#docudrama

[phantomladyoverparis]

 Little Girl Blue (2023), dir. Mona Achache

[petermorwood]

I don’t usually post about politics, but the UK situation has degenerated into a sitcom that thinks it’s a docudrama. Or vice versa.

If “Blackadder”, “The New Statesman” and “Yes Prime Minister” had a bastard child, it would look like this.

@dduane​ reblogged someone’s “Explanation for Non-UK readers” HERE.

*****

There have been nearly (more than?) 60 resignations and 1 sacking - that one was for threatening to resign if Prime Minister Boris Johnson didn’t.

BJ mishandling Covid response to the tune of a mountain of corpses didn’t start this, BJ having parties while the rest of the country was in lockdown didn’t do it, BJ giving his minders the slip to chat with a KGB agent (they call themselves FSB nowadays haha but we know who they are, and what was that about anyway?) didn’t do it.

The list of things that didn’t do it is astonishing.

This memorable image of the Queen observing attendance numbers and distancing at her husband’s funeral...

...stands for all the other people who couldn’t attend funerals or even be with dying family members.

The night before that photo was taken, there were two (TWO) parties at 10 Downing Street...

But no resignations.

*****

The catalyst involved a known sex-pest called Chris Pincher - ”Pincher by name, pincher by nature” BJ is claimed to have said after the first male-groping incident and formal complaint. That was in November 2017.

18 months later Pincher was back in favour - BJ favourite catchphrases are “time to move on” and “put this thing behind us” (ooh-er, Missus!) - and held the post of Deputy Chief Whip (swish-smack! you could NOT make this stuff up...)

Then in June 2022 Mister Whippee groped other males at a party. They were Party Members as well as party attendees, and it seems Pincher pinched their members as well as their arses. Maybe he thought that made it okay. What British Tories regard as acceptable nowadays is a mystery.

There was another formal complaint about the incident.

After which...

The Prime Minister denied that he’d been told anything about it, then denied that he’d been told very much about it, then denied that he’d been told as much about it as the people who told him about it said they’d told him about it, then claimed that he’d forgotten what he’d been told about it, then was confronted in an open letter with proof showing that he’d not only been told about it, but exactly how much he’d been told about it.

And that’s when the resignations started.

*****

The number of letters with phrases like “...can no longer tolerate...” show that those whose names are on those letters were content to tolerate everything prior. They are no more admirable after the letters than they were before.

It seems - did it apply to the woman caught by an MP giving BJ a BJ in his office? (oh yes, that happened too) - that the Johnsonite gang would rather swallow than spit.

Maybe it’s something learned at Public School, or maybe the rug’s too soggy with sleaze to absorb any more.

It’s certainly lumpy enough from all the stuff swept under it.

*****

At time of posting,

Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia offered to provide a venue for any press conference due to “having experience with this sort of thing”.

Somebody was sent to get the Mess Webley.

BJ is believed to have resigned as Leader of the Conservative Party (although his speech did not use the word “resign” anywhere) but plans to stay on until the October party conference as “Caretaker PM” - which conveniently allows use of Chequers, the PM’s country home, for his next wedding reception. At taxpayer expense. Apparently invitations have already gone out.

Nobody can find the Mess Webley.

Moves are already afoot to extract him from the No 10 janitor’s cupboard before he can fill the resignation posts with acquiescent lickspittles, as well as fears of what he might do or cover up in the interim out of carelessness, disinterest, personal interest or spite.

Nobody can find the ammunition for the Mess Webley.

Ex Tory PM John Major has publicly stated that for the good of the country (and other countries!) BJ should not be allowed to remain PM.

It’s as if somebody has deliberately hidden the Mess Webley.

And its ammunition.

ETA: after some “what’s a Mess Webley?” questions, it’s this.

Also, someone who enjoys irony posted this (Gordon Brown (Labour) was 4 PMs ago.)

*****

Currently the most respected, trusted and popular resident of 10 Downing Street continues to be Larry, Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office.

[diana-andraste]

Kaneto Shindō's Children of Hiroshima, 1952

[vsthepomegranate]

Jane B. par Agnès V. (1988)

by Agnès Varda

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

COMMEMORATING 40 YEARS OF A GOLDEN AGE HIP-HOP CULT CLASSIC IN 2023.

PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on the front and back of a (J B5 Chirashi) 2015 Japanese re-release movie poster to American hip-hop docudrama film, "Wild Style" (1983), written, directed & produced by Charles Ahearn.

BONUS PIC: Alternative and/or variant 2015 JB5 Chirashi/Japanese movie poster to "Wild Style."

Sources: https://posteritati.com/poster/48794/wild-style-original-r2015-japanese-b5-chirashi-handbill (Posteritati 2x).

[just-late-roman-republic-things]

I don't know if you ever watch melodramatic docudramas, but I read that you know Spanish and there is this Spanish documentary about Fulvia (and Cleopatra) that might interest you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lrSwC-NOlY&t=2429s

!!! Fulvia! ¡Me encanta! (Also love Cleo too, but it's so hard to find Fulvia content!) I watched the video and got mad when I realized it was only the first half of the show! Which is remarkable, because this thing is...it's something!

Fulvia's actress has so much poise and gravitas, I'm pretty sure if I weren't aroace I'd have a crush. She looks even better splattered with blood. <3

Clodius has the personality of cardboard, and I feel so bad for the actor because it's clearly the director's fault for not letting him ham it up in drag or punch dudes in the face. Let! Him! Sashay!!

44-year-old Cicero is portrayed as an old bearded fart yelling at clouds.

When they cut to a painting of the curia burning down so they didn't have to set the model on fire...

After said fire, and Clodius' solemn funeral, we immediately cut to...Julius Caesar, in the form of a slutty theater puppet. It's terrifying and hilarious.

Cleopatra steals every scene she's in. As she should. At one point Cicero picks up one of her scrolls and she's like "That's a book on contraceptives, want a copy?" and the narrator says, deadpan, "Cicero did not enjoy meeting the queen."

The intense 10-second gaze between Fulvia and Cleopatra is more sexually charged than every actual couple in the show.

Did I mention all this is presented by Santiago Posteguillo? The novelist? Alongside actual historians, but still funny.

Curio has apparently been yeeted from history altogether.

Several factual errors - Cicero was a witness at the Bona Deal trial, not a prosecutor; the populares and optimates were not political parties; Clodius was killed in a gang fight, not one-on-one; Roman women could own property and have praenomina, though the latter was rare in Fulvia's time; and Cleopatra first met Caesar in Egypt, not Rome.

I wouldn't recommend it for accuracy, but I would absolutely recommend it if you speak Spanish and like seeing scary women covered in blood. Be warned that it depicts animal death and graphic violence, too.

I'm absolutely going to be looking for the second half of this incredible...something. But even if I can't, I'm immediately adding this to my favorites list. Thank you, for whatever the hell I just watched.

[autville]

autville, it's international podcast day! what are your go-to recommendations? from whimsical or spooky docudramas...to revolutionary nonfiction reporting...to super niche special interest deep dives...what are you listening to these days?

please share your best recs here!

[piraticaltwit]

rupert penry-jones + krakatoa: the last days, 2006 ↳ part 1 / ?

[pagansphinx]

I Shot Andy Warhol • 1996 • film poster • Image courtesy of Past Posters

Lili Taylor was brilliant in this film!

[fleurdelouve]

"When They See Us" dir. Ava Duvernay

[phantomladyoverparis]

 Little Girl Blue (2023), dir. Mona Achache

[drsonnet]

Leila and the Wolves (ليلى والذئاب) is a 1984 drama film from Lebanese director Heiny Srour and assistant director Sabah Jabbour.

It was filmed in often treacherous areas and the filming lasted seven years. In the film, the protagonist Leila, a modern Lebanese woman living in London, time travels through the 1900s to the 1980s, with each trip focusing on the centrality of women in Palestinian and Lebanese resistance movements. The film won the Grand Prize in the Third World competition at the International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg.

فيلم - ليلى والذئاب  (1984)

ليلى تلميذة لبنانية، تتمرد ضد مناهج التاريخ التي يفرضها المستعمر. تقرر القيام برحلة عبر التاريخ، في فلسطين الواقعة تحت الانتداب البريطاني حتى الغزو التاريخي للبنان، وتتفهم أن علينا دور في صنع التاريخ فتغير حياتها.

ﺇﺧﺮاﺝ:

هيني سرور (مخرج)

ﺗﺄﻟﻴﻒ:

هيني سرور (مؤلف)

طاقم العمل:

رفيق علي أحمد 

ليلى حكيم 

أوديت ملكون 

هالة حسني 

صباح عبيد 

نبيلة زيتوني

[angevinyaoiz]

Watched this Henry II docudrama while working on stuff yesterday and as u all know I love seeing what ppl do with the reenactor drama while Dan Jones walks around like a badboy at Chinon.

The thing is I've been so spoiled by the ugly haircuts and colorful stage camp toot toot music of The Devil's Crown that going to this SUPER grey and gritty modern realism filter is a whiplash haadjdjdidid. Also I realized they recycled a lot of this footage into the Secrets de Histoire video about Eleanor lmaoooo

The narrator talks in very serious voice about how THIS FAMILY DRAMA IS MORE BLOODIER AND DRAMATIC than FICTION which true I suppose but also to me it's Funny. It's Bathos.

We have Eleanor being the Evil Woman in the Yaoi shot here between Henry and Becket

Becket looks EVIL in all his shots and they play like the most foreboding haunting music it's like God damn u guys don't have ANY lighting whatsoever. Bc he comes across so sinister when they get to the part about Young Henry's dadson marriage coronation and they talk Abt Becket being uninvited it sounds like he's Maleficent or something..should show up in announced just to CURSE him (tbh he kind of did that with the excommunication lmaooo)

We get to see Henry Junior ofc which I'm always like yayyyyy it's my glup shitto...this doc really leans on that "Criticizing Henry re his interpersonal faults and internal personality" kind of motivation for his actions which I'm like ehhhh ofc things are more complex politically and I can't help but feel after reading Strickland's TYK book it's more hmmm. But anyways this distracts from the important things which is:

Narrator sticks pretty much to Actual Factual things that happens and the actor scenes follow suit BUT THEN! THERE IS SUDDENLY A FANFICTION (preceded by narrator going "one could only imagine what the heated conversations were like")

The dark ass lighting is annoying as hell but basically Young Henry bursts into Henry's room to be mad about Chinon (Mirabeau and Loudon) being given to John and they argue for a bit and then Henry gets mad and starts choking him???

But then he stops and then they're both like crying and hugging with this foreboding music. Anyways thanks timeline for the completely made up dadson bait for Me Personally

Blabla blah rebellion etc it's very truncated ad most of it is about bullying Henry LMAO

But ofc we get Eleanor helping da Boyz rebel and being mad Abt Toulouse and then there's the obligatory intimate shots w Richard (this also was recycled in Secrets de Histoire)

Also this series ofc follows the grand tradition of letting you know who John is by giving him a smirk and fancy lil fashion accessory in this case his cunty hat

Anyways pretty fun intro and overall generally factual. I nitpick bc I've just come off my reading ofc but djskjf the psychological narrative of "Henry grew up fighting for his throne in disordered times (the Anarchy) so that led him to want to reassert order and control in the lands and also not relinquish control in his family" feels oversimplified modern psychoanalysis storytelling rather than based in the reality, surprised there wasn't really any brief mention of the whole thing Abt the king of the English still being subject to Louis for the French lands thing bc that feels very central??? To the conflicts?? To me??? but it's a fun intro. At least there were no Party City Wigs like in Secrets de Histoire

[machetelanding]

[kwebtv]

The Missiles of October - ABC - December 18, 1974

Docudrama

Running Time: 150 minutes

Stars:

Ralph Bellamy as Adlai Stevenson

Howard da Silva as Nikita Khrushchev

John Dehner as Dean Acheson

William Devane as John F. Kennedy

Andrew Duggan as General Maxwell Taylor

Dana Elcar as Robert McNamara

Larry Gates as Dean Rusk

James Olson as McGeorge Bundy

Nehemiah Persoff as Andrei Gromyko

William Prince as C. Douglas Dillon

John Randolph as George Ball

Martin Sheen as Robert F. Kennedy

Michael Lerner as Pierre Salinger

Clifford David as Theodore Sorensen

Albert Paulsen as Anatoly Dobrynin

Keene Curtis as John McCone,

Robert P. Lieb as Curtis LeMay

[mann-walter]

My Thoughts on Napoleon (2023)

Please note that walking into the studio and sitting down, a comically large box of popcorn in hand, I had no idea what the movie was going to be about. Oh aye, I heard Joaquin Phoenix and Ridley Scott, I heard of the historical inaccuracies and all, but never read about them. By-and-large, I was blind. Please also note that I know very little of Napoleon and the Napoleonic Wars. Sure, I know about his wife, the battles, all those emperor stuff, and I certainly know about the Waterloo squares, but only on a surface level, and that's the end to that. That's why I will:

Not comment on historical accuracy

Treat the material as a biopic or historical fiction

I will only be commenting on what I understood from what I saw.

The movie was alright, a solid 3/5 and no more. Maybe I would have been much harsher, like many on this site, if I were more knowledgeable. Alas, I'm not. My biggest gripe with it would be how kernel-like it was. The best allegory I can provide is a good presentation material: condensed, consisting of somewhat disjointed points. It could've been a great presentation. Sadly, the brilliant storyteller who should've presented it got killed in an accident and never showed up.

I don't know what sort of Napoleon it tried to portray (certainly not the glorious one); it's possible that they aimed for a power-hungry, borderline-mad megalomaniac. But, if that was so, then they've kind of failed. However, if what they were going for was an extremely emotionally dependent man, uncertain, chasing after others' validation, guidance, and assurance, then I won't demand my money returned.

The whole of it not being precisely a struck of brilliance doesn't mean it has no brilliant side to it. Again, if they were treading the small, insecure man route, they did it well. Please observe the scenes in which the focus is on Napoleon or him and his closest female family members (Josephine, his mother), contrast that to scenes of battle and relatively public settings where he is not the sole center of attention. Napoleon was much more fierce, a little brutish even, and generally grander and more dangerous in the latter. While in the former, he... wilts.

I really like how they showed it, too, how he's a human with fear of death after all. Take Tulon, for example. When they were climbing up the fort, there was a moment—quite long—when the fighting was relegated to background visuals and audio, and Napoleon was just wading through it; they added in his breathing. It gave how, like anybody else there and in many other battles, he was near-pissing-himself afraid, overwhelmed, and uncertain of what will come of it. Yet, above all, what struck me most about that scene was how similar it was to the battle scenes in All Quiet on the Western Front both in form and the emotional result.

However, my favorite scenes still rest on Austerlitz. They took the time to present the tragic chaos of the soldiers, many wounded, frantically trying not to sink into the icy water. Keep in mind that winter gears were heavy and would be made heavier by soaking, acting as a weight. The image was interspersed with Napoleon looking down at them. To me, it was like a puncture to the gut.