The Power Of Nightmares/Adam Curtis

Ha. Obviously undeterred by The Loving Trap-style mockery, he's going the "full Curtis" here:

It is a rollicking saga that involves all sorts of things not normally associated with think tanks - chickens, pirate radio, retired colonels, Jean Paul Sartre, Screaming Lord Sutch, and at its heart is a dramatic and brutal killing committed by one of the very men who helped bring about the resurgence of the free market in Britain.

No wonder he gets so many commissions if his pitches are that good. It's a well-told story. I knew the Shivering Sands story already but didn't know much about Smedley.

"I want to suggest that the Hug has become a part of the modern problem of not being able to imagine any alternative to the world of today. The Hug is no longer liberating, it is restraining"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/10/the_curse_of_tina_part_two.html

aha, the killer final conclusion:

"If we can be taught to hug we can just as easily learn to march and chant."

well I'm seeing Loving Grace tom'w

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/all-watched-over-by-machines-of-loving-grace

anyone else want to weigh in?

IIRC the consensus around here was that it was even less convincing than usual but still very entertaining.

I rewatched it last week and enjoyed it more. But yes...stretching.

This is good:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2012/01/the_years_of_stagnation_and_th.html

^^ also, the following the post about cruise ships, and the history of the owners of the Costa Concordia. Includes a v. funny 60s ALan Whicker clip
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2012/01/were_all_in_the_same_boat_-_ar.html

At first sight the search for peace and stability in Iraq, and the search for physical and mental fitness in the extreme contortions of modern Yoga seem to have absolutely nothing in common.


But curiously they do.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2012/11/while_the_band_played_on.html

a fair point well expressed here

but this was a fantasy

what a great use of the bbc archivists' time

hang on, music changes the way we feel about the images we're seeing?

it's true tho, the final scene of andrei rublev is subtly different when set to bbbbbounce by the blackout crew

oh you guys..

But in amongst all this new-found self-confidence among the pets of Britain there were still the ghosts of the old rigid owner-pet power structure

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/blogadamcurtis/posts/HEAVY-PETTING

i can't even

the kind of self-parody i could get behind tbh

also looking forward to seeing all these videos of dogs

but this was a fantasy

― woof

in reality, pets had been learning to post on forums

tbf i think the bit I posted was curtis-does-curtis for lols.

a radical new form of lol

where should i start with this guy?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=x1bX3F7uTrg

I would say The Mayfair Set: it's a bit more tightly focused than the later work, & the narrative's a bit cleaner, though it keeps going to odd interesting places. Full of fascinating slightly monstrous sorts - Goldsmith, Aspinall etc.

good grief charlie brooker has a lot to answer for xp

thanks woof

Did you guys know about this: http://www.mif.co.uk/event/massive-attack-v-adam-curtis

It Felt Like A Kiss a few years ago was hands down the most mind-blowing few hours of my life. Can't wait for this one.

the financial journalist in the second episode (Christopher Fildes) is amazing. 'I and other people in the financial press were willing dupes'. Can't be said enough. Very good documentaries - nothing more plainly connects the switch from paternalistic (the paternalism of a grotesque controlling father) to unmediated unapologetic-yet-duplicitous socially destructive greed, which is also the recent history of the Tory party.

YOU THINK YOU ARE A CONSUMER BUT MAYBE YOU HAVE BEEN CONSUMED

Haven't watched these clips yet but I do love his TITLES.

The cuts may be right, or they may be stupid - but the astonishing thing is how no-one really challenges them.

orly

I think that one of the reasons for this is because a lot of the power that shapes our lives today has become invisible - and so it is difficult to see how it really works and even more difficult to challenge it

difficult to challenge yes, invisible no. these days there are probably as many people trying to pull the wool away from our eyes as trying to pull it over.

finished the mayfair set. a little shrill perhaps, but interesting.

and p.s. hmm, the treatment of mohammed al fayed was a little bit ... euphemistic. i'm not saying it was explicitly racist. that is for other people to say.

blimey ..this is dire

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/interactive/2013/jul/08/adam-curtis-massive-attack-what-is-reality

Seems to have been taken down.

What was that, Bob Six?

It says "This article was temporarily taken down on Monday 8 July 2013."

Was an except of a poem/text that went with a video installation he did with Massive Attack in Manchester. Several b/w pics, maybe a video clip (couldn't see, was on my phone), quite long, didn't read, just scrolled and saw bits and pieces here and there - do you know what reality is, nicolai ceaucescu and his wife were shot, that's about all I remember :-/

More info without the actual excerpt: http://m.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/jul/07/adam-curtis-massive-attack-review

it's had a few sniffy reviews up here even from the Curtis fanbase. a fair few people walked out of the opening night supposedly; spending 2 hours standing up (with no bar!) in a darkened warehouse on a Friday night hasn't gone down to well with folk expecting a more traditional 'gig'.

£36 a pop too.

(SPOILER)

liz fraser's in it.

yeah, it's pretty disappointing, esp if you went to It Felt Like A Kiss a few years back. spoke to AC afterwards and he said he's working on turning the current thing into TV production for the BBC but there's a bunch of legal issues to get past so it might never happen (will prob end up on his blog though). He's also working on a new documentary series about massive institutions and how they're broken - including the BBC - *for* the BBC.

http://www.latitudefestival.com/line-up/artist/alan-moore-mitch-jenkins-adam-curtis

"RD Laing challenged the psychiatric establishment in the 1960s THATCHER THATCHER DEATH WE ARE ALL PROSTITUTES something about prozac"

"but this was an illusion."

Got tix for this off the back of Curtis's involvement rather than Massive Attack, looking back upthread seems nuts that It Felt Like A Kiss was 4 years ago. Generally hit a lot of the MIF events, but with recent Babby A we could only really organise childcare for one proper evening event.

I read quite a lot of the mealy mouthed early reviews and was ready to be underwhelmed, but in the end came away feeling like it was something of a triumph - the immersive nature of the film screening was really effective and MA's involvement was understated yet powerful, takes a bit of grit for a band to avoid playing almost any of their own material and the covers were mostly great. I felt like Liz Fraser was a bit underutilised, but god hearing that voice live was a treat and the Russian pop song super beautiful. Could spend a long time going round the plughole of what Curtis is actually saying, and picking his argument apart, but during the show I was swept up into it and enjoyed it very much (same went for Mrs A and friends we were with). The Saturday night crowd laid into some thunderous applause at the end, and didn't see any walkouts from where we were. The Mayfield Depot was a v interesting and cavernous space to stage it in too, odd to think that such huge structures still lie derelict in the heart of the city.

On a tenuous note, we'd also been for a meal at Zouk in Manchester beforehand and Daddy G was in there, dining solo, on some kind of grilled chicken starter and then steak in a "lonely guy thinking baout things" mode.

Adam Curtis on MI5:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/BUGGER

Watch the film before you read Curtis on the people featured:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/ONES-PRIVATE-LIFE

Enjoyed the Whicker documentary.

It was interesting to see Elizabeth Jane Howard, as I'm just reading her autobiography and just finished the part covering her marriage to Peter Scott.

oh Adampaws

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/02/adam-curtis-interview

i sort of like the general ways this guy's mind works (esp. his emphasis on how right-thinking decisions can have disastrous or just bizarre unintended consequences, or his general chaos theory of world civilization) but the actual films (or videos) strike me as kind of 'roided out and glib. i'm not sure if i'm expected to take them as righteous muckraking or a kind of craig-baldwin-esque video theater and i don't think the confusion is particularly educational.