Search Results
Query: Judgements found 56 results
The available figures on honey adulteration are pretty alarming: 46% of samples in the EU, 100% of honey exported from the UK, more than a quarter of Australian samples “of questionable authenticity”. However, as Matt Phillpott pointed out in a recent episode of Eat This Podcast, one of the great difficulties honey poses is that it is so variable. All of the many “natural” components of honey vary from batch to batch, hive to hive, season to season, so that while a specific “unnatural” chemical might unambiguously signal adulteration, other kinds of evidence are a lot less cut and dried.
Episode summary: Taste is a very curious thing. We understand that how we taste something is almost entirely subjective, that while it depends to some extent on the physical and chemical properties of the things we’re tasting, the sensation is overlaid with all sorts of cultural and personal memorie...
People have raised concerns about Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs. It's cultural appropriation. It's racist, or at the very least xenophobic. For the first, I couldn't give a fig. When an artist creates something they inevitably appropriate; creation requires that. The second, I honestly don't feel st...
Inigo Thomas' recent and Fire and Fury, was a treat in and of itself.
Resentment broke out, as if Wolff, who has written mostly about the media in the past, had stolen a subject from the seasoned political reporters. Or was it because, by getting i...
The (Italian) poster for Three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri describes it as a black comedy. I'm not sure I would call it a comedy of any kind, even though it has lots of very funny moments. But then, I'm not sure what category I would put it in, if forced. "Quirky, damn funny, thought-provo...
The big difference between Broadchurch, ITV’s knockoff of The Killing, and its model is that in the end, The Killing made sense whereas Broadchurch did not.
They were similar enough as they rolled along. Everyone damaged to a greater or lesser extent, many hiding secrets nothing to do with th...
I'm not sure how long I've been waiting to see Beasts of the Southern Wild. There was a great article some time last year that made me write down the title and scour my usual haunts from time to time, each time coming up empty. So when a friend casually mentioned that she'd seen it here in Rome, a...
A Ken Loach comedy? For the first half hour or so that seemed unlikely in the extreme. Oh sure, there were laughs as the Voice of God tried to prevent a harmless drunk falling under a fast-approaching train. But as the beak sentenced the four stars to community service, and awful sudden violence rai...
I became aware that I had finished this book after I read the last word, me, on the last page, although of course it wasn’t the actual physical last page, for there were three blank pages, blank, that is, except for the publisher’s web address on the actual, physical last page, a result of the print...
I’m the kind of person who likes to do a little research, especially when reviewing books. Not for me the put-down (X fails to consider the reverse-Reimann manoeuvre and yet expects us to take his analysis of post-causal hermeneutics seriously) that is so easily countered (Y obviously didn’t get as...
Tech Transfer is a self-published first novel.
If that rings alarm bells, silence them. Daniel S. Greenberg knows science, especially science funding, administration and politics in the US, better than anyone else alive today. Add the book’s subtitle -- Science, Money, Love and the Ivory Tower --...
There is a temptation, and we all know what Oscar Wilde said, in his native English, about temptations, or perhaps it is merely an urge, or a desire, something I want to do in any case, when faced by an extremely peculiar writing style, something way out on the boundaries of normalcy, something that...
Boogie Woogie is about art, and the London art scene. How droll that the main character, a wonderfully charming dealer, is called Art. All the characters, Art (and Art) included, are caricatures rather than characters, though the film is none the worse for that. In fact, it is a rather good laugh,...
So we’re sat in the front row in front of the big white screen, glancing around at the beautiful courtyard of the palazzo that houses the administrative offices of the Provincia di Roma. We’re there to see a movie, part of the Wine and Food Film Festival. A woman comes on stage. She announces that...
Luigi turned me on to David Mamet's Spartan, in a discussion of what was worth watching on TV these days.1 I loved it. Not just for the violence, which is considerable and effective. Not just for the secret service procedurals, which are everywhere these days and which for all I know are having...
The Countess arrived more or less unheralded in our house, and on a quiet evening after a hard day, her appeal was great. I mean, “She sacrificed all for love... and sacrificed others for beauty. A 17th century Hungarian countess embarks on a murderous undertaking, with the belief that bathing in t...
My hardback copy (16th printing) of Mastering the Art ... was bought so that I wouldn’t have to contend with the stains on the paperback when I wanted to read rather than cook. (Alas, there's no recipe in it for humble pie.) So when Julie and Julia was released earlier in the summer, I was sniffy....
The Brothers Bloom concerns two of the greatest con artists in the world and their various cons, and it is engaging and funny and, in the end, quite suspenseful. It also plays with time in ways that intrigue. Set in the now, it nevertheless features a telegram being read, stop, and replied to, stop...
I am so firmly in the demographic for The Boat That Rocked that it would have had to be truly dreadful to be disappointing. You know: predictable plotline, one-dimensional characters; forced drama; loathsome villains. It had all those, and more, and was an utter delight, not least because of the...
I wasn't sure whether to blog Quantum of Solace, which I saw on Wednesday night, but late-breaking news of a James Blog-a-Thon tipped the scales, needy-blogger that I am.
QoS is a mess of a movie, with an even more meaningless than usual title, but WTF. I'm no Bondie (or whatever they call the...
Redbelt is a strange movie. “Written and directed by David Mamet” is the only reason I would watch a film about martial arts, and may also be the only reason I am actually thinking a bit about the film. The “simple” idea is that the martial arts instructor -- Mike Terry, beautifully played by the E...
Do actors make good directors? I’m blowed if I know. Some can certainly do it. So when I was looking up Tom McCarthy, the director of The Visitor, I was pleasantly surprised to see he had lots of acting credits, including several for The Wire. He was also in Syriana. And he wrote and directed The...
Stop Loss is a film about the war in Iraq and what it does to the young men who serve. War is hell. So is this film. How it gets the ratings it does is beyond me. IMDB says “Mark Richard estimated that there were no less than 65 drafts of the script.” Sixty five, no less? Fewer might have been bett...
Finally got to see No Country for Old Men over the weekend, and boy was it worth it. I don't know that I can remember a film as full of suspense. I heard an interview with the sound designer, I think it was, who explained how the Coens had insisted on almost no music and how he had assembled the s...
M.A. Peel, over at her blog, has a big deal post explaining to the world the significance of the scene with the horses that ends the first segment, before the flashback, of Michael Clayton. She does a good job of it too. My point is, why was it needed? I mean, who did not realize what was going on...
In the Valley of Elah is a pretty good film, made absolutely mesmerizing by the way Tommy Lee Jones inhabits his role. The lined face, the slight haggardness, the way he keeps his emotions in check: it is his film. The sense we have of not quite knowing who he is, which seems mirrored in the way he...
The Last King of Scotland is a pretty exciting tale to file under “innocents abroad”. What is this hell hole I’ve wandered into, and how do I get out? Except that for the most part, the hell hole is really rather attractive, at least to the hero, who doesn’t start to wonder about getting out until...
Ah, the glamour of life in the Eternal City. A friend had tickets for a screening that was part of the Rome Festival of Cinema, for 10.30 on a Saturday night. Of course one didn't ask “what for?”. My aversion to horror movies being well known, it wouldn’t have been one of them. But had someone told...
I’m late reporting on George Clooney’s Michael Clayton because it hasn’t been easy to work out what to say, beyond the banal “one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long, long time”. The script plays with time beautifully, with the flashback -- four days earlier -- spooling quietly on so that thing...
I had read about Werner Herzog’s documentary Grizzly Man, which weaves his own footage with that of the dead bear watcher, although I never really made the effort to seek it out. But when it showed up on a DVD evening at a friend’s house, I wasn’t going to object. It is actually a beautifully made...
I decided to give up on the Simplr theme and throw my lot in with Sandbox and its devotees, in particular a theme called Shades of Gray. It seems to do just about everything I want, which could be described as simple complexity. Or complex simplicity.1 Either way, I quite like it the way it is, es...
Why does he wear his cap backwards, like the yoof? Other than that, Looking for Richard doesn’t pose many questions. It’s a good enough watch, and in the end you come away with a film within a film, with the very best bits of Richard III staged rather well. I liked the rapid switches between rehea...
Cate Blachett surely has to be in the running for an Oscar, but as Actor or Actress? Her Jude Quinn (without a parka!) in I'm not there is astonishing, Bob Dylan somehow brought to life. She doesn’t impersonate Dylan, but she somehow recreates him, which is fitting as this wonderful, kaleidoscopic...
There’s something deeply appropriate -- and equally deeply stupid -- about IMDB’s Plot Synopsis for Down by Law. It reads: “This plot synopsis is empty. Add a synopsis.” And one is tempted, deeply tempted. But there’s no point, because plot is not the great driver of this wonderful movie. Indeed,...
Most film directors are content to signal boredom, tedium, ennui and the passage of time with a couple of yawns, maybe a fidget or two, and perhaps the chipmunk rotations of a speeded-up clock. (There are exceptions (http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/philip_hensher/article119385.ece)...
Maybe it was the setting. The Villa Medici, above Rome's Piazza del Popolo, is a wonderful building, sometimes open for art and music. This year, last week, they showed films in the courtyard. The theme was the dark side of Hollywood, and on Tueday that meant Mulholland Dr.. You're wondering, ho...
Another cliché fest, but this one is entirely enjoyable. Tea with Mussolini features English battle-ax, free-spirited artist, dyke archaeologist, fresh-faced boy, kindly grandmotherly type, Latin Lothario, Scotsmen, etc etc. And Cher, who really has made some rather good films (this, Moonstruck, M...
We saw The Lives of Others before Four Hours, and it may have been because it was so good that we were tempted to try another German film. But that’s besides the point. The film is full of wonderful little touches, like the reappearance of the junior Stasi officer who dared to make a joke about...
Really, how long does it take to hammer out a little review? Four minutes? Hahahaha; a private joke, because in the great catch-up effort, the movie in question is Four Minutes. This has everything. The artist as savage beast. Music as savage breast soother. Art as redemption. Sex. Violence. Lesbi...
I subscribe to three NPR podcasts; Popular Culture, Music, and Science and Medicine. It’s more than I can actually keep up with, because they are generally so interesting that I can’t simply leave them on in the background, as I generally could with Radio 4. So I have to actually listen. Sometimes...
My friend Rob has unerringly good taste. He has never once given me a totally bum steer, not even Damien Rice. So why did I wait so many months before watching The Edukators (aka Die Fetten Jahre sind vorbei)? It is bloody marvelous, a wonderful exercise in small-scale ensemble acting that kept me...
The truth is, pedantry and non-pedantry can cut both ways. A pedant may vary from a dogged, uninquisitive, cloth-palated follower of orders to a devotee bent on doing everything right; while a non-pedant might be a simply lazy-bones or someone airy-fairily ‘creative’ in the worst, self-applauding...
I didn’t know Ang Lee had directed oaters before he got to Brokeback Mountain, and having now seen Ride with the Devil, I’m not surprised. Uncannily, there was another film of the exact same title released in 1999. And equally uncannily, Lee’s film recalls every other civil war Southern Gennleme...
Arlington Road has Tim Robbins and Jeff Bridges in it; what’s not to like? The heavy-handedness and plethora of hints that all is not what it seems. That old saw “Just because you're paranoid …” gets a good working over, and the end is something of a surprise, in a movie-making industry addicted to...
At first I couldn't remember why I had ordered David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence. Then it slowly came back to me: the reviews had been pretty good. And the film did not disappoint, not one bit. After the long opening sequence, setting up the two psychopaths, Cronenberg’s efforts to depict a...
Very odd to see a film as quintessentially English as The History Boys among an American audience. Were others aware of the crucial layering of “other” universities? Neither Hull nor Loughborough is Oxbridge, of course; but nor is Hull Loughborough. Excellent, excellent fun, and well portrayed too...
When a long time passes quickly, that’s a good sign. When you leave a movie thinking, “I wonder what that meant?”. Suspense without phony fear. Definitely a fine movie. Matt Damon is wonderfully repressed throughout, the only distraction being that I was continually reminded of an old and dear frien...
I cannot remember the last time I paid money to see a Bond film. There were a couple I couldn’t avoid on TV, and one that helped to pass the time of day on a flight. But actual money? Not since the main purpose was a snog in the back row. Yesterday, however, buoyed a bit by the buzz, I laid my money...
Just back from Fast Food Nation and I feel as if I’ve been bludgeoned for hours with a semi-thawed side of beef. Ponderous does not begin to describe this film, and I speak as someone who would sooner eat his own arm than gum on a fast food patty. I know what goes on in the food industry -- one reas...
There's a clear metaphor at the heart of Wasabi: Jean Reno sucks great gobbets of the aforementioned cruciferous paste from his fingertips and evinces no emotion, no stimulation, whatsoever. He's that hard. Or, alternatively, this wasabi is entirely without heat. Take your pick. One thing’s for...
I can’t remember who recommended Garden State -- probably Luigi -- but I know that I have been waiting forever for it to arrive. And, boy, was it worth it. It builds slowly, wonderfully, and to me brought to mind One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in the almost imperceptible transformation in the lea...
An odd week, to say the least, in which one sees Sin City one night and Water a day later. It’d be easy to do the trite thing and say that Sin City was very violent while Water was very moving. But it works the other way too. The violence of Water is unspoken and largely unseen; but without the...
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is a gem of a film. The entire cast give stellar performances and the gentle poke at Cousteau, which to begin with I thought might wear thin, sustains beautifully. Killing off Owen Wilson -- unthinkable in a mainstream movie -- works too. As for Jeff Goldblum, cou...
I hadn't planned to say anything about Bob Dylan’s Modern Times; what would be the point, with all those words already flyin’ about the æther? But then Neddie went and posted a fine item on the structure of songs, and I felt I had to. Actually, it isn’t only about the structure of songs. It’s ab...
The opening title sequence was really wonderful. That’s not to denigrate the rest of the film, which was just the job for a slightly morose Monday evening. But the book of Thank You For Smoking is funnier and perhaps more interesting. Of course a film can’t often be as nuanced as a book, but fre...
The DVD of Bad Santa skipped badly, so I sent it back. But I asked filmacasa.it to send me a fresh copy, because I just had to see whether and how Billy Bob Thornton's Santa could possible redeem himself. Which, being a Hollywood movie, he obviously had to. But they left it awful late.
My ratin...