When I received my review copy of Spirit Level Film’s latest documentary, The Fear Factory, through my letterbox a few days ago, I had little idea what to expect. A few seconds in, as the ominous music begins to play and the image of a foetus looms into view accompanied by the voiceover telling us [...]
Laura, 25, from Wandsworth, 5‘4’’, slender, employed in media, off mysinglefriend.com pre-date-dumped me.
‘How about changing coffee to alcohol?’ she wrote four days before the show. ‘I think it will help. Both of us.’
Well it took me a couple of days to get back to her.
‘7pm at Hammersmith?’ I asked, and waited for her reply. I [...]
At the interval Mental Flatmate was a bit glum. ‘There’s not enough grime,’ he complained. ‘Prison’s all about knives and gangs, you know?’ He paused and stared silently at his beer for a full minute. ‘They haven’t got enough hate.’
Mental Flatmate reads the Daily Mail and gets intimidated by the school kids who hang around [...]
Like Starsuckers, reviewed last week, Ondi Timoner’s We Live in Public is a confused film. It’s a documentary about ‘the most brilliant dot.com millionaire you’ve never heard of’ [actually that would probably be all of them] ― a chap called Josh Harris.
Not that even if you had heard of him, you’d necessarily have recognised the [...]
‘Starsuckers’ is the new documentary film by Chris Atkins, (Director of the Blair-baiting polemic ‘Taking Liberties’) which created a bit of a stir at the London Film Festival both by preleasing clips of tabloid journalists offering cash for trash stories about celeb boob-jobs, whilst being simultaneously sued by Max Clifford. The Guardian particularly loved [...]
I must start with a sincere apology on behalf of what follows: indeed, when it comes to offering up reviews of the weekend’s events, I would appear that my style is more akin to that of Mark Lawrenson than Mark Lawson. None the less, I thought I would try my hand at some theatre reviewing, [...]
In capitalism’s early life Marx compared capital to a vampire, that ‘only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks’. Chris Harman thinks a different horror staple is appropriate for the system’s later years. Far from being the sophisticated, sentient vampire count, it is better compared to the mindless, [...]
Guest post by Holly Robbins
Celebrating its tenth birthday this year, (The People’s Republic of) Shambala has everything a festival-goer could possibly desire – without being the size of a small town (yes, I’m talking to you Glastonbury). Set in the grounds of a manor house in Northamptonshire and playing host to around 10,000 punters, [...]
Guest post by Carl Packman
102 Minutes That Changed America, the brave documentary that aired on Channel 4 yesterday, made for very tough viewing.
The camera was very intrusive, and actually seemed to infuriate people, but it did what was best in documenting some very sombre and terrifying moments. People, covered in dust and debris, would wave [...]
It’s extremely easy to criticise the politics of cultural products if you don’t agree with absolutely everything they say. If you consider your understanding to be more nuanced, it is very easy to say that a book, a film, or an article doesn’t go far enough. The point is that not every great film is [...]
