Monday, June 09, 2008

Well, that was a bit of a rubbish weekend!
I had a terrible stomach upset which really hasn't gone away today. The best thing about that is that I got to read a lot of Wilkie Collin's "ripping yarn" called No Name and to catch up on watching films.

Finally got to see Aki Kaurismaki's marvellous "Lights in the Dusk", another one of his films which some people might describe as depressing or bleak, but which I find as ultimately optimistic.

I also finally watched Nigel Kneale's legendary The Year of the Sex Olympics, which really IS depressing and bleak, predicting the miserable decline of television into the likes of Big Brother, where producers manipulate the participants of "reality" television programmes in order to affect the audience.
The big difference, of course, is that in The Year of the Sex Olympics, Kneale skillfully writes characters who break away and who you care about; in Big Brother, you couldn't care less for their egomaniacal posturing.