The Froghall View

Batman: The Brave and the Bold



Watch this new Batman cartoon. It's damn entertaining.


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Adam Curtis Documentaries


Watch the greatest documentary films you'll ever see.

1984: Inquiry: The Great British Housing Disaster.

1988: An Ocean Apart. Episode One "Hats Off to Mr. Wilson” (concerning the process by which the United States was involved in the First World War).

1992: Pandora's Box examined the dangers of technocratic and political rationality. It received the BAFTA Award for Best Factual Series.

(rewtube.com)

1995: The Living Dead investigated the way that history and memory (both national and individual) have been used by politicians and others.

1996: 25 Million Pounds a study of Nick Leeson and the collapse of Barings Bank. Won the Best Science and Nature Documentary in the 1998 San Francisco International Film Festival.

1997: The Way of All Flesh tells the story of Henrietta Lacks, the "woman who will never die". It received the 1997 Golden Gate Award.

1999: The Mayfair Set looked at how buccaneer capitalists were allowed to shape the climate of the Thatcher years, focusing on the rise of Colonel David Stirling, Jim Slater, James Goldsmith, and Tiny Rowland, all members of The Clermont club in the 1960s. It received the BAFTA Award for Best Factual Series or Strand in 2000.

2002: The Century of the Self (BBC Two) documented how the rise of Freud's individualism led to Edward Bernays' consumerism. It received the Broadcast Award for Best Documentary Series and the Longman-History Today Award for Historical Film of the Year. It was released in the US through art house cinemas and was picked as the fourth best movie of 2005 by Entertainment Weekly.

2004: The Power of Nightmares (BBC Two) suggested a parallel between the rise of Islamism in the Arab world and Neoconservatism in the United States in that both needed to inflate a myth of a dangerous enemy in order to draw people to support them. It received the BAFTA Award for Best Factual Series in 2004.

2007: The Trap - What Happened to our Dream of Freedom (BBC Two - working title Cold Cold Heart), a series regarding the modern concept of freedom.

2007: Curtis provided a tongue-in-cheek version of his owndocumentary style for a section about television news reporters in the third episode of the fourth series of the BBC Four programme Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe.


2009: Curtis provided another mini-documentary for Charlie Brooker and his new current affairs programme Newswipe, this time focussing on the rise of "Oh Dear"-ism

2009: July 2 saw the release of a new mixed media documentary, called It Felt Like A Kiss.

2010: Curtis provided a third mini-documentary on paranoia and moral panics for the fourth episode in the second series of Charlie Brooker's Newswipe.


More to come.

(Source: Wikipedia)

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Robin Cook fights Evil

A total gem of a find on YouTube.

A flashback to February 1996, when the Arms-to-Iraq scandal took a turn for the worse for Conservative Government, after the long-awaited Scott Report was finally published.  The report was highly critical of the government, raising concerns over ministerial accountability, incompetence and public deception.  It picked out certain members of the Conservative party for particular misdeeds.  Scott had even described their slippery evasions when asked to cooperate with the research for the report - in colourfully venomous language. 

In the media, the Conservatives had already begun to try and declare it a victory, claiming that Scott had exonerated the Government.   In their press pack, they included dull sounding, inoffensive extracts from the report.  For now, they had successfully avoided media scrutiny.  Before the parliamentary debate, Tory MPs had been fully briefed on how to defend themselves against the findings.  The Scott Report was only made available to the Labour party through Robin Cook, then shadow foreign minister, who had been given only two hours, directly before the debate, to scrutinise the report under Tory supervision, where he was expressly forbidden to make any copies.  

Robin Cook and a team of researchers read the entire 1800 page report, then he walked into parliament, and battled the entire Conservative party single-handed for an hour.  



We miss you, Robin Cook.

Unfortunately only half of it is here.  Especially because Neil Hamiltion stands up a bit later, which is always good for a laugh.

John Major declared that a no vote would be a vote of no confidence, and an aye would exonerate the Governement.  The Government won 320-319.

Read the House of Commons debate 26th February 1996:
Read some shitty BBC On This Day thing.

If anyone could tell me where to get a PDF of The Scott Report, I would be very grateful.

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Red Nose Day 2009 - Best Bits



I didn't watch Comic Relief this year.  That's because experience has taught me that it's a shit way to spend an evening.  Apart from a few five minute clips that you spend the whole bleedin' night waiting to see, you wade through hours upon hours of godawful celebrity 'variety performance', harrowing reports about all the terrible things that happen in this damned world, and dreading the cruelly inevitable appearance of Lenny Henry, the least funny man on the planet.

Thank goodness for YouTube.  I got to watch all the best bits without the gumph.   What I really could have done with was a list of links to all the good stuff.  So here it is.

Mitchell & Webb, Armstrong and Miller


Outnumbered


Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant: The Office - The Opera


Robert Webb does Flashdance


Radio 4 Presenters Stand-Up


Tell me if I've missed anything worth watching.  Little Britain can fuck right off.
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Street Fighter: The Later Years

We like this.  People who didn't waste their childhood may not.


Here's the rest of the parts:

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Fox News celebrates inauguration day, showers Obama with shit

Fox News, the home of evil, has predictably begun its four-year plan of slinging shit at Obama and hoping something sticks. Here they are:

1) Spinning the closure of Guantanomo Bay (affectionately known as 'Gitmo' in Foxland) as a bad thing.
9/11 Families Outraged by Obama Call to Suspend Guantanamo War Crimes Trial
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/01/21/families-outraged-obama-suspend-guantanamo-war-crimes-trials/

2) Implying that during the few days of transition between governments, Obama's staff has been hopelessly wandering around the Whitehouse like a load of teenagers on work experience, trying to find the forms that they need to fill out and getting lost on the way back from the coffee shop.  And it comes with a paternally reassuring, wild west themed headline:
Bush Appointees Holding Down the Fort While Obama Nominees Await Confirmation
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/01/21/bush-appointees-holding-fort-obama-nominees-await-confirmation/

3) Having a pop at Obama for stumbling the oath:
Obama, Chief Justice Roberts Stumble in Recitation of Presidential Oath
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/01/20/chief-justice-roberts-officiates-inauguration/

Before recognising that it was actually Chief Justice Roberts fault (yeah- the other dude said the wrong thing, and it messed Obama up 'cos he was all like "whoa - that's not the thing" but he'd already said the thing, so, he, like, stopped saying the thing.) in a rather catty tone, and slipping in the marvellous line:  "Obama then repeated the oath in the incorrect order. His presidency is unaffected, however."
Biden Takes Shot at Roberts for Flubbing Presidential Oath
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/01/21/biden-takes-shot-roberts-flubbing-presidential-oath/

4) Finally, getting their dicks out and swinging them around the room, pissing all over goodness and decency, fornicating with demons and swearing allegiance to the wicked one, the tempter, the dark lord of the pit...

Five Reasons Americans Should Be Concerned About Hamas

Including:

3. The Deck Is Stacked Against Israel
Despite an enormous advantage in firepower, intelligence and military training, Israel is the underdog in this conflict — there is enormous pressure on Israel not to attack Hamas.
So, why should you care? Because Hamas and other Islamists throughout the world view Israel as a warm up for the greater foe– the United States.

Despicable.  Also an article on the front page "Give Bush Credit for Keeping Us Safe".  Lovely.
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Bruce Lee was Awesome

Awesome-fucking-Welles.

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