Posted in Movies, tagged George Clooney, Michael Clayton, Movie reviews, Movies, Serious cinema, Tony Gilroy on October 28, 2007| Leave a Comment »
An immensely watchable movie, with characterization grey as a winter morning. Actors deliver dependably with their individual performances. For me, the best part was the movie gaining in its grip as it progresses. That doesn’t happen too often at the movies any more. If you are interested in serious cinema, then Michael Clayton is for you.
BTW Tony, Shiva in hindu mythology is not the god of death. He is the god of destruction.
Posted in Incidental-musing, Stockmarket, tagged Comedy, John Stewart, Media, Network news, News, Satire, Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, TV on October 28, 2007| Leave a Comment »
I was a news junkie some time back. When the television set was turned on, it was tuned to either of a couple of news channels. When i woke up in the morning, one of the first things i did was to tune into news, unless ofcourse, when i never bothered to switch off the TV the night before. (In retrospective, i find it remarkable that, TV news could lull me into such a dreamless sleep!)
Even in a world that is awake 24 * 7, cable networks can not fill all hours of a news channel with news. Evidently there isn’t much happening across the world despite all the wars, famines and the stock market volatility. That is where, analysis takes over from news. Try checking out any news network, they tout their analysis. Often this analysis essentially means getting an expert to talk about the news. In other cases, the network news reporter will spew verbiage with quite a few question marks that is considered analysis. The whole thing is an exercise in killing time. All in the race to retain ratings and of course the resultant advertising.
Enter, John Stewart and Stephen Colbert. The absurdities of news and news-makers are their specialty and it makes for excellent satirical comedy. Watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, eventually generates immunity to, so called news coverage and analysis of network news.
In my case for instance, i have realized that, current event analysis does not mean sound-bytes, and that extensive coverage means killing time.
Despite globalization and 24 * 7 lifestyle, nothing important to you, happens out there, every minute of the day, and to understand those that do happen, takes perspective best generated over a period of time.
A place with a view 