Archive for June, 2010

WHY I ROOT FOR ARGENTINA

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

'Efficient fantasy' - no one plays the beautiful game like Argentina and when the team full-heartedly goes behind the country's desaparecidos, they truly deserve your support - both on and off the field. By Dave Zirin. Before the start of the World Cup, I broadcast my rooting interest with the obnoxious ...

TATTOO YOU

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

The evil in Niels Arden Oplev's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is so in your face that there is no room for any shades but, as Critic After Dark Noel Vera points out, it is Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer that conveys menace through the very smoothness of its ...

DAVIES & DICKENS

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

Ray Davies of The Kinks is an English rock 'n' roller while Charles Dickens was a writer from the Victorian era. Yet, according to Bill Glahn, editor of Live! Music Review, a case could probably be made that Ray Davies is the Charles Dickens of rock 'n' roll. Ray Davies and ...

THE NEW BigO PLAIN-SPEAKING, STRAIGHT-TALKING, NO B.S. CONTEST NUMBER 1

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

It's a simple world. But there are people who just like being complicated. Take the simple query of why $ingapore's recorded public debt is $255.464 billion? The information released by America's Central Intelligence Agency [click here] made some people wonder why $ingapore is ranked 6th in the world for public debt. The ...

ANTI-IMPERIALISM 101

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

Why would the Algerian World Cup team watch The Battle Of Algiers before their game with England last week? Or, as lecturer Harry Browne points out, football was in fact specifically important in the Algerian independence struggle. That bastion of British liberalism and prince of online newspapers, the Guardian, adopted a ...

THE MAN IN THE SUITCASE

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

The gore and violence in Kongkiat Komesiri's Slice may be horrifying but it is the childhood abuse that stays in this gender-bender about a serial killer in a red raincoat and who has a thing for suitcases. Stephen Tan reviews. A string of grisly murders is taking place in a Thai ...

IS THE BP GUSHER UNSTOPPABLE?

Friday, June 18th, 2010

*http://moneycentral.msn.com/ownership?Holding=Institutional+Ownership&Symbol=BP This is not a scenario for a sci-fi movie. What if BP's leaking oil well cannot be stopped? Environment writer Julia Whitty looks at the critical comments at The Oil Drum site and asks: Is this why Obama is praying? Sharon Astyk at ScienceBlogs points the way to a seriously scary ...

DESPITE AGE DISCRIMINATION, THERE IS STILL BEAUTY IN THE WORLD

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

When a record label turns down Macy Gray because she is in her 40s, the soul singer-songwriter hits back by saying that age does not matter, it's what the song says that is important. "I don't know how to get a 40-year-old woman on the radio. If she was 20, 25. ...

WHO SHOULD WE ROOT FOR?

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

To help viewers, newcomers and possibly gamblers along (what fan need to ask what team to support?), media lecturer Harry Browne gives a kick-by-kick account - almost - of the World Cup teams and lists Germany, Ghana and Argentina as potentials. That may change as Brazil, Italy, Spain and Portugal ...

GLENN BECK’S BLUES: WHY THE FAR RIGHT HATES SOCCER

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

When Glenn Beck puts down soccer and the World Cup, it only shows the conservative radio and TV host as a poor sport who hates losing. As sports commentator Dave Zirin points out, the USA tend to get their asses handed to them each and every World Cup. Every World Cup, ...