reviews
Reviews of books, articles, publications, music, film, events and culture.
Five Minutes of Heaven, by Guy Hibbert, BBC 2
Tom Jennings is disappointed, but not surprised, at this drama reducing the legacy of the North of Ireland Troubles to personal therapeutics.
Troubles Shared. Television review – Tom Jennings
The Wire, by David Simon and Ed Burns, BBC 2
Tom Jennings endorses the accolades accorded to ground-breaking American TV drama The Wire – but with reservations.
Wired for Sound and Fury. Television review – Tom Jennings
Her whole life ahead, by Paolo Virzi (2008)
Story of a 25 year-old woman working in a call-centre, the movie is a grotesque and tragic-comic depiction of Italian precarious workers (original title: Tutta la vita davanti).
Marta, protagonist of the story, is an excellent philosophy graduate who, not being able to find a better job, ends up working in a call centre of Multiple, a multinational company selling futuristic and useless home appliances.
The Class, directed by Laurent Cantet - Tom Jennings
Tom Jennings attributes this film’s success to its subversion of educational orthodoxy veiled in high-liberal and Hollywood homilies.
Class Encounters of the Secondary Kind. Film review – Tom Jennings
Creating a Movement: The Struggle for Inclusive Education in the UK, 1990–2006, by Stefan Sczcelkun
Tom Jennings appreciates this snapshot of a campaign against the segregation of disabled people.
Anti-Ability Apartheid. DVD review – Tom Jennings
The Dream of Fluxus, by George Macuinas
The Baltic’s recent Fluxus show can’t entirely conceal the radical ambition and potential of avant-garde art, finds Tom Jennings.
Avant-Garde Nightmare. Art review – Tom Jennings
The Dream of Fluxus, by George Macuinas, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, November 2008 – February 2009
Amber Films and UK social-realist cinema
Tom Jennings questions the documentary claims of film fictions of lower-class life.
Hunting, Fishing, and Shooting the Working Classes. Film review essay – Tom Jennings
Anarchy alive! Anti-authoritarian politics from practice to theory by Uri Gordon
Despite its interesting account of organisational preoccupations among global protesters, Tom Jennings doubts Anarchy Alive!’s coherence as theory
Reinventing Wheels. Book review – Tom Jennings
The formidable organising capabilities of the last decade’s global protest networks have helped gather many thousands of folks to disrupt late-capitalism’s world cannibalism junkets – registering spectacularly in the corporate media and making links with an impressive variety of grass-roots groups worldwide.
The Given Day, by Dennis Lehane - Tom Jennings
Aspiring to reveal the long roots of 20th century America’s fantasies of itself, Lehane’s new book nails some while reproducing others.
Boston Mendacity Party. Book review – Tom Jennings
A sideways look at Pixar's films
A column from the Christmas 2008 issue of Freedom that looks at the subversion to be found in places as unexpected as Pixar's films.
A Sideways Look
