Reading Dalton Trumbo (Spontaneous thoughts.) It was Hollywood that got me. In particular the film Spartacus, produced and starring Kirk Douglas, directed by Stanley Kubrick and screenplay by Dalton Trumbo. The other main roles were played by Jean Simmons, Laurence Olivier and Peter Ustinov. The film was inspired by Howard Fast’s wonderful novel, also called […]
ARTICLE: THE ACT OF KILLING – A puncture in the hegemony by Max Lane
The Act of Killing did not win Hollywood’s favor. The activist-oriented systematic promotion of the documentary, however, has helped it to have a significant impact on public discussion of the mass killings of 1965, both in Indonesia and internationally. A single film could never overthrow the hegemony of half a century of indoctrination, but it […]
ARTICLE – After THE ACT OF THE KILLING: Indonesia, 1965: rehabilitating victims, rehabilitating revolution by Max Lane
Indonesia and 1965: rehabilitating victims, rehabilitating revolution under a counter-revolutionary state. Max Lane Text of notes used for talk delivered at Conference: “After The Act of Killing: Historical Justice and the 1965-66 Mass Killings in Indonesia”, University of Melbourne and Sekolah Tinggi Filsafat, Jakarta, August 30, 2013. It is very heartening to see the increased and more open […]
Film Review: THE ROAD, with updated POSTSCRIPT
After postponing the decision several times unsure whether I wanted to spend my leisure time watching a film that was universally being described as a harrowing depiction of humankind’s return to barbarism after an apocalyptic Armageddon event. The reviews kept pulling me back to the cinema – they all hailed the script, acting and direction. In addition […]
Film Review: the miracle of AVATAR
According to Miranda Devine, one of Australia’s loony right newspaper commentators, watching AVATAR felt like being “hit with a leftie sledgehammer”. It appears that in America too, the loony right has been severely irked by the immense popularity of James Cameron’s epic hi-tech science fiction film. Devine tips her hat to the talent involved in […]
INDONESIA: Documentary review: “Tjidurian 19”.
Tjidurian 19, directed by Lasja Susatyo and M. Anduh Aziz, screned Jakarta, November 17, 2009 This film is about some of the people who were leading writers and artists in the Peoples Cultural Institute (LEKRA) in the 1960s. LEKRA was aligned with the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), and like the PKI was banned after 1965. […]
Film Review: 2012
Judging from the news coming in from the US box office, this film will make a lot of money for its investors. Such is the irrationality of contemporary society. As a commodity to be marketed, of course, it has everything you need. The main thing though is the promise that you will see the biggest ever […]
Review: Michael Moore’s CAPITALISM: A Love Story
Last night, here in Singapore, I went to the cinema to watch Michael Moore’s latest film: Capitalism: a love story. I had read that morning a very negative review of the film in the Straits Times newspaper, the island’s man daily newspaper, owned by a government linked corporation. Apart from the reviewer’s frustrations with Moore’s […]
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