Rob Fisher, another occasional commenter at our threads who has his own blog, has this to say about a new TV show about border security guards (yes, that’s right). On the basis of his comment, I think I will be watching the rest of Mad Men instead.
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I bought a number of pirated DVD’s in Malaysia recently and they all include unskippable piracy messages at the start. … – A commenter, who unsurprisingly preferred to remain anonymous, contributes to a discussion about how the crap at the beginning of legally purchased DVDs makes pirated DVDs, provided they are of sufficient quality, a happier watching experience. Not always, it would seem. I now copy all my DVDs from the television. February 19th, 2010 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Over at the Adam Smith Institute blog is this nice item on a recent performance of s Tom Stoppard play, touching on the themes of oppression under the old Soviet Union. Apparently, as the ASI commenter notes, this makes some theatre reviewers a bit sniffy, since all this stuff about the USSR is so, well, dated, dahling. As the blog points out, it is not. The kind of issues that arose under the Soviet Empire are as relevant now as they were during the Cold War. Some of the names have changed a bit, that’s all. Talking of dramatists, here is an old post of mine about David Mamet, who has had a bit of a Road to Damascus political conversion. February 17th, 2010 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Read about it here. Victorious Afghan Hamid Hassan blogs about it here:
Gradually? I thought Rocky did it with one fight. Seriously though, it’s fun to see a guy so gripped by the American ideal of the common man excelling, and as a result … defeating America. The way Hamid Hassan writes about Rocky and Silvester Stallone and so on makes me also think of this piece, about how the imminent decline into relative insignificance of the USA is once again being oversold, in which Joshua Kurlantzick says:
Although my part of the blogosphere is very anti-Obama just now, what with Obama seemingly hell-bent on ruining the USA’s economy, the rise of Obama to being President of the USA must look like a very similar kind of story to Rocky, if you are someone like Hamid Hassan. February 11th, 2010 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
This is an amazing example of one those archetypal political processes, which happens when a regime that still commands the present nevertheless manages to lose all control of the future:
Recently a posting of mine here about an SD card was honoured by a re-run in the comments of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch, where they take it in turns to boast with ever greater ferocity about the awfulness of their childhoods, or in this case about the vast expense and extreme non-capaciousness of their very first hard discs. You mean you had a hard disc? – We dreamed of having a hard disc, etc. Soon, Iran will be entertained with similar jokery, in which Four Iranian Ex-Oppositionists indulge in similarly competitive boasting about their hellish sufferings under the previous regime, thereby justifying their subsequent social and political elevation. Sadly, they may not need to exaggerate. February 11th, 2010 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
By the way, here is an old post I did about a superb spoof on 1970s education programmes, which convey a similar sort of feel to some of those old Cold War public information items. February 10th, 2010 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
We should not forget, here in the UK, that dislike of the state-financed broadcasting network of the BBC has been going on for some time. Here is Kingsley Amis, the author and lecturer, writing in 1984:
The point, however, is that the focus on entertainment has arguably increased since the late Mr Amis wrote those words back in the era of Mrs Thatcher. As a consequence, the paternalistic intentions of the creators of the BBC have been frustrated to a remarkable degree. When Amis commented on the BBC, he at least was part of a country in which it was assumed that the BBC’s controllers felt that they had some sort of mission to educate and inform – not that this justified coercive funding even then. But the paternalism was at least fairly blatant. Now even that sense of mission appears to be more evident in the breach rather than the observance. The contradictions posed by the BBC’s funding model are unendurable. The quote is taken from The Amis Collection, page 257, published in 1990. I am not sure if the book is still in print. January 26th, 2010 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
“The final irony, of course, is that this entrancing vision of prelapsarian innocence is the product of the most ruthless and sophisticated money-machine the world has ever seen. With a budget of $237 million and with takings already at £1 billion, this exquisite capitalist guilt trip represents one of the great triumphs of capitalism.” – Boris Johnson, in fine form today, on the movie Avatar. I wonder if his mockery of Eden-worship among prosperous, middle and upper class Westerners is a veiled dig at David Cameron. I am still trying to find a spare evening to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie. It may not be for purists, but it sounds terrific. I don’t think I will waste my cash on Mr Cameron’s (no relation to the Tory Party leader) latest flick. January 25th, 2010 | 47 comments - (Comments are closed)
Elvis would have been 75 today. I remember the day he died, and he was a megastar way before I was a twinkle in my mother’s eye. But I watched a couple of TV shows last night about him, featuring some of his performances, and even with the grainy old TV, some of that amazing charisma comes across. January 8th, 2010 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
I pretty much endorse this list, over at Big Hollywood, of the 10 worst films of the past 10 years, although I am sure Samizdata readers will come up with some more for their own lists. I did not see No Old Country For Old Men, which is one of the derided films on the list, but the way that certain reviewers wrote about it, meant I just knew it was the sort of pretentious, nihilistic waste of several hours that the writer in the article I have linked to said it was. Plus I happen to think the Coen brothers are a bit over-rated anyway, although I quite enjoyed Fargo. As for the best 10 films of the past decade, name your choices. For my part, I would say that two films I saw last year – The Wrestler and Gran Torino – deserve to be on such a list. Here are my other choices: The Aviator – the biopic of Howard Hughes. Serenity – Okay, it helps to have seen the Firefly TV series first, but even so, a fine film. Casino Royale – Despite some flaws, it marked a triumphant reboot of 007 on the screen. Ian Fleming would have approved. Sideways – A funny comedy set in California’s wine country. My tour of Napa and Sonoma was not quite as eventful. Spirited Away – Proof that Miyazaki remains one of the world’s greatest animators and film artists. The Incredibles – I loved this film and much of its sense of life. The “designer” character is a hilarious combo of fashionista and Ayn Rand. Gladiator – “Upon my signal, unleash hell”. The film that made Russell Crowe a megastar. The Lives of Others – Brilliant film set in former East Germany, demonstrating the utter evil that is done in the name of the “surveillance state”. January 3rd, 2010 | 56 comments - (Comments are closed)
 (1) A Cathay Pacific Flight between Hong Kong and Sydney – July 1987 Michael’s mother: “I would like a Coke” (2) An expat bar in Maputo, Mozambique – February 2007. Michael: “Two-Em”, please. Michael points to a beer tap marked “2M”. Of course, the name of the beer is actually pronounced “Dos-Em”, this being a Portuguese speaking country. The number “Two” is understood, as English is probably the predominant language spoken by expats in Maputo, which is unsurprising given the nature of the world and the proximity to South Africa. However, the beer is named “Dos-Em”. That is different. Two beers are thus placed in front of Michael. He smiles, and hands over a large enough banknote to pay for both of them. (3) A (literally) underground music club, Cluj-Napoca, Romania – December 2009. A heavy metal band has been followed by a slightly less heavy metal guitar band with a (good) female lead singer. This is definitely Dale Amon’s sort of place. Michael is sitting at a table. He is approached by a waitress. Michael: “Timisoreana, thanks”. Timisoreana is a beer from the beautiful city of Timisoara, perhaps a hundred klicks away, but the beer is widely available throughout Transylvania. This sort of thing might happen slightly less frequently if I were not a monolingual Anglophone. Or perhaps not. And if it did, I am not sure if it would make things more or less fun. But I love traveling, and one of the most important principles of my kind of traveling is that it is important to have mastered the ancient Confucian principle of going with the flow. And the problem of having accidentally purchased two beers instead of one is generally a relatively easy one to deal with. December 1st, 2009 | 38 comments - (Comments are closed)
Anything that p*sses off the mad mullahs is worth seeing twice in my book. In addition to seeing cool special effects you can set 10th century heads spinning in blind hatred as you enjoy a doomsday fantasy! November 20th, 2009 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
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