God this is terrible. Saved only by Ian Holm and Ralph Fiennes’ performances. Ghastly London yuppies do horrible things to each other and then get into trouble. All of the characters (the neurotic gallery owner with self-esteem issues, the high flying lawyer, the whoring judge and his Chelsea wife, the “sensitive” gay art historian, and the sleazy journalist and his ball busting editor) are unlikeable, cliched parodies, and as you watch them wallow in their shallow, pitiful privileged lives, you can’t wait for them to meet their fates. Then, the film resolves itself and seems to say that it doesn’t matter about an individuals moral and ethical actions, it’s love that gets us through. Stand by your man and it’ll all come out in the wash. Lots of references to various art genres litter the film, but it’s done so clumsily and obviously, that you come away from the film feeling insulted and patronised. AND one of the main story lines about a social worker and an unidentified Eastern European prostitute going into hiding from the authorities, really shows how little research was done into what social workers actually do and how economic migration and sexual exploitation really damages people. Let’s not even mention the homo/paedo storyline that runs alongside the main narrative – it’s so hackneyed that all I could do was cringe. Don’t waste your time watching this one, it’s a real stinker.

This is what film-making/cinema is supposed to be about: an interrogation of truth, myth, politics and identity intertwined with narratives about the Armenian genocide and our attempts to make sense of modernity. A rare film of heart and soul well worth two hours of your time.

More ideas here in two minutes than many directors have in a whole career. Excellent.

In “Coercion: the persuasion professionals and why we listen to what they say”, Douglas Rushkoff analyses the ways in which we are manipulated and coerced by real and virtual commercial environments, and in turn the way in which these techniques are impacting on our understandings of society and citizenship.

Taking a number of examples such as “atmospherics” (the architecture and setting of the mall), “spectacle” (the psychological use of overwhelming environments to create confusion and passivity), public relations, pyramids and virtual marketing, Rushkoff creates a scary roadmap of modern life.

He refers to the Gruen Transfer, which is the intentional disorientation of the consumer in order to render them powerless in the face of advertising and marketing, and then expands upon this by looking at the World Wide Web and the ways in which demographers, marketers and psychologists are zoning in more and more on our individual desires and then marketing them back to us.

Published in 2000, Rushkoff’s protrait of the internet is pre Web 2.0, but spot on in its dissection of the “myths” of the internet, and how these were articulated by free-market experts and propagated by the bods at “Wired” magazine, in order to frighten people into a narrow usage of the potentially liberating medium of the internet itself.

The book ends with Rushkoff arguing that people will seek out alternative, non-commercialised spaces in which to form communities and this is a return to the original founding ethos of the internet itself.

It’s a great read, and offers up some fascinating insights into this heavily mediated logo saturated environment we find ourselves in today.

And still it twists and turns! More psychologically unsettling than series 2, Lost 3 delivers the goods again. One of the most exciting shows I’ve watched in a long time, a truly ambitious multi-levelled narrative continues to unspool, playing games with time, space and reality. The final episode really puts the cat amongst the pigeons too… Now I’ve just gotta stay alive for Season 4…

it’s darker, grimier and altogether more cyberpunkier than the original versions. It’s one of the most immersive films I’ve ever seen and blew me away when I first saw it at the cinema all those years ago. Finally restored to its original structure and format, dumping the hideous voiceover and all the other gimmicky things used to make it easier to view, Bladerunner creates its own world and references lots of noir and expressionist films. Rachel is perhaps one of the saddest characters ever to grace a cinema screen as she realises that her whole identity is founded on a fiction.

This really is cinema as high art and should be viewed immediately if you have never seen it before, preferably on a huge screen with a kick ass sound system.

This is a really great book which has been produced with much love and care. Fantastic, beautiful illustrations, spectacularly detailed information and more photography than you can shake a stick at. Perfect for any Zygoptera or Anisoptera fans in your life.

a tricky one to pass a love it/hate it view upon, as the content is so repellent. Yet the film making, direction and technical innovation are a marvel.

Riefenstahl certainly made a deal with the devil for her art.

“TAKING LIBERTIES is a shocking but hilarious polemic documentary that charts the destruction of all your Basic Liberties under 10 Years of New Labour. Released to coincide with Tony Blair’s departure, the film and the book follow the stories of normal people who’s lives have been turned upside down by injustice – from being arrested for holding a placard outside parliament to being tortured in Guantanamo Bay.

THIS IS WHAT YOU DON’T READ IN THE PAPERS!
THIS IS WHAT YOU DON’T SEE ON TV!
AND IT’S HAPPENING TO YOU!”

http://www.noliberties.com/

I love, Love, LOVE this album! It’s literate, ironic, snidey smart-ass jazz-rock made by obsessive world-weary New Yorker/LA burn outs. I must have played it about a thousand times, and still I return and just let its molten, aural smoothness flood into my ears and massage my brain.