Under Night Streets: BBC4
I haven’t seen enough pre-1960s british documentaries to say how widespread this might be, but the use of voiceover in Under Night Streets, a 1958 documentary about the Underground’s 800 night shift workers, to create a narrative over the pictures seems to be straight out of Billy Wilder’s 1950 Sunset Boulevard.
Not only does our gruff-voiced [...]
Black Power Salute
It’s hard to imagine an equivalent act or image nowadays so simple yet so powerful that would rival Olympic medal winners Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s gloved clenched fists, raised in support of the Black Panther movement during the Star Spangled Banner at the 1968 Mexico Olympics. The story of the lead up and aftermath [...]
Culture Show: Steve McQueen (no, the other one)
At 12′32 you’ll find Turner prize winning artist Steve McQueen talking with Mark “Max Headroom” Kermode about his new work Queen and Country, postage stamps commemorating those who have died in the Iraq conflict. They’re not real stamps but he’s working on getting the Royal Mail to take them on. He also talks about his [...]
Criminal Justice
Warning: another annoying post about an item that’s just about to expire. I’m four episodes into this five parter that was on Monday to Friday last week on BBC1 and it’s pretty good, starts slow and then picks up.
As it was all on in the last seven days all five parts are currently available in [...]
Imagine… Werner Herzog: Beyond Reason
Truly excellent documentary about the German director Werner Herzog (who looks and sounds like an older Richard E. Grant playing a quietly crazy German director) that covers his career from the epic films like Fitzcarraldo, working with the insane Klaus Kinski (think intense to the power of 100 and then triple it) through to the [...]
