MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 
AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)
Reply to topic Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3 ... 103, 104, 105 ... 145, 146, 147  Next
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

The Newsreader (BBC-2)

This is a very rum offering. First off, it's an Australian version of Broadcast News, a terrific 1987 American film. A very limp version. News studios on-the-job always makes for watchable viewing -- and does here -- but the sub-soap, in your own time, stuff is close to unwatchable. They're not Jason'n'Kylie. But that's not why I'm drawing this to the AEL's attention.

Why is it on BBC-2? This is pure BBC1. Almost but not quite straight to BBC cable. My theory is that post-Netflix (rather than post-Covid) the BBC is forced to a) keep the big stuff on BBC1 and b) use BBC-2 for the non-big stuff. BBC-2 is supposed to be for high-brow drama but high-brow cannot be catered for now that great tranches of licence-payers have gone off to explore the wonders of subscription-services. In case you hadn't noticed, BBC-4 is getting increasing dollops of high-brow drama in the guise of tie-ins with documentaries. Certainly The Newsreader doesn't qualify as above low-to-middlebrow.

Something to watch out for. The BBC is a barrel of snakes unless you shoot their heads off as they try to slither away from licence commitments.
Send private message
Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
View user's profile
Reply with quote

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UqV_5rVTNc

Guitar paradigm shift.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

I don't understand why she isn't (a) a man and (b) a flamenco dancer. I was doing all this after half an hour with Bert Weedon.

Only kidding, triff.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

An interesting discussion on Newsnight about the forthcoming Anglican Synod on gay marriage. None of them pointed out that the Bible expressly forbids same sex nookie of any sort, never mind marriage. But the Church of England has never had a lot of time for God's opinion on anything. And quite rightly so. He is far too other-worldly.

The really electrifying news was that Toronto has three bishops. I know where I'm headed now that I've had the unofficial word that my own advancement here in the diocese of London is unlikely to get much beyond night deacon at St Jude's, Ladbroke Grove. But of course there has been a vacancy in the AEL hierarchy at Toronto for some time now so I may have to go in for some informal simony.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

I was given a new lease of life when the Virgin man came and took my 100% full digibox away and gave me a fresh 0% digibox. With one bound, I was free! I danced around the flat, joy unconfined. It goes without saying that I haven't missed any of the 1000 hours (or whatever it is) of recorded but unwatched programmes (whatever they were). At last, I said to myself, I can really get down to all those marginal programmes I had been meaning to watch but was too nervous of the 100% limit to risk recording.

Now after a month of bliss, I am up to 30% and all the old torments are starting to return. My current dilemma is whether to embark on recording the entire back catalogue of Wycliffe. The plotlines, the pacing and the acting is hewn out of Cornish granite. I suppose I'll have to but I'm not happy about it.

After that I really will apply some discipline. I have no intention of mortgaging my future to Virgin upgrades.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Europe's Most Dangerous Man: Otto Skorzeny in Spain Netflix

An excellent -- and not unimportant - Spanish documentary, spoiled by Netflix not only declining to set the voice-over in English but over-dubbing English-speaking talking heads.

I judged it reliable apart from the twenty-second foray into 'Did Skorzeny organise the Kennedy assassination?' and him being recruited by the CIA. (Though he was recruited by Mossad.) He was certainly a big figure in various post-war operations that need wider publicity though the most important of his wartime exploits was not the much-trumpeted rescue of Mussolini in 1943 but his activities in Budapest in 1944 which played a part in the many hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews ceasing to have a charmed wartime existence. Existence. They would now be the only major representative of European Jewry if one or two cards had fallen the other way.

From a historiographical perspective the most significant thing was that Skorzeny's papers were turned down by any number of institutions and were finally 'rescued' by an American war buff. Why this is important is because it shows that liberalism was already infecting history. The academic libraries won't touch Nazi stuff, however important they are to history, yet pay stupendous sums for the collected scribblings of unimportant but respectable people.
Send private message
Grant



View user's profile
Reply with quote

Not just history. I’m always disappointed when I visit Duxford, the flying war museum. It’s great to see the Hurricanes and Spitfires but where are the Me262s?
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

No, that's life. But since you raise the topic, the Anglo-Americans would have won the Korean War if they had just started building Me-262's instead of Meteors and Shooting Stars. It took until the Sabre for the swept-wing penny to drop.
Send private message
Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Shtisel Netflix

It's set in an ultra orthodox, super strict haredi community within a Jerusalem ghetto.

You start by thinking it's going to be about the son, the gentle, child-like artistic Akiva, throwing off his father's oprressive expectations, but the show soon confounds you. Nobody will break out. Nobody wants to. Every family member, is struggling to maintain appearances within the gheto despite the fact they are, say, enduring a heartbreaking relationship breakdown, they are a relative entering a care home or a father adjusting to the loss of his wife.

When Akiva is going on an arranged meeting, with a beautiful prospective future wife, the young rabbi truthfully breaks the news they will be living with his father,"he will live to 120 God willing". Both humour and pathos. That's it.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

How strange. I rushed off to watch it on your recommendation only to find I was halfway through the first episode from an immemorial time ago and must have stopped watching it because it was rubbish. Or something, who can say? I have no recollection of it whatsoever. Now, I found it utterly captivating. But only presumably because you had given it your imprimatur. I find this unnerving. Do I have no cultural backbone of my own? Where will it end?

Is it all right if I have fishfingers and chips tonight?
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

I am giving a (very small) shout out to Shaolin Soccer. They're making great strides with the beautiful game in China. Though connecting with opponents' faces at the end of it is presently frowned upon by those stick-in-the-muds on the FIFA Rules Committee.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

A Short History of the Moors (Netflix)

I haven't watched it but the interesting thing is the use of the term Moors. I have never known this to be used in any historical context, only literary and architectural ones. Shakespeare and whatnot. In view of the distaste felt in some quarters for Arabs and Muslims this may be a sign of the times.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Who Stole Tamara Ecclestone's Diamonds? (BBC-1 from BBC-3)

An exceptionally interesting programme prompting the following questions

1. Why had I never heard of any of these high crimes and misdemeanours?
2. Why did no-one mention that all the crims were Romanies?
3. Who is Tamara Ecclestone's plastic surgeon?
4. Why didn't the Ecclestones insure their twenty-six million pounds worth of jewellery?
5. What is the point of silent alarms if Frank Lampard can lose his goodies and the baddies get away even though the police were alerted?
6. Why was this complex and high value crime apparently in the hands of a detective-constable?
7. Why are the most successful criminals always complete eejits?
8. Why does it take 'the best crime-fighting unit there is' to make a complete balls-up of putting them away?
9. Why is Serbia prepared to suffer the obloquy of at least two NATO countries keeping the criminal mastermind safe?
10. There is a tenth -- as there always has to be under AEL rules -- but I'm damned if I can think of it right now.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Recalculating Art (BBC Radio 4)

At auction, art by women sells for just 10% of the price by men. To untangle this mystery, Mary Ann Sieghart enters a thrilling world o...

Of what? The thrilling thing to me is how they resolve, on the one hand, male art should by rights outsell female art but, on the other hand, the price of art is so subjective... it ought not to by now.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

This is a variation on the 'symphony orchestra test'. Women vastly outnumber men when it comes to people entering the classical music profession via music colleges and have done for many years. Yet men still vastly outnumber women in symphony orchestras.

The real question though is whether the experience of attending symphony concerts is the same when the orchestra consists of men with a sprinkling of women or women with a sprinkling of men.
Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3 ... 103, 104, 105 ... 145, 146, 147  Next

Jump to:  
Page 104 of 147

MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group