Category Archives: Politics
September 12, 2011 Kill BBC4
By Niall Anderson Do you remember the furore when BBC Knowledge was axed? Were you part of the protest? Here was a channel dedicated to the purest Reithian ideal. It had science documentaries, serious arts coverage, challenging first-run drama and comedy. It ran twenty-four hours a day. It had recognisable anchors and presenters. Now its [...]
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- Posted under Politics, Television
September 6, 2011 Friends Like These . . .
In the second of an occasional series of what is basically an angry man baying at the moon, Caulorlime, the foul-mouthed English teacher, turns his attention to television advertising. My wife once bought me a Fawcett Society “This is what a feminist looks like” T-shirt. It doesn’t fit any more, which is good as I [...]
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- Posted under Politics, Television
August 30, 2011 Shake Your Money Maker
MarvMarsh looks at the history of big finance on screen Gordon Gekko; Larry the Liquidator; the Duke brothers. They may sound like professional wrestlers but what they actually are is nothing like as honest and noble. They are cinema’s money men. The people at the top of the writhing pile of maggots that is the [...]
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- Posted under Classic Films, Cult Movies, Film Making, Politics
August 2, 2011 New Art Galleries: Remaking Margate
Ann Jones introduces the first of an occasional series about new art galleries. Over the last couple of decades art has acquired an unprecedented audience in Britain. Blockbuster museum shows still draw big crowds but contemporary art also pulls in visitors in huge numbers and the London art market is thriving – in so far [...]
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- Posted under Art, Politics
July 11, 2011 The land of the Bolsheviks: early Soviet cinema at the BFI
BY JOSEPHINE GRAHL How would you go about making film propaganda in support of a new, revolutionary state? The Russian revolution coincided with the rise of the cinema as mass entertainment, a cultural development which didn’t escape the attention of Lenin or the Soviet bureaucracy. In the 1920s, the Soviet film industry was state-sponsored and [...]
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- Posted under Classic Films, Film Festivals, MF Recommends, Politics
June 2, 2011 Art and the Political Message: Ai Weiwei and Peter Kennard
by Ann Jones In the film that accompanied his Sunflower Seeds installation in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, Ai Weiwei says that he wants “people who don’t understand art to understand what I am doing”. In his recent book @earth, Peter Kennard has attempted communication that is purely visual: barring the title, the book [...]
Tags: Ai Weiwei, Peter Kennard
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- Posted under Art, Politics
June 1, 2011 Osama bin Laden – Michael Bay’s Biggest Fan
by Preposition Joe It’s simultaneously too horrible to say aloud, and too obvious to ignore. Osama Bin Laden based the 9/11 attacks on the films of Michael Bay. Perhaps that’s not fair. He based 9/11 on the films of Michael Bay, and the films of Roland Emmerich and Mimi Leder. And possibly Tim Burton too. [...]
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- Posted under Politics
