling you can deeply appreciate if not truly understand.

I also discovered during the film that I can blame my mum for my dark sense of humour. There’s a scene where two men are attempting to assassinate a wealthy Arab and are hiding in his garden ready to take aim. My mum sees the swimming pool and leans over to me whispering “It’s Michael Barrymore’s party!” Soon enough, the pool did end up containing a dead body

Right, on Wednesday it was great to meet up with some friends from school again. We planned to go bowling but finding it fully booked ended up watching Fun with Dick and Jane – the new comedy starring Jim Carrey. It’s… an odd little film. I definitely enjoyed watching it but that’s not to say it was actually a good movie, in fact, I wouldn’t have said they were even trying particularly hard to make a coherent film in the first place. Until five seconds ago when I looked it up on IMDB I didn’t know it was a remake which may go some way to explain this. I think this would have actually been the perfect Valentine’s Day film simply because couples could spend half the time snogging at the back, then watch a few scenes and not feel like you’ve missed much. (Dominic’s Valentine’s Day tips will not be a regular feature of this blog.)

Basically – if you want to go and see a good film, see Munich. If you need something to pass the time and don’t mind a rather cartoony plot, Dick and Jane might be more your thing. If you think combining these two films into some kind of slapstick massacre film would be interesting, you’ve officially sunk to my depths. Well, Fabio and I. Oh it was good to go into full force religious mocking again without fear of a fatwa, but I did get a very odd look from a woman pushing a buggy on the way back home when I joked that we were glorifying terrorism (we weren’t, don’t worry) rather too loudly. She just turned round and gave me that “I’m reporting you to the Daily Mail” stare that shut me right up.
Continue Reading