Archive for the ‘Cultural issues’ Category
Has storytelling become more opaque?
August 15th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
I recently wrote a blog posting suggesting that it had. Now I’ve just read a fascinating book called “The Science Of Storytelling” by Will Storr (2019) in which there is a sentence that I think supports my view that serious storytelling has become more opaque or challenging: “Expert readers understand that the patterns of change they’ll encounter in art-house […]
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A review of “The Science Of Storytelling” by Will Storr (2019)
August 15th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
I love being told stories (my favourite genre is the cinema and I reckon I’ve viewed around 3,000 films) and I enjoy writing short stories (I’ve produced 31 self-published under the title “The Rooms In My Mind”), so I found this a fascinating book which should help me both to analyse and to create stories. […]
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A review the new movie “The Suicide Squad”
August 13th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
I’ve enjoyed many, many superhero movies and I’m sure I’ll delight in a few more, but some of them are becoming a bit ridiculous and this is one of them. Following the original “Suicide Squad” (2016) and the spin-off “Birds Of Prey” (2020), now we have a kind of reboot of the first movie with […]
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A review of the 2017 film “Downsizing”
August 5th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
I had thought that this was one kind of movie but it turned out to be a rather different one altogether. I had imagined – based largely on the trailer – that it was some kind of romantic comedy starring Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig, both of which I enjoy as actors. At first, my […]
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Some people say that we live in a new age of identity politics. But what is identity and why has it become more complicated?
August 1st, 2021 by Roger Darlington
The question of identity has troubled humans throughout the 200,000 history of humankind. Just who are we and what makes us different from other humans and how important are those differences? In evolutionary terms, for most of human history, identity has been a relatively simple matter. But, since the age of civilisations emerged some 5,000 […]
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A review of the 2017 film “Beast”
August 1st, 2021 by Roger Darlington
If you were thinking of having a holiday on the English Channel island of Jersey, you might want to avoid this psychological thriller which is set on the island. In his first feature film, writer and director Michael Pearce – who grew up on the island – offers the viewer some glorious local scenery but […]
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A review of “V2”, the latest novel by Robert Harris
July 20th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
This is my seventh novel by Harris (he has written 14). He is never going to win the Booker or the Pulitzer, but he is a consummate storyteller whose forte is to set a fictional personal tale against a backdrop of actual historical events. In this case, the story takes place over five days at the end […]
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A review of the new super-hero movie “Black Widow”
July 19th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
I’m a big fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and I’ve seen virtually all the previous 24 movies in the franchise, but these films have been released over a period of 13 years and I’ve only seen each offering once at the cinema on its release, so I struggle to remember all the cross-linkages […]
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Now I have written two books: a biography and a collection of short stories
June 26th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
In 1985, I wrote the biography of the Czech Flight Lieutenant Karel Kuttelwascher who was the RAF’s greatest night intruder ace of the Second World War. It was republished in 2017. It is titled “Night Hawk”. I never thought that I would write another book. But now I have collated 31 short stories that I […]
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Word of the day: paraprosdokian
June 24th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence, phrase, or larger discourse is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing an anticlimax. For this reason, […]
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