Ashes to Ashes

Why am I posting so much all of a sudden? I dunno ... just feel I should put something up, leave me mark on the interweb, though nobody actually reads this blog, and nobody knows who I am ... oh well, anyway ...

Being a big Life on Mars fan that I am, I decided to start watching Ashes to Ashes, and I have to say, Gene Hunt is just a fantastically fun character to watch. Just gold!!

Here's a trailer:



I have to say, I'm enjoying the music as always. For me, the '70s music in Life on Mars is more my sorta music, but there's nothing like '80s music to bring back the good old memories of shoulder pads and too much mascara!!

This video features The Clash with I Fought The Law. Can I say "gold" again??? =)

Firthy firth

Mmmmm ... so I'm a big fan of Colin Firth and can't help posting this trailer of Then She Found Me, though it looks rather like a rehash of one of his romantic comedy roles like Mr Darcy in Bridget Jones's Diary etc:



and for good measure, here's an interview he did with Sky News for the movie And When Did You Last See Your Father?:

'They're just dead Africans'

When a BBC reporter in the movie Shooting Dogs is asked how her experience in Bosnia compares to that of her current situation in Rwanda, she replies: "Everytime when I saw a dead Bosnian, white woman I thought, that could be my mother ... no, it's worse ... Over here, they are just dead Africans. What a thing to say. We are all just selfish pieces of work in the end."

I've just rented this British film, which surprisingly, has only just been released in Australia (it was first released as a film in the UK in 2005), and it's about the Rwandan genocide in 1994, where about 800,000 were massacred in just 100 days.

Shooting Dogs (or Beyond the Gates, its American title) is a powerful and very moving film. It was produced by a BBC journalist who was in Rwanda covering the genocide and is based on actual events of how 2500 Tutsi Rwandans were killed in the compound where they were sheltering in with the UN soldiers when they pulled out.

I watched Hotel Rwanda when it came out a few years back and somehow I think this movie is much more poignant. It was filmed IN Rwanda for one, unlike Hotel Rwanda, which was shot in South Africa, and used people who were caught up in the genocide.

Hotel Rwanda sort of gave an African point of view of what happened, and the heroism of one individual, while Shooting Dogs really works in encapsulating the lack of action by the UN though the abandonment of the Tutsis in the compound. It's a must-watch:



I first started reading in detail about the Rwandan genocide when I read the book We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch probably about eight years ago, and then the book Me Against My Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda by Scott Peterson. Philip Gourevitch's book was the one that really changed my perception of spirituality and my belief in God. I think slowly but surely after that (unlike John Hurt's character in Shooting Dogs) I lost my faith in God and the belief that there is God, that Jesus did exist, that there's Heaven and Earth. I guess I just couldn't believe that such things could happen - and not only that it was happening, that it is happening again and again, after the Holocaust, and now, in Sudan ...

Ode on Melancholy

The Ode by John Keats that was mentioned in my previous post:

NO, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kist
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globèd peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

She dwells with Beauty — Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
— John Keats (The Oxford Book of English Verse:
1250-1900, 1919 edition)

Sadness has a direct line to the soul

One of the best articles I've read in a long long time:

OURS are ominous times. We are on the verge of eroding away our ozone layer. Within decades we could face severe oceanic flooding. We are close to annihilating hundreds of animal species. Soon our forests will be as bland as pavement. Moreover, we find ourselves on the verge of a new cold war. But there is another threat, perhaps as dangerous: we are eradicating a cultural force, the muse behind much art and poetry and music. We are annihilating melancholia.

A recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Centre shows that almost 85 per cent of Americans believe that they are very happy or pretty happy. The psychological world is abuzz with a new field, positive psychology, devoted to finding ways to enhance happiness through pleasure, engagement and meaning.

What are we to make of this obsession with happiness, an obsession that could well lead to a sudden extinction of the creative impulse, that could result in an extermination as horrible as those foreshadowed by global warming and environmental crisis and nuclear proliferation? What drives this rage for complacency, this desperate contentment? Surely all this happiness can't be for real. How can so many people be happy in the middle of all the problems that beset our globe, not only the collective and apocalyptic ills but also those particular irritations that bedevil our everyday existences?

I, for one, am afraid that this overemphasis on happiness at the expense of sadness may be dangerous, a wanton forgetting of an essential part of a full life. I am concerned that to desire only happiness in a world undoubtedly tragic is to become inauthentic, to settle for unrealistic abstractions. I am finally fearful of our society's efforts to expunge melancholia. Without the agitations of the soul, would all of our magnificently yearning towers topple? Would our heart-torn symphonies cease? MORE

John Simpson: my favourite journo

Stumbled across these videos on YouTube. John Simpson interviewed by The Panel on RTE. Assume it was taped in 2006.

Part 1:


Part 2:

Even lighter note

Since I've started posting, might as well continue eh? Make up for all those lost months, which frankly, I wish never existed.

Anyway, this is the "lighter" note. A cool mime by British comedian David Armand of the song Natalie Imbruglia Torn, with a very special guest ...