Tom's TV picks, week beginning 11 December 2011

Two absolute must-sees in a double-header on Thursday night:

At 10pm, SBS1 is screening Dirty Pretty Things (2002), a film which lifts the lid on the precarious existence of the hundreds of thousands of "illegal immigrants" who keep British industry, in this case hospitality, ticking over. Despite their contribution, they are harassed at every turn by heartless immigration officials, which helps of course to keep wages low and the workers scared. But in this case the workers begin to overcome their fear and take a stand. Great acting by Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sophie Okonedo (who turned up recently in The Slap) and even Audrey Tatou who shows in this that she can do more than light and frothy. Sergi Lopez adds to his list of menacing roles as the evil hotel manager who is involved in a very dark scheme to exploit the hapless migrant workers.

Followed immediately afterwards by:

The Colonel (2006) (11.45pm, SBS1) in which a senior French military officer's brutal deeds in Algeria during its war of independence are exposed many years later. Blurb says: "A "Reformed Colonel" is found dead in Paris, a couple of decades after Algeria's struggle for independence was won from France. Lieutenant Galois is assigned the investigation of this murder. She receives the diary of Lieutenent Guy Rossi who served under The Colonel in Algeria in 1956, and has been reported as missing in action since 1957. The revelations found in Rossi's diary go far beyond The Colonel's actions in Algeria, and give an insight on how dirty Algeria's War for Independence really was." Directed by Costa Gavras, which is always an indicator of quality.

And, for something completely different on Friday night, the rarely-screened (and only recently rediscovered after having disappeared for decades) Wake in Fright (renamed "Outback" in international release) (1971) on ABC2 on Friday at 9.30pm. A teacher wanders into an Outback Australian town intending just to stay the night. Instead, he is quickly drawn into the town's life centred on drinking to excess, brawls and 'roo hunting. Dark black drama. An excellent antidote to the romanticisation of the Australian bush which has been a central theme of Australian nationalism since the days of Henry Lawson and The Bulletin and which continues to this day with rubbish like Baz Luhrman's Australia or pretty much any tourism promo you care to mention.

Tom's TV picks, week beginning 4 December 2011

Tuesday at 8.30pm: Go Back to Where You Came From, on SBS1. If you missed this first time around, make sure you catch it on repeat. It's reviewed here:
http://www.sa.org.au/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=6955:go-back-to-where-you-came-from&Itemid=453

Tuesday at 10.05pm: My Perestroika on SBS1. Documentary depicts the devastating consequences of the USSR's very own "structural adjustment programme" in the 1980s which Gorbachev started in an attempt to deal with the long-standing crisis of Soviet state capitalism and which was continued at a more rapid rate under the tender watchful eyes of right wing US-trained economists after the collapse of the USSR in the 1990s. There were those on the left who supported perestroika on the grounds of making Russian "socialism" "more efficient". Others attacked it because it further undermined the Stalinist "planned economy" inherited from Brezhnev. Revolutionary socialists saw it as an attempt by the Russian ruling class to save their system at the expense of workers. This documentary shows what 25 years of capitalist restructuring has meant for the working class of the USSR. Does much to explain the collapse of support for Putin evident at this weekend's elections.

Wednesday at 9pm: Another one hour special for The Thick of It on ABC1.

Thursday at 8.30pm: Here I Am (2010) on ABC1. There's been a slew of films in recent years which present a picture of Indigenous people in which the coercive and genocidal policies of courts, police, mining companies, pastoralists and governments are more or less absent from the script. See, for example, "Samson and Delilah". The reference points are almost entirely internal to the community involved. The problem with this "interior" approach to film making about Indigenous life is that the attempt to escape simply seeing Indigenous people as "passive victims" of overwhelming forces can all too easily swing in the other direction, placing individual choice at the centre. It's as if Indigenous people's "lifestyle choices" can be understood in the same way as, for example, the wretched characters in "The Slap". This approach very easily slides into victim blaming. "Here I Am" has its heart in the right place, in its tender portrayal of a young woman's attempt to get her life straight after two years in jail on a drugs offence, but by abstracting from the monumental insititutional structures of oppression faced by young Indigenous women, the director, Bec Cole, too easily leaves the door open for the idea that Aborigines should just try to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps". Get clean, meet a nice guy, get a job, reconcile with your mum and you've got a bright new future. A cruel delusion maybe shared by middle class film-makers but which bears no resemblance to reality.

Saturday at 10.40pm: The Front Page (1974) on ABC2. Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, on their tenth movie pairing, team up with a young Susan Sarandon. Blurb says: "Hildy Johnson is the top reporter on a Chicago newspaper during the 1920s. Tired of the whole game he's determined to quit his job to get married. His scheming editor, Walter Burns, has other plans though. It's the day before guilty (but insane) murderer, Earl Williams, is due to go to the gallows and Burns tempts Johnson to stay and write the story." Movie depicts mainstream journalism as a despicable trade in which ethics are completely dispatched for the sake of a "good story", real or fabricated.

And don't forget part 3 of The Promise on Sunday night at 8.30pm on SBS1.

Tom's TV picks, week beginning 27 November

by Tom Bramble on Saturday, 26 November 2011 at 19:39

 

Two things worth watching on Sunday night.

8.30pm on SBS1: The Promise: part 1 of a new series. Here's the blurb that outlines the basic story: "Just as 18-year-old Londoner Erin sets off to spend summer in Israel with her best friend, Eliza, she unearths an old diary belonging to her sick grandfather, Len. Intrigued by the life of this old man she barely knows, she takes the diary with her and is stunned to learn of his part in the post-WWII British peacekeeping force in what was then Palestine. Left to her own devices when Eliza begins national service in the Israeli army, Erin witnesses the complexities of life, for both Jews and Arabs, in this troubled land."

So, shades of Ken Loach's "Land and Freedom" in the basic plot device. The plus points: the series shows how Israel was born in violence and how that violence is maintained today. For those who don't know much about the Israeli colonial project it will be quite an eye-opener. And the Zionists hate it, which is always a good recommendation. Wikipedia records that: "A press attaché at the Israeli embassy in London condemned the drama to The Jewish Chronicle as the worst example of anti-Israel propaganda he had ever seen on television, saying it "created a new category of hostility towards Israel"".

The downside: it's a British production and seriously underplays the role of the British in facilitating the Zionist project in the 1930s and 1940s - quite an historical distortion in that respect. And, as the blurb suggests, despite the ranting of the Zionists, it does at times tie itself in knots trying to present a "balanced" view. But it gets better as the series progresses, the compulsory romantic interlude notwithstanding.

12.10am on SBS1: Ae Fond Kiss: speaking of Ken Loach, any Loach film, even a bad one, is better than most. And this is by no means bad. Indeed, it's rather good: "Sparks fly in Glasgow's south side when Casim, a young Muslim, falls in love with Roisin, an Irish Catholic. Casim's parents try their hardest to make him marry the girl they have chosen for him back in Pakistan, but Casim and Roisin are devoted to each other and determined to stay together." A small-scale, intimate film that shows decent people trying to overcome family prejudices that in turn are born out of the wider crucible of colonialism and racism. Even though one barracks for the couple, you are also invited to understand why it is that the Pakistani family are so set against their son marrying "out" of the community. 

Wednesday 9pm on ABC1: The Thick of It: The best political satire on TV in an extended one-hour special. Pitch black comedy.

On Friday night there are two programmes both worth watching and both at 9.30pm:

ABC2 is screening Fear of a Brown Planet: 75 minutes of incisive comedy which skewers racism in Australia, while SBS2 is showing The Rising: Ballad of Mangal Pandey a film featuring the hero of the Indian revolt of 1857 who leads his men in a courageous fight against the corrupt and exploitative East India Company. This is British colonialism as it really was: "dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt", as Karl Marx described the rise of capitalism.

Tom's TV picks week beginning 20 November

Tom's TV picks week beginning 20 November

Slim pickings this week. After Sunday's documentary on Daniel Ellsberg (The Most Dangerous Man in America), I can really only suggest two picks this week:

Tuesday 22 November at 10.05pm on SBS1: The Pipe
"A compelling documentary film four years in the making, The Pipe tells the story of the small Rossport community which has taken on the might of Shell Oil and the Irish State. The discovery of gas off this remote coastal village has led to the most dramatic clash of cultures in modern Ireland. The rights of farmers over their fields, and of fishermen to their fishing grounds, has come in direct conflict with one of the world's most powerful oil companies. When the citizens look to their State to protect their rights, they find that the government has put Shell's right to lay a pipeline over their own. Already 5 locals have spent 94 days in jail rather than let the proposed Shell pipeline cross their lands. This once tranquil area is engulfed in turmoil, as huge numbers of police drafted in. Normal policing has broken down following baton charges, surveillance, arrests, and a hunger strike by a local schoolteacher...".

And, possibly this:

Thursday 24 November at 7.30pm on SBS2: Trails from the East: Syria and Jordan: the Great Enemy
Part 10 of a series of 13 documentaries from Holland exploring nations and cultures in Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Blurb says: "In "The Great Enemy", the train ride goes from the Iraqi-Syrian border to Aleppo, Syria. From there the train continues to Damascus and Amman (Jordan), until Aqaba, bordering Israel. This episode explores how travellers manage their relationship with their enemies, Israel and America. One traveller claims he does not want to be seen as a terrorist, while the train conductor praises Palestinian suicide bombers. Outside of the train we meet Rana Husseini, a Jordanian journalist, who questions honor killings in her country and is therefore often accused of being pro-American". Hmmm...

There's also the regulars (Pride and Prejudice tonight, Sunday, on ABC1 at 10.35pm; The Killing on Wednesday night on ABC2 at 8.30pm; Friday Night Lights on, yes, Friday night, also on ABC2 at 8.30pm). And, for a bit of light relief, Tampopo (Japan, 1985) (Monday at 10.30pm on SBS2).

Tom's TV picks week beginning 13 November

Thursday at 1.30pm (SBS1): "The Coca Cola Case": unions and lawyers take on the big American corporation and try to bring it to book for its appalling abuse of workers' rights at its operations around the world. A one-hour Canadian documentary.

Thursday at 11.10pm (SBS2): "Once you're born, you can no longer hide" (Italy, 2005): A touching film about a young Italian boy, Sandro, who is forced to confront the reality of his privileged existence when he encounters refugees trying to get into Italy. One review says, and I concur: "The basic plot sounds like it could be tedious--a boy from a wealthy industrialist family who is thought drowned is saved by a refugee boat. He becomes especially close to a Romanian brother and sister and in many ways ties his own fate to theirs. The film is so beautifully directed--subtle, never obvious, not belabored or sentimental--that it feels as much like it is observed so much as created for the screen."

Saturday at 1pm (SBS1): "Black Music: An American Revolution", Part 2 of this documentary takes the story from the civil rights era to gangsta rap and overproduced R&B; in my view, from treasure to trash, though I know some comrades will strongly disagree!

Saturday night: two very different films...

At 9.30pm, SBS2 is screening "Crossed Tracks" ("Roman de Gare") (France, 2007), a Hitchcockian thriller directed by noted French film director Claude Lelouch. Haven't seen this, but here's the blurb: "The successful novelist Judith Ralitzer is interrogated in the police station about the disappearance of her ghost-writer. A serial-killer escapes from a prison in Paris. A missing school teacher leaves his wife and children. In the road, the annoying and stressed hairdresser Hughette is left in a gas station by her fiancé Paul while driving to the poor farm of her family in the country. A mysterious man offers a ride to her and she invites him to assume the identity of Paul during 24 hours to not disappoint her mother. Who might be the unknown man and what is real and what is fiction?"

At 10.50pm over on ABC2, you can see"It's a Wonderful Life" (1946) by Frank Capra. One of the best known and loved films of the 20th century. Heart-tugging small-town populism as Everyman George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart, reviews the impact of his life on his community. As he does so he discovers that his actions over the years, although seemingly relatively inconsequential at the time, have lifted up everyone in the town, except dastardly Moneybags Mr Potter who is out to wreck the town for his own selfish pecuniary motives. The film is an ode to human decency and is one movie everyone should see at least once in their lives. Difficult to believe that the director was a registered Republican! See this for some interesting background on one of Hollywood's best 20th century directors: http://www.crossleft.org/node/6547

Tom's TV picks week beginning 6 November

Tom's TV picks week beginning 6 November

by Tom Bramble on Tuesday, 08 November 2011 at 16:43

 

Three picks dealing with racism and anti-racism, one just a damn good police procedural...

Tuesday at 8.30pm (SBS1): "Breaking into Europe": a documentary detailing the struggle by migrants and refugees to bust Europe's racist immigration laws and find a way into the UK. The blurb says "In a ground-breaking assignment, two reporters set out to follow the journeys that these migrants take along the most popular and dangerous routes to the UK". If you liked that wonderful French movie "Welcome" (http://www.welcomemovie.com.au/) this could be worth watching.

Wednesday at 8.30pm (SBS2): "The Killing". We're now on Episode 2 of this great 20-part Danish series about cops trying to track down the killer of a 19 year old student. Here's the blurb: "The body of the missing student is found in an abandoned car, and details of her suffering are uncovered. Suspicion falls on local politician Troels Hartmann when it is found that the car is registered to his campaign office. Detective Inspector Sarah Lund keeps postponing her departure, and tension arises between her and her new partner as they investigate the connection to city hall." Plenty of political skullduggery, red herrings and twists and turns keep you involved right the way through the series. It's on repeat so if you missed it first time, don't miss it second time around. Series 2 is shortly to be screened in the UK so with luck SBS will screen that following Series 1.

Friday at 8.30pm (ABC2): "Friday Night Lights". I recommended this last time but it's suddenly taken an interesting turn with the Black members of the Texas school football team, the Dillon Panthers, rebelling against their racist coach. Hitherto quite unpolitical player "Smash" Williams emerges as a leader.

Saturday at 1pm (SBS1): "Black Music: An American (r)evolution". Episode 1 (of two), entitled "We Shall Overcome", traces the history of Black music in the States from early Negro spirituals through to the civil rights era.

Tom's TV picks week beginning 30 October

Not much on this week, but here's a few selections.

Sunday
10.30pm: Pride and Prejudice (1995) on ABC1. The best, if you haven't already seen it two or three times. And even if you have, I hope you'll agree it's worth another round, with part 1 starting tonight. Beautifully acted, beautifully scripted and with a first-class wise and witty heroine, Lizzy Bennett.

Monday
10.30pm: The Blue Kite (1993) on SBS2: A Chinese family survive the hardships of life in Beijing from 1953 to the Cultural Revolution in 1968 as the Communist Government sought to crash industrialise the country and suppress the rights of the working class. Banned in China. A humanist sentiment pervades the film.

Tuesday
10pm: Gaddafi: Our Best Enemy on SBS1: a documentary which traces how Gaddafi was rehabilitated by the West as he became a useful "asset" to the West in the War on Terror and control over the region's oil supplies. Tony Blair and Condoleezza Rice get skewered.

Friday
8.30pm: Friday Night Lights on ABC2: the fortunes of the local football team dominate life in small town Texas in this long-running series (it's been on weekly since August, but you can quickly catch up with the basic story). Rather more involving than your average story about football jocks, the characters are all well developed, the businessmen are venal, the players are a pretty mixed bunch and are all dealing with tricky family issues as well. It doesn't set the world on fire but it's a good use of 45 minutes on a Friday night.

Tom's TV picks week beginning 23 October

Just a quick, cut down version as too busy to do much more, but some things definitely worth catching in the next week:

Sunday 8.30pm SBS1: Dateline has a feature on the Syrian revolt, followed immediately afterwards by:

Sunday 9.30pm SBS 1: "My Lai": documentary on massacre in Vietnam when US troops wiped out an entire village. Remember this when you hear the US crowing about bringing freedom to Libya.

Monday 8.30pm ABC1: 4 Corners: feature on Australia's brutal refugee detention centres. An inside look.

Thursday 8.30pm SBS2: "China Blue": documentary about conditions of Chinese factory workers.

Saturday 10.20pm SBS1: "Hunger": film about Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands. Harrowing but demonstration of indomitable spirit of the hunger strikers in their campaign for political prisoner status

Tom's TV picks w/b 11 September

Cologne following Allied bombing raid in 1944.

What else to say, it's been "all 9/11, all the channels, all the time" on TV lately and of course today will be no exception. As a welcome counterpoint to this 9/11 media/political necrophilia (attaining satisfaction from the bodies of the dead), SBS1 is screening THE BOMBING OF GERMANY on FRIDAY night at 8.30pm. Although the blurb suggests that this documentary will tie itself up in liberal knots judging the morals of the industrial-scale massacres of German civilians by US bombing raids in World War II, and although it is extremely unlikely that SBS programmers have scheduled this documentary for this purpose, it will at least serve as a reminder that Al Qaeda did not invent the use of aeroplanes as a means to inflict carnage on innocents.

It's a big week for programmes about the War on Terror and not just the obvious 9/11 features. On TUESDAY night at 8.30pm SBS1 is showing WIKI SECRETS, a documentary about Bradley Manning and the mass leaking of US military secrets last year. SATURDAY night (10.15pm) has the same channel showing the film SECRETS OF STATE (2009), a thriller depicting the abuses of the French secret service, the DGSE, in its hunt for "terrorists". I'm a bit torn by this film. It depicts the kind of abuses engaged in by the French secret service, the DGSE, in its hunt for terrorists. The French anti-terrorist apparatus is shown to be highly amoral and an enemy of basic human rights, both of its own agents and also its victims. It's also got a gripping story line. But it doesn't really question the underlying motives of the French state and indeed, at the film's finish the director appears even to justify these abuses in the name of "whatever it takes". So, be warned.

And then there are two films that explore the effects of ideological conditioning similar to that to which we have been exposed in saturation doses over the past ten years. First, on WEDNESDAY night at 10.05pm, SBS1 is showing THE WAVE (2008), a German movie that explores how easily fascistic "groupthink" can operate in a classroom context. The movie is based on a real-life 1967 experiment by Californian teacher Ron Jones who got students to role-play a microcosm of a fascist state in class over several days before having to cancel the experiment abruptly as it got completely out of hand. More on this at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave. The same totalitarian conformism is also evident in Danish film DELIVER US FROM EVIL (2009) on SATURDAY night on SBS2 at 9.30pm. A small-town neo-Nazi successfully blames a refugee for the death of an elderly resident and mobilises the wrath of the townsfolk against him.

Finally, for something completely different, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960) is showing on ABC2 on SATURDAY night at 8.30pm. A remake of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954), it's lighter in tone and considerably shorter but doesn't suffer much in being so. A Western, in which seven unlikely characters all operating with mixed and usually quite selfish motives band together to save a town. Fair doses of cool humour and glimpses of human frailty amongst the tough guys keep it humming along. I suppose if you look at it critically you could say that it has a liberal imperialist tone to it (terrorised Mexican villagers ask an American gunslinger to save them from a heinous bandit when in fact the main danger Mexicans faced was the US itself which stole one third of their land mass in the 19th century) but I'm willing to put this aside in favour of its many virtues.

Not a vintage week then, by any means, but some stuff worth catching amidst all the 9/11 militaristic tub-thumping.

Update on Tom's TV picks 21 August

Just a quick note for those following this blog. I am currently (12 August to 9 September) on leave in the Northern Territory and have very intermittent access to the internet. Next TV Picks will be posted on my return to Brisbane probably on Sunday 11 September. Apologies for the interruption!

Tom's TV picks w/b 14 August

A week since I wrote my last TV picks and in the meantime the world seems to have blown up. First on Friday, the financial speculators who have enjoyed an enormous surge in their incomes in the past two years took time off from buying gold plated yachts and Mercedes limousines to sell off in bulk from the world's stock markets, driving indices down around the world in the biggest slump since 2008. And then on Saturday night the youth of Britain, particularly but not exclusively black youth, rose up in an insurrectionary wave of revolt which spread quickly from Tottenham to cities across the country and stretched from one night to the next. Condemned to a life of police harassment, joblessness and no future, these youth went out and took their revenge on the society that has condemned them to the scrap heap. Two apparently quite disconnected events, but actually both intimately connected, both the product of a capitalist system deep in crisis.

The media of course completely avoided seeing these developments as in any way linked and treated those who have destroyed whole economies as respectable pillars of society, those who have burned down a few shops as mindless criminals deserving nothing less than water cannon, rubber bullets and lengthy jail terms. From the shock jocks to the "serious" news on the BBC, Al Jazeera and ABC, the coverage of the British riots has been nothing less than scandalous, any pretence at "objective" journalism thrown to the wind. So god knows what DATELINE on SUNDAY night at 8.30pm on SBS1 will come up with. The title of the segment "ANARCHY IN THE UK" suggests that we should expect the worst!

Race is also a consistent theme of some of the better stuff on TV this week. On WEDNESDAY night at 10.20pm, ABC2 is screening SKIN DEEP: THE STORY OF SANDRA LAING. This is a remarkable documentary which tells the true story of Sandra Laing, a child born in South Africa in the 1950s to staunchly Nationalist Afrikaaner parents but who is, as racial classifications go, to all intents black. This is of course a huge embarassment to her dad who goes all the way to the Supreme Court to try to prove that she is in fact white. Sandra is sent to an all-white school where she is mercilessly taunted and abused and eventually thrown out. In her teens she forms a relationship with a young black man and is told by her father that she must choose between her boyfriend and her family. No Spencer Tracy woolly liberalism ("Guess Who's Coming to Dinner") here - no doubt it doesn't help that her beau is a vegetable peddler not a jet-setting Yale-qualified MD. Much to her credit, Sandra tells her dad to get stuffed and is promptly cut off. She then goes to live with her new husband in a black village. A tale of true courage but also immense cruelty as people are judged not by their character but the colour of their skin, to use Martin Luther King's turn of phrase.

And then on SATURDAY, we're back with Sidney Poitier for a second double billing on ABC2 to follow up on THE DEFIANT ONES and GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER? (showing on 13 August). This week it's IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (8.30pm) and TO SIR WITH LOVE (10.20pm), both shot in 1967. The first is a classic. It won five Oscars and, like The Defiant Ones, teams Poitier up with a racist who gradually softens. Unfortunately in this case, it's not two prisoners on the run, but two cops - Virgil Tibbs, Poitier's detective from the north, and the Rod Steiger character, a redneck Southern sheriff - who are at the centre of the story. It's a murder mystery but also a look at the deep racism of Mississippi in the 1960s. TO SIR WITH LOVE is altogether different. Sentimental and largely ignoring the issue of race, it features Poitier playing an engineer from Guyana who, unable get work in his profession, winds up teaching in a "dead-end" school in London's East End. As usual with these sort of inspirational stories of wonderful teachers who win over a group of tough kids, you are really expected to hope that the classroom experience will triumph over the crushing adversity that these young people face on the outside. The riots in Britain this past week, however, tell a rather different and more sober story.

Back to MONDAY, to finish off, SBS1 is showing SECRET OF THE GRAIN (2007) at 10.30pm. A film about a Tunisian-French shipyard worker in the south of France who is cast aside in his early 60s by his employer as "non-economic" and who turns in his enforced "retirement" to opening up a restaurant featuring North African food . Slimane quickly enlists his family members and friends in his new venture which is created in the upturned hull of a ship. A slow moving slice of life with quite a bit of improvisation that gives it a documentary feel at times. Something of a tragicomedy with desperation alongside moments of humour and optimism it's worth a look.

Tom's TV picks w/b 7 August

So DEADWOOD is heading towards its finale, the penultimate episode this MONDAY on ABC2 at 9.30pm. It says something about the quality of this series that, although many of its leading characters are so unpleasant, parasitical or otherwise highly objectionable, it is so damned involving and such unmissable TV. The town of Deadwood is divided between the "Good" Guys (very broadly defined!), ranging from the saintly (e.g. Doc Cochran and Trixie) to the scoundrels (e.g. Swearengen), and the Complete Bastards (e.g. Hearst, Woolcott and Tolliver). But none of them is perfect (well, perhaps with the exception of the Doc) and all of them are such well-drawn characters and so well acted that you follow them all with interest. One of my favourite characters is the utterly loathsome E.B. Farnum, the hotel-keeper, a reptilian figure, a toady to the rich and powerful, a tyrant to the weak - a creation worse in these regards even than Mr Collins, Jane Austen's vile country parson in Pride and Prejudice - another of my "so awful he's a pleasure to watch" crew. And Al Swearengen - an all-time great creation of TV played so well by Ian McShane. Hardly plausible that a brothel owner would speak like a character out of Shakespeare but what force he gives to his words!

Deadwood is not just an enjoyable tale of rivalry on the Western frontier but also a metaphor for the rise of monopoly capitalism. Deadwood in its buccaneering heyday of independent prospectors and brothel owners illustrates the notion that "anyone" can make it rich on the frontier. There's no bank, no laws, no government, so the small bourgeois in the town (Tolliver and Swearengen) get to make the rules. But threats keep emanating from the east in the form of Government (Yankton and Montana) and Big Capital (Hearst). Big Capital brooks no obstacle and is willing to use Pinkertons and other strongarm methods to get its way. So Hearst murders union organisers and squeezes out rival business operators in order to sew up the whole town - you can see from the outset that Alma Garrett's friendly neighbourhood bank is either going to have to get big or go under. The Sioux and other Native Americans are also virtually wiped out. The independent prospectors are bought out or forced off and replaced by wage labour under the command of Big Capital. Eventually, the takeover is complete and Big Capital (in the form of Hearst) moves on to conquer new territories on its way westwards towards the Pacific Ocean and the subjugation of the American continent.

Well, that turned out to be a bit of an essay, so less detail on what follows...

MONDAY night (SBS2 at 10.30pm) also features THE COLOUR OF PARADISE (1999), a beautiful and touching film about a blind young Iranian boy, Mohammed, who returns home from his school in Tehran to his village for a three month summer break to the joy of his grandmother and sisters but the chagrin of his dad who regards him as an embarassment and a potential obstacle to his pending marriage. Dad, Hashem, tries to palm him off to the village carpenter for an apprenticeship. But all Mohammed wants is the love of his father. Great camerawork, impressive acting and heart-rending material.

Another great movie on WEDNESDAY night (SBS1 at 10.05pm) - THE LIVES OF OTHERS (2006) which tells the story of an East German intelligence (Stasi) operative who is sent to spy on a "dissident" playwright and who, through his growing disgust with his assignment, gradually "turns" on his masters. This film just gives some small inkling of the degree to which the East German government penetrated the lives of almost everyone and therefore some idea why the East Germans were so keen to throw off "socialism" (really state capitalism) in 1989.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against apartheid Israel is getting more and more coverage in the media as right wing pundits and politicians - from Andrew Bolt to Kevin Rudd - work themselves up into a lather throwing around accusations of anti-semitism. It was not so different in the early days of the campaign to isolate apartheid South Africa. Nowadays even the most right wing politicians say how much they admire Nelson Mandela. Forty years ago figures such as John Howard were arguing that sanctions against South Africa were a communist plot to bring the country under Soviet control. HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT JOHANNESBURG? (THURSDAY, 1.30PM, SBS1) tells the story of the sporting boycott of South Africa from its earliest days and the shit that *they* had to put up with at that time.

Finally, a double bill on ABC2 on SATURDAY night. Both directed by Stanley Kramer, both featuring Sidney Poitier and both confronting the issue of racism in the United States. THE DEFIANT ONES (1958) at 8.30pm and GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER? (1967) at 10.05pm. Although the latter is by far the better known, the former, about two prisoners, one black (Poitier), one white (Tony Curtis), on the run from jail, is better in my opinion. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is just a bit too stage-y and just too white-bread - the characters are all squeaky clean, the Poitier character most of all. And while Poitier, who plays an upper middle class, Yale-qualified doctor, and his white girlfriend only have to win over her ever-so-liberal middle class parents in the latter film, in The Defiant Ones, the Poitier character is forced to challenge a tough-nut hardcore racist jailbird who in the end makes far more of a sacrifice for the black man than simply giving his daughter's hand in marriage.

Tom's TV picks w/b 31 July

Karl Marx described capitalism as a vampire system, sucking blood from the living. US industrial corporations have done their best to confirm Marx's description. It is nearly 30 years since the Bhopal Disaster in which an explosion at a Union Carbide factory in India killed 4,000 at the time and left a legacy of up to 8,000 deaths in the aftermath. Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson absconded to the US soon after the explosion and has never spent one day in jail for his role in this, the largest massacre of people by a non-nuclear industrial company at a time of peace. Illiterate peasants of Bhopal are now suffering once again at the hands of US multinationals - they have been the innocent subjects of drug testing by US pharmaceutical companies who have given them pills and injected them without their informed consent. DATELINE investigates this scandal on SUNDAY night on SBS1 at 8.30pm.
http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/about/id/601291/n/Experimenting-on-India
Shades of Nazi death camp experiments on Jews or the notorious Tuskagee experiments (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment).

SBS1 is following this with something else that would be well worth seeing - a half hour documentary unpicking the News International empire in the light of the phone hacking scandal: "MURDOCH: BREAKING THE SPELL?" at 9.30pm on SUNDAY.

Four Corners also digs the dirt on another crime of the US establishment on MONDAY night at 8.30pm (ABC1) - "THE GUANTANAMO TRAP": http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2011/07/29/3280442.htm. As the blurb says, Obama promised to shut the place down: 30 months after his inauguration it's still operating.

This, unfortunately, clashes with part 1 of "COLLISION" (ABC2, MONDAY at 8.30pm), described thus by the TV guide: "A five-part British drama that tells the story of a major road accident and a group of people who have never met, but who all share one single defining moment that will change their lives forever". Having seen it, I'd say it's one of the better drama series of recent years and keeps you guessing right to the end, as the lives of the protagonists are intertwined in many unexpected ways. A reviewer on www.imdb.com comments: "What starts as a straight forward car accident quickly turns into a story full of twists and turns as the police start to dig. [Detective] Tolin unravels a number of mysteries which involve murder, smuggling, whistle blowing and a government cover-up". Record one, watch the other, I'd say!

TUESDAY brings the enjoyable "MOTORCYCLE DIARIES" (2004) at 9.30PM on SBS2, based on the journals of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara as he journeys, as a young man, by motorcycle through South America with his best friend, Alberto Granado. It's an interesting tale that traces Guevara's radicalisation as he travels the continent, witnessing crushing poverty that contrasts so strongly with his own relatively privileged upbringing. It is to Guevara's great credit that he renounced the comforts of bourgeois life to pursue a life of revolution, but the tragedy is that his conception of revolution made no space for the self-activity of the working class who were relegated to the role of passive bystander in the course of the Cuban revolution. Cuba of course does not feature in this film but by the end of it Guevara has clearly marked himself out as a man who conceives of the people as objects to be saved rather than masters of their own destiny.

This is followed straight after by Tony Gatlif's "EXILES" (2004) at 11.40PM on SBS2. I'm a big fan of Gatlif's films - I love the way that in his films he blends wonderful music with cultures and peoples who have been marginalised and who sustain this music. Exiles features a rather unlikeable and self-absorbed couple, both born in Algeria, one to Algerian parents, one to French, but who both now live in France. They decide to travel back to Algeria, much to the initial scepticism of the first who can't understand why anyone would want to go back to such a "backward" country, and to the amazement of Algerians who are making the trip in reverse. It's a road trip with the usual disasters, misunderstandings and so forth. What absolutely makes this film for me, though, is the musical interludes, in particular the amazing final quarter of an hour in which the central female character is transported through a trance-like state brought on by rhythmic drumming and the sounds of a deep bass stringed instrument to some connection with the country and culture of her birth.

Another clash on WEDNESDAY night at 10.05pm. I haven't seen either of these, so bear that in mind! "ASSEMBLY" (2007) on SBS1 tells the story of People's Liberation Army Captain Guzidi who leads 46 men on a sniping mission to defend a vital post during the Chinese war of national liberation against Chiang Kaishek's Nationalist forces. All the men under his command are wiped out, something that is portrayed in pretty bloody detail in the first hour. The second hour shows Captain Guzidi in his fight for justice to restore the honour of the men he led in the face of bureaucratic obstruction.

"ALTIPLANO" (2009) (SBS2 at 10.05pm) has got a mixed reception. It's set in the Peruvian Andes in the mining region. The people suspect that they are being poisoned by mercury from the mine and revolt, barricading the mine. The local surgeon is caught up in the riot as the villagers take their vengeance on the mining company. So we're back where we started with this week's TV picks. Beautifully shot, exquisite music but perhaps rather slow?


Finally, Australia's first ever IRANIAN FILM FESTIVAL kicks off in BRISBANE on THURSDAY and runs through to SUNDAY. Other cities to follow. See for more information:
http://www.sbs.com.au/films/article/single/895191/Iranian-Film-Festival-Australia-2011-Armin-Miladi-interview?cid=23223 AND
http://www.iffa.net.au/

Tom's TV picks w/b 24 July

Ronit Elkabetz

Getting in very early this week - something on SUNDAY, and a major editing job on my forthcoming Marxist Left Review article all weekend ...

I'm guessing that most Australians older than about 30 or 40 got their first exposure to the Native Americans through the Westerns directed by John Ford and others. Ford was in some ways a great director but he, like most in the film industry, had shockingly racist attitudes towards the Native Americans. They were either Noble Savages or else just Savages. The white "settlers" and the US Cavalry were essentially carrying out a civilising mission by driving them off the land. Notably, it took an anti-war movement (Vietnam) to see a new "revisionist" approach to film making about Native Americans, starting with Little Big Man (1970) and Soldier Blue (1970). "REEL INJUN" (ABC2 , SUNDAY at 8.30pm), a Canadian documentary in same genre as "Reel Bad Arabs", tracks how Hollywood has depicted Native Americans since the early silent movies.

MONDAY brings a repeat of "NIN'S BROTHER" (SBS2 at 9pm)  about the death of a young Aboriginal man in South Australia in the 1950s, and also "THE INSECT WOMAN" (1963) (SBS2 at 10.30pm) which might sound like a trash sci-fi film but is actually about the struggle of a poor Japanese woman who escapes from rural poverty only to find yet worse in the big city. This is directed by Shohei Imamura, who also directed "Pigs and Battleships" which I recommended a couple of weeks back and which was quite involving. A reviewer on IMDB writes of the heroine in "The Insect Woman": "Tome's struggles are a metaphor for Japan's wartime struggle. Her rural upbringing represents pre-war Japan, mostly rural and agricultural. Her factory work parallels Japan's call to war and subsequent industrialization. Her work in the Japanese-American household could be related to Japan's service to America during the occupation. Finally, her prostitution is a rather harsh analogy to Japan's selling of service to American might." I guess that involves a few spoilers (!) but might help set the woman's story in the wider context.

TUESDAY brings something likely to make your blood boil. SBS1's "INSIGHT" programme at 7.30pm. Theme this week "MIGRATION BOOM". See a whole bunch of "sophisticated" racists pontificating about "cultural cohesion", Australia's "carrying capacity", "human capital" etc. etc. Keep your shoes close to hand. Also on Tuesday, "JAFFA" (2009) on SBS2 at 9.30pm, a film about a "cross-cultural" romance between an Israeli and a Palestinian, set in the Tel Aviv suburb of the same name. Heavy on the family angst and drama, light on on the broader politics of the situation. But featuring the great Ronit Elkabetz who did a really touching performance in "The Band's Visit" two years previously.

Finally, ABC2 brings a new series of the black comedy "THE THICK OF IT" on THURSDAY at 10.30pm. Whitehall politics unvarnished and unexpurgated.

Tom's TV picks w/b 20 June 2011

Two very different movies about Israeli expansionism coming up next week. "Beaufort", one of a flourishing stream of Israeli "war is hell" films, none of which however show any sympathy for the main victims of war, the Palestinians (or Lebanese in this case): SBS1 Tues 11.50pm. And the rather better "Lemon Tree" set on the West Bank with the fantastic Hiam Abbass as lead: SBS2 Weds 9.30pm.

And for something completely different, the classic Max Ophuls romantic melodrama, featuring a completely selfish bastard of an anti-hero, "Letter from an Unknown Woman": ABC2 Saturday (25th) at 10.15pm

Tom's TV picks w/b 27 June 2011

For a slashing indictment of the position of women in Iran, check out "The Circle" (2000): SBS2 at 11.50pm on Weds 29 June. Grim, but necessarily so given the appalling situation facing women in that country. The director, Jafar Panahi was jailed last year for six years for “assembly and colluding with the intention to commit crimes against the country’s national security and propaganda against the Islamic Republic" and there is an international campaign to get him out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jafar_Panahi.

And a double bill next Saturday night (2 July) on ABC2 worth staying in for/ recording. At 8.30pm one of my all-time favourites "Annie Hall" (1977). I know some comrades can't stand Woody Allen and/or Diane Keaton but for me it's very, very funny with endless witty dialogue. Allen gently sends up the obsessions and neuroses of middle class East Coast liberals in what is basically now a time capsule of the mores and manners of the time. Followed by, at 10.05pm, "From Here to Eternity" (1953), a film that is good but could have been great. Set on a military base in Hawaii on the eve of Pearl Harbour it is a romantic melodrama which also comments on the bastardry and sadism of military life. The writer of the original novel, James Jones, disowned the film because McCarthyite pressure forced the film makers to cut out much of the more savage criticism of the US military. But still worth a look if you haven't seen it already.

Tom's TV picks w/b 4 July 2011

Getting in early this week as there's a bunch of stuff on Monday and Tuesday:

First up, on Monday at 8.30pm: ABC 4 Corners: "The Killing Fields". Made by Britain's Channel 4, this is a documentary that tears apart the lies told by the Sri Lankan Government about its massacre of the Tamils in 2009. The 4 Corners website says: "The program contains disturbing descriptions and footage of executions, atrocities and the shelling of civilians. It includes devastating new video evidence of war crimes. Some of this material was shot on video cameras; other scenes are taken from mobile phones used by Sri Lankan soldiers as trophy vision. Put together it creates one of the most confronting stories of war and conflict ever seen on Australian television." Given that the Australian government has given political cover to the Sri Lankan government over years, hopefully it will make Gillard & Co squirm.

Three late-ish moves on SBS2 are the other picks this week:

Monday 10.30pm: "Pigs and Battleships" (1961) part of the Japanese New Wave cinema contemporaneous with the French. Summarised in the TV guide as follows: "This dazzling, unruly portrait of post-war Japan details, with escalating absurdity, the desperate power struggles between small-time gangsters in the port town of Yokosuka." But it's more than that. I haven't seen it myself, but one review adds: "While on first glance, Hogs and Warships might seem to be typical yakuza film fare, it is in fact laced with a strong social commentary on Japan's reliance on America and its "support" of America's further military actions within Asia, especially the Korean War." It's pretty bleak but could be worth viewing.

Tuesday 10.50pm: "The Axe" (2005). Forget "Up in the Air" which I thought was vastly over-rated and trivialised Corporate America's mass sackings, "The Axe" really sticks the knife into big business. It's nominally a comedy - as the long-term unemployed chemist played so well by Jose Garcia decides the only way to land a job is to kill all of his rivals in the job market - but there's a darkness to it that can only lead you to anger against the bastards who force even skilled white collar workers into desperate measures for the sake of a job. And there's no sugar pill at the end of it. Directed by the legendary Costa-Gavras, maker of "Z", "Stage of Siege" and "Missing" amongst other politically charged classics.

Thursday 9.30pm: "The Anarchist's Wife" (2008). Sorry, another punt here, haven't seen it. The TV guide says "A moving drama about the undying love and suffering of a couple affected by the Spanish Civil War over several decades." With the 75th anniversary of General Franco's coup coming up on 17 July, it might repay viewing as a reminder of the savagery of the Franco regime and the impact it had on the families of those who bravely fought him tooth and nail.

Tom's TV picks w/b 11 July 2011

Last week's "Leaky Boat" documentary about the Tampa crisis of 2001 did a great job in highlighting the way in which the Howard government exploited refugees to save its own political skin in the run up to the election of that year. Howard, Ruddock and Reith were willing to see refugees drown and to endanger Navy personnel in order to whip up racist sentiment towards refugees. Good on Able Seaman Bec Lynd who was able through her own dealing with refugees in peril on the high seas to see through the "terrorist scare" that the Government was promoting and who, along with her other comrades in the RAN, helped blow apart the "children overboard" scandal which Howard and Reith had concocted and which was accepted without questioning by Beazley & Co.

So we know what to expect with this week's 4 Corners "The invasion of Lampedusa" on **MONDAY** at 8.30pm (ABC1). Politicians playing political football with refugees' lives. This time, tens of thousands of refugees from Libya and Tunisia wash up on the Italian island of Lampedusa. The islanders are left to cope with the influx on their own and, not surprisingly, get ticked off. Enter Berlusconi, along with Marine Le Pen, both looking to save, in Berlusconi's case, or boost in Le Pen's case, their politicial careers by bashing refugees and calling for tighter "border control". Watch it and get angry:

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2011/s3263523.htm

The hidden story of the "refugee crisis" of the past decade has been how people can resist the racist crap promoted by governments and media and take a stand in support of refugees. Nothing new about this. SBS2 on **WEDNESDAY** at 10.40pm is running "Divided we Fall" the Oscar-nominated 2000 movie about an "ordinary couple" risking their lives in German-occupied Czechoslovakia during World War II to hide a Jewish friend in their home, thereby putting at risk not just themselves but their families and their entire community. Basic humanity and a sense of solidarity trump Government vindictiveness and violence. Great, uplifting movie.

One movie that may not have any particularly obvious politicial "message" this week but which nonetheless should be of interest to those opposing the ongoing War on Terror is "Son of a Lion" (2007) (**WEDNESDAY** 9pm on SBS2, immediately before "Divided we Fall"). This is about a father-son relationship set in a Pashtun village in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, on the Afghanistan border. Australian director (yes, really) Benjamin Gilmour said "Considering all we seem to get in the news is anti-Pashtun, those involved in Son of a Lion saw the making of this film as a way of showing the world a slice of life in the tribal belt. In the midst of intense Pakistani propaganda on one side and Taliban propaganda on the other, the Pashtuns are clutching at opportunities to regain ground for the culture on the verge of its obliteration."

Finally (but not chronologically) on **MONDAY** at 10.30pm on SBS2 there's the Akira Kurosawa classic "Throne of Blood" (1957) - Macbeth done Noh-theatre style. Lots of rolling fog, cobwebs, dark premonitions and bloody ambition. And did I mention spirits? One of Kurosawa's best - may be hard going at first, but stick with it if you think that this might be your cup of tea.

Tom's TV picks w/b 18 July 2011

TONIGHT, Monday, at 8.30pm (ABC1) FOUR CORNERS is running a documentary "Iron and Dust" about the fight by Indigenous people in WA against racist mining billionaire Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest for a fair share of mining royalties in a $280 billion dollar iron ore deposit near Roebourne:

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2011/s3270263.htm

Twiggy was aptly described by an SA comrade in a magazine article in 2008 as "a bigger bastard than James Packer":

http://www.sa.org.au/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=6365:a-bigger-bastard-than-james-packer?

And that was even before he put on his double act with the woman who has now succeeded him as the richest person in Australia, Gina Rinehart, as they both cried poor when campaigning off the back of a gold plated ute against the piss-weak mining tax mooted by Kevin Rudd last year. Twiggy needn't have worried: the ALP collapsed in a heap when faced with a "people's revolt" of multi billionaires. But the Yindjibarndi people are made of sterner stuff. They've got to be - they're fighting against not just Forrest and his lawyers who are using every dirty trick to steal the resources, but they're doing so in a situation where rotten native title legislation basically allows the mining companies to ride roughshod over indigenous people. Let's hope that they take Forrest to the cleaners.

Campaigning against Israeli apartheid you still occasionally come up against the old chestnut that "Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East". That was never true. It's even less true today with real democracy blossoming across the region and Israel setting its face squarely against the Arab Spring. "LIVE AND BECOME" (2005), a film screening on TUESDAY at 9pm on SBS2, shows the reality of Israeli "democracy". It's about Salomon, a young Ethiopian Christian boy who is airlifted out of a Sudanese refugee camp by pretending that he is part of the "Falasha" Jewish diaspora. He is taken to Israel and is adopted by a liberal middle class Jewish couple who do their best to help him fit in. But he can't. Because for the Zionist establishment, a black African cannot possibly be a "good Jew". So Salomon has to fight for his rights. An excellent movie that peels back the thin veneer of supposedly cosmopolitan Israeli society to reveal the racist underbelly.

Finally, the PBS documentary series "NEW YORK: THE POWER AND THE PEOPLE" (FRIDAY at 7.30pm on SBS2) could be worth viewing. This week it's looking at the crucial period 1898-1918 and tracks the influx of millions of European immigrants and their struggle against the awful sweatshop conditions that many face when they reach the Promised Land. These migrants brought socialist politics and trade unionism with them and after 146 women and girls were burned to death in 1911 at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory by their bosses, who locked the fire exits "to prevent theft", pressure by the workers movement and its supporters saw the first serious efforts at protective legislation enacted. No doubt the bosses at the time wrung their hands at the onerous imposition on them, just as Twiggy Forrest and his parasitic ilk do today.