xpost. i think he is referring to Obama's rejection of the terminology of the "war on terror" and the use of fear-based explanations for pretty radical policy changes etc.
― everything, Tuesday, 3 May 2011 21:28 (thirteen years ago) link
so... curtis just wants better PR? he's got no problem with using massive military resources to destroy the organisation called al-qaeda - which he maintains either doesn't exist or isn't important - as long as you don't use the precise term "war on terror"? instead you say:
We quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by Al-Qaeda - an organisation headed by Osama bin Laden, which had openly declared war on the United States and was committed to killing innocents in our country and around the globe. And so we went to war against Al-Qaeda to protect our citizens, our friends, and our allies.
not really a decisive rejection of the notion of a "good war" against an evil enemy. and what the fuck is he on about re: libya? the "liberal intervention" couldn't take place without the US.
― joe, Tuesday, 3 May 2011 23:48 (thirteen years ago) link
All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace
― Gukbe, Sunday, 8 May 2011 04:09 (thirteen years ago) link
that trailer induces the traditional blend of mild queasiness and actual excitement, but i think this might be the series that proves that he is actually quite genuinely mad.
Wiki tells us where the title comes from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace
― piscesx, Sunday, 8 May 2011 22:59 (thirteen years ago) link
im all for him just being mad and letting it hang out, kinda
leads to some cool sound-image combinations, drawing random connections between things
what i will not abide is him writing ostensibly serious comment pieces/being quoted as an authority/etc
― reference + ilx meme (history mayne), Sunday, 8 May 2011 23:33 (thirteen years ago) link
while the soviet union was certainly as evil as states get, it's disingenuous to pretend that U.S. leaders didn't exaggerate the soviet threat for political reasons, increasingly so in the late '70s and early '80s and arguably even from the beginning of the cold war.
the first half of the article anyway is OTM.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Sunday, 8 May 2011 23:46 (thirteen years ago) link
back back back! new show starts in 90 minutes on BBC 2.
― piscesx, Monday, 23 May 2011 18:30 (thirteen years ago) link
looking forward to some prize bullshit
― Romford Spring (DG), Monday, 23 May 2011 18:31 (thirteen years ago) link
Great filmmaking, incoherent premise. It's so hypnotic though - it's like trying to argue with a lava lamp.
― We need to talk about Bevan (DL), Monday, 23 May 2011 22:00 (thirteen years ago) link
The "at the same time, fifty years later" schtick does get annoying.
― England's banh mi army (ledge), Monday, 23 May 2011 22:03 (thirteen years ago) link
more annoyed by his usual 'there was this idea that...' routine. his o-level history practice essays must have come back scrawled with WHO? WHEN? (etc) in frenzied red ink
― Romford Spring (DG), Monday, 23 May 2011 22:09 (thirteen years ago) link
only saw bits of it but seemed fun -- as docs on the financial bubble/crash go, this at least had some imagination and ideas, even if you don't subscribe to them, and i often don't with adam curtis
wouldn't take it straight, which is why i think he gets misfiled (by himself, sure) as an authority rather than a creative artist
― if opinions about ofwgkta could fly this place would be the wtc (history mayne), Monday, 23 May 2011 22:11 (thirteen years ago) link
Must check this out, DG hates it so I'm bound to love it.
j/k <3 DG :-)
― StanM, Monday, 23 May 2011 22:16 (thirteen years ago) link
well a big part of it is laying into alan greenspan, and he's jewish, so i'm sure you'll love it
j/k <3 StanM :-)
― Romford Spring (DG), Monday, 23 May 2011 22:22 (thirteen years ago) link
a few lols to be had from his peers giving him/the show a bit of a ribbing on twitter. feels like this is the show where the Curtis backlash is going to kick in, as his stuff is now so identifiably 'him' it almost lends itself to piss-take/parody. after the It Felt Like A Kiss movie i think everything he does now can only be a bit of a comedown. IFLAK is easily one of the top few pieces of non fiction tv/film making i've ever seen.
― piscesx, Monday, 23 May 2011 22:23 (thirteen years ago) link
Hmmm. xpost
― StanM, Monday, 23 May 2011 22:34 (thirteen years ago) link
after the It Felt Like A Kiss movie i think everything he does now can only be a bit of a comedown
hmm idk. 'the trap' is definitely his worst.
― if opinions about ofwgkta could fly this place would be the wtc (history mayne), Monday, 23 May 2011 22:56 (thirteen years ago) link
The Trap was before IFLAK. Actually, even if it was afterwards, that comment wouldn't really make sense.
― Alba, Monday, 23 May 2011 23:02 (thirteen years ago) link
i thought it felt like a kiss was aight but not a career high... i dunno. there's a fair bit of repetition in his work, which is ok, but i just felt 'the trap' was (strident and) repetitive within the series itself.
― if opinions about ofwgkta could fly this place would be the wtc (history mayne), Monday, 23 May 2011 23:05 (thirteen years ago) link
I think I read your full-stop as a semicolon.
― Alba, Monday, 23 May 2011 23:09 (thirteen years ago) link
It Felt Like A Kiss watchable here (via iplayer, so probably uk only):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/it_felt_like_a_kiss/
― koogs, Friday, 27 May 2011 20:06 (thirteen years ago) link
It's available for download on archive.org (as is most of his stuff).
― free inappropriate education (Abbbottt), Friday, 27 May 2011 20:09 (thirteen years ago) link
So the first part of this was v poor - the connections are often reaching as expected but the collage just wasn't as good as in some of his past series.
Low point was possibly the quote from msg board rant.
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 30 May 2011 18:03 (thirteen years ago) link
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/may/29/adam-curtis-ecosystems-tansley-smuts
I quite enjoyed this article, simultaneously trolling UK Uncut and laying bare the limitations of his approach by applying it to people who are - I assume - fans of his work.
― oppet, Monday, 30 May 2011 19:22 (thirteen years ago) link
saw the rest of the first ep and it definitely went downhill and sped up, getting very garbled. says things like 'for the first time in human history everyone believed everything would be stable forever...' it's almost as if he takes what people say at face value. or takes thinkers like ayn rand to be saying something radically new and different -- when it translates to a belief in low taxes and unregulated markets, it's not as if the rand-ness is that significant. it wasn't all bad though.
― ^^ new board description!!!1!! (history mayne), Monday, 30 May 2011 19:38 (thirteen years ago) link
man he shd check out some of the 18th century Parliamentary debates on Income Tax and get his mind proper blown
― banter panchali (Noodle Vague), Monday, 30 May 2011 19:47 (thirteen years ago) link
no amusing video footage of the Earl of Bute tho
― banter panchali (Noodle Vague), Monday, 30 May 2011 19:48 (thirteen years ago) link
He's incredibly irritating.
― "Comin', Comin', Com-in-a-round (comin' around) com-in-a-round (comin (Bob Six), Monday, 30 May 2011 20:55 (thirteen years ago) link
Missed part 2, does that Observer article cover the same ground? i.e. californian hippies fail at recreating the earth in a greenhouse, lol who gives a shit.
― England's banh mi army (ledge), Monday, 30 May 2011 22:08 (thirteen years ago) link
i'm with hm, he's much better appreciated on the level of absolute style and take no notice of the polemicism
― banter panchali (Noodle Vague), Monday, 30 May 2011 22:09 (thirteen years ago) link
I don't find his style that engrossing, just seems like standard stock footage playfulness. I have not seen IFLAK tho.
― England's banh mi army (ledge), Monday, 30 May 2011 22:19 (thirteen years ago) link
He's got a really irritating habit of authoritatively and wrongly conflating a wide spectrum of views - "scientists believed", "hippies believed", "psychologists believed", "economists believed, "scientists discovered that ", "psychologists discovered that " etc - as if there was one convergent view across these groups. This invariably conveniently sets an inaccurately summarised 'philosophy' that Curtis says completely misled politicians. (Not that they are completely blameless - presumably the point of the Lewinsky footage in the first episode is that Clinton was so distracted by the Lewinsky episode that he ignored urgent messages from economists that could have saved the world from doom.
― "Comin', Comin', Com-in-a-round (comin' around) com-in-a-round (comin (Bob Six), Monday, 30 May 2011 22:27 (thirteen years ago) link
wish someone would tabulate exactly how many people i kill with each consumer electronics purchase
― Once Were Moderators (DG), Monday, 6 June 2011 21:12 (thirteen years ago) link
well y'know that sort of is how the economy works but best not to think about it too hard unless u wanna wind up making cut-up documentaries for a living
― aka best bum of the o_O's (Noodle Vague), Monday, 6 June 2011 21:16 (thirteen years ago) link
monday night is genocide night at the G household
― Once Were Moderators (DG), Monday, 6 June 2011 21:18 (thirteen years ago) link
the final thought: we have comforted ourselves that we are automatons directed by genes to avoid responsibility for our actions that have caused great suffering.
or words to that effect.
total balls. who the hell has been comforting themselves with this? (ok maybe John Gray, the dick.)
― Britain's Obtusest Shepherd (Alan), Monday, 6 June 2011 21:36 (thirteen years ago) link
Best made episode of the series, but yeah that conclusion was ridiculous and typically wrong use of 'we' by Curtis.
― oppet, Monday, 6 June 2011 21:50 (thirteen years ago) link
ah super, a cogent argument in defence of Free Will.
― aka best bum of the o_O's (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 7 June 2011 06:34 (thirteen years ago) link
Just caught up with the last episode. On balance, I felt this was spectacular bullshit, full of nonsequiturs, duplicitously vague applications of "we" and stories that deserved their own docs (esp Rwanda) and were insulted and muddled by being chucked in the blender with bits of Burial and slo-mo footage of people dancing. By the end, the alleged central thesis had become utterly meaningless. If this argument were put into a written essay it would be laughed out of a GCSE class. But hey, it sure was pretty.
― Strictly vote-splitting (DL), Wednesday, 15 June 2011 15:47 (thirteen years ago) link
There was enough material for about twenty hours of television in the last episode alone. As an exercise in explaining the course of events, it would be laughable - there's no way you can summarise the causes for the wars in Rwanda and Congo in four minutes apiece - but as an exercise in providing a set of interesting things for viewers to go and find out more about, it had a purpose. I think the overarching polemical point was fairly weakly structured but, again, it gives us something to think about when the show's over. There's not much on television that can make the same claim. Also, Pizzicato 5!
What annoyed me the most, aside for the use of 'we believed' and 'scientists thought' throughout, were the sections that seemed to bend fact to fit the theory. The idea that the colour-coded revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan demonstrate that organic displays of people power without hierarchy are doomed to failure, for example, ignores the fact that they were never organic and always had a hierarchy. There were too many occasions like that for it not to come across as a little dishonest, rather than misguided or constrained by format.
― модный хипстер (ShariVari), Wednesday, 15 June 2011 17:36 (thirteen years ago) link
His name was Adam Curtis, and his programmes followed a radical new path. He would show that history, far from being something supported by facts, was something quite different. This was a radical new form of documentary, in which the very idea of not pulling a fast one was simply not a problem.
At its heart was some cool slo-mo footage of people dancing intercut with Alan Greenspan and the Pizzicato 5.
― Alba, Wednesday, 15 June 2011 18:25 (thirteen years ago) link
j/k - love him really
― Alba, Wednesday, 15 June 2011 18:26 (thirteen years ago) link
I thought this one was great and pretty entertaining. I couldn't get through a couple of his past shows. I feel like the haters don't really "get" adam curtis. Approaching his work like it's some kind of cogent political essay seems kind of silly to me.
― unmetalled world (wk), Wednesday, 15 June 2011 18:55 (thirteen years ago) link
oh, and alba lol and otm
― unmetalled world (wk), Wednesday, 15 June 2011 18:56 (thirteen years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg
― Alba, Monday, 20 June 2011 06:28 (thirteen years ago) link
but this was a fantasy
― Once Were Moderators (DG), Monday, 20 June 2011 10:10 (thirteen years ago) link
I never got around to saying why wk's thing about not "getting" Adam Curtis was an undeserved get-out-of-jail-free card but this parody does it for me.
― Strictly vote-splitting (DL), Monday, 20 June 2011 11:40 (thirteen years ago) link
some lols in this, though i'm surprised that the most obvious Curtis phrase/meme didn't pop up; just before a sudden shift in the narrative you get "and then (name of person) ..*made a discovery* ...". there's always some random fellow somewhere who's making a discovery in Curtis stuff.
― piscesx, Monday, 20 June 2011 11:49 (thirteen years ago) link
might do a version of the Lewinsky "Suzanne" bit but with "Suzanne" slowed down to the same rate as the actual footage
― blueski, Monday, 20 June 2011 11:59 (thirteen years ago) link
A lot of his appeal seems to overlap with Malcolm Gladwell's - cool little stories about incredibly important people and things you probably haven't come across before, eg "In a laboratory in southern California in 1963 an eccentric young scientist named xxx made a remarkable discovery." I'm sure if you didn't know who Ayn Rand was, for example, then the first part of Loving Grace was a blast if only for telling her story vividly. But Gladwell, though prone to false connections and oversimplifications himself, has way more narrative focus. And the downside of this technique is that the more the viewer knows about a particular subject, the shabbier and more misleading this skimreading of it seems. It was the Rwanda section of Loving Grace which made me lose my patience with Curtis because it's something I know about and he was mauling it.
― Strictly vote-splitting (DL), Monday, 20 June 2011 12:42 (thirteen years ago) link