A review of the 2017 film “Tulip Fever”
February 20th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Set in Amsterdam during the 17th century ‘tulip mania’, this is a romantic drama involving interconnecting relationships that looks splendid but suffers from excessive plotting.
A lot of talent went into the production of this film: it is based on a novel by Deborah Moggach and the script was co-written by her and Tom Stoppard; it has an ensemble cast including Alicia Vikander, Christoph Waltz, Judi Dench and Tom Hollander; and, although it was shot entirely in Britain, the sets and costumes create an authentic sense of time and place.
However, the work was beset with problems: both production and release were much delayed; once out, it lost a lot of money; and it was tainted by being one of the last products of The Weinstein Company.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Does the Earth need its own flag?
February 19th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Sounds like a good idea to me. But what would it look like?
You’ll find one possible design in this short piece.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
A review of the 2019 film “Last Christmas”
February 18th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
This is a Christmas rom-com with lots of singing by the late George Michael – hence the title – with the main roles being an elf in a Santa shop who has issues (the cute and talented Emilia Clarke) and her mysterious saviour on a bike rather than a horse (affable but bland Henry Golding). Emma Thompson co-wrote, co-produced and stars (as an eccentric Croatian mother).
It has to be one of the most sentimental films that I’ve seen – but I guess that you would have to be without a heart not to enjoy it at some level. It was recommended to me by a couple of women friends, because it is set in central London locations close to where I live, and I enjoyed spotting the familiar sights, but it is not really funny enough and I found the central proposition rather corny. Sorry, guys.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the new book “Bond Behind The Iron Curtain” by James Fleming
February 16th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
In October 1962, I was 14 when I went to see the new film “Dr No” which introduced me to James Bond aka special agent 007. For the next 60 years, I went to see each new Bond movie as it was released in a franchise which has now reached 25 outings for MI6’s top spy. Meanwhile, in my teenage years, I read all 14 of the Bond novels written by Ian Fleming.
It’s hard to believe now just how frenzied the media was for Bondmania. In the same month that the first Bond film was released, the world experienced the Cuban missile crisis which was about as hot as the Cold War became and Bondmania was very much a Western phenomenon with the films and books banned behind the Iron Curtain. And yet …
A nephew of Ian Fleming has now written a short but fascinating work which reveals that the Communist world was aware of the Bond phenomenon. Somehow, some months before the “Dr No” movie was released, a review of the film appeared in the Russian publication “Isvestiya” and Ian Fleming was so amused by this that he almost persuaded the publisher of his books to carry a translation of the review on the dust jacket of his next Bond book.
Although “Bond Behind the Iron Curtain” carries James Fleming’s name as the author, the majority of the 125 pages are not written by him but are translations of works from the mid 1960s in Russian, Czech and Polish.
The longest and most impressive of these foreign pieces is an excellent translation of a critical but erudite article by Maya Turovskaya that was published in the distinguished literary journal “Novy Mir” in 1966 which was arguably the height of the Bondmania.
Turovskaya had seen the first four Bond movies – “Dr No”, “From Russia With Love”, “Goldfinger” and “Thunderball” – and read the books on which these films were based and she wrote an incisive article that dissected the Bond phenomenon and placed it in a wide-ranging cultural context of the crime genre. Turovskaya saw enthusiasts for Bond as seeking “all that they lack in their dull and mediocre lives” and damned such enthusiasm as “compensation for the bourgeois inferiority complex” and “a form of narcotics for the senses”.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the 2019 film “21 Bridges”
February 13th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
The critics were quite hard on this movie but I found it entertaining enough. The plot centres on a New York Police Department detective on the hunt for two cop killers who persuades the authorities to close all the bridges from Manhattan for the night in order to track down the villains. Of course, there are complications along the way in an action-packed hour and a half or so.
What, I guess, elevates the film is the casting of Chadwick Boseman as the principled crusader. This was the last of Boseman’s work to be released before he died from cancer and reminds us what a really talented actor he was. Support roles are filled by Sienna Miller and J.K. Simmons adding to the film’s watchability.
In fact, while there are 21 connections in and out of Manhattan, only 17 of these are actually bridges, the remaining four being tunnels. Also, although there are some fine aerial shots of Manhattan, the film was shot on the streets of Philadelphia.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the new Spanish film “Parallel Mothers”
February 11th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
I’ve seen a number of art house films recently which characteristically were very slow and very opaque. So it was a not-so-guilty pleasure to view “Parallel Mothers” which moves at pace and has a clear narrative. Of course, I would have expected nothing less from the Spanish master Pedro Almodóvar both wrote and directed this wonderful movie.
For the eight time, Almodóvar cast his favourite actor, the beautiful and ever so talented Penélope Cruz. She plays the lead role of Janis, a middle-aged woman who finds herself unexpectedly pregnant and befriends a teenager Ana (the ingénue Milena Smit) who is having her baby in the same hospital at the same time.
It is a moving tale of love and loss, at both a very personal level of two first-time mothers facing emotional challenge and at a societal level of a country coming to terms with the horrors of a civil war still raw and recent. Except for the final sequences, the dialogue is constant so there are a lot of sub-titles but the viewer still needs to savour Almodóvar’s trademark use of vibrant colour.
This is a gay director who loves working with women and giving them strong roles and there is only one significant male character (Israel Elejalde), but he is kindly and has a significant part in both the personal and the political levels of the story.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
I hope the Russians love their children too
February 11th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of “The Other” by Ryszard Kapuściński (2008)
February 10th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
In so many disciplines – philosophy, anthropology, psychology, sociology, politics – there is a fundamental difference between the Self and the Other. This slim volume of just 80 pages of text on the Other brings together an English translation of six thoughtful and enlightened lectures and essays by the renowned Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński with an introduction by Scottish journalist Neal Ascherson.
There are many ways of distinguishing the Other and Kapuściński focuses on race, nationality and religion, while other ways would include gender, sexual orientation, and ableism.
Kapuściński (1932-2007) travelled extensively in Africa, Asia and Latin America and this book critiques the Western idea of the Other: the non-European and non-American idea that the Other is inferior and indeed dangerous. This Western-centric approach has been increasingly challenged as, in the second half of the 20th century, two-thirds of the world’s population was liberated from colonial dependency and as, since the advent of modern electronic communications, the word of nations has become a global village.
Kapuściński subscribed to the view that “there are no superior or inferior cultures – there are just different cultures which satisfy the needs and expectation of their members in different ways”.
Kapuściński underlines that fundamentally there are three possibilities when a man encounters the Other: “he could choose war, he could fence himself behind a war, or he could start up a dialogue”. He views it as a moral imperative to take the last of these three courses – to engage in dialogue wherever and whenever possible.
I am with Kapuściński on this which is why I love living in a city like London, travelling to other countries, and learning about other cultures.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
So when will Boris Johnson actually leave 10 Downing Street?
February 10th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
For months now, almost every day has seen a new scandal associated with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Government. Surely his time is up?
Last weekend, I had a friendly bet with a good friend. My friend said that Johnson would be gone by Wednesday, but I thought that he wouldn’t. So it’s Thursday and Johnson is still in No 10.
I rarely make political predictions and, when I do, I’m usually wrong = but let me try …
I think that Johnson is going to survive the Metropolitical Police enquiries and the Sue Grey report, but that the killer blow will be the local government elections when Tory MPs will finally understand that Johnson is now a vote-loser big time.
So I venture to suggest that Boris will announce his departure some time over the weekend of 6-8 May. Let’s see …
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
How did the Third World War begin?
February 9th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
The key event was the Moscow Conference of 2022.
After months of Russian troop build-ups on the borders of Ukraine, a conference to resolve the crisis was convened in Moscow. It was the proposal of the two western attendees: French President Emmanuel Macron, who was about to face a re-election battle, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was under heavy attack domestically for his flouting of covid rules. The eastern attendees were Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose massive military forces stood ready to invade Ukraine, and the Chinese President Xi Jinping, who was encouraged to be there by the French and British who thought that he would be a restraining influence on Putin.
Representatives of the Ukrainian Government were in a Moscow hotel but Ukraine was not represented at the conference. All the four attendees judged that having the Ukrainians there would make it harder to reach an agreement.
In fact, the Moscow Agreement was concluded quickly. It was determined that Russia would occupy the swath of Ukraine located between the Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, and the Donbas region, already occupied by Russian-backed insurgents. Putin insisted that this would be the limit of his territorial aspirations. Pressure from France, Britain, Germany and the USA forced the Ukrainians not to oppose this further occupation in the interests of world peace.
Less than a year later, however, Russian forces occupied the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv which was only a short distance from the Russian military and the whole country rapidly came under Russian control. NATO forces did not intervene on the grounds that Ukraine was not a member of NATO.
Another year later, Russia occupied the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and took over the eastern half of Poland including the capital Warsaw. These four countries were NATO members, but American public opinion – still substantially influenced by the failed invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq – was overwhelmingly opposed to the United States entering a third European war and the US Congress and even President Joe Biden did not feel able to act against such opinion as they approached the elections of 2024.
Emboldened by Russia’s success, President Xi mobilised air, land, and sea forces to take the island of Taiwan which had been an integral part of China until the end of the Second World War. Both political and public opinion in the US viewed this Chinese threat as different from the Russian aggression. It was seen as a key move in China’s wish to replace the USA as the leading global power and as such it was to be opposed. The US Navy immediately deployed a large battle group close to Taiwan.
A crisis conference was convened in Washington DC between the Americans and the Chinese. Senior Chinese diplomats attended the event and insisted that President Xi wished to resolve the crisis peacefully. While the conference was still sitting, China launched a hypersonic missile attack on the US fleet which largely obliterated it. Next day, it launched an amphibious attack on Taiwan.
Over the next few days, China’s success was the green light for North Korea to invade South Korea and for Pakistan to invade India’s part of Kashmir.
And so the Third World War began …
This scenario is not a prediction. It is a warning.
If you know something about the outbreak of the Second World War, the scenario may bring to mind certain events from 1938-1941. It is meant to do so – for two reasons.
First, it should be a reminder that the Munich Agreement of 1938 should never have been instigated and signed by Britain and France. The Czechoslovaks should have been supported in resisting a Nazi invasion. The Agreement did not buy us time to re-arm as suggested by the new film “Munich: The Edge Of War”.
Second, it should be a reminder that, the sooner one stands up against a totalitarian regime intent on creating a ‘sphere of influence’ by military force, the better. We cannot change history; we can shape the future.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (6)