TV/Movies Megathread

[mongers]

.....
(Also as an aside if it weren't entirely unlike the films he actually makes Loach is the one director I'd love to see do something set in the English Civil War - that radical tradition is his and I think he'd get it perfectly minus the religion, which is also missing in this film.)
.....

Have you seen Winstanley ? (spelling?)

[Sheilbh]

Have you seen Winstanley ? (spelling?)

I haven't but it sounds interesting.

You know St. George's Hill, where the Diggers did their digging, is now a private residential estate where the average property costs £3 million

[mongers]

Have you seen Winstanley ? (spelling?)

I haven't but it sounds interesting.

You know St. George's Hill, where the Diggers did their digging, is now a private residential estate where the average property costs £3 million

Indeed.

Old history seems ever more relevant by the day. 

edit:
my dvd of it is messed up, so I've only been able to watch 4/5th of it, not seen a crucial middle section. 

[Queequeg]

Edit:

Maybe he finds the notion that all Protestants are barbarians with an never-ending appetite for blood, oppression, and violence repulsive.  The rest of us just know it as a self-evident truth.

Also this.

Ken Loach is an Englishman who lived through the bombing campaign and still believes that all of the North should just be handed over to the Republic, regardless of the opinion of the local Protestants.  It has been 8 years since I've seen the film, but I've found the simplicity of Loach's pro-IRA position extremely suspicious and more than a little troublesome, as I think it should be the natural instinct of a man to feel at least a degree of contempt for an organization that spent much of its energies trying to slaughter innocent Englishmen and women.  I remember Murphy being a much less complicated hero.

[Sheilbh]

Ken Loach is an Englishman who lived through the bombing campaign and still believes that all of the North should just be handed over to the Republic, regardless of the opinion of the local Protestants.  It has been 8 years since I've seen the film, but I've found the simplicity of Loach's pro-IRA position extremely suspicious and more than a little troublesome, as I think it should be the natural instinct of a man to feel at least a degree of contempt for an organization that spent much of its energies trying to slaughter innocent Englishmen and women.  I remember Murphy being a much less complicated hero.

And that has what to do with the War of Independence or Civil War?

If you want to criticise a Loach film for that, I suggest the one about Northern Ireland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Agenda_(1990_film)

But again I don't generally have problems with political artists doing political art so long as it's good (which doesn't mean you don't acknowledge it).

Edit: For what it's worth there was a lot of criticism in the UK when it won Cannes. Turned out most of the critics hadn't seen it and some refused to watch this sort of IRA propaganda ( ), but the general reception was very positive and not that the nuance and the fact that it was about a totally different war made even conservative reviewers say it basically wasn't pro-IRA (as in pro-Provo).

[Admiral Yi]

I enjoyed Barleywind, but it is a one-dimensional film, lacking any nuance or shades of gray.  It would have benefited immensely by giving the "bad guys" one or two good lines of argumentation.  Particularly as the good guys were such retards.

Which author was it that said you should always give your villains the best lines?

[Sheilbh]

I enjoyed Barleywind, but it is a one-dimensional film, lacking any nuance or shades of gray.  It would have benefited immensely by giving the "bad guys" one or two good lines of argumentation.  Particularly as the good guys were such retards.

I don't think it's one-dimensional or lacking nuance - though it is black and white. But then I think the situation was.

There's also the question of which bad guys. The English don't have any good lines, but really what good reasons did they have by 1920? I think the pro-treaty forces do get good lines. One of the early heroes joins the National Army and there are entire scenes of political debate as old comrades are forced to choose sides in a new war - which is the key bit of the film for me. Do they complete the revolution or uphold the social order?

Edit: I need a CDM Batman-light for threads like this

[Admiral Yi]

The Irish bad guys. 

[CountDeMoney]

Edit: I need a CDM Batman-light for threads like this

Only the good, brooding Batman, not the cartoonly nipples Batman.

And no, I don't mean "not the nipples, Batman" but as in "the Batman With Nipples."*




*In France, it would be a Royale with Nipples.  On account of the metric system.

[Razgovory]

Ken Loach is an Englishman who lived through the bombing campaign and still believes that all of the North should just be handed over to the Republic, regardless of the opinion of the local Protestants.  It has been 8 years since I've seen the film, but I've found the simplicity of Loach's pro-IRA position extremely suspicious and more than a little troublesome, as I think it should be the natural instinct of a man to feel at least a degree of contempt for an organization that spent much of its energies trying to slaughter innocent Englishmen and women.  I remember Murphy being a much less complicated hero.

And that has what to do with the War of Independence or Civil War?

If you want to criticise a Loach film for that, I suggest the one about Northern Ireland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Agenda_(1990_film)

But again I don't generally have problems with political artists doing political art so long as it's good (which doesn't mean you don't acknowledge it).

Edit: For what it's worth there was a lot of criticism in the UK when it won Cannes. Turned out most of the critics hadn't seen it and some refused to watch this sort of IRA propaganda ( ), but the general reception was very positive and not that the nuance and the fact that it was about a totally different war made even conservative reviewers say it basically wasn't pro-IRA (as in pro-Provo).

See, this is what happens when you get raised as a Mormon and are taught from a young age that Rome is the great whore of Babylon.  It sticks with you, even if you aren't a mormon anymore.

[Sheilbh]

The Irish bad guys.

Okay but as I say they do get an argument. There's two brothers Murphy's character who's anti-treaty and the commander who's pro-treaty. There's an entire scene when there's a debate between the fighters and others over which side to join and both sides of argument are shown getting applause.

Yeah the hero's anti-treaty, but both sides get far more of a fair hearing than they do in, say, Michael Collins.

[Ideologue]

I liked the part in Michael Collins when the armored car gunned down the IRA insurgents on that rugby field.

[Admiral Yi]

Okay but as I say they do get an argument. There's two brothers Murphy's character who's anti-treaty and the commander who's pro-treaty. There's an entire scene when there's a debate between the fighters and others over which side to join and both sides of argument are shown getting applause.

There's give and take on signing peace, but not on the retards retarded sense of social justice.

[Sheilbh]

There's give and take on signing peace, but not on the retards retarded sense of social justice.

That's perfect

I think chances are it's because it would be the least opposed bit. The hugely contentious issues were the oath, dominion status and the fact that as Collins put it it wasn't freedom but freedom to achieve freedom.

A lot of Irish nationalism was about land and agrarian revolt. The famous stat is that in 1870 only 3% of people in Ireland owned their own holdings (and remember tenancy had gone from an average of three lifetimes in the 18th century to 11 months in the mid-19th and, until Gladstone's reforms, could be terminated for any reason) but in 1930 only 3% didn't.

[Admiral Yi]

I'm not sure exactly what that means, "it would be the least opposed bit."

Ireland has been a free democracy since achieving independence.  If a majority of Irish voters had supported the retards' program, as you seem to be suggesting, then surely it would have been enacted into law by the dirty Mick parliament.  But since it has not, we can conclude that it was fringe sentiment.

That's the essence of my critique of Barley: Loach presented opposition to the communards as being composed of double dealers and hypocrites and Quislings.  He didn't treat the no point of view with respect.