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Hello. I’m Leem, but you can call me Leem.
The rest of this site is mainly concerned with my erotic fantasies, but on this page I will be jotting down my thoughts, such as they are, on movies, DVD, television, radio, life in general, and whatever other subjects take my fancy.
I don’t know about you, but I can hardly contain my exczzzitement.
All opinions expressed herein are solely my own, and therefore correct. |
AUGUST 2004
9 AUGUST: RANDOM THOUGHTS
For the 59th consecutive year, no nuclear weapons were dropped on anyone. This may just be a good sign. It’s always horrified me that the atomic bomb was invented before colour television. I mean, just think - if there had been a nuclear war, they’d have had to show it in black and white!
Well, you may have noticed (assuming that “you” are not all just webbots trying to track down my credit card details)that I haven’t updated this page much lately. You could call it laziness, I guess...well, all right, call it laziness. Sigh. I addded a new navigation button to all of those other pages too. Truth is, I’m not sure whether to bother maintaining this page any more because I don’t have much to put in it. But if I take it down it’ll mean revising all those other pages to remove the navigation buttons I so painstakingly put in just a couple of months ago. Oh, well, you know what they say: apathy rulezzzzzzzz....
JUNE 2004
This page is now getting into shape. I’ve added some more entries and will continue to do so whenever I come across something I consider worth mentioning. Feedback, people, feedback!!!
15 JUNE: EDITORIAL
I see that a so-called reporter from the “fair and balanced” (snort) Fox Noise network has been criticising a BBC reporter for his so-called anti-American bias. In fact he’s gone so far as to accuse the BBC of "frothing at the mouth anti-Americanism".
Now the BBC has been accused of many things in its 82 year history, but FROTHING AT THE MOUTH??? That is so fucking idiotic it would almost be laughable if it weren’t for the fact that this particular twerp is trying to convince the American public that it’s true.
Of course, what Fox Noise always fails to take into account is that you don’t have to be frothing at the mouth or brain damaged to criticise America’s foreign policy in Iraq and elsewhere. Lots of perfectly sane and sensible people, many of them Americans, have been doing just that for decades.
Whenever the BBC comes under fire (as in the case of the recent Hutton Enquiry) it has the maturity to face criticism with dignity and restraint. By contrast, whenever someone complains about Fox Noise it wails like a baby that’s lost its rattle.
As a result of Fox’s coverage it has been censured by Ofcom, the British television regulator. In extreme circumstances Ofcom has the power to ban Fox from broadcasting to the UK entirely. If that happened the screams of “America-bashing” would undoubtedly be even louder, but I for one would not lose any sleep over it.
Useful links:
10 JUNE: FILM REVIEWS
Did hie me to the metropolis to check out a couple of blockbusters. Also saw two films. (This joke courtesy of The Burkiss Way, circa 1978 BC.)
Incidentally, isn’t it remarkable that after more than a century we still don’t have a better name for the 20th and 21st Centuries’ favourite form of entertainment than “moving pictures”?
The first film I saw was Troy, which has been touted as a big-budget revival of the sword-and-sandal epic. Well, it was epic all right (at least in terms of it’s bum-numbing and bladder-busting length) and there were some spectacular pitched battles as well as some nail-biting hand-to-hand combat. But for me the film’s Achilles heel was not Achilles himself (although Brad Pitt’s got a terrific bod for a 40-year-old, and you get some all-too-brief glimpses of it in a couple of love scenes), but the long boring talky bits in between the battles.
And as for the actress playing Helen (whose name I will withhold to spare her embarrassment, and anyway I’ve forgotten it), I’m afraid that face wouldn’t launch half a dozen paddle boats at the local pond.
Eventually it all became a bit of a blur; unlike, say, Ben-Hur or Spartacus you didn’t really get much of a sense of who was fighting for what, or who was right and who was wrong, and so in the end it all falls a bit flat. And of course we all know that the battle scenes nowadays are mainly fought by pixels, whereas in the old days they really would have used armies of extras. Ultimately, Troy doesn’t need a wooden horse - it falls down all by itself. WAIT FOR THE TV BROADCAST.
By contrast, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban does not disappoint. (FULL REVIEW TO FOLLOW IF I GET AROUND TO IT.) RECOMMENDED.
4 JUNE: DVD REVIEW
Found a copy of The Last Waltz on DVD. For the half-dozen of you who have spent the last 26½ years stranded in the Amazonian jungle, the film is a record of the 1976 farewell concert by The Band (although for some reason it wasn’t released until 1978). The band are accompanied by a host of special guest stars like Dr. John, Muddy Waters, Joni Mitchell and their old partner in crime Bob Dylan, and the film is directed by somebody called Martin Scorsese who’ll probably be well known someday.
Now I have to confess this one had passed me by, because although I was obviously aware of the artists involved my personal taste, such as it was, lay in other directions. The truth is, I only picked up the DVD out of curiosity, and because it was in the bargain bin. I’m glad I did, though, because it turns out to be one of the few rock concert films that lives up to its hype.
Winterland in San Francisco - a fairly unprepossessing venue by all accounts - was transformed by a borrowed opera set and some chandeliers into a spectacular stage with cameras placed at strategic intervals, and by means of radio communication and runners Scorsese was somehow able to instruct his seven cameramen and his lighting crews on their cues without interfering with the music. Even more surprisingly, there are hardly any shots in which the other cameras are visible. Something like five hours of music is condensed into an hour and a half of film, and the movie is padded out with a couple of soundstage performances and interviews.
Thanks to some stunning digital remastering the film looks and sounds as if it was made yesterday, there’s a booklet containing an article on the making of the film by Robbie Robertson of the Band, a whole bunch of extras including a making-of featurette and not one but two audio commentaries, which might seem a little excessive except that they give lots of useful and interesting insights into the making of the film and the music.
Oh, and in case it needs saying, the music is terrific. RECOMMENDED.
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