#berlin breaks 2018 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

justforbooks · 4 months

Text

Alexei Navalny, who has died suddenly aged 47 while in prison, was Russia’s best-known campaigner against high-level corruption. For many years he was the leading critic and opponent of President Vladimir Putin and his political party, United Russia.

Repeated arrests, jail sentences and physical assaults did not deter Navalny from digging up financial scandals, which he published on his blogs and X feeds as well as YouTube. In a 2011 radio interview, he described United Russia as a “party of crooks and thieves”, which became a powerful and popular mantra on social media and at political protests.

Repression did not stop him attracting enthusiastic crowds in support of opposition politicians in local elections in cities across Russia. Occasionally he ran for office himself, most notably in 2013 for the mayoralty of Moscow, when the official result gave him 27% of the vote – which he said was rigged so as to deny him victory.

In 2016, Navalny launched a campaign for the 2018 presidential election but was barred by Russia’s central election commission due to a prior criminal conviction. In 2017 he was attacked with a spray, leaving him partially blind in one eye. In 2019 Navalny fell ill in prison, from what he claimed was poison. His most dramatic brush with death came in 2020 at the end of a political campaign trip through Siberia, when he was taken seriously ill on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow. His condition was so grave that the pilot made an emergency landing in Omsk, where he was rushed to hospital. Navalny’s wife and supporters asked for him to be taken to Germany, where they felt he would be better treated.

The Russian authorities agreed and Navalny was flown to the Charité hospital in Berlin, where toxicology tests showed traces of the nerve agent novichok in Navalny’s body. Russian officials complained that the test results were not made public nor disclosed to them. Navalny recovered and was released from hospital after a month.

He decided to convalesce for several weeks in Germany. Russian court authorities announced that if he returned late to Moscow he would be jailed for breaking the terms of a probation order. The threat was seen as a device to deter Navalny from returning to Russia in the hope, as the authorities saw it, that in exile his influence would rapidly decline.

Showing great courage, but defying the advice of his family and friends, he flew back to Moscow in January 2021, accompanied by his wife and dozens of journalists, and was arrested on landing. His Anti-Corruption Foundation promptly published on YouTube an investigation with pictures of a luxury multimillion-dollar mansion on the Black Sea, which they dubbed Putin’s palace.

Navalny’s stock had never been higher at home or abroad, and when a court gave him a two-and-a-half year sentence, western political leaders, including the US president, Joe Biden, protested openly and imposed sanctions. But Putin was determined to destroy him politically.

In 2022, Navalny was sentenced to an extra nine years after being found guilty of embezzlement and contempt of court. In 2023, he was given a further 19 years in prison on extremism charges.

Navalny was born in Butyn and grew up mainly in Obninsk, a small town south-west of Moscow. His mother, Lyudmila, worked as a lab technician in micro-electronics and then moved to a timber-processing factory. His father, Anatoly, a Ukrainian, was in the military. In addition to Russian, Alexei learned Ukrainian through spending summers with his grandmother near Kyiv. He gained a law degree (1998) at the Peoples’ Friendship University in Moscow.

In 2000 he joined the United Democratic party, known as Yabloko. Under its leader, Grigory Yavlinsky, the party stood for liberal and social democratic values. Navalny gained an economics degree at the Financial University (2001), and from 2004 to 2007 served as chief of staff of the Moscow branch of Yabloko. A charismatic speaker, he was attracted by the concept of television debates, and in 2005 founded a social movement for young people, with a name taken from the Russian word for yes, DA! – Democratic Alternative, which was active in the media.

Navalny started to move gradually to the right, and in 2007 he was expelled from Yabloko after clashing with Yavlinsky over Navalny’s increasingly nationalist and anti-immigrant views.

He then co-founded a movement known as Narod (The People), which aimed to defend the rights of ethnic Russians and restrict immigration from Central Asia and the Caucasus. A year later he joined two other Russian nationalist groupings, Movement Against Illegal Immigration (MAII) and Great Russia, in forming a new coalition called the Russian National Movement.

It made little impact and Navalny turned his attention to journalistic muckraking. His main outlet was a blog, LiveJournal. In 2010 he published leaked documents about the alleged theft by directors of millions of roubles from the pipeline company Transneft. The following year he exposed a scandalous property deal between the Russian and Hungarian governments. He decided to establish the Anti-Corruption Foundation, which continued until his death.

He also went back into electoral politics, leading street protests over unfair practices by United Russia. Navalny urged people to vote any way they liked in the 2011 parliamentary elections, including for the Communist party, so long as they voted against United Russia. He was tempted to run against Putin in the 2012 contest for the presidency, but said the ballot would be rigged. After the poll, he led several anti-Putin rallies in Moscow and was briefly arrested.

The following year Moscow was to elect its mayor. Navalny registered as one of six candidates. The next day he was sentenced to five years on embezzlement and fraud charges. Initially he called for an election boycott, but when he was released on appeal he changed his mind. Some analysts speculated that Putin wanted him to run to make the electoral contest look genuinely open. Navalny lost to the incumbent mayor and Kremlin ally Sergei Sobyanin, but claimed to have won. In 2016 he announced he would stand against Putin in the 2018 presidential contest. More arrests and repression followed.

Navalny’s nationalism put him in agreement with Putin on one major issue: Crimea. The territory had been ceded to Ukraine in 1954, but in 2014 Putin used force to reincorporate it into Russia. Navalny said he would not return it to Ukraine if he had the power to do so. Like Putin, he argued that Ukraine was an artificial construct. “I don’t see any kind of difference at all between Russians and Ukrainians,” he said, while admitting his views might provoke “horrible indignation” in Ukraine.

However, his agreement with some of Putin’s views on Ukraine did not bring him to support Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. That March, Navalny released a statement from jail. Through his spokesman he urged Russians “to overcome their fear” and take to the streets and demand a “stop to the war” against Ukraine. He called Putin an “obviously insane tsar”. “If in order to stop the war we have to fill prisons and paddy wagons with ourselves, we will fill prisons and paddy wagons with ourselves.”

“Everything has a price, and now, in the spring of 2022, we must pay this price. There’s no one to do it for us. Let’s not ‘be against the war’. Let’s fight against the war.” At the end of 2023 he was transferred to the remote penal colony at Kharp, north of the Arctic circle.

In 2000 he married Yulia Abrosimova, and she and their daughter, Daria, and son, Zakhar, survive him.

🔔 Alexei Anatolievich Navalny, politician and anti-corruption campaigner, born 4 June 1976; died 16 February 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

#just for books #alexei navalny #in memoriam

16 notes · View notes

mariacallous · 2 months

Text

Global governance, never really settled, has recently been having an especially hard time. Everyone believes in a rules-based system, but everyone wants to make the rules and dislikes it when the rules work against them, saying that they infringe on their sovereignty and their freedom. There are deep asymmetries, with the powerful countries not only making the rules but also breaking them almost at will, which raises the question: Do we even have a rules-based system, or is it just a facade? Of course, in such circumstances, those who break the rules say they only do so because others are, too.

The current moment is a good illustration. It is the product of longstanding beliefs and power relations. Under this system, industrial subsidies were a no-no, forbidden (so it was thought) not just by World Trade Organization rules, but also by the dictates of what was considered sound economics. “Sound economics” was that set of doctrines known as neoliberal economics, which promised growth and prosperity through, mostly, supposedly freeing the economy by allowing so-called free enterprise to flourish. The “liberal” in neoliberalism stood for freedom and “neo” for new, suggesting that it was a different and updated version of 19th-century liberalism.

In fact, it was neither really new nor really liberating. True, it gave firms more rights to pollute, but in doing so, it took away the freedom to breathe clean air—or in the case of those with asthma, sometimes even the most fundamental of all freedoms, the freedom to live.

“Freedom” meant freedom for the monopolists to exploit consumers, for the monopsonists (the large number of firms that have market power over labor) to exploit workers, and freedom for the banks to exploit all of us—engineering the most massive financial crisis in history, which required taxpayers to fork out trillions of dollars in bailouts, often hidden, to ensure that the so-called free enterprise system could survive.

The promise that this liberalization would lead to faster growth from which all would benefit never materialized. Under these doctrines that have prevailed for more than four decades, growth has actually slowed in most advanced countries. For instance, real growth in GDP per capita (average percent increase per annum) according to data compiled by the St. Louis Fed, was 2.5% from 1960 to 1990, but slowed to 1.5% from 1990 to 2018. Instead of trickle-down economics, where everyone would benefit, we had trickle-up economics, where the top 1 percent and especially the top 0.1 percent, got a larger and larger slice of the pie.

These are illustrations of British political theorist Isaiah Berlin’s dictum that “total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs”; or, as I have sometimes put it less gracefully, freedom for some has meant the unfreedom of others—their loss of freedom.

Just as individuals rightly cherish their freedom, countries do, too, often under the name “sovereignty.” But while these words are easily uttered, there is too little thought about their deeper meanings. Economics has weighed into the debate about what freedom and sovereignty mean, with John Stuart Mill’s contribution in the 19th century (On Liberty), and Milton Friedman’s and Friedrich Hayek’s works in the mid-20th (Capitalism and Freedom and The Road to Serfdom).

But contrary to what Hayek and Friedman asserted, free and unfettered markets do not lead to efficiency and the well-being of society; that should be obvious to anyone looking around. Just think of the inequality crisis, the climate crisis, the opioid crisis, the childhood diabetes crisis, or the 2008 financial crisis. These are crises created by the market, exacerbated by the market, and/or crises which the market hasn’t been able to deal with adequately.

Economic theorists (including me) have shown that whenever there is imperfect information or imperfect markets (that is to say, always), there is a presumption that markets are not efficient. Even a very little bit of imperfection can have big effects.

The problem is that much of the global economic architecture designed over recent decades has been based on neoliberalism—the kinds of ideas that Hayek and Friedman put forward. The system of rules that evolved from there must be fundamentally rethought.

From an economist’s perspective, freedom is the “freedom to do,” meaning the size of the opportunity set of what a person can do, or the range of the choices that are available.

Someone on the verge of starvation has no real freedom—she does what she must to survive. A rich person obviously has more freedom to choose. “Freedom to do” is also constrained when an individual is harmed. Obviously, if an individual is killed by a gunman or a virus, or even hospitalized by COVID-19, he has lost freedom in a meaningful sense, and we then have a dramatic illustration of Berlin’s dictum: Freedom for some—the freedom to carry guns, or to not be masked, or to be unvaccinated—may entail a large loss of freedom for others.

The same principle applies to the international arena. The rules-based trade system consists of a set of rules intended to expand the freedoms of all in a meaningful way by imposing constraints. The idea that constraints can be freeing, while seemingly self-contradictory, is obvious: Stoplights force us to take turns going through intersections, but without this seeming constraint, there would be gridlock and no one would be able to move.

All contracts are agreements about constraints—with one party agreeing to do or not do something in return for another person making other promises—with the belief that in doing so, all parties will be better off. Of course, if one party cheats and doesn’t deliver on its promise, then that party gains at the expense of others. And there is always the temptation to do so, which is why we require governments to enforce contracts, so that promises mean something. No government could enforce all contracts, and the so-called free market would crash if all participants were grifters.

But while there are similarities between discussions of freedom at the individual level and the country level, there are also a couple of big differences. Most importantly, there is no global government to ensure that the powerful countries obey an agreement, as we are seeing today in the case of U.S. industrial subsidies. The World Trade Organization (WTO) generally forbids such subsidies and especially disapproves of some of the provisions—such as requiring domestic manufacturing (“Made in America”)—in legislation passed recently by the U.S. Congress, including the CHIPS and Science Act.

Moreover, within democratic countries, the role of power in the making and enforcement of the rules is often obscure; we know that inequalities in wealth and income get translated into inequalities in political power, which determines who gets to design the rules and how they are enforced. An imbalance of power means that the powerful within a country determine the rules in ways that benefit them, often at the expense of the weak.

Still, the democratic context means that every once in a while, power is checked—as it was when the antitrust laws were passed in the United States in the latter part of the 19th century, or the Wagner Act was passed during the New Deal of the 1930s, giving workers more power.

In an international setting, power is even more concentrated, and democratic forces are even weaker. What has happened in the past few years illustrates this. The United States was at the center in constructing the rules-based system, in both designing the rules and how they were to be enforced, including dispute resolutions through the WTO’s Appellate Body. But when the rules—such as those concerning industrial subsidies—were inconvenient, it decided to ignore them, knowing that there was little, if anything, that any country could or would do about it. So much for the rules-based system.

And the United States’ confidence that nothing could or would be done was reinforced by the fact that it had effectively defenestrated the Appellate Body, because that Body had made decisions it didn’t like, and the U.S. thought that the Body was guilty of overreaching, going beyond what it was entitled to do. But rather than going back to the WTO and clarifying what the Body’s role should be, the U.S. simply hamstrung any adjudication within the WTO. The situation would be like suspending the U.S. Supreme Court while figuring out how to bring the justices back to a reasonable theory of jurisprudence.

This imbalance of power has played out repeatedly in recent years. When developed countries attempted to implement industrial policies—even mild policies, such as Brazil’s effort to provide capital to aerospace corporation Embraer at reasonable interest rates through that country’s development bank (as opposed to the outlandishly high rates then prevailing in its financial markets)—they were attacked. When Indonesia tried to ensure that more of the added value associated with its rich nickel deposits remained in Indonesia, it was attacked.

To win the hearts and minds in the new cold war brewing between the United States and China, the United States needs to do more. Washington needs to use the money it has to provide assistance to the poor, and the power that it possesses to construct rules that are fair. Nowhere is that more evident than in response to the debt crisis that the United States faces today and the recent pandemic, another of which the world will almost surely face in the future.

With most sovereign debt contracts written in the United States, Washington has the power to change the legal framework governing these contracts in ways that make the resolution of crises—where countries can’t pay back what they owe—faster and better. This approach would address the “too little, too late” problem by which one crisis is followed by another, which has plagued the world for so long. With more creditors entering the field, debt resolution is becoming ever more difficult. There are important proposals currently before the New York legislature (where most of the money is raised), but support from the Biden administration would be enormously helpful.

The world has just gone through a terrible pandemic, and the recognition that there will be another has spurred work on a proposed pandemic preparedness treaty. Unfortunately, under the influence of Big Pharma, there are no provisions in the treaty for the kind of intellectual property waiver that the world so badly needs, let alone the technology transfer that would allow the production of all the products—protective gear, vaccines, and therapeutics—necessary to fight the next disease that strikes.

The freedom to live is the most important freedom that we have. Our global agreements have not balanced our freedoms in the way they should. Better global agreements can benefit all countries, though not necessarily all people within them: Such agreements would constrain the power of the exploiters to exploit the rest of us, thereby making a dent on their bottom line, but they would benefit society more generally.

Striving to create global agreements that are fair and generous to the poor would, I believe, be in the United States’ self-interest—in its “enlightened” self-interest, taking into account the new geoeconomics and geopolitics. It was never in the United States’ self-interest to pursue a corporatist global agenda, even when it was the hegemon. But it is especially not so today.

7 notes · View notes

dweemeister · 6 months

Text

2023 Movie Odyssey Award for Best Original Song Final

TAGGING (interested observers, non-participating observers, and participants): @addaellis, @birdsongvelvet; @cinemaocd, @cokwong, @doglvr, @emilylime5, @exlibrisneh, @halfwaythruthedark, @idontknowmuchaboutmovies, @machpowervisions, @maximiliani, @memetoilet, @metamatar, @monkeysmadeofcheese, @myluckyerror, @phendranaedge, @plus-low-overthrow, @rawberry101, @rosymeraki-blog, @shootingstarvenator, @stephdgray, @theybecomestories, @umgeschrieben, @underblackwings, and @yellanimal.

OPEN INVITES go out to (longtime followers and former participants who have not accepted/declined): @dog-of-ulthar, @introspectivemeltdown, @mehetibel, @noelevangilinecarson, @qteeclown, @shadesofhappy, @the-lilac-grove

Hello everybody,

A good day to you wherever you are reading this. Following the most dramatic preliminary round in Movie Odyssey Award for Best Original Song (MOABOS) history, it is now time for the final.

Might the final also have some surprises and razor-thin close calls in store? As many of you know, this is the eleventh edition of MOABOS (MOABOS XI) and the tenth with participation from family, friends, and tumblr followers. At the beginning of every year, I never know whether or not this admittedly strange competition will return for another year. That it has persisted all this time – and grown – has been a personal joy. And it is not possible without all of you.

I began record-keeping for MOABOS XI when I saw Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022) on New Year's Day this year. From there, I kept a running shortlist until the preliminary began on American Thanksgiving weekend. That one song from GdT's Pinocchio has survived the entire year to get to the final. Over the rest of 2023, numerous songs from various movies filtered in and out on my master shortlist, culminating into this final round.

INTRODUCTION

For those who have never participated in this before, my classic movie blog traditionally ends the year by honoring some of the best achievements from movies that I saw for the first time that calendar year (the "Movie Odyssey", in which any rewatches do not count) with an Oscar-like ceremony. I choose all the nominees and winners from each category except for this, Best Original Song. Original Song is the only category which does not require you to watch the movies in their entirety. As always, MOABOS is considered a sort of cinematic-musical thank-you for your moral support in various ways over how long I've known you for. In addition, I think it's a fun, novel way to introduce to all of you films and music you may not have otherwise encountered or sought and to give everyone a little bit of film and music history.

However, MOABOS is but a foot-deep glimpse into my much larger Movie Odyssey for this last year. There are many films I saw this calendar year that I consider much better than the ones that appear here. But did they have any original songs? They did not!

WHAT'S IN THE FINAL

This final will be contested by fifteen songs.

In a preliminary round filled will thrills and spills, some popular titles have failed to make it this far. That includes Lady Gaga's "Hold My Hand" from Top Gun: Maverick (2022) and "Take My Breath Away" by Berlin in Top Gun (1986). But there's a Top Gun song in here, even more widely recognizable than both of these songs, that will be looking to assert its frontrunner status.

Snapping back from what was the first-ever monolingual MOABOS last year, the 2023 final sets the record for the most multilingual field ever with six languages represented – English, French, Hindi, Japanese, Portuguese, and Vietnamese. This breaks the previous record held by MOABOS VI (2018), which featured five different languages. After three-year absences, both Hindi-language and Japanese-language songs have progressed to the final. A Portuguese-language song marks the language's (and Brazilian cinema's) first appearance in a MOABOS final.

Two films from 20th Century Fox's Golden Age will also be contending. The first film, Sun Valley Serenade (1941), has two entries by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra. In addition to the appearance of Orchestra Wives (1941) in MOABOS IX (2021), this ensures that each song featuring Miller that has qualified for MOABOS has made the final. In addition, some big news as Shirley Temple – so often on the wrong end of the points totals in the preliminary round – finally sees a final round with Curly Top (1935).

Finally, in a round usually riddled with multiple entries for certain films, there's a distinct lack of films with two or more contenders for MOABOS this year. The only exceptions to that are, surprisingly, Sun Valley Serenade and Good Morning and Good Night (which I encountered for Viet Film Fest this year).

2023's winner will join this company (winners' playlist):

2012 (Special): To be contested

2013 (I): “The Gold Diggers’ Song (We’re In the Money)”,Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

2014 (II): “Rainbow Connection”, The Muppet Movie (1979)

2015 (III): “Amhrán Na Farraige (Song of the Sea)”, Song of the Sea (2014)

2016 (IV): “Stayin’ Alive”, Saturday Night Fever (1977)

2017 (V): “Remember Me (Recuérdame)”, Coco (2017)

2018 (VI): “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing”, Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955)

2019 (VII): “I Wish I Didn't Love You So”, The Perils of Pauline (1947)

2020 (VIII): “Can't Help Falling in Love” , Blue Hawaii (1961)

2021 (IX): “Lullaby in Ragtime”, The Five Pennies (1959)

2022 (X): “9 to 5”, Nine to Five (1980)

INSTRUCTIONS

Please rank (#1-15) your choices in order. The top ten songs will receive nominations; all others get "Honorable Mentions". There is no minimum or maximum amount of songs you can rank, but because of the nature of single transferable vote (the tabulation method described in the "read more"), it is highly recommended to rank as many songs as possible, rather than only one or two. Those who rank fewer songs run a greater risk of their ballots being discarded in the later rounds of tabulation. Since this rule change (first implemented in MOABOS VI in 2018), no participant who has only ranked one song has seen their choice win MOABOS. Again, this is all described in the "read more".

The tabulation method used in the preliminary round (10 points for 1st place, 9 points for 2nd, etc.) is being used for this round. However, it is used for the final only as the second tiebreaker (the tabulation method that will be used principally for the final – aka "single transferable vote" – is described in the "read more").

Please consider, to the best of your ability (these are only suggestions, not strict guidelines):

How musically interesting the song is (incl. and not limited to musical phrasing and orchestration);

Its lyrics (incl. and not limited to lyrical invention and flow);

Contextual use within the film (contextual blurbs provided for every entry for those who haven't seen the films);

Choreography/dance direction (if applicable; I know that almost none of us have a dancing background, but please do not dismiss this aspect entirely);

The song's cultural/sociopolitical impact and legacy/listenability outside the film's context (if applicable, and, in my opinion, least important factor)

Remember: you are not judging music videos.

A notice on audio/video quality and colorization of black-and-white film: Because it is sometimes difficult to find clean recordings of much of this music, imperfections in audio and video quality may not be used against any song while you are drawing up your rankings – you're on the honor system on this one. In addition, in respect to personal and blog policy, I will not provide colorized videos of films that were originally in black-and-white. You can call this snobby all you want. But to yours truly, film colorization of B&W is disrespectful to the artisans who plied their craft and made decisions based on the fact the film was shot in black-and-white. It is essentially redirecting a movie without consent.

You are encouraged to send in comments and reactions with your rankings - it makes the process more enjoyable for you and myself!

The deadline for submission is Wednesday, January 10 at 9 PM Pacific Time. That is7 PM Hawaii/Aleutian Time and 11 PM Central Time. That deadline is also Thursday, January 11 at Midnight Eastern Time / 5 AM GMT / 6 AM CET / 7 AM EET / 2 PM Korea Standard Time. This deadline – as it always seems to happen – will be pushed back if there are a large number of people who have not submitted in time. The deadline is later this year due to Christmas and New Year's being on Mondays this year.

All of the below songs can also be found in this YouTube playlist (but please note you may not judge the music video, but instead judge the song and how it is used in context).

Enjoy the music! Feel free to listen as many times as you need, and I hope you discover music and movies you may have never otherwise heard of that you find fascinating. The following is formatted... ("Song title", composer and lyricist, film title) and presented in alphabetical order (so feel free to shuffle the order!):

2023 Movie Odyssey Award for Best Original Song Final (playlist)

“Animal Crackers in My Soup”, music by Ray Henderson, lyrics by Ted Koehler and Irving Caesar, Curly Top (1935)

Performed by Shirley Temple

6th in Group B

Young Elizabeth Blair (Temple) and her elder sister, Mary (Rochelle Hudson) are living in an orphanage and are the primary entertainers for their fellow orphan girls. This number occurs early in the film and is quoted multiple times in the film's score. For those of you who despised this song's placement in those Shirley Temple DVD infomercials, I have no apologies to offer you.

For those familiar with Over the Garden Wall, this number inspired "Potatoes and Molasses" and its respective episode.

Where Alice Faye (MOABOS X's "A Journey to a Star" from 1943's The Gang's All Here) and Betty Grable may have been the two primary musical adult actresses at 20th Century Fox, Shirley Temple eclipsed both. Her modestly-budgeted movies showcased her childhood innocence and spunk, endearing her to a moviegoing public faced with the Great Depression. She was the highest-grossing actor in Hollywood from 1934-1938, and moviegoers of the Lost, Greatest, and early Silent Generations credit Temple's movies as needed morale boosters.

“Barsaat mein hamse mile tum sajan (In the Rainy Season, We Met One Another)”, music by Shankarsingh Raghuwanshi and Jaikishan Dayabhai Panchal, lyrics by Shailendra, Barsaat (1949, India)

(initial version) / (end-of-film reprise)

Performed by Nimmi (singing voice dubbed by Lata Mangeshkar)

Lyrics in Hindi (translations in the CC's in provided videos)

5th in Group A

Raj Kapoor was a major director/actor in the early decades of Bollywood. In one of his first directed movies, shortly after the Partition of India, we find Barsaat. This romance tells of two love stories of vacationing city men meeting women who live in Kashmir (a disputed region between India, Pakistan, and China). Later in the films, we will find Pran (Raj Kapoor) and Reshma (Nargis) quickly falling in love. But this song surrounds the womanizing Gopal (Prem Nath) and Neela (Nimmi), whose faithful love for Gopal goes largely unrequited. After much convincing from Neela, Gopal attends a local festival – and doesn't pay much attention to this Neela-led song-and-dance number.

In the reprise, Neela has died near the end of the film. Reformed, realizing too late how horrible he has been to Neela, Gopal carries her body to her funeral pyre as the monsoon rains – as hinted in this film's very title – finally arrive.

“Chattanooga Choo Choo”, music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Mack Gordon, Sun Valley Serenade (1941)

Performed by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra, Tex Beneke, Paula Kelly, and The Modernaires; danced and sung by the Nicholas Brothers and Dorothy Dandridge

Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song

Advanced directly to the final

Midway through this musical, the Phil Corey Orchestra (Glenn Miller and His Orchestra) are anxiously awaiting for their pianist (John Payne) before rehearsal for a Christmas concert in the ski resort town of Sun Valley, Idaho. He's been delayed by an unexpected detour while skiing down the slopes in pursuit of a young woman (Sonja Henie) who has been flirt-trolling him on the slopes. Phil is asked to "stall for time" by the band's manager (Milton Berle). But, quietly, Phil essentially says "screw it" and starts the rehearsal. As one of my tumblr followers put it, classic Hollywood's legacy of weird shenanigans at ski resorts continues.

Nicholas Brothers' and Dorothy Dandridge's segment feels separate from the rest of this number by design. White-owned theaters in the American South would refuse to show films with prominent roles with black actors, so 20th Century Fox structured Nicholas Brothers numbers in a way so that their dances could be easily cut for those theaters. MOABOS IX (2021) participants will recall that "I've Got a Gal (in Kalamazoo)" from Orchestra Wives (1942) and the reprise to the title song for Down Argentine Way (1940) were impacted similarly.

It's a brief, but memorable role for Dandridge in her early career. She would become one of the best African American actresses ever, thirteen years removed for her Best Actress nomination for Carmen Jones (1954).

This was the first of only two films made by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra while contracted to 20th Century Fox (RIP "Fox"). They were to make more, but then Miller decided to join the U.S. Army Air Forces (the predecessor of the Air Force) to lead its official band. Miller, an enormous musical figure of the swing jazz era, disappeared over the English Channel in December 1944. This was the first song ever to receive a gold record, and it was musically referenced across numerous Fox movies during the 1940s and '50s, becoming an unofficial studio anthem.

The city of Chattanooga and railways have and still embrace the song; localized Dutch, Finnish, German, and Italian versions of this song exist.

“Ciao Papa”, music by Alexandre Desplat, lyrics by Roeban Katz and Guillermo del Toro, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022)

Performed by Gregory Mann

3rd in Group A

In this adaptation of Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio, director Guillermo del Toro injects the tale with his signature gothic touch – moving the narrative up in time to Fascist Italy and not shying away from the original book's grotesqueness and the title character's sociopathy. This song appears as part of a montage where Geppetto (David Bradley) goes in search of Pinocchio (Mann) after Count Volpe (Christoph Waltz) abducts the wooden son. Pinocchio is performing for Volpe in part to avoid conscription into Fascist Italy's military.

“Danger Zone”, music and lyrics by Giorgio Moroder and Tom Whitlock, Top Gun (1986)

Performed by Kenny Loggins

Advanced directly to the final

This song first appears in the film's opening credits, as a number of U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcats are about to lift off from the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The Tomcats are being scrambled to address an incursion of what is heavily implied to be Soviet aircraft (and results in an exchange that should've immediately started WWIII, but the always-jingoistic Top Gun movies do not care about geopolitical consequences). The song is briefly played again for a similar scene later in the film.

“Esse Mundo é Meu (This World is Mine)”, music by Sérgio Ricardo, lyrics by Sérgio Ricardo and Ruy Guerra, Esse Mundo é Meu (1964, Brazil)

Originally performed a cappella by Antônio Pitanga; provided version performed by Marina Lutfi and Adriana Lutfi (lead vocals), Sérgio Ricardo (vocals), João Gurgel (vocal/guitar), Alexandre Caldi (winds), Marcelo Caldi (piano/accordion), Lui Coimbra (cello), Giordano Gasperin (bass), and Diego Zangado (percussion)

Lyrics in Portuguese (extremely rough translation... "Saravá ogum" is an Afro-Brazilian exclamation; I'm not sure what "Mandinga" means in the song's context, but it's an Afro-Brazilian word that either refers to an ethnic group or "magic")

2nd in Group A

In this film almost never screened outside Brazil, two separate romantic storylines – a white couple and a black couple – play out in a Rio de Janeiro favela. In the latter storyline, Antônio Pitanga plays a shoeshiner. One day, while setting up his shoeshining equipment along the beach, he sings this song – an optimistic number in hopes for a better tomorrow. Black Brazilian romance was and is rare in Brazilian cinema, and the inclusion of such a romance so prominently featured in this film makes it a landmark of the nation's film history, alongside the likes of Black Orpheus (1959; although Esse Mundo é Meu came from a filmmaking movement – Cinema Novo – that rejected the likes of Black Orpheus).

From the song's humble origins and use in the film, Sérgio Ricardo turned it into bossa nova. That's the late composer/film director himself in the provided video (the older man furthest to the left). The lead singers are his daughters.

“Hooked On Your Love”, music and lyrics by Curtis Mayfield, Sparkle (1976)

Performed by Lonette McKee, Irene Cara, and Dwan Smith

(use in film) / (soundtrack version with Aretha Franklin)

Advanced directly to the final

Loosely based on the history of the Supremes, the musical Sparkle is the story of the three Williams sisters (the late Cara as lead singer Sparkle, McKee as Sister, and Smith as Dolores). They decide to take their church singing experience to become a semi-professional group called the Hearts.

This song appears midway through the film, as the boys have dropped out to become managers and the girls have renamed the group Sister and the Sisters (I would've kept the original name). This is the debut performance of Sister and the Sisters. If you're wondering what's going on with the lighting here, that's because the cinematographer of Sparkle didn't know how to light non-white actors.

The film's original soundtrack does not contain any of the original performances. Instead, Aretha Franklin sings all the songs from the film in the soundtrack.

“I Know Why (And So Do You)”, music by Mack Gordon, lyrics by Harry Warren, Sun Valley Serenade (1941)

(initial version) / (reprise)

Performed by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra, Lynn Bari (dubbed by Pat Friday), The Modernaires, and John Payne; reprise by Payne and Sonja Henie

6th in Group A

This song's melody forms the backbone of the film's score throughout. In the opening minutes of this musical, we find the Phil Corey Orchestra (Glenn Miller and His Orchestra) rehearsing in preparation for a Christmas concert they will be headlining in the mountainous resort town of Sun Valley, Idaho. The first 48 seconds of the first video are an instrumental version of Glenn Miller's "Moonlight Serenade".

The reprise occurs near the end of the film as Norwegian refugee/figure skating extraordinaire Karen Benson (Sonja Henie, a 3x Olympic gold medalist in figure skating) and pianist Ted Scott (John Payne) find themselves stuck in a mountainside cabin. Karen, who has fled Norway due to the Nazi takeover there, has been pursuing Ted for almost all of the film, and Ted finally succumbs to her charms here – to the outrage of his girlfriend (Lynn Bari). Suffice it to say nobody should watch 20th Century Fox musicals for the plot (but refreshingly, they're not pretending to be any more than what they are).

What the heck is an Olympic figure skater doing and singing in a movie? Well, Henie was used in a handful of Fox musicals in musical numbers set to an elaborate figure skating sequence. These days, Henie's movies are largely out of print and hard to find. Her popularity was such that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) hired aspiring swimmer Esther Williams (unable to compete at the canceled 1940 Summer Olympics) as response to Fox's Sonja Henie movies.

“I’m Just Ken”, music and lyrics by Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt, Barbie (2023)

Performed by Ryan Gosling and company

3rd in Group B

The Kens of Barbieland have taken over power from the Barbies after Ken (Ryan Gosling) learns about patriarchy in our real world. In response, the Barbies, Allan, and Mattel employee Gloria and her daughter Sasha have manipulated the Kens into fighting each other (or, in the Kens' parlance, "beaching off") while they attempt to reestablish control. According to director Greta Gerwig, the dance segment seen here was influenced by "Lullaby of Broadway" from Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935; see the warm-up playlist I sent to many of you) and "The Broadway Melody" from Singin' in the Rain (1952).

The production design and overall look of Barbie was meant to have a sort of plastic toy aesthetic. Gerwig wanted to achieve an "authentic artificiality", injecting a sense of child's play into the filmmaking, and spiritually inspired by the production design of The Red Shoes (1948) – especially its 15-minute ballet sequence.

“Miss Celie’s Blues (Sister)”, music by Quincy Jones and Rod Temperton, lyrics by Quincy Jones, Rod Temperton, and Lionel Richie, The Color Purple (1985)

Performed by Margaret Avery (singing voice dubbed by Táta Vega)

Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song

1st in Group A

Based on the book of the same name by Alice Walker, The Color Purple stars Whoopi Goldberg as Celie Harris in her breakthrough role. Celie, forcibly married off to Albert "Mister" Johnson (Danny Glover) as a teenager, has grown resigned after a lifetime of parental and spousal abuse. Mister has a mistress named Shug Avery (Margaret Avery), who works as a showgirl in Memphis. After one stormy evening, a sickly Shug appears at Mister's homestead for the first time and, over a few weeks, Celie nurses her back to health. The two grow attached and, as tribute, Shug performs this song at the local riverside juke joint.

In the book, the romantic relationship between Celie and Shug after this moment is more explicit. Director Steven Spielberg's greatest regret over this film was not making more of this romantic relationship. Given that the movie was released at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis and in an environment where LGBTQ+ themes were verboten to the major movie studios, I don't believe much more could've been done in 1985.

“Qu'est-ce qu'on fait de l'amour? (What Do We Do with Love?)”, music and lyrics by Vincent Courtois, Ernest and Celestine: A Trip to Gibberitia (2022, France)

Performed by Pomme

Lyrics in French (rough translation)

1st in Group B

This song appears at the top of the end credits of this sequel to 2012's Ernest & Celestine, which was nominated (against the odds) for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. The original was, as I wrote back in 2014, "cinematic friendship at its most rewarding and profoundly beautiful." In this sequel for our dynamic mouse and bear duo, Celestine (the mouse) accidentally breaks Ernest's (the bear) precious Stradibearius violin. It leads the unlikely friends to search for an old violin maker acquaintance of Ernest's back in his homeland of Gibberitia ("Charabïe" in the original title, a name derived from "charabia", the French word for "gibberish").

A further shameless plug for all of you reading this to seek out animation that is not from the major American and Japanese studios.

“Return to Sender”, music and lyrics by Winfield Scott and Otis Blackwell, Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962)

Performed by Elvis Presley

5th in Group B

The eleventh of Elvis' 31 movies (if MOABOS returns for future editions, let's just say there's a lot more Elvis to come) and the second shot in Hawai'i after 1961's Blue Hawaii, Girls! Girls! Girls! is a misnomer as there are only two girls vying for Elvis' affections (it would be an appropriate title for many other Elvis movies). My sister thinks this film should've been titled Girls? Girls. Girls!

Here, Ross Carpenter (Elvis) is a fisherman who spends his evenings as a nightclub singer. Fellow nightclub singer Robin Gantner (Stella Stevens) and the secretly wealthy Laurel Dodge (Laurel Goodwin) are very much attracted to him. This number occurs after Ross starts seeing Laurel, inflaming Robin's suspicions, and resulting in a spat at the bar that immediately preceded the song.

“Suzume”, music and lyrics by RADWIMPS, Suzume (2022, Japan)

Performed by RADWIMPS and Toaka

Lyrics in Japanese (extremely rough translation)

2nd in Group B

This song's melody (especially the eighteen-note vocalized motif) appears throughout the film. But this version, with lyrics, only appears as the second song in the end credits. In this film, 17-year-old Suzume and a young man named Souta must journey across Japan to close a series of mystical doors. Mysterious phenomena are passing through these once-locked into our world, and are causing natural disasters.

Makoto Shinkai's latest, unadjusted for inflation, is the fourth-highest grossing Japanese film of all time. MOABOS regulars will recall previous entries from Your Name (2016) and Weathering with You (2019) – all RADWIMPS compositions. Suzume directly addresses a trauma that Your Name and Weathering with You danced around: the 3/11/11 earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.

“Tiền”, music and lyrics by Trần Khắc Trí, Good Morning and Good Night (2019, Vietnam)

Performed by Trần Lê Thúy Vy, Hà Quốc Hoàng, and company

Lyrics in Vietnamese (translation in provided video)

4th in Group B

In this romantic musical influenced heavily by Richard Linklater's Before trilogy, indie musician Tâm (Hà Quốc Hoàng) unexpectedly forms a deep connection with Thanh (Trần Lê Thúy Vy), a rideshare driver who challenges his view of life, love, and art over a full day traversing Saigon. This song appears about a third of the way through, after a conversation about money ("tiền" means "money" in Vietnamese). Most of the numbers in this film are composed in a style suited to Vietnamese indie music.

“Trời Sáng Rồi, Ta Ngủ Đi Thôi (Good Morning and Good Night)”, music by Phạm Hải Âu, lyrics by Phạm Hải Âu and Chung Chí Công, Good Morning and Good Night (2019, Vietnam)

Performed by Hà Quốc Hoàng and Trần Lê Thúy Vy

Lyrics in Vietnamese (translation in provided video)

4th in Group A

In this romantic musical influenced heavily by Richard Linklater's Before trilogy, indie musician Tâm (Hà Quốc Hoàng) unexpectedly forms a deep connection with Thanh (Trần Lê Thúy Vy), a rideshare driver who challenges his view of life, love, and art over a full day traversing Saigon. This song appears at the top of the end credits. Most of the numbers in this film are composed in a style suited to Vietnamese indie music.

Have a question or comment about MOABOS's processes? Maybe you would like to know something more about a song or a movie featured in this year's competition? I'm the one to ask! If you are having difficulty accessing any of the songs (especially if region-locked) or if there are any errors in the links above or the playlist, please let me know as soon as possible.

Once more to all, my thanks all for your support for the Movie Odyssey, the blog, and for me personally over this last calendar year and beyond. However long you've known me – it has been and is a distinct privilege and a pleasure to share all this music and (at least excerpts of) these movies with you. It's my hope you find this entertaining and enlightening about cinema and the music that goes along with it. Do not worry too much about this if you cannot participate, although I will be checking in as the deadlines get close. Happy listening, and I hope you have fun!

A happy holiday season to you and yours!

PS: TABULATION

The winner is determined by a process distinct from the preliminary round. For the final, the winner is chosen by the process known as single transferable vote (the Academy Awards uses this method to choose a Best Picture winner, visually explained here):

All #1 picks from all voters are tabulated. A song needs more than half of all aggregate votes to win (50% of all votes plus one… i.e. if there are thirty respondents, sixteen #1 votes are needed to win on the first count).

If there is no winner after the first count (as is most likely), the song(s) with the fewest #1 votes or points is/are eliminated. Placement will be determined by the tiebreakers described below. Then, we look at the ballots of those who voted for the most recently-eliminated song(s). Their votes then go to the highest remaining non-eliminated song on their ballot.

The process described in step #2 repeats until one song has secured 50% plus one of all votes. We keep eliminating nominees and transfer votes to the highest-ranked, non-eliminated song on each ballot. A song is declared the winner when it reaches more than fifty percent of all #1 and re-distributed votes.

NOTE: It is possible after several rounds of counting that respondents who did not entirely fill in their ballots will have wasted their votes at the end of the process. For example, if a person voted the second-to-last place song as their #1, ranked no other songs, and the count has exceeded two rounds, their ballot is discarded (lowering the vote threshold needed to win), and they have no say in which song ultimately is the winner. No one who has ranked only one or two songs on their rankings and nothing more has succeeded since this tabulation method was implemented. I highly discourage, but do not forbid, these practices.

Tiebreakers: 1) first song to receive 50% plus one of all #1 and transferred votes; 2) total points earned (the preliminary round's primary tabulation method); 3) total #1 votes; 4) average placement on my ballot and my sister’s ballot; 5) tie declared

For reference: 2013 final 2014 final (input from family and friends began this year) 2015 final 2016 prelim / final 2017 prelim / final 2018 prelim / final 2019 prelim / final 2020 prelim / final 2021 prelim/ final 2022 prelim / final

#Movie Odyssey Award for Best Original Song #Movie Odyssey Awards #MOABOS

7 notes · View notes

afrobeatsindacity · 10 months

Text

BURNA BOY REAFFIRMS HIS GREATNESS ONCE MORE WITH "I TOLD THEM..."

Ever since the stroke of luck or carefully planned commercial move that was the release of "Ye" in January of 2018, Burna Boy has not stopped rising. The song that led to his meteoric rise was a part of his album, Outside which marked his major label debut. With the success of the album shooting him into universal acclaim, he wasted no time in declaring himself the African Giant with a new album released in 2019. He kept with the pace by releasing his fifth studio album which he named, in true smug Burna fashion, Twice as Tall. Five years and a few weeks after that first alignment of stars, Burna is still steady on his grind and as confident as ever with his new body of work, I Told Them…, his fifth album in six years. The title is no doubt drawn from the same self-assured state of mind that the previous ones were.

Burna's greatness shines through from the very beginning of the album as his unique artistry is put fully on display here. He begins with a palm wine music–inspired, slow tempo song with traditional percussion. "I told them", he says and he repeats it, and his delivery is very much "I told you so". It is a clear payback to all those who didn't believe in him. He sings his own praises, calling himself amongst other things; a genius, a giant, the master. GZA, of the legendary Wu Tang Clan, comes in at the end with a spoken word rendition. Burna's self proclaimed genius is evident not only in this song but in the entirety of the album which is a unique blend of different elements and influences, featuring snippets, excerpts and samples from other musical works, banter with friends and phone conversations all carefully curated to create an inimitable work of art.

"On form" for instance, is both Afrobeat and Afrobeats and he mixes English with pidgin and Yoruba. "E no go tire me, nothing we never see", Burna sings, assuring us that he does not plan on quitting anytime soon. Burna travels through time in the earlier released "Sittin' on top of the world" which features a sample of Brandy's 1998 single, "Top of the world". It is a funky delight and a perfect throwback to the vibes of the late '90s and early 2000s.

Is it really a Burna Boy album if it doesn't feature a bit of political activism in some form?. On "Cheat on me", Burna takes a break from the focus on girls and money which occupied most of the earlier tracks, to pass a message about the prejudiced treatment of Africans by foreign governments; "Make embassy no deny my people visa/ No be Taliban, no be Al-Qaeda". Dave makes an appearance here but the potential of his verse is hindered by what could bluntly be described as lazy writing. He borrows multiple rhymes from Burna; "Believer", "Kilometer" and "Visa", using the last to end three different lines. Dave, also Nigerian, missed an opportunity to deliver a resonant, patriotic verse that could perhaps rival that of Skepta in "Dimension". On this song as well, Burna reworks a sample, this time from English singer Kwabs' "Cheating On Me", though this snippet bears only sonic but not thematic connection to Burna's new album. "Big 7" bears a similarity in rhythm to "Sittin' On Top Of The World", calling to mind early hip hop culture while Burna Boy grittily brags that he's been "Wavy since London, wavy since Berlin", referencing European cities from his tours on his journey to world domination.

But despite all of this, Burna is not forgetting his home and people. He takes a quick trip back home with "Giza", an Amapiano track with Seyi Vibes that is simply perfection, beginning with the ethereal sound of the Ney, the Arabian flute, and followed by rapidly mounting, light percussion. Seyi begins the track with characteristic spoken-word rap, and Burna's deep bass glides so smoothly into the second verse that it might take you a second to notice when the baton was passed. On "If I'm lying" Burna returns to foreign soil, this time somber and sincere. His delivery is assisted only by a few guitar strings and toned down Middle Eastern vocalization that gives a naked poignant beauty to the RnB song. Burna puts on no airs here, baring himself to the world. "Everyday I just dey give thanks for life/ Know how to move 'cause I know sacrifice", he begins. Not long after he promises; "If you need a shoulder to cry, then I'll give you mine".

On the next song however, Burna draws from a completely opposite emotion—anger. "Is this the motherfucking thanks I get/ For making my people proud every chance I get", he begins furiously. Like the Dave assisted "Cheat on me", this song too is about his people, but where he had pled on their behalf for respect from the outside world on the previous song, on this one, he berates them for what he believes to be a gross ingratitude for his many gifts, including his founding of Afro Fusion and being the blueprint for other African acts seeking global fame. He confronts them with their accusations and claps back at their threats, sacrificing melody for message, so that the song is not as appealing as most others. "Thanks" features hip hop heavyweight, J. Cole, whose verse would have served better on one of the grander rap-leaning tracks rather than an Afrobeats track that fixes on a domestic squabble between a man and his people.

I Told Them… had been much anticipated since its announcement, but even more so in light of Burna's recent interview with Apple music where he made some controversial statements about Nigerian music's lack of substance. Ironically, many of the songs on his album centre on hedonistic pursuits - Afropop staples. There was talk of "Azul and champagne" in "City Boys", "Rocking your body" in "On Form" and in "Normal", he makes us know that none of this is excessive in his book. But this is Burna Boy, and flippant and dismissive comments are not a new thing coming from him. And perhaps he could be exonerated on the grounds that he is one of the few artists in the business who regularly ventures out of that banal box to create timeless pieces of art.

With I Told Them… Burna Boy manages to pull off what many African artists have failed and are still failing at; creating a sound that will tie two worlds together. He not only does this effortlessly but even manages to bring in slices of different subcultures - African-American hip hop, Afrobeat, Afrobeats, Reggae fusion, Amapiano and RnB. The album is a patchwork of cultures, it is Burna's journey through space and time collecting bits and pieces here and there for an enduring album. I Told Them… is Burna taking another giant step across continental waters to claim new territory whilst still managing to carry along his already conquered turfs, putting his versatility and ingenuity on full display for the world to see. The African Giant need not try to tell us of his greatness anymore as he has proven it to us time and time again. But knowing Burna, there is no doubt that he will continue to.

This article was written by Afrobeats City Contributor Prisca

Afrobeats City doesn’t own the right to the images

#Afrobeats #Afrobeats City #Burna Boy #I told Them #Burna Boy I Told Them #Africa #African music #Afrobeats article #Nigeria #Nigerian music #Wu Tang Clan #No.1 UKTopAlbum #UK Music charts #J Cole #Brandy #Sittin on top of the world #Cityboys #Seyi Vibez

13 notes · View notes

manitat · 5 months

Text

The 100 greatest TV series of the 21st Century

BBC Culture polled 206 TV experts from 43 countries in order to find the greatest TV of the 21st Century – here’s the top 100

01 The Wire (2002-2008) 02 Mad Men (2007-2015) 03 Breaking Bad (2008-2013) 04 Fleabag (2016-2019) 05 Game Of Thrones (2011-2019) 06 I May Destroy You (2020) 07 The Leftovers (2014-2017) 08 The Americans (2013-2018) 09 The Office (UK) (2001-2003) 10 Succession (2018-) 11 BoJack Horseman (2014-2020) 12 Six Feet Under (2001-2005) 13 Twin Peaks: The Return (2017) 14 Atlanta (2016-) 15 Chernobyl (2019) 16 The Crown (2016-) 17 30 Rock (2006-2013) 18 Deadwood (2004-2006) 19 Lost (2004-2010) 20 The Thick Of It (2005-2012) 21 Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000-) 22 Black Mirror (2011-) 23 Better Call Saul (2015-2022) 24 Veep (2012-2019) 25 Sherlock (2010-2017) 26 Watchmen (2019) 27 Line Of Duty (2012-2021) 28 Friday Night Lights (2006-2011) 29 Parks And Recreation (2009-2015) 30 Girls (2012-2017) 31 True Detective (2014-2019) 32 Arrested Development (2003-2019) 33 The Good Wife (2009-2016) 34 The Bridge (2011-2018) 35 Fargo (2014-) 36 Downton Abbey (2010-2015) 37 Band Of Brothers (2001) 38 The Handmaid's Tale (2017-) 39 The Office (US) (2005-2013) 40 Borgen (2010-2022) 41 Schitt's Creek (2015-2020) 42 Peep Show (2003-2015) 43 Money Heist (2017-2021) 44 Community (2009-2015) 45 The Good Fight (2017-) 46 Homeland (2011-2020) 47 Grey's Anatomy (2005-) 48 Inside No 9 (2014-) 49 The Bureau (2015-) 50 Halt And Catch Fire (2014-2017) 51 Small Axe (2020) 52 This Is England 86, 88, 90 (2010-2015) 53 Call My Agent! (2015-2020) 54 Happy Valley (2014-) 55 The Shield (2002-2008) 56 The Big Bang Theory (2007-2019) 57 The Young Pope (2016) 58 Dark (2017-2020) 59 The Underground Railroad (2021) 60 House Of Cards (2013-2018) 61 Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008) 62 The Good Place (2016-2020) 63 Pose (2018-2021) 64 Detectorists (2014-2017) 65 Orange Is The New Black (2013-2019) 66 Mare Of Easttown (2021) 67 RuPaul's Drag Race (2009-) 68 Stranger Things (2016-) 69 24 (2001-2010) 70 Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009) 71 Enlightened (2011-2013) 72 Gilmore Girls (2000-2007) 73 Planet Earth (2006) 74 Utopia (2013-2014) 75 Babylon Berlin (2017-) 76 Rick And Morty (2013-) 77 American Crime Story (2016-) 78 The Killing (Denmark) (2007-2012) 79 Mindhunter (2017-2019) 80 House (2004-2012) 81 OJ: Made In America (2016) 82 Big Little Lies (2017-2019) 83 Insecure (2016-2021) 84 Normal People (2020) 85 Narcos (2015-2017) 86 How I Met Your Mother (2005-2014) 87 The Comeback (2005-2014) 88 The OA (2016-2019) 89 Dexter (2006-2013) 90 It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia (2005-) 91 Westworld (2016-) 92 Show Me A Hero (2015) 93 Treme (2010-2013) 94 Louie (2010-2015) 95 Luther (2010-2019) 96 Catastrophe (2015-2019) 97 Hannibal (2013-2015) 98 Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2015-2019) 99 Steven Universe (2013-2020) 100 The Queen's Gambit (2020)

#the 100 greatest tv series of the 21st century #the wire #mad men #breaking bad #bbc culture

3 notes · View notes

april-is · 1 year

Text

April 22, 2023: Dearest,, Jean Valentine

Dearest, Jean Valentine

this day broke at ten degrees. I swim in bed over some dream sentence lost at a child’s crying: the giant on her wall tips the room over, back: I tell her all I know, the walls will settle, he’ll go.

Holding her fingers, I watch the sky rise, white. The frost makes about the same lines on the same window as last winter, quicker, quieter. . . I think how nothing’s happened,

how to know to touch a face to make a line to break the ice to come in time into this world, unlikely, small, bloody, shiny, is all, is God’s good will I think, I turn to you, and fail, and turn,

as the day widens and we don’t know what to do.

Today in:

2022: Birth, Louise Erdrich 2021: Cicada, Hosho McCreesh 2020: Future Memories, Mario Meléndez 2019: Little Girl, My Stringbean, My Lovely Woman, Anne Sexton 2018: First Night, D. Nurkse 2017: Einstein’s Happiest Moment, Richard M. Berlin 2016: Yiddishland, Erika Meitner 2015: July, Kazim Ali 2014: This Morning in a Morning Voice, Todd Boss 2013: Paralysis, Peter Boyle 2012: from Mayakovsky, Frank O’Hara 2011: Northern Pike, James Wright 2010: Humpbacks, Mary Oliver 2009: Alone, Jack Gilbert 2008: From Blossoms, Li-Young Lee 2007: For Grace, After A Party, Frank O’Hara 2006: Wild Geese, Mary Oliver 2005: A Brief for the Defense, Jack Gilbert

#motherhood #winter #parenthood #poetry #poem #jean valentine #small children

13 notes · View notes

architectuul · 4 months

Text

Tinatin Gurgenidze: Between Two Cities

Continuing our talks on the Independent Coastal Radio NOR with Tinatin Gurgenidze, an architect and urban researcher from Georgia. She is one of the co-founders of the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial. Listen to new edition of Weltraum.

Explain me more about the Tbilisi architectural biennial?

Tinatin Gurgenidze: Since I've left Georgia, I always wanted to do something there. I started my PhD research about a neighbourhood in Tbilisi and at some point in 2017 spent half a year in Georgia. This is when the idea of making a cultural event in this district came up. With some friends we made this utopian idea of establishing an architectural biennial in 2017. Afterwards we managed to organise the first edition in 2018. The main reason was the lack of cultural activities in Georgia concerning architecture and also a lack of critical discourse. It was important to create a platform to bring different actors together and talk about certain topics. The second important reason was to engage with the city critically and talk about existing problems.

The inaugural Tbilisi Architecture Biennial was based in the suburb of Gldani. Photo is by Tako Robakidze

Do you also involve different communities in this discourse?

TG: The initial idea is to create it for the local audience but as we had less expertise, and we were lacking experiences of creating such events we made it quite international at the beginning. The local audience at first was not so much present, probably because it was the first time, they didn't really understand what we were doing, but it radically grew in the last two editions. Our audience is very different because we make very interdisciplinary activities. For example, in the last edition we had the film screenings where completely other audience attended compared to the symposium. Each activity has different audiences and it's always open to new people depending on what is happening. Participation wise it's quite international but oriented and based on local topics.

Young architects built guerrilla structures into existing buildings, like this pavilion by Maria Kremer. Photo is by Stefan Rusu

What did LINA offered the the biennial?

TG: This was probably the most important things for us, being part of LINA platform gave us so much connections throughout all Europe with different organisations and also so much support. Without LINA we have not gone so far. I feel very grateful for that, and I think we sometimes forget how important it is to come together and share, what LINA is doing. We've got also partners for another project that we have met through LINA.

How is to create such events in a precarious situation of work as a freelance?

TG: I am not completely a freelancer because I work for a local NGO in Berlin which is partnering with biennial and also my colleagues in Georgia they get their part time employment as well. Creative Europe funding allows us to have the salaries, which is a very positive thing. There is so much energy and time that we invested for free, overworking, but slowly with experiences and the results we get it pays back.

Your PhD thesis is based on the (post-) Soviet mass housing settlement of Gldani, a suburb of Tbilisi; What are you researching?

TG: It's a complicated story. When I started my PhD I did my research and stop it because of lack of time as I was involved in the organising the biennial. I have a plan to start again this year. It changed a lot from what I was researching and what I want to research now because I am working on the period of transformation after the break up of the Soviet Union and introduction of the market economy and how this influenced the built environment. I would like to research the typologies of the self-made structures and this transformation that happened in this period and archive the cases. I know the typologies will disappear but I would like to pay attention to this phenomena because this is also the period when self-made architecture was done and it's also an architectural style that needs to be studied.

Some people doesn't consider the self-made as an architectural style. I have to proof why it is it important to document this.

How did neoliberal period influenced on the architecture and society in Georgia?

TG: Extremely. From one radical system we entered to another radical system. This is having a massive influence, specially exploiting all the resources like selling out to foreign investors valleys and forests. The feeling of common ship is completely lost. This process has gone so far that since few years there are movements and protest. Since there is another side there is some hope. The situation is so extreme that people are also loosing their homes in a very brutal way. The banking system is super violent and influences drastically on people's life. The discourse is now opening more and more around the topic of common resources and that forests shouldn't be sold to one owner. People are slowly starting to understand this and these protest start from the region, they didn't started in the big cities, this fact makes it strong as well. It is very important that they reached the centre and are more and more people understand the problematic.

What about the privatisation of water in Georgia?

TG: We worked on this topic during the Venice biennial last year and we will continue to talk about it this year during the Tbilisi biennial. Water in Georgia is one of the most valuable resources as the territory in Georgia has so many different bodies of water - from nature springs to lakes, rivers, glacial, sea. The reality is that not everybody has equal access to the drinking water. Rather that some made water into a commodity and earning money from it, while on the other hand locals might not have the access to drinking water in their homes. It is a paradox how this can happen and a way of modern colonisation that affects environment and ecosystems because t's not really controlled. There is a problem of what kind of contracts are being made and how the natural resources are being sold out.

Exploring the Relationship Between Time and Energy: The Georgian Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Biennale is Curated by the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial Photo © Gigi Shukakidze

It is not possible to sell an entire valley or a river to a private investor, this is something that has to belong to the country and its people.

How do you see architecture in the future?

TG: A lot of rethinking must be done of what is architecture and what it can be in the future. We must really think if we need to build completely new buildings and urbanise so much territory. We must start to radically change not to build new things. It's proven many times that reconstruction is much more eco-friendly and cheaper. How much more can we build? According to the calculations where more people are coming into cities, we shall build more, but how far can we go? If we build more, more people will come therefore we need to find a balance between land, regions and cities, which can't grow endlessly.

Architecture is not an alone standing profession, it's connected with everything around it.

Tinatin Gurgenidze lives and works in Berlin. She studied architecture and urban design in Tbilisi and Barcelona. Trained as an architect and urban designer, Tinatin is involved in research and curatorial work regarding critical urban issues. She is one of the co-founders of the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial. Tinatin is also an author of several publications and articles in journals as ‘Architectural review’ and ‘Failed Architecture’. Currently, she is working on her PhD thesis concerning the (post-) Soviet mass housing settlement of Gldani, a suburb of Tbilisi. Tinatin’s work concentrates on a sociological approach towards architecture and urban space. In her work she tries to understand what happened to Gldani in the transition period after Georgia regained its independence in 1991.

Here You can listen to the WELTRAUM interview.

#architecture #interview #lina community #venice biennale #collective

4 notes · View notes

crawlingbetweenearthandheaven · 4 months

Text

"“I could get into Berghain,” Kendall insists, looking down at his sneakers. “I could,” he says again, as his siblings exchange looks. “I’m not delusional. I think – it would be nice for us, and Connor, and it’s spring break for you guys and you don’t want to go to fucking – Bora Bora, do you? Come to Berlin.”"

Berlin, spring 2007.

Heed the warnings.

#Kendall Roy #bipolar Kendall roy #ao3 #fanfiction #kenstewy #bipolar #bipolar disorder #succession #succession fanfiction #succession fic

4 notes · View notes

mostlysignssomeportents · 8 months

Text

This day in history

Next Tuesday (Oct 31) at 10hPT, the Internet Archive is livestreaming my presentation on my recent book, The Internet Con.

#20yrsago Whitehouse site blocks indexing of files about Iraq https://home.bway.net/keith/whrobots/index.html

#20yrsago WorldCon-running game https://web.archive.org/web/20031118200638/http://costik.com/weblog/2003_10_01_blogchive.html#106726489238821683

#10yrsago Spooks throw Obama under the bus: He knew about Merkel spying since 2010 https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/cover-story-how-nsa-spied-on-merkel-cell-phone-from-berlin-embassy-a-930205.html

#10yrsago Coach seating is getting even worse https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304384104579141941949066648

#10yrsago UK spies were terrified that the willing cooperation of telcos would get out; understood they were breaking the law https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/25/leaked-memos-gchq-mass-surveillance-secret-snowden

#5yrsago A detailed technical rebuttal of Bloomberg’s “backdoored servers” article https://www.servethehome.com/investigating-implausible-bloomberg-supermicro-stories/

#5yrsago Old dentists’ office walls are full of thousands of “buried teeth” https://www.valdostadailytimes.com/news/local_news/hundreds-of-teeth-found-in-downtown-valdosta-wall/article_2c6a0635-f973-58c2-8e18-949e63e4d9c7.html

#5yrsago Legal threats force retraction of peer-reviewed article about the problems with private-equity-backed dermatologists https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/health/private-equity-dermatology.html

#5yrsago Felons, Nazis: Michigan is occupied by an army of 3,000 armed, unregulated “police reservists” https://www.freep.com/story/news/investigations/2018/10/24/mcoles-michigan-reserve-cops/1353397002/

#1yrago Substituting economics for politics is a failure https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse

#pluralistic

2 notes · View notes

digital999placebo · 2 years

Note

what are your favorite movies? 😼🫵

IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS ONE….. right so I used 2 b somewhat of a movie buff so im gonna give u my top 10 movies that I think YOU should watch:

1. Das Boot /english title: The Boat (full version from 1981, no 2018 pussy bullshit) dir. Wolfgang Petersen it is the movie ever. I have the book in german and english and i have like 4 posters for it, it is that good

2. Farewell my Concubine (1993) dir. Chen Kaige Das Boot n this have shared number 1 spot. There’s all kinds of child abuse in the first hour of the film, so look that up if that’s anything ur uncomfortable with, but this movie is so beautiful i think everyone needs to see it. It was the first movie I saw with Leslie Cheung and he’s amazing <3<3<3<3<3

3. The Lighthouse (2019) dir. Robert Eggers

4. I Kina spiser de hunde /english title: In China They Eat Dogs (1999) dir. Lasse Spang Olsen One of the funniest movies out there. About a shy banker whose girlfriend breaks up with him and takes all his furniture, and the next day his bank gets robbed, but he manages to stop it. Later the robber’s girlfriend comes to his apartment and beats him, claiming that she and her bf were gonna use that money to adopt since she can’t get pregnant. The banker decides to contact his half-criminal brother to rob a cargo so that the girlfriend can get the money.

5. “Pusher” trilogy (Pusher, Pusher II: With Blood on My Hands, Pusher III: I’m the Angel of Death) (1996) dir. Nicolas Winding Refn you knew this was gonna b up here. Personally I love the second one the most bc it’s interlaced with this heavy melancholia.

6. La Haine (1995) dir. Mathieu Kassovitz

7. The Florida Project (2017) dir. Sean Baker From the genius behind “Tangerine”. top 10 movies that always makes me cry

8. Dom Kallar Oss Mods /english title: “They call us Misfits” trilogy (They Call Us Misfits, A Respectable Life, The Social Heritage) (1968, 1979, 1993) dir. Stefan Jarl Fuck Boyhood. Jarl made a documentary in three parts, the first one filmed in the late 60s, following two boys living in Stockholm, the last documentary even follows the boys’ sons as they’re growing up in a world that is completely distant from their fathers’. It’s perfect, it’s a cult classic, I can’t explain how beautiful it is, depicting how fast n how much society n culture in Sweden changed during the 70/80s, before n after r like 2 seperate worlds. also its just sad man.........

9. 15: The Movie (2003) dir. Royston Tan It’s a black comedy that’s v well executed. I haven’t watched it in years, but I still remember scenes vivdly like the main characters’ chant and a gangster boss sending two guys on a mission to find the best building in Singapore to committ suicide from.

10. Les Amants du Pont-Neuf /english title: The Lovers on a Bridge (1991) dir. Leos Carax Juliette Binoche is one of the leads, that should be all you need, she is a fantastic actress.

EXTRA. Christiane F. (also known as Wir Kinder Vom Bahnhof Zoo) (again 1981 is the year, not the remake, i havent seen the remake yet so i cant say if its good/bad) dir. Uli Edel This movie made me romanticise drugs n move to Berlin on my own at 16 so yeah.

#recs #movies #asks #THANK U FOR THIS ASK

18 notes · View notes

getting-messi · 2 years

Note

Seeing people get mad at Dibu for that moment of silence in the locker room and holding a baby doll with mbappe's face (💀) taped to it during the parade like??? first of all, pretty sure someone in the crowd threw that at them, second????????? they're on top of the world right now, i sincerely doubt there's any malice behind ANYTHING. leo and dibu both hugged and spoke to mbappe after the match. accounts keep posting that doll pic for reactions like?? ok post crowds chanting xenophobic bs and burning argentine falgs in france. post the establishments placing messi's psg and argentina jerseys at their door, telling customers to wipe their shoes on them on the way in. and so much more like everyone so unwilling to admit that argentina played better for most of that match and of course the 'bathrobe' discourse. a guy honestly went around doha asking actual argentines what they thought of it and everyone said they don't mind and it's obviously a sign of respect and honoring messi/argentina. is it only disrespectful and 'classless' when they're not european? if they were, i'd bet anything they'd be laughing about it, calling it banter and shithousery and whatever else. give me a break honestly.

that's way longer than i thought, i'm sorry 😭😭. sincerely though, ur egyptian bestie 👋

HEY EGYPTIAN BESTIE🤩

Omg never apologize for a long message, I love hearing from you💞🤧 but you are SO RIGHT! I’m not mad at it, because like Jamie Vardy said “chat shit, get banged.” Mbappé ran his mouth and this is it coming back to haunt him🤷🏾‍♀️

Argentine fans are having fun with it but it’s not like Dibu made that doll💀 and remember when back in 2018 France made a song about Kanté stopping Messi and they kept singing that🤔 because I do……I remember that clearly.

Remember in 2014, when the German players were celebrating in Berlin, they were singing songs about: "This is how the gauchos walk, the gauchos walk like this," chanted the Germans, mocking the South Americans as a hunched-over, short and little people.

Then came the Germans.

"This is how the Germans walk, the Germans walk like this." Back straight. Tall. Proud.

So people truly need to get over themselves. A teenage mutant ninja turtle teddy and a doll with his face on it is truly tame compared to how Argentina have been mocked over the years😒

#and see!! I knew argentines were not upset #I saw a headline that said ‘Messi lifted the World Cup and it’s the worst moment in history’ AND THE ARTICLE WAS ABOUT THE BISHT!!?#it was literally British media #FIFA even said they had one prepared according to Hugo Lloris’s size as well - they were going to do it regardless #the racism and islamophobia is disgusting #anon

8 notes · View notes

singfurmich · 1 year

Note

That’s maybe a stupid question, but how do you know Till’s Richard’s closest friend (as you mentioned). In a 2018 RZK said they’re more like colleagues now.

I don’t know why I care so much, but in my phantasy world as a failed Tillchard shipper I do. :)))

They're certainly not as close as they used to be but they're still family. Last year they spent their break between the Europe and American tour together in Berlin. They're both very busy too outside of Rammstein.

3 notes · View notes

mariacallous · 2 years

Text

As Europe considers another round of sanctions targeting Iran for its deadly crackdown on protesters and the supply of arms to Russia, there is a ready sanctions tool already in place, whose activation would send an unmistakable message to Tehran. Britain, France, and Germany, as original participants in the Iran nuclear deal, have the power to take the most important step of all: the snapback of United Nations sanctions that are already on the books.

Beginning in 2006, the U.N. Security Council imposed escalating international sanctions and restrictions on Iran out of concern for its growing nuclear and missile activities. An arms embargo prohibited the transfer of arms and conventional weapons, including drones, in and out of Iran. A missile embargo restricted the same for missile-related systems and components. Multiple U.N. resolutions called on Iran to halt activities related to nuclear enrichment and banned Tehran from testing nuclear-capable missiles. Additionally, the Security Council established an international sanctions list of individuals tied to Iran’s nuclear and missile activities and encouraged the regime’s isolation on the world stage.

The 2015 Iran nuclear deal, however, upended the U.N. sanctions framework on Iran. U.N. Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 2231, which endorsed the deal, set the arms embargo to expire in 2020 and both the missile embargo and individual sanctions to expire in 2023. In 2024, key nuclear restrictions on Iran will also begin to expire. The resolution even watered down the U.N. ban on Tehran’s missile testing.

But UNSCR 2231 also came with a “snapback” mechanism: a way for the original state parties to the Iran deal—the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany—to force the return of all prior U.N. sanctions if Tehran violates its commitments. With Iran today spinning enough advanced centrifuges to produce high-enriched uranium for several nuclear bombs, any party could at any time notify the Security Council that Iran is breaking its nuclear deal commitments. This would trigger a 30-day clock before all prior resolutions—and their restrictions—come back into force. Russia or China would then have the opportunity to offer a Security Council resolution to block the snapback, but it would be subject to the veto held by the other permanent members Britain, France, and the United States.

The Trump administration attempted to activate snapback in August 2020, but it was disputed by other Security Council members on the grounds that Washington had forfeited the right to initiate snapback when it withdrew from the accord in 2018. The Biden administration rescinded the Trump administration’s move shortly after taking office in 2021 and just last week suggested that only London, Paris, or Berlin could move snapback forward.

Notably, it only takes one country to trigger snapback. For instance, new British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who reportedly supports tough Iran measures, including snapback, could start the ball rolling. With Tehran’s nuclear program accelerating, protesters being massacred, Iranian drones and military advisors in Ukraine, and a U.S. envoy all but calling the Iran deal dead, Sunak would be more than justified in taking the lead.

Besides the strong signal it would send to the regime in Tehran, completing snapback would have other key benefits. Snapback means the U.N. arms embargo would return, and the missile embargo would stay. Iran would once again be isolated by the international community, with the potential for the world to expand trade and financial sanctions against the regime. Previous Security Council demands would be revived that Iran halt all enrichment and nuclear-capable ballistic missile activities, both crucial given Tehran’s ongoing non-compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, including its efforts to hide nuclear sites and material from international inspectors.

By contrast, reviving the deal and allowing remaining U.N. sanctions to lapse means throwing Iran a financial lifeline when it is most vulnerable. Under the proposed terms of the shorter, weaker nuclear accord the United States offered Iran in recent months, Tehran would receive an estimated $275 billion in revenue during the first year, rising to $1 trillion total by 2030. Iran would retain the ability to expand its nuclear centrifuge program with an eye toward the deal’s full expiration in 2031.

In short, the regime could fortify its economy, quash the popular uprisings, and emerge with an unstoppable nuclear threshold capability simply by saying “yes” to the deal on offer. Western proponents of the nuclear deal claim snapback is irrelevant, a step that would do nothing to stop the flow of drones and missiles from Iran to Russia or weaken the regime in the face of a national uprising. Their argument, however, ignores two basic realities.

First, as long as Western governments hedge their policies to preserve the potential to make a deal with Tehran, they will never fully support the protesters or hold Iran accountable for supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine. Snapback, on the other hand, represents a turning of the page from an era of appeasing and accommodating Iran back to an era of pressure and accountability.

Second, many governments use Security Council resolutions as a basis for national laws and regulations, including sanctions and other enforcement actions against Iran. Restoring prior resolutions on Iran gives those states justification to widen economic and political pressure, or at the very least, think twice about engaging in banned trade with Tehran. International sanctions also support transnational enforcement efforts such as the Proliferation Security Initiative, under which coalitions of states can act to interdict proliferation-related trade to or from Iran.

The Biden administration claims restoring the Iran nuclear deal is no longer a focus. A senior European official said the deal “does not count anymore.” Meanwhile, Iranians are dying at the hands of the regime and Ukrainians are under lethal attacks from weapons made by Tehran and launched with the help of Iranian military advisors. The West should not wait any longer and initiate snapback without delay.

2 notes · View notes