Archive for August, 2021
How many covid deaths have there been now?
August 31st, 2021 by Roger Darlington
Each evening on the BBC’s News At Ten”, it announces the latest daily death toll but, for a long time now, it has failed to mention the total number of deaths. That figure for the UK, as of today, is 132,485. That’s almost twice the number of non-combatants killed in this country in the Second […]
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A review of the 2018 film “Destroyer”
August 30th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
This is a police thriller with a difference: the protagonist, a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department, is a woman – brilliantly played by Nicole Kidman – and the director is also a woman – Karyn Kusama whose partner Phil Hay is co-writer. The narrative centres around two bank robberies with many of the […]
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Statistic of the day: of 4.8 billion Covid vaccine doses delivered around the world to date, around 75% have gone to just 10 countries
August 26th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
The statistics are stark and shaming. During an exasperated intervention earlier this week, the World Health Organization’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, pointed out that of 4.8bn Covid vaccine doses delivered around the world to date, around 75% have gone to just 10 countries. The level of vaccine donations from richer countries, he added with some understatement, has been […]
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A review of the new movie “Free Guy”
August 23rd, 2021 by Roger Darlington
If you’ve never played a video game (I haven’t), you might struggle to work out what’s going on in the beginning of this movie. So it helps to know that it opens inside a video game where the human players are represented by characters with sunglasses and all the other figures are what are called […]
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A review of the 2018 film “All Is True”
August 20th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
It was a brave man who thought that a commercially successful film – as opposed to a reasonably appealing play – could be made about the last three years of the life of English playwright William Shakespeare during which time he retired to his home in Stratford-upon-Avon, wrote nothing, and further ruminated on the death […]
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The first reviews for my book of short stories
August 19th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
“Very good read witty & easy to read.” “Would buy his books again.” “Excellent and easily readable. Highly recommended!”. “An excellent read, thoughtful and very well written.” This is what they are writing on Amazon about my book of short stories titled “The Rooms In My Mind”. If you haven’t purchased it yet or think […]
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Word of the day: larking
August 19th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
Larking is the art of looking for the little treasures that are all around us, on beaches (beachlarking), in fields (fieldlarking), at home (houselarking and gardenlarking) and of course mudlarking in rivers, especially on the River Thames, next to which I live.
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A review of the 2016 political thriller “Miss Sloane”
August 19th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
This film is a terrific reminder of a lesson too often forgotten in the world of movies: a really good film has to start with a really good script. Amazingly, the scriptwriter in this case, the British Jonathan Perera, had never written a film before this one which won him Best Screenplay from the Writers’ […]
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As we debate the admission of Afghan refugees, I’m reminded of the Evian Conference of 1938
August 18th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
The Évian Conference was convened 6–15 July 1938 at Évian-les-Bains, France, to address the problem of German and Austrian Jewish refugees wishing to flee persecution by Nazi Germany. It was the initiative of United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt who perhaps hoped to obtain commitments from some of the invited nations to accept more refugees, although he took pains to avoid stating […]
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Ever heard of Sobibor?
August 16th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
Sobibor was a Nazi concentration camp in German-occupied Poland where, on 14 October 1943, there was a mass break-out of the 600 prisoners, some 300 managing to escape but only around 60 succeeding in avoiding recapture. This remarkable story is told in a 1987 film with a cast including Alan Arkin and Rutger Hauer which […]
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