Mike Meredith

Pink Floyd Rambling

 General  No Responses »
Oct 312008
 

I have just watched a documentary on Pink Floyd, which I had unfortunately messed up the audio and video synchronisation which made the viewing somewhat peculiar – perhaps somewhat appropriately.

To me it seems that Pink Floyd is one of those bands where everyone meets. Amongst friends who listen to music, they have widely varying tastes in music and everyone has their own list of favourite bands. Oddly enough that rarely includes Pink Floyd, but when asked the response is almost always “Yeah! Them too”. And usually they will have every studio album produced by Pink Floyd even if they do not have every studio album of their favourite band – I have every Pink Floyd album, but not every Black Sabbath album.

It is almost as though there is no need to mention Pink Floyd as a favourite because anyone with any serious interest in music of almost any kind will have Pink Floyd as a favourite. I do not spend a great deal of time thinking about what music to listen to on my iBox, but every few weeks I find myself listening to Pink Floyd.

In some ways, we all hunting for another band as good as Pink Floyd.

Film Review: Closer

 Film  No Responses »
Oct 302008
 

Format: Blueray

IMDB entry: here

An interesting film about the relationship between two couples – a writer, a photgrapher, a dermatoligist and a stripper. The story revolves around their relationships and breakups, with some minor twists. Nothing earth-shatteringly dramatic about it, but entertaining enough.

Russell Brand, Jonathan Ross, and “That” Radio Show

 General, Media  No Responses »
Oct 292008
 

Over the last week or so, the news has been swamped with details of a certain radio show that involved Russell Brand (the host), and Jonathan Ross (the guest) phoning up Andrew Sachs and leaving “abusive” messages on his answerphone. I have not heard the show myself, but from the descriptions it goes well beyond what should be acceptable. But the right word is “silly” and not “malicious”.

But does it really deserve all this attention ? From what I can tell, there are plenty of other more serious problems that could be reported in the news. This is after all really just a couple of idiots on one radio show insulting another “showbiz” personality.

Russell has resigned, and the BBC has suspended Jonathan pending the outcome of an enquiry. There are some grounds for complaining about the BBC’s tardiness in dealing with this. Although this feels like a typical corporate tendency to keep quiet until everyone has huddled around and come up with an answer rather than responding immediately with “we’re investigating”.

Some of the criticisms around focus on the fact that the BBC is not a commercial organisation and there are claims that this sort of thing would not happen in a more commercial organisation. This is just classic anti-Beeb propoganda by those who believe that all broadcasters should be commercial. There are those who believe that free-market forces would ensure that such things never happened. I have no belief that the commercial sector is any better at dealing with such incidents, and those same free-market forces will ensure that broadcasters would be much less inclined to take risks.

There also seems to be some jealousy around the level of pay that these two celebreties get. I am not entirely sure why they are worth the amount of money they get, but criticisms of their pay should not be a consideration during this incident.

Film Review: Cruel Intentions

 Film  No Responses »
Oct 262008
 

Format: Blueray

IMDB Link: here

A re-make of Les Liasons Dangereuses with a pathetic Hollywood gloss. The core story could have been quite amusing if they had had the sense to portray the characters as properly dissipated young people. The characters in Cruel Intentions are schoolchildren which makes their actions somewhat unbelievable. This is not the fault of the actors; simply the age of the characters. The original story portrays a level of dissipation far beyond what is revealed here; making the theme of redemption through love considerably less powerful.

Don’t waste your time; try one of the film adaptations closer to the original.

Film Review: V For Vendetta

 Film  No Responses »
Oct 252008
 

Format: Blueray

IMDB Entry: here

Now this one is a treat I have seen several times. The story itself is somewhat simplistic (although I believe that owes something to the studios wanting to exorcise the anarchist themes of the original comic book) being the old story of an attempt to overthrow a repressive regime. But as we learn more about the history of this regime, we begin to see parallels with what is happening in our current society.

Now being thwacked around the head with a serious political message is not usually considered to be an entertaining experience, which is why films like V need to gloss up the message in a story. And the story whilst simplistic does have enough twists to keep one interested.

The main message is that we need to be wary of sacrificing our civil liberties in the name of security.

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