In Amongst It

Everything about this film's opening scene oozes intelligence. A cracking cast - Michaels Fassbender and Stuhlbarg and Kate Winslet - reads an exceptional, mile-a-minute script - Aaron Sorkin - under masterful direction - Danny Boyle - with an exceptional musical score underneath - Daniel Pemberton . If you asked a generative AI bot how to make a film about a revolutionary genius, it wouldn't be able to come up with something so accomplished. The film has a very difficult job: make the audience relate to Steve Jobs, a messianic figure who, I suppose, bears striking resemblances to Elon Musk, though that is a rabbit-hole down which I do not want to go.  The film portrays Jobs as a genius and, I suppose, I am here to judge the film and not the man himself. The film has been hit by claims it is inaccurate, but I can't speak and won't speak to those. What the film does exceptionally, if not a little painstakingly, is show the viewer that Jobs is a genius. Nothing reflect...

I've been sceptical of Netflickian sports documentaries done like this for a while now. I've heard that 'Drive to Survive' has saved Formula 1, even brought it to levels it hadn't before seen. It's exceptionally compelling television. It almost got me interested in F1. Almost. 'Break Point', its tennis version, and 'Full Swing', its golf version, have left me desiring something better. Individual episodes of those have been fantastic. But the shows as a whole have been lacking in the nitty-gritty and in the tension. They don't tell their stories, all rather compelling, in the same way other fantastic episodic sports documentaries have, like 'The Last Dance' or 'Last Chance U'. I hoped 'Six Nations: Full Contact' would revitalise interest for rugby and open it up to new audiences, further pushing the power-brokers to take some very logical steps to grow the sport that I won't get into now. That metric, though, canno...

  Introduction: Tu Dormis, Tu Perdis – You Snooze, You Lose [1] To read satire is to read a culture. To understand satire is to understand a culture. There is an effective historical example that supports the very concept of the accurate efficiency of satire in cultural comprehension. Plato, upon being asked by the tyrannical Dionysius of Syracuse for a text that accurately described ancient Athenian society, didn’t turn to the legal works of Solon and Draco, the tragic works of Euripides, the histories of Herodotus or even his own philosophical ancestors in Pythagoras and Anaxagoras. Rather, Plato sent the tyrant his copy of the plays of Aristophanes, the man renowned in the West as being the first comedian and a potential forefather of satire itself [2] . Plato is insisting that, in order to understand the culture of ancient Athens, you first must read between the lines of said culture. Satire inhabits that microscopic interstice between reality and fiction. His suggestion of A...