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Michael Brooke

@marbleicehook.bsky.social

1.7K followers 1.7K following 3.2K posts

Freelance writer, editor and DVD/Blu-ray producer/commentator specialising in British and central/eastern European cinema. Indexes to my regular posts celebrating the latter (9am daily, 9pm most days) can be found at http://www.michaelbrooke.com/bluesky

www.michaelbrooke.com

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 2h

Well, the fact that his entire output now seems to exist as high-definition DCPs is a major step in the right direction, as it means that potential production costs of a Blu-ray release (I suspect 4K UHD is a pipe dream) will have come down sharply.

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 2h

Speaking of which, I voted Legalise Cannabis Alliance in 2005, not because I have any strong opinions on the subject but because it was the only party on the ballot paper in that election whose leadership I didn't viscerally despise. And I always vote, so...

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 2h

(I'm not in favour of electoral pacts; the choice on offer is usually limited enough without having it further restricted, and I disapprove of effectively forcing people to vote in a particular way - which is often counterproductive anyway, given the splendid British tendency to go "fuck you".)

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 2h

Unless tactical voting on a constituency-by-constituency basis is intelligently thought through, as was the case in Caerphilly. Which will certainly be the case in some constituencies, although I concede that in others it'll be fiddlier.

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 2h

The BFI has been meaning to post an introductory guide like this for ages, but they needed someone to make the films available first! In this case via the ICA's current complete retrospective, although I concede that's not much help if you're not based in London.

(I'm not either.)

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 3h

Interestingly, this was also their strategy in the 2019 general election under a different leadership, only that time it was the Tories who benefited.

Personally, I'd honestly prefer a Lab/Lib Dem/Green coalition to what we have right now, so I am unfazed by this increasingly plausible prospect.

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 3h

A thing what I wroted. I'd gladly have made this two or three times longer - it's a phenomenally rich subject - but the BFI has a standard template and word count for these pieces.

Where to begin with Theo Angelopoulos

Ninety years after his birth, and as a season of his films begins at the ICA, we suggest a beginner’s path through one of the heavyweights of European arthouse cinema: Greek master Theo Angelopoulos.

www.bfi.org.uk

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 3h

And your comment is the living breathing definition of another phenomenon.

Why people of colour are misidentified so often

Being confused with someone else can happen to anyone, but in majority-white spaces, it happens to people of colour more often. Why?

www.bbc.co.uk

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 3h

Yes, we all know about John Profumo, a major reason being that this is the example that gets endlessly recycled - which strongly suggests that there aren't too many others. In fact, are there any at all?

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 6h

Incidentally, I'd still be very interested to see some concrete evidence of the motivation behind the people who created the video - were they being intentionally satirical, as some suggest, or just riffing on a very well-known image?

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 6h

Not so much "explaining the obvious" as picking up on Jeff's point and developing it by underscoring just how absurd it would be if the Obama line was replaced by an equivalent Trump one. Which I assume is why Jeff quoted me approvingly, and why my comment got a triple-digit number of likes.

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 19h

Very possibly, but that's an assertion, not evidence.

It could just as easily have been picked because it's a famous close-up, and they focused so much on the technology that nobody stepped back to think "hang on a minute..."

(Which is just as much an assertion, but I'm happy to admit it!)

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 20h

In a couple of weeks, it'll be the tenth anniversary of the death of a close friend of mine, and while that can't help but bring back intensely sad memories the fact that he's missed out on all the insanity of the last ten years... well, maybe he was the lucky one.

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 20h

A motivation that I can totally understand, but where's the proof that that was the reason and not, say, that it's one of the most famous close-ups of a face in any film made in the last decade, and therefore ideal material for a face-swapping exercise?

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 20h

And the head of the notorious terrorist organisation Antifa, who I like to think of as some cat-stroking Blofeld type.

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 20h

Where's the evidence that this was created as a joke?

Believe me, I've been looking!

I mean, I very much hope that it *is* a joke, but if it's to promote the virtues of this technology, what was the point?

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 21h

Whose point? Jeff Yang's obviously, but was the original AI video explicitly created for satirical reasons?

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 1d

But it backfired when Livingstone ran as an independent, comfortably won (57.9%), and Labour's preferred candidate Frank Dobson came an embarrassingly poor third (13.1%).

Londoners can see when they're being blatantly manipulated by the establishment - and I strongly suspect New Yorkers can too.

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 1d

Which happened in London in 2000, when Ken Livingstone should have easily become the Labour Party's London mayoral candidate, but for deliberate sabotage by Tony Blair's government in the form of giving MPs votes worth a thousand times as much as those ordinary party members and trade unions.

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 1d

This also happened in London in 2016, when initial dog-whistles rapidly morphed into pretty much full-blown racism and Islamophobia when it seemed likely that Sadiq Khan would win.

But this completely backfired because Khan not only won handsomely but he's now serving his third consecutive term.

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 1d

Get Out is a particularly stupid example because it would make absolutely no sense with Brad Pitt in the lead. And even if they race-swapped everyone and changed key lines ("I'd have voted for Trump a fourth time if I could") it would still be a grotesque parody.

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 1d

A very good point, which I really should have spotted upfront!

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 1d

And despite confident predictions of London turning Islamist under Khan, introducing compulsory Sharia law, etc. etc., almost a decade later none of these things has happened, and nor does anybody sane expect them to happen. And London's Muslim population is just 15%.

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 2d

Exactly the same guff was written about London mayor Sadiq Khan in 2016 - and then in 2021 and 2024, when he was elected to a second and third term, in all cases with thumping majorities (respectively 13.6%, 10.4%, 11.1% over his nearest rival, the last helped by her being hair-raisingly terrible).

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 2d

If I'd placed a bet in 1999 on Donald Trump being US President, Boris Johnson being PM and Jeremy Corbyn being Leader of the Opposition (all three being known quantities back then), I wonder what odds I'd have got? At least once the bookie had stopped laughing.