Tag Archives: Film
The Future & AI
Posted by on Feb 23, 2019
This week on Facebook: A video that I posted two week ago ended with the question, “What would you do if you never had to die?“. As someone who is going to be an octogenarian this year the question was an initial no-brainer, I would leap at the chance (especially if it repaired my short term memory failings at the same time). Then I began to think about what being human meant and the more I thought about it, the more my initial reaction began to change. Read more of this post
Democracy in Tibet?
Posted by on Jun 16, 2018
This week on Facebook: It could be thought odd, even hypocritical, that NATO (as led by the USA) is so selective and clearly so inept at using military force to spread democracy. Democracy, it now appears, being as inconsequential to the USA as it is to communist China! Tibet was invaded by China in 1950, the Tibetan government in Lhasa appealed for help to both Britain and the United States (both NATO members) but non was given.
The Free Tibet campaign still has many adherents, unlike last week’s post ‘Democracy in Xinjiang‘ when the USSR’s loyalties switched to Chairman Mao and the Russians helped the communist People’s Liberation Army recapture Uighur East Turkestan. In 1949 East Turkistan became Xinjiang when it was once again integrated into Communist China. China’s expansion westward is reminiscent of Japan’s reasons for its empirical expansion during world war II. To the Chinese, there is the added dimension of interpreting their cultural history and the memory of the humiliation inflicted on China by western economic and military hegemony in Asia. Read more of this post
Myfanwy
Posted by on Jun 21, 2016
Francis never tired of walking Offa’s Dyke, especially the climb to Dinas Brân where the surrounding views always rewarded his effort to get there and never failed to reinforce the emotional bond he held for the place. The views were spectacular with Moel Morfydd, Moel y Gamelin and Pen-y-Garth standing on the far ridge like sentinels guarding Dyffryn Dyfrdwy. He used the Welsh names for the distant hilltops, the Dee Valley and even castle Dinas Brân, pronouncing them in the lilting Welsh of the Marches that Hywel had taught him many years ago. His Welsh had become so good that he was taken for Welshman when he spoke it. Read more of this post
Children Will Listen.
Posted by on Jan 10, 2015
The same medley and two version. I quite like Barbara Streisand and have a few of her records. I don’t have any recordings by Mandy Patinkin. In the recording below Mandy Patinkin has has a simple piano accompaniment this, and the setting, makes it quite different from the following Barbara Streisand version in which she is accompanied by an orchestra. Read more of this post
HO – HO
Posted by on Jan 3, 2015
A close friend of mine has a grandson diagnosed as an Aspie, having become more enlightened on Aspberger’s Syndrome, I was prompted to post a critique of the TV programme Chasing Shadows.
Whilst researching material for this critique I came across a web site, written by an Angry Autie who had posted an amusing piece with the title: The Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical. Read more of this post
A tart with a heart
Posted by on Nov 8, 2013
Watching a television programme recently brought the theme ‘tarts with hearts’ to mind. That male fantasy epitomised by Julia Roberts in the film ‘Pretty Woman’, which was more a pastiche of ‘My Fair Lady‘ than a Shavian ‘Pygmalion‘ and one that I was not going to include in any post with this theme. While I reviewed a number videos to include here, I found myself collating an homage to Shirley Maclaine. So my ‘other tarts’ will have to wait until another time. Read more of this post
Zoom Zoom Zoom Zoom
Posted by on Oct 11, 2013
Listening to the tune ‘Slap that Bass’ on the radio, I recognised it as being from the film Shall we Dance, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Rather than play my DVD copy of the film, I viewed a video for ‘Slap that Bass’ on the internet and have embedded it below. There is a comment that the opening sequence of ‘Slap that Bass’ made one viewer feel ‘uncomfortable’. Discomfort, I assume, at the all black troupe and the inference drawn that they were crew members in the engine room.
Chick Flicks
Posted by on Oct 3, 2012
My wife really wanted to see the film ‘Hope Springs‘. I was somewhat reticent, it being yet another ‘chick-flick‘ but I have usually enjoyed the film performances of both Tommy Lee Jones and Meryl Streep . We haven’t seen all of their films, in fact very few of the many films that they have starred in, with Hope Springs being their first ‘joint venture’ (unless you know different). We don’t always enjoy the same films. My wife really liked the film It’s Complicated and insisted on buying the DVD. I simply thought that the film traded on the name of Meryl Streep and her co-star Alex Baldwin.
Aasof’s Reflections 