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A Trifecta of What’s Best on the Box
1990, Please Make a Liar of We
It is strange, the more we change, rearrange/ Everything just seems the same/ 1990/ Please make a liar of me - David Rudder, from the song, ‘1990’.
YOU KNEW Bob Dylan was the American cultural thermometer from the first time you heard, “Blowing in the Wind”; and, you knew David Rudder was the Trinidadian cultural prophet 27 years ago, yesterday, when the good imam took up arms for Allah, and Denis McComie, Trinidad’s lonesome DJ, played ‘1990’, that anthem for our modern Trini times, for five days straight; and those opening notes, that eerie, creepy, prayer-like wailing, seem commissioned after the fact, not disturbingly prescient of them.
Sunday BC on TV – A trifecta of the best films on the box
In exceedingly trying circumstances - I’m piggybacking on borrowed hardware because my computer has crashed big-time and is being held captive in the dungeon of the repair shop here in Bimshire - BC on TV takes the form (hopefully, for today only) of a straightforward declaration of what I think are the three best films of the day and a list of options.
There are three very clear top-runners in the pack.
You have two chances (10.30am & 9.45pm Cinemax) to see today’s best film Locke, a thriller set entirely in the front seat of a BMW, give or take a few establishing shots. This is nail-biting tension that would please even the Fast & Furious crowd - okay, maybe not them; they’d consider it a waste of a Bima. For the discerning grownup, though, it’s hard to top.
Read moreCrapauds by Any Other Name
LAST WEEK, in either their wisdom or their cups, the mayor of Port of Spain and his partners-in-creativity renamed Queen Street to mark the 40th anniversary of Janelle “Penny” Commissiong, being crowned Miss Universe, sparking the kind of utterly meaningless debate Trinidadians love: we pontificate at a length far in excess of the actual worth of the thing being quarrelled about; no one ever turns a page in a dictionary when they could turn a phrase in a rumshop; and, no matter how the “debate” ends, everyone can claim to have been right all along.
For retaining the original street name while inserting the new one, the Mayor and City Council get my vote for the Neatest Attempted Sidestep of the Year. Had they simply renamed Queen Street as “Penny Lane” - which this Beatles fan would have supported I Wanna Hold Your Hands-Down - the historians and the cultural activists would have come to blows, the way they did over renaming King George V Park as Nelson Mandela Park.
Read moreSunday BC on TV – A trifecta of the best films on the box
If it hadn’t been picked recently, Spike Lee’s amazing production of Mike Tyson alone on stage (**Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth BEST FILM OF THE DAY, 4.24pm HBOS) would definitely have got top spot.
Today’s Number One Film:
*Unfriended, 6.05pm HBO Plus. Watch this if you liked V/H/S, Oculus or The Cabin in the Woods. There’s nothing new under the sun, true, but Facebook and Skype haven’t been around for as long as Shakespeare and the great success of Levan “Leo” Gabriadze’s film of Nelson Greaves’ hugely inventive screenplay is that it turns humdrum areas with which modern audiences are overly familiar – the computer desktop, the Facebook and Skype interfaces – and warps them to tell a terrific – and, at times, genuinely chilling – horror it would be hard not to call “new”.
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