Adam Curtis fans?

[daddy cool]

Any fans of Adam Curtis?
I love his films/documentaries. I'll be honest, maybe I'm just thick, but usually after watching one, I couldn't tell you what its about in any real detail. And yet, they are almost hypnotising to watch, despite all being made up of grainy archive footage and trippy music and cheap text on the screen. I guess the main theme I pick up is mankind attempting to replicate either nature or computer technology as a way to shape society, and always getting it spectacularly wrong.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to his new movie - its on iPlayer on Sunday 16th Oct:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeMwfS4_eLM&in...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/02d9...

[daddy cool]

Get ready for more archive footage of people dancing, Adam Curtis has a new series out (June, i think) - "Shifty"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQc8625Y03g

[Electronicpants]

Completely agree, it's a bit like a great painting or something, I don't really understand why there's more to it than a bunch of flowers or a picture of a woman, but you know there something more there and get a bit lost in it.

Looking forward to this one.

[vixen1700]

Cheers for the heads up, I can just drift into his stuff and escape normal life.

[TwistingMyMelon]

ty for heads up - love his stufff

[Nick NE]

All five parts have appeared on iPlayer this morning. An early Father’s Day present!

[vixen1700]

Watched the first two, interesting enough but ultimately quite a grim watch.

[C69]

I've watched the first episode of Shifty. Not being familiar with his work, I didn't know what to expect. He's got an unusual style, but it's very watchable.

I see that HyperNormalisation is still on the iPlayer, too.

[Wills2]

Bitter lake is great, love his stuff.

[Wills2]

I watched his Barings bank film, that's really good as well showed them to be the entitled Ruperts you'd expect.

[Electronicpants]

Watched the first one last night.

Crikey, the country has changed in so many ways in my lifetime.

[vixen1700]

Finished this series last night and compared to all the other stuff of his I've seen, I found it disappointing really. Very mis-jointed and just a little trying too hard for randomness sake.
Interesting in places but then the interest is just diverted to something completely disconnected.

[SpeedBash]

Adam Curtis on the BBC, Politics & AI

[redrabbit]

SpeedBash said:

Adam Curtis on the BBC, Politics & AI

Hmm.

Although I usually enjoy The Rest Is Entertainment, I've suddenly lost all respect for Osman and Hyde following the Curtis episode - what an embarrassing, obsequious spectacle. Both of them are desperate to impress their subject, and offer no critique of his work at all. Curtis himself is articulate and precise, but his summary of his work is far more engaging than the.work itself. 'SHIFTY" is just lazy polemic dressed up as high concept, and far inferior to Curtis' earlier work. It is however ripe for uncritical praise from those keen to parade their intellectual credentials, including Osman, who totally embarrasses himself in that episode.

[Stick Legs]

I’m enjoying it immensely.

Love Adam Curtis’ work.

[bergclimber34]

He has a fascinating way of presenting.

This series has echoes of Hypernormalisation in it, particularly at the end talking about how so many thought the Internet was going to rescue us from power shifting from politics to the banks

I also love his "they know, we know they don't know what they are doing" stuff that comes largely from his fabulous series about Russia, and it applies now in the UK more than ever

He is one of the few people who speaks independently largely and he speaks for me certainly much of the time, unlike most politicians

He paints Thatcher as almost mad, and Blair and Brown as the two men who gave away the last vestige of political power, which is why we have no real rudder, a series of aimless leaders and extremes becoming popular as they say things that make us notice and hanker for the past.

I sometimes have no idea what links the pictures to the words but I do love his work, the way Hypernormalisation depicts Gadaffi particularly is truly eye opening, and Bitter Lake shows us what a mistake the last few wars over the last 40 or 50 decades were.

Edited by bergclimber34 on Friday 4th July 08:13