Volver, an’ that

With canny timing, just before the release of his new film Broken Embraces, Pedro Almodovar’s Volver was on FilmFour t’other night. It tells the story of a crisis in the main character Raimunda’s life which disturbs the memory of traumas she thought she’d buried long ago – memories which become physically embodied in the form [...]

The Fountain at the Centre of the World

Insomnia again.  Boo.  It’s not like I don’t have stuff I need to have slept well for.  Anyway.  When I started this blog, I told myself I’d regularly review all the books and films that crossed my path.  That ship has long sailed right out of view, but there’s no reason I can’t do it [...]

Who would win?

Klingons vs Nazis? IRA vs Taliban? I wanted to find a clip from The League of Gentlemen, too, where the two video nerds are debating Alien vs Species and other implausible deathmatches – for no other reason than the fact that it was filmed in the late, lamented Palace Cinema, which would have made it [...]

SE Manchester – The Communist Manifesto

This week’s SWP branch meeting will be on ‘The Communist Manifesto’ with Dave Sewell. It will be a chance to discuss the legacy of Marx and Engels’ great call to arms in the midst of the 1848 revolutions across Europe and to discuss its legacy today. At the branch meeting, we will also be discussing our [...]

Crisis and the Zombie State

I’ve been reading War and an Irish Town, Eamonn McCann’s account of the “Troubles” – from a compelling first-person narrative of Free Derry and the Battle of Bogside through to an analysis of the material causes of sectarian violence.  I can’t recommend enough that you get your hands on a copy (or better yet, come [...]

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