Bit’s and pieces: Weekend edition, Steve Kilbey and Sophie Koh cover the Go-Betweens, Borgen – is it any good? Clint Eastwood. Atlas Shrugged Update… and less… February 11, 2012
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture.trackback
Okay, here’s a roundup of bit’s and pieces on less political issues that have struck me over the last while. First up Steve Kilbey of the Church and Sophie Koh cover the Go-Between’s Streets of Our Time. Starts out a bit hesitantly, to my ears, but improves rapidly afterwards. In a way there’s almost nothing that could be done to that song to ruin it. By the way Koh supported the Go-Betweens early in her career.
Secondly I caught the last two episodes of Borgen at the weekend on television. For those who have missed it it’s a critically acclaimed Danish series about a female Prime Minister heading up a coalition government of her Moderate Party, the Greens and Labour. Given that a quick perusal of the actual Danish political system informs one that those names aren’t used, albeit there are analogues, it’s a cute conceit.
But my problem is having watched the two episodes I can’t work out whether it is any good. There’s no faulting the acting, and there’s a nice and overt current of feminism that is threaded through the narrative and in an effective way too. But. But. It’s fairly soapy in parts and some of the human relationships are overly melodramatic [not like Game of Thrones which I finally got around to seeing over Christmas, much to my enjoyment]. Anyone else seen it?
Great news for those awaiting the release of Ayn Rand opus mopus Atlas Shrugged on DVD. According to wiki:
On February 2, 2012, the producers of Atlas Shrugged: Part 2 announced a start principal photography of April 2012 with a release date of October 2012. Joining the production team was Duncan Scott who in 1986 was responsible for creating a new, re-edited version with English subtitles of the 1937 Italian film adpatation of We the Living.[45]
Meanwhile, I mentioned SF radio broadcasts in this post last year, and am also working my way through them. Got to hand it to the script writers, boiling entire novels into twenty minutes or so is quite some achievement. But better yet is the way in which sound effects and voices combine to create genuinely entertaining, if dated, stuff. There were some similar UK based radio shorts in the 1950s and 1960s which I must go and look up. Anyone know where to find them?
And lastly, for the moment, what of this? Clint Eastwood promoting Chrysler in a rasp that was very reminiscent of Leonard Nimoy in Fringe. A car ad? A covert political ad? “It’s morning in America?” again [a slogan I’m old enough to remember, or at least recall Doonesbury slagging it off!] – or at least mid-morning? And what was Clint Eastwood’s [who voted McCain last time out] take on it?
Watch and wonder.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
I felt similar ambivalence to Borgen. It was engrossing watching but thinking about the plot afterwards it seemed a bit silly. As you said, a marked contrast with Game of Thrones, a fantasy which turns into a great political thriller.
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Mengdie, I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels that way about it. Thanks.
Re Game of Thrones, an object lesson in why aristocracy and feudalism are pisspoor ways to run societies – though it’s depressing to think how long that model survived [and does still in parts of the world]. the one thought I’ve had throughout is how do kings/queens in those societies sleep at night? The fear of assassination, lack of trust of those supposedly loyal and so on must be ever present.
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I guess if you’ve never known anything else, it wouldn’t be a big deal.
While I love the GOT series, I find the sexposition scenes a little annoying. The way sex was treated in the novels was a lot better and a lot less sensationalistic. I hope that the series’ writers realise that they don’t need to have a sex scene every episode.
I really hope the writeres manage to capture the complexity of Westeros politics over the next few seasons. One of the things that makes the books work so well is that Martin manages to exploit our fiction based expectations by being realistic/
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Completely agree re the sex. It’s not the variety, which is refreshing, but the necessity that not ten minutes [or thereabouts] must pass without a comely bicep buttock or breast bared…
Interesting point about not knowing anything else, I guess the other side is the way the elision of state interest and family self-interest and personal self-interest combine. The most telling point was Varys’s point to the Sean Bean character when asked who he represented… ‘the realm, Lord. Someone has to.’ That’s self-serving too – I don’t know how his arc develops but he seems to have a broader game plan, but not entirely and a great descriptor of the overall situation…
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I like The Game of Thrones. But it’s not the gratituous sex scenes which make me cringe as much as the gratutious manly sex banter, all that, “ah har my old comrade, the last time I saw you you were swiving the wenches in a goodly fashion,” stuff.
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It’s impressive how that theme is developed throughout the books. Five books in, we begin to see some of the consequences of Varys’ plans, but it isn’t clear what his endgame is.
Tywin, Jon, Stannis, Cersei, Daenerys, Robb, Littlefinger, Tyrion Ned and Varys all show us different sides of leadership and power. We get to see the importance of blood, gold, arms, idealism and religion – usually when some character neglects the importance of one of these factors.
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I liked RR Martin’s Tuf Voyaging, one of my favourite books, though it’s a minor work, but I’ve never read GOT. I’m kind of tempted but it looks like the work of ages 🙂
I like that thought re the characters. It’s certainly the most realistic fantasy I’ve seen on TV. Though I also like Richard Morgan’s the Steel Remains and the Cold Commands. A great deconstruction of fantasy tropes.
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I got the audio books and enjoyed them, but I will say that the author completely lost the run of himself after Book 3 or thereabouts. He introduced far too many characters and far too many new plots. I sense that he ground out the novel without taking some time to give it a good editing. His writing is very good, though. I avoid fantasy and SF because I find much of the material out there to be dross; Martin manages to provide both good writing and an interesting plot.
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Borgen was consistently on in the background here, with me trying my best not to get sucked into it. What saved me was revulsion at the smug liberal politics of the central character, which reminded me more than anything else of the West Wing – a smug liberal’s wet dream about how the world would be a better place if deeply moral smug liberals ran it. It seems reasonably clear from a few episodes in that they were pushing more of an idealism corrupted theme in Borgen, but by that stage I hated the lead intensely. Almost as much as I hated Sheen’s President in fact.
As for Game of Thrones, it was an entertaining enough romp, alhough the entirely gratuitous flesh got a bit wearying and, Good Lord, that whole strand of the program with the horse people would have had Edward Said spinning in his grave.
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Good actor though, the lead.
Yes, the horse people is a tricky one. I wonder how the books treated of that.
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Agree about the West Wing. I could never stomach its over-developed sense of m
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Agree about the West Wing. I could never stomach its over-developed sense of moral superiority, especially since that was inherently linked into a bunch of rather moderate positions.
I always felt the series was rather naive. Much of the difficulties revolved around feelings and understanding rather than, say, economics and underlying social structures.
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The West Wing always reminded me of a 12 year old’s idea of what politics would be like. Borgen is desperate old hackwork, like The Killing it wouldn’t get the time of day if it was in English.
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The moral superiority of the West Wing characters was pretty much ramped up to be deflated at regular intervals though – the Alan Alda character Arnold Vinick in particular is the foil used to expose that sort of smugness.
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Alastair, I think that a fair point, certainly by the latter few seasons a lot of the superiority had been smoothed away. Always liked the Vinnick character too and the tribulations a reasonably moderate Republican would face were well depicted. Twould almost mak me sorry for Romney. Almost.
Re EamonnCork, I have that horrible feeling too that the language/subtitles thing is dulling critical faculties. Though I’ve never seen the killing. Got spiral on DVD. Anyone seen it?
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I think they’re treated relatively similarly in the books. The Dothraki are barbarians who enjoy rape and pillage, but have honour and are an effective military force.
I guess the problem a lot of people have seems related to the fact that they have dark skin, but this is true of many of the other peoples (Dornish, Summer Islanders etc) who receive more favourable treatment. Similarly, the Wildlings and the Skagos are white and enjoy hobbies like canibalism, rape etc.
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Tbh they’re not even that dark skinned, more Mediterranean really. Interesting how that shapes responses.
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