VIDEOCRACY: Broadcasting Control over the Italian Psyche
photo credit: the bbp Erik Gandini’s Videocracy is an intriguing and distressing documentary film that explores Silvio Berlusconi’s media empire, and the deep impact that it has had on Italian society and culture. Gandini’s investigative endeavour was released in 2009, but the trailers were blocked on the six main Italian television channels, which are controlled by Berlusconi. It was a tacit form of censorship aimed at obstructing Videocracy’s popularity,... Read More
Where Were You in Whenever?
The whole concept of crowd funding fascinates me. It’s an excellent means of getting some start up cash together for a project. Some of what has been seeded through these means, like the bittorrented sci fi series Pioneer One prove that it can work for rather large scale productions as well as more individual labours of love. Where Were You? looks like its going to unearth many of the subcultures and street styles that strutted their stuff in the city over the past... Read More
Treme: Won’t Bow, Don’t Know How.
photo credit: SIR: Poseyal With season 2 scheduled for April 24th, here’s a quick look back at one of the best shows of last year… You know when friends swap TV recommendations? There’s always some shows, that when vouched for, provoke responses along the lines of “Ah I think I’ll wait…” Treme’s one such show. Even with over blown critical adoration, it’s proven to be a slow burner at fan base level. For most it carries weighty post-Wire... Read More
That Was Pucker.
Watching Between The Canals the other day brought this one to mind. Well, it didn’t spring to my mind, but the person I was watching it with. Something about the camera work maybe. Or the way it moves almost aimlessly in and out of a “heck, despite it all – we survive” pastoral working class existence. Not that any of these films, Between the Canals and The Tina Trilogy included, avoid moments of grimace and violent bang, but there is an undoubted... Read More
Review of My Best Friend By Tamsin Oglesby
photo credit: mohammadali My Best Friend recently returned to a 2 week stint in the New Theatre, having completed a very successful run there in 2010. It’s about 3 school friends, in their early 30s, who are re-united in a French farmhouse. The play starts off by drawing you into a friendly, convivial atmosphere, as 2 friends put their lives in perspective, in the way any 2 holidaying friends might. The tension begins innocuously, as Bee and Emma attempt to give up cigarettes... Read More
Film Review: Waste Land
photo credit: Marat In The Bath The Christ the Redeemer statue holds its arms open in an embrace to the mega-polis of Rio, and as it does so, it also turns its back on the world’s largest landfill site, Jardim Gramacho. Hardly shocking either, that upper class Brazilan society also ignores the reality and consequences of its cult of disposable consumerism. Nominated for an Oscar, new documentary Wasteland by Alice Walker goes some way to correcting this slight. Throwing... Read More
Vidiot : DCTV Schedule
Many of you’ll know me for my other hat, the one in the shape of community media – so when I’m not leaving this site to rot, I’m off doing “community” – writing scripts, looking for lost kids in the liberties. applications for funding, cleaning toilets for a directors credit and propagandizing for the class war. I just spent the past hour or two pushing the new schedule for January out online, looking at it with the distance of a few... Read More
When Street Art Becomes A Joke
In Exit Through The Gift Shop, Banksy’s directorial debut, we meet Mister Brainwash. A wonderfully confused tongue in cheek character creation that almost personifies the whoredom of street art in the commercial gallery world. In that film, we see how a self-made rag man, applies similar techniques to the world of stencils. On a mass scale ripping off the ideas of the movement and giving them several wee twists, but mainly that of a hefty cash tag. Read More Read More
No Tomorrow
photo credit: drosera88 Solar by Ian McEwan first published on drb.ie There are many issues that the turbulent passage of global warming through public discourse has revealed. From the deadlock at Copenhagen in December to the growing confidence of climate change scepticism, it has become clear that we suffer from an incapacity to rationally discuss and address long-term and system-wide problems. It might indeed not be an exaggeration to say that we have seen evidence... Read More
Review Of Diarmuid Ferriter’s Limiting Liberty
photo credit: (Carrie Sloan) In The Limits of Liberty, historian Diarmuid Ferriter has been given three one hour episodes to lay out the social history of the Irish Republic. It is, of course, too brief, but the first episode is encouraging for its dissection of the new-state’s failure to deliver on promises of equality. The first episode is shot through with indignation, as Ferriter centres his ire around the lip-service paid to the social values of the Democratic Programme... Read More
