Archive for the ‘Cultural issues’ Category
A review of the important new film “Official Secrets”
October 29th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
In 2003, 28 year old China-watcher Katherine Gun worked for Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) when she came across evidence that the British and the Americans were covertly monitoring members of the UN Security Council in an effort to obtain leverage on countries that might be persuaded to support a crucial second vote authorising the invasion […]
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A review of “Terminator: Dark Fate”
October 28th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
I thought the first two “Terminator” movies (1984 & 1991) were terrific and the third (2003) and fourth (2009) were entertaining enough, but the fifth (2015) was disappointing and I felt that we’d seen the end of the franchise. However, it seems that – even after 35 years – you just can’t keep those killers […]
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My nearest cinema and a review of “Joker”
October 27th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
As all my friends know, I am a massive cinema fan. I see a fair number of films and review all of them online. Now, when I moved to London’s South Bank seven month ago, I was excited that I would be living so near so many cinemas. Indeed the British Film Institute – which […]
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A review of “The Metamorphosis And Other Stories” by Franz Kafka
October 23rd, 2019 by Roger Darlington
In my early 20s, I read all three of Kafka’s novels – “America”, “The Trial” and “The Castle” – as well as some of his short stories including “The Metamorphosis”. I had thought that this would be the end of my Kafka phase but, some 50 years later, a Czech friend bought me a handsomely-bound […]
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How could an animation film for children cause an international row?
October 21st, 2019 by Roger Darlington
This weekend, I took my two granddaughters (aged 8 and 3) to see the new animation movie “Abominable” and they loved it. They were able to identify with the young Chinese girl Yi, who lives in Shanghai, when she discovers a yeti on the roof of her apartment block and endeavours to return him to […]
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A review of the charming but poignant film “The Farewell”
October 20th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
This mostly Mandarin-speaking film is billed as “based on a true lie”. since it is the lightly-fictionalised experience of writer and director Chinese-American Lulu Wang. The lie in question is the deceit perpetrated by the family of Chinese grandmother Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen) when she is diagnosed with incurable lung cancer and given little time […]
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A review of the new Will Smith film “Gemini Man”
October 18th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Although this movie has had poor reviews, I wanted to see it, partly because I like Will Smith (and you get two of him here) and partly because there was location shooting in Cartagena, Colombia during my visit there last year (the other non-American location – Budapest, Hungary – is familiar to me too). Taiwanese […]
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Women substantially underrepresented in the movies both before and behind the camera
October 1st, 2019 by Roger Darlington
The Gina Davis Institute on Gender in Media has analysed the 56 top-grossing films of 2018 in 20 countries in North America, Scandinavia, Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe. Almost half of the characters across the films analysed, which collectively earned $21bn (£17bn) at the box office, were white. Only one of the 60 female […]
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What’s happening with the choice of baby names in England & Wales?
September 24th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Earlier this month, there Office of National Statistics (ONS) published its annual list for the choice of baby names last year. There are some interesting trends. First of all, astonishingly the most popular boys’ name and the most popular girls’ name are essentially the same (Oliver and Olivia) – what is technically known as cognates […]
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A review of the new science fiction movie “Ad Astra”
September 20th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
The technology of film-making is now so advanced that a good space movie can really put the viewer into the cosmos – think of “Gravity” for instance – and, if you can, you should should see “Ad Astra” in IMAX, as I did, because the visuals are simple stunning. An opening sequence on board an […]
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