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AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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Should I be watching Roses vs Quality Street: Chocolate Box Wars (Channel 5)? I'm not sure. I'm going to record it and make a decision after I've slept on it.
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Mick Harper
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I always start the New Year by watching Withnail and I to see how far I've come. Most heartening.
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Mick Harper
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Death in Bollywood (BBC-2)

A very strange tabloidish offering from BBC-2. Strange also because despite three hours being devoted to what was being presented as a murder mystery/ scandal/ whodunnit/ police procedural incompetence, it was obvious from very early on this was just a straightforward suicide by a disturbed young woman. She was not, it turned out, even very major in Bollywood terms. It also had a structural flaw since the deceased’s mother was the ‘star’ of the show and she was shudderingly unsympatico. Still it had its interest, sociologically speaking.

The chief of which was that the boyfriend who had dumped her but seemed otherwise entirely blameless, spent twenty-eight days in a maximum security prison and then seven years on probation (he still is) for inciting suicide. Blimey, you’d better watch yourself if you’re Jack the Lad on the sub-continent. The duty of care towards ex-girlfriends is for life.

The main thing though was how truly awful Bollywood films still are. Imagine that the British film industry was the biggest in the world but was still churning out Carry-On films. Now imagine that it was only churning out Carry-On films. That’s Bollywood.

Maybe that’s because India is stuck in the past. The deceased woman was considered beyond the pale for ‘ordinary’ parts because she showed some leg in her early roles. We’re not talking Barbara Windsor here. Just, you know, walking down Regent Street, dressing for a disco, on the beach in a bikini, normal. Still, a thousand million people can't be wrong.

Also, after sixty years, everybody is still mother-tongue fluent in English. What's that all about? What they need is a good dose of Hindu nationalism.
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Boreades


In: finity and beyond
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Mick Harper wrote:
[Also, after sixty years, everybody is still mother-tongue fluent in English. What's that all about? .


It has some advantages. Despite my best attempts, I still have a Day Job, and the person we turn to for proof-reading our works of fiction (project plans, requirements, technical designs, test plans, etc), to correct our grammar (and wot we rote), is a native of Uttar Pradesh.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uttar_Pradesh

He's also just passed hs British Citizenshiip test with flying colours, and knows more about British History than nearly everyone else I know (present company excepted)

https://britishcitizenshiptests.co.uk/life-in-the-uk-test-1/
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Everybody throws in "The Hustler" and its sequel "The Colour of Money" to their reviews of the "The Queens Gambit" which is only natural as the film and NetFlix series were based on novels by Walter Tevis. However, Wiley reckons, in spirit, the Netflix series draws on the largely forgotten "The Cincinnati Kid."

Anya Taylor-Joy, portrays Beth Harman an awkward orphaned, drug-loving, super cool chess genius who will either become an addict, go mad, conquer the world or maybe do all three at the same time. Anya plays it like Steve McQueen, by not wasting time on smart dialogue, instead she is focusing on chess books, chess boards and often simply just looking upwards, mentally calculating variations, after having taken drugs or alcohol. The camera leaves her to it, circling round a janitor's room, a university hall, a hotel interior, Beth collapsed drunk on the floor, and so on.

It is mainly about how Beth finds her only true family among the oddballs and obsessives, and the public fascination with young genius. It is strangly riveting.
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Mick Harper
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The problem with oddballs is that they are very dull people. By definition, because 'odd' means not-fitting in and not-fitting in means anti- or non-social, though there is a slight chicken-and-egg aspect to this. Their world is an internalised one. Public fascination is not with them but with their products. Watch any film/programme about writers, artists, moguls, psychopaths etc for proof. When such people gather together, the milieu can be interesting to watch but not to live in.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Correct, whilst events swirl around Beth, and the boys look on longingly, she is more concerned on going to bed with a copy of Modern Chess Openings.
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Yeah. Female chess geniuses. That's a thing.
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Boreades


In: finity and beyond
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I'm getting worried about Marcella.
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Grant



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Perhaps the only reason there are more male chess geniuses than female is that to get to be a master you must spend thousands of hours studying a board game. Few women are boring enough to do that
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Probably a similar reason why men don't get pregnant.
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Grant



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Ha ha, but there is a surprisingly strong correlation between how many chess players are men compared with women and the world rankings. To hit the top you must have an almost autistic obsession with a silly game from a preteen age. Few women have these obsessions. They really are better at multitasking, but the payback is they aren’t world class at anything. Apart from singing of course
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Boreades


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Marcella has clearly got some kinds of obsession(s), but it's not doing anything good for her health. How she survived the final climactic shootout (while all the other men dropped dead around her) was a triumph of scriptwriting over believability. But she did get to fly off into the sunset literally holding her new baby. It must have been the multitasking wot dunnit?
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Mick Harper
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Perhaps the only reason there are more male chess geniuses than female is that...

The AE principle is that you have to come up with a reason that puts men in a good light (or women in a bad light). There are eight billion people out there (and you in here) telling us reasons for the opposite. Of course there may not be such a reason, or you may not be able to think of one, but the AE principle that applies in that case is to say nothing. It's already been said eight billion times. And disagreed with by Ishmael eight billion times.
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Mick Harper
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McDonald & Dodds (ITV)

The new Sunday night police-procedural (OK-ish) featured some dialogue about the poem 'I met a man upon the stair'. A line from the poem -- "He wasn't there again today" -- was quoted by one of the 'tecs. It is also the opening chapter-title of our new book (more than OK-ish). Will everyone think we got it from an ITV cop show, and hence we should change it, or will nobody read the book anyway? These last-minute editorial decisions are murder.
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