Saturday, May 29, 2010

Home (2006)

Dog Tired Afternoon

As New Year's Resolutions go, lasting out until nearly the end of May is pretty impressive but, after one hundred and forty eight films, I have to hold my hands up to the fact that, due to a combination of extreme tiredness and more extreme tiredness, May 28th is marked down as the first day in 2010 that I didn't watch a new film as part of my '365Watch'.

I'm especially disappointed because I'd already decided to temporarily suspend 365Watch for the duration of the World Cup. Only fourteen days shy of an honorable suspension of the resolution.

Gutted . . . .sick as a parrot . . . more morose than a Red House Painters album track. The cliches come fast and furious. And all the more galling to last so long when I've had to suffer through garbage such as this, this and especially this.

Rather than knocking 365Watch on the head after lasting so long, I think I'll carry on with my original plan: try and watch as many films as possible during the course of the year - maybe doubling up one day with two films to make up for the aberration that was May 28th - and welcome the temporary suspension of the film a day for the duration of the World Cup.

What else am I going to do . . . write actual blog posts?

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Don's Party (1976)

Madcap Mensheviks

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain 150

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 150th our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1571 friends!

Recent blogs:

  • Capitalist Money Madness
  • Let’s produce for use, not profit
  • The election: who wins?
  • Quote for the week:

    "An election is nothing more than the advanced auction of stolen goods."Ambrose Bierce

    Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

    Robert and Piers

    Socialist Party of Great Britain

    Monday, May 17, 2010

    The Likely Lads (1976)

    250,000 page hits

    Just thought I'd note a milestone of sorts for the unofficial Socialist Standard page over at MySpace.

    Obviously MySpace has seen better days but 250,000 hits for the blog is nothing to be sniffed at.

    Tuesday, May 11, 2010

    The Omega Man (1971)

    1985AD

    Damn, I'd forgotten how good this song was.

    From one of the best albums of the eighties, Colourbox's 'The Moon Is Blue':

    Whatever happened to Lorita Grahame and the Young brothers?

    Where's the Facebook campaign to make Colourbox's 'Official Colourbox World Cup Theme' the number 1 single during the World Cup? And throw in their cover of 'Baby I Love You So' as the Xmas number 1 whilst you're at it.

    Labour MPs line up to vote for electoral reform Liberal Democrat MPs enter a coalition with the Tories

    Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain 149

    Dear Friends,

    Welcome to the 149th our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

    We now have 1569 friends!

    Recent blogs:

  • Capitalism must go!
  • Puppet on a string
  • Yours for World Socialism II
  • Quote for the week:

    "Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian." Robert Orben

    Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

    Robert and Piers

    Socialist Party of Great Britain

    La la la la la la, I can't hear you.

    It's Tuesday morning and I still can't bring myself to watch the Match of the Day highlights.

    If I haven't watched them, Chelski still haven't won the title.

    Genius. Stick on another episode of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.

    Saturday, May 08, 2010

    Dirty Pretty Things (2002)

    "Vote early and . . . yeah, just vote early."

    "I dressed really carefully, in my trenchcoat, with my glasses, and I was careful to wear my posh shoes. I put on a posh accent, sort of southern."

    No, not someone plucking up the courage to go to their first Anarchist Federation meeting.

    It is in fact the funny story of 14-year-old Alfie McKenzie taking advantage of mistakenly being allocated a polling card and popping along to his local polling station to vote tactically for the Lib Dem candidate in a marginal seat so as to ensure that the Tories are kept out of office (mmm, no, that can't be right.).

    With a name like Alfie, surely he didn't need the polling card to pass for a 45 year old?

    No happy ending, though. A teacher grassed him up for showing some initiative. (In my day, my lefty teachers would have broken out the Bulgarian wine and excused the fact that I'd only submitted five pieces of homework in my last four years of school.); The Tory candidate romped home in a safe Tory seat; And Clegg might get to keep his Orange Book in a ministerial briefcase some time in the near future.

    Friday, May 07, 2010

    The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

    Just in: SPGB result in Vauxhall

    To my shame I haven't really been covering the election on the blog. I can't make excuses about being 4000 miles away. I've been looking in. I just haven't got my political mojo at the moment.

    I should, however, mention the SPGB result in Vauxhall. (Click on the pic below to enlarge.)

    It's the usual sort of vote for the SPGB that reflects the level of socialist support in any part of the world. Genuinely surprised - and pleased - that they beat Trotskyist candidate. (Yep, I'm that shallow).

    I actually thought that Workers Power's shopping list of demands would have garnered more votes than the SPGB at the election. Just goes to show that sectarianism wins out every time. All those Tankies, Swoppies, Millies and Perm Revs in Vauxhall, and they couldn't bring themselves to vote for the vanguardist candidate on their doorstep . . .with the petition and the paper.

    The rejects from the Second International 1 The Fifth International 0.

    . . .Oh, and the Labour candidate, Kate Hoey, got 21,000 more votes than us both combined. But that's just a minor point.

    Thursday, May 06, 2010

    An American Tail (1986)

    Insert random pic in the left hand corner

    Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain 148

    Dear Friends,

    Welcome to the 148th our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

    We now have 1569 friends!

    Recent blogs:

  • Yours for World Socialism
  • Revolution or Reform?
  • Left Unity
  • Quote for the week:

    "For nearly 40 years we have raised to prominence the idea of the class struggle as the immediate driving force of history, and particularly the class struggle between bourgeois and the proletariat as the great lever of the modern social revolution; ... At the founding of the International, we expressly formulated the battle cry: The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself." Marx and Engels, Strategy and Tactics of the Class Struggle, 1879.

    Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

    Robert and Piers

    Socialist Party of Great Britain

    Tuesday, May 04, 2010

    Ragtime by E L Doctorow (Picador 1975)

    In New York City the papers were full of the shooting of the famous architect Stanford White by Harry K. Thaw, eccentric scion of a coke and railroad fortune. Harry K. Thaw was the husband of Evelyn Nesbit, the celebrated beauty who had once been Stanford White's mistress. The shooting took place in the roof garden of the Madison Square Garden on 26th Street, a spectacular block-long building of yellow brick and terra cotta that White himself had designed in the Sevillian style. It was the opening night of a revue entitled Mamzelle Champagne, and as the chorus sang and danced the eccentric scion wearing on this summer night a straw boater and heavy black coat pulled out a pistol and shot the famous architect three times in the head. On the roof. There were screams. Evelyn fainted. She had been a well-known artist's model at the age of fifyeen. Her underclothes were white. Her husband habitually whipped her. She happened once to meet Emma Goldman, the revolutionary. Goldman lashed her with her tongue. Apparently there were Negroes. There were immigrants. And though the newspapers called the shooting the Crime of the Century, Goldman knew it was only 1906 and there were ninety-four years to go.

    Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (2010)

    Saturday, May 01, 2010

    Bread and Roses (2000)

    Happy May Day

    Good post over at the World Socialist Party of the United States website on the significance of May Day.

    And it would be remiss of me if I didn't mention the May Day post over at the Socialism Or Your Money Back blog.

    Now on a day like today, what radically minded film can I watch as part of 365Watch? Norma Rae, maybe? (No, too close to Soapdish.) Reds? (Yep, believe or not, I've never watched it in its entirety.) Children of the Revolution? Together? John Thaw in Praise Marx and Pass the Ammunition? (I would if I could. The holy grail of lost films that one.) Modern Times? (Bugger Chaplin.)

    I'm sure I'll find something appropriate . . . .