Friday, 24 October 2008

Burn After Reading

We finally got to go to the arts cinema, Cinema City, in Norwich the night before last and it was a pretty good experience.
 
We went to see Burn After Reading, the latest Coen Brothers film starring George Clooney and the enigmatic John Malkovich. I don’t think it was quite as good as No Country For Old Men and it certainly wasn’t quite as blood-thirsty but a good film all the same. There are some people that would claim that ‘American Intelligence’ is an oxymoron and having known someone that worked ‘in intelligence’ for the USAF I would subscribe to that view wholeheartedly. The film’s blurb claims that ‘Intelligence is relative’ and the film starts with John Malkovich’s character being ‘offered’ a demotion within the CIA. The demotion is brought about due to his alleged ‘drink problem’. There’s a great riposte from John’s character at this point when he says to his accuser, “you’re a Mormon. Against you everybody has a drink problem!”


The film revolves mainly around Clooney and Malkovich who could well be described as ‘rivals in love’, but as with all good Coen Brothers films there are several plots and sub-plots intertwined. It’s an amusing film with some well written comic moments, and of course there are the surprises, their stock in trade.
I’d recommend going to see it if it comes to a cinema near you. If you’ve never seen a Coen Brothers film it’s about time you did!

Tuesday, 7 October 2008

The world turned upside down

I remember a time when the Labour Party was very keen to nationalise the banks. Of course the right-wing press (most of it) would have branded it as left-lunacy at the time. Now that capitalism is in deep shit I suspect there would be few complaints if and when the banking system is nationalised. And I for one I hope it is.

I don’t care much for the markets or the capitalist system in general, so there’s a part of me that thinks the whole bloody lot should be left to the market and their own devices to sort themselves out, which in essence would mean capitalism imploding, but as per usual it would be the ‘little people’, us proletarians that would inevitably suffer.