Ingsoc

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOURfeliz

Orwell, George (Signet Classic, January 1961, ISBN 9780451524935)

I receive a letter from Centrelink explaining that when I lodge next fortnight’s form I need to “negotiate a new Activity Agreement”.

When I go in that fortnight, they tell me again that we need to negotiate a new Activity Agreement. Continue reading

Gallo

buffalo_66
BUFFALO ’66 
Dir. Vincent Gallo. Perf. Vincent Gallo and Christina Ricci. Cinépix Film Properties, 1998. Film.

 

I revere Vincent Gallo’s film Buffalo 66 as a work of genius. From the outset, the film seizes our attention through its humour and stunning photography. Buffalo looks like Orwell’s bright cold day in April when the clocks struck thirteen. Gallo’s flurrying delivery leaves us in hysterics.

At first, we despise his protagonist. After heckling her away from the
payphone, Billy mooches phone change from the tap dancer and then sneers at her in return.

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      Nothing to Envy is Barbara Demick’s rightly praised history of North Korea in the early to late 1990s, as experienced by North Koreans.  Demick spent years interviewing North Korean defectors living in China and South Korea to compile the book.  Through their stories, Demick follows the crises in the isolated … Continue reading