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Michael Brooke

@marbleicehook.bsky.social

1.7K followers 1.7K following 3.1K posts

Freelance writer, editor and DVD/Blu-ray producer/commentator specialising in British and central/eastern European cinema. Indexes to my regular posts celebrating the latter (9am daily, 9pm most days) can be found at http://www.michaelbrooke.com/bluesky

www.michaelbrooke.com

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 21h

I felt something similar after Jerzy Skolimowski returned to filmmaking after a 17-year break, during which I assumed that that would be that; he was already seventy when he made his comeback. And it was as if he'd never been away.

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 3d

I see "recognising steampunk fiction" ranks alongside "recognising sarcasm" on the long and ever-lengthening lists of things that AI can't do.

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 4d

I gather the French were genuinely baffled when Patrice Leconte was hailed as some kind of art-cinema master in the English-speaking world. To us, he's the man behind Monsieur Hire and The Hairdresser's Husband. To them, he's the one who made Les Bronzés and Les Bronzés font du ski.

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 4d

This may be a subconscious (and maybe not too subconscious) reason why I never studied film academically - I met enough of these people in the London rep cinema scene in the 1980s and 90s.

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 5d

In Poland, Pope John Paul II is regarded as one of *the* key figures in the 1980s anti-communist resistance, but I've no idea how Father Ted went down over there.

(I've tried Googling, but got hundreds of references to Father Jack downing some floor polish instead of what I was after.)

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 5d

She could of course easily find out if she had the slightest interest in doing so.

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 5d

If social media had been around in the 1970s we'd still have regular smallpox outbreaks. Do these people think that smallpox "just went away"?

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 5d

@ohsinnerman.bsky.social has probably seen this already, but just in case...

Amanda Watson @amndw2.bsky.social · 6d

I couldn't resist. #pleasingterror

A bingo card for the ghost stories of M.R. James. Boxes read:
"Spiders
Terrible hotel stay
Narrator makes fun of golf
Latin passages
Eerie disembodied voices
Confirmed bachelor main character
Vengeful spirit
Evil magician
Working-class character as comic relief
Bleak East Anglian coast
Visit to an archive
Narrator in guidebook mode
FREE SPACE
Unholy doings in a church
Frogs or toads
Queen Anne style house
Cursed artifact
Don't buy that rare book!
Something hairy and horrible
Someone gets too curious
Tentacles
Story told via old manuscript
Research trip gone horribly wrong
Beds are scary
Tactile horror

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 5d

Exactly. Or why Allo Allo! appealed to Poles but Dad's Army didn't - comedies about resisting actual Nazi occupation clearly had crossover appeal but the Poles never had much of a chance to ponder the hypothetical kind before the tanks rolled in.

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 5d

I once chatted with someone who was convinced that Tyler Perry's vanishingly low profile in the UK was down to distributor racism. In fact, UK distributors would love to duplicate their US success, and they've certainly tried, but UK (and, I suspect, all non-US) audiences just aren't interested.

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 5d

See also the Daily Express readership, whose average age is 69, and 83% of its readers are over 55 - and every time those figures are compiled they move in just one direction.

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 6d

The US doesn't recognise the ICC. Hence the fact that Netanyahu wasn't immediately arrested when he recently visited the UN.

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 6d

None whatsoever, I imagine, since he was the one actually giving the orders.

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 6d

And one traditionally, erm, rolexes on the sofa with a film. At least if one has a very peculiar accent that's hard to immediately place.

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 7d

He's perfectly competent - his prosecutorial success record is seriously impressive - but he's slow and methodical, which absolutely wasn't what was needed at that particular time.

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 8d

The declaration of immunity wouldn’t have affected some of the charges, and Trump and the Supreme Court wouldn’t have been able to delay things forever. Had the election happened in, say, mid-2025 rather than November 2024 there’s every likelihood that the January 6 hearings would have concluded.

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 8d

Sorry, by 2020 I meant 2021. Appointing Smith in 2020 would be Minority Report territory.

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 8d

Merrick Garland must take a huge share of responsibility for this. If Jack Smith had been hired in 2020 rather than 2022, Trump would almost certainly have been convicted on the January 6th charges well before the 2024 primaries, and the US could be favourably compared with Brazil and South Korea.

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 8d

I suspect a fake wouldn't have been riddled with such egregious misspellings.

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 10d

One bit had dated - when we recorded it, GDT was only talking about remaking it, but by the time the Blu-ray came out the remake had already been completed and released. But I rather liked that snapshot of history, so I left it in.

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 10d

It took three years to come out, and when they finally resolved a Fox/Disney issue they asked me to listen to it to make sure it was still OK. Which was a fascinating experience, as I’d forgotten the intensive research that I’d done and so was regularly startled by how much I seemed to know.

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 11d

They will presumably be taking into account things like shutting down USAID, continuing to support Israel even after its leader has been indicted for war crimes, and various other things that make a claim to any sort of peace prize (never mind a Nobel) somewhat spurious.

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 11d

And yet his debate with Kamala Harris was broadcast live and unedited and he was wildly incoherent at times.

Mind you, that's just as true of all his other debates, including the fateful last one with Joe Biden - it's only that Biden was worse so it was less obvious.

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 15d

Glad to see that you’re acknowledging the state of Palestine there.

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 15d

Apologies for my dismal punctuation and inability to distinguish between singular and plural - but that’s what posting while horrified does to one’s typing.