2458 days ago
The magazine written for millennial women, Marie Claire, has slated the film Dunkirk. This time it is not about its factual accuracy in having a male and white cast. This slating from the liberal media is even dafter. The tweet below says all you need to know about this 80 year old market leading title which, a former editor stated "is read by intelligent women who are in tune with global issues." You have got to be kidding.
2459 days ago
It was off to the cinema today with Joshua for a mother and baby screening at the Watershed cinema in Bristol. This is the uber PC movie theatre which is oft praised by the Guardian and likes to show the sort of utterly shite films that the Guardian loves but which would make any right minded person either puke or fall asleep or both. Remember The Lobster - the worst film of 2015? Watershed audiences loved it.
2519 days ago
I would like to see a low tax small state Britain. Sadly that dream is not shared by any of the money tree worshipping political parties but I can still hope. Instinctively that makes me view HMRC as the pantomime villain, a body to be hissed and booed whenever it comes on stage to try and get more cash out of hard working folks. But in the case of HMRC vs Gary Lineker, the jug eared virtue signalling poseur, I will not be warning Mr Walker's Crisps that "he's behind you", I cheer on the taxman at every turn.
3389 days ago
Yes I saw this film last night. It was long and boring and you might think that it was a documentary about life today in South Wales. It was of course part 3 of the Hobbit. I loved the book as a kid but the film sucks.
It is ching, ching, ring every last penny out of the franchise. The Hobbit could have been made as a one or plausibly two part tale. Three parts is all about the money. I am just maxed out on Middle Earth battles where the good guys are outnumbered, start heroically but then face defeat, then launch a fight back, then face defeat and they are finally saved by a last minute intervention. That is the way of all Middle Earth battles in this six film franchise.
I still fancy far too many elfish women for my own good but this is a film to dodge.
3735 days ago
Sitting on a train on my way to inflicting misery on my daughter by taking her to Upton Park, I am thinking of last night’s film. But first one I saw the other day: Mandela. As those who have read my articles will know, the man is a hero of mine so I suppose it is hard for me to view the film entirely objectively. But it was wonderful.
There may be some younger readers who forget that Mandela (reluctantly) found himself and the ANC engaging in acts of terror in the early 1960s. There were those on the right who branded Mandela a terrorist as a result. I suppose a Gandhi- style campaign of passive resistance might have been more desirable. However, the Apartheid regime in South Africa was a lot more evil and heavy handed than the British in India. The Mandela defence of “just cause” is not something I feel uncomfortable with. The film begs the question and allows each of us to answer it.
The two things about Mandela which make him truly remarkable were his willingness to admit to his failings as a man and his unbelievable power of forgiveness to those who had locked him up and made his life hell for 30 years. It was the latter that give South Africa a chance to heal its wounds and move forward.
Mandela insisted that his biography, upon which the film was based, did not airbrush out his failings. How many other world leaders would have behaved thus? The lamentable (BBC) aspect to coverage of the death of this great man was that it attempted to portray him as a saint, whiter than the driven snow. Mandela did not view himself in that way which makes him all the more of an amazing human being. It is a subtlety some missed.
As to the forgiveness,
3832 days ago
Hopeful that at last she was taking me to see the new film about James Hunt – Rush, I started to get excited. Er no. Instead what was on offer was at the local art-house, a documentary about Stewart Hall. The bloke from it’s a knockout who is currently in the nonces wing in a prison up North? No.
Apparently the other Stewart Hall is one of the most influential sociology lecturers of the past fifty years, with particular expertise in explaining the phenomena of multiculturalism from a socialist perspective.
Hmmm. Sounds like a fascinating fellow but I think that I will pass I said. The woman formerly known as the deluded lefty understood.
