Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
The making of American power (4): military dictatorships in Latin America
March 16th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
This week, I attended week 4 of an eight-week evening class at London”s City Literary Institute. The title is “The making of American power: US foreign policy from the Cold War to Trump” and our lecturer is Jack Gain. Week 4 of the course was about the many interventions that the US has made in Central and […]
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Ten of the films that I have most enjoyed in the last year
January 15th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
This week, I started a 12-week course of evening classes at the City Literary Institute in central London. The course is titled “Contemporary Cinema” and the tutor is the American John Wischmeyer. We have 25 students on the course, many of them with a deep knowledge of the movies (one woman goes to the cinema […]
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A review of the novel “One Hundred Years Of Solitude” by Gabriel García Márquez
November 14th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Márquez was born in Colombia in 1927 and died in 2014. This work – perhaps his most famous – was published in 1967 and he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. I finally read the work after visiting Colombia and reading his later novel “Love In The Time Of Cholera”. It is not […]
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A review of the new version of “A Star Is Born”
October 12th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
It seems that each generation is destined to have its own version of this classic and painful cinematic tale of one star on the decline as another rises. In the original 1937 version, the actors were Frederic March and Janet Gaynor; then, in the 1954 remake, we had James Mason and Judy Garland; and, in […]
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Holiday in Colombia (8): Medellin
September 3rd, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Today (Sunday) was devoted to a tour of Medellin which is Colombia’s second city with a population of 3.4 million. Thanks to its location at 1,500 metres (5,000 feet) in the Aburra valley, it is known as “the city of the eternal spring” and the weather today was comfortably warm. Sadly Medellin is best known […]
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A review of the new movie “Sicario 2: Soldado”
July 17th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
In the taut and exciting original movie, the action began with FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), but slowly and inexorably shifted to Columbian ‘adviser” Alejandro Gillick (Benicio Del Toro) who – with support from CIA black ops expert Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) – emerged as the ‘sicario’ (hitman) of the title. In this accomplished […]
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A review of the movie “Hidden Figures” and the story of three remarkable African-American women
May 29th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
In some ways, “Hidden Figures” (2016) is a (belated) companion piece to “THe Right Stuff” (1983). Both tell the story of the herculean effort by the United States – which failed – to beat the Soviet Union to put a man in space. Whereas “The Right Stuff” focused on the first seven America astronauts who […]
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If you’re confused about the current crisis in Italian politics …
May 28th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
… it’s not surprising. The country has effectively had no government in the two and a half months since a general election and it is possible that a new set of elections will now have to be called. The proposed new governing alliance is an unlikely combination of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S), which […]
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Word of the day: antidisestablishmentarianism
May 19th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
In the many debates on political reform in the UK, one idea is disestablishment of the Church of England. Rightly in my view, it is argued that the UK population is no longer largely devoted to the Anglican faith and that, in multicultural Britain, it is wrong for one religious denomination to be privileged over others with […]
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A review of the new film “Isle Of Dogs”
April 15th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
If you live in London (as I do), then the Isle of Dogs is a former area of dockland bounded by a major meander in the River Thames. In this case of this move, however, it is a fictional island opposite the Japanese metropolis of Megasaki City headed by a cruel mayor who expels all […]
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