Posted on May 30th, 2009 by Zettel Film Reviewer
The Apprentice Week 10
- intelligent, thoughtful, skilled team-player, good listener, good manager - you’re fired.
If Sralan Sugar had been in charge of the European Champion’s League Final this week they’d still be playing: he moves the goalposts so suddenly and so often no one could ever score.
Last week the high-ticket Rocking Horses were a [...]
Filed under: Television | No Comments »
Posted on May 24th, 2009 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Il Divo - Paolo Sorrentino (2008)
Shakespearean in content, operatic in tone, writer director Paolo Sorrentino’s Il Divo (the extraordinary life of Giulio Andreotti) is a masterly work. Richly textured and at times demanding, Sorrentino’s film is a profound study of power, and its irresistible affects on men who possess it and those drawn to them. [...]
Filed under: 5 stars, Action, Drama, Europe/World cinema, Extended essay, Film Essay, Historical, Humorous, Paolo Sorrentino, Philosophical, Political, Thriller | No Comments »
Posted on May 21st, 2009 by Zettel Film Reviewer
The Apprentice Week 9 - Getting Real
This was my come-uppance week. Sralan had a good show and even Ben showed a bit of the self-knowledge one despaired of him ever acquiring.
It is a troubling aspect of The Apprentice that everyone later on The Apprentice You’re Fired (TAYF) suddenly becomes more likeable, more truthful, less aggressive [...]
Filed under: Television | No Comments »
Posted on May 17th, 2009 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Eurovision Song Contest - Russia
“Ooohh Graeme, you’re such a bitch……but I like you.” (With apologies to Dick Emery). The pink pixie of presenters done good – in the end. Slick, technically stunning Russian production stripped away most of the ‘lose-the-will-to-live’ inter-song tourist board-style films that used to offer such rich pickings to Sir Tel’s smirky [...]
Filed under: Television | No Comments »
Posted on May 14th, 2009 by Zettel Film Reviewer
The Apprentice Week 8 - Margate Mission Muffed
Sugar’s increasingly capricious firing decisions and inconsistent rationale for them invites analysis. The promising Rocky Andrews was fired in week 2, partly on the argument that he was ‘too young’; yet the strikingly immature Ben, just 22 remains after some of the crassest remarks and dumbest behaviour the [...]
Filed under: 2 star, Television | No Comments »
Posted on May 9th, 2009 by Zettel Film Reviewer
The Apprentice Week 7 - who was a pretty boy then?
Pretty men don’t like plain women. The reason is psychological not aesthetic. Guys like Philip have to make virtually no effort with lots, even most women. And those who hold out he can usually charm. But really plain women not only distrust such charm because [...]
Filed under: Television | No Comments »
Posted on May 7th, 2009 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Is Anybody There? – John Cowley
Is there a nation on earth more contemptuous or contemptible about the old than the British? Politically and socially we under-resource shamefully large numbers of the elderly literally to the point of starvation; or we freeze them to death. Politicians with a toxic self-serving sentimentality exploit them. We ‘vanish’ them: [...]
Filed under: 1 star, Comedy, Drama, John Cowley, Philosophical | No Comments »
Posted on May 4th, 2009 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Political Leadership
Barack Obama’s election puts the latest ‘Brown study’ of the Labour Party into perspective. The Democratic Party had two candidates of intellectual weight, political gravitas and an air of leadership – in the UK we have none – in any party. The more Mr Brown exercises the power he connived for [...]
Filed under: Letter | No Comments »
