Saturday, 8 January 2011

Karaoke
(1996)

RATING: 40%

Empty Orchestra

The usual misogyny and social snobbery from Dennis Potter without any real insights into either condition. Fine for the narcissistic middle-classes but what about the rest of us? We are left to laugh at the sheer triviality of the childish personal problems of the main characters. POTTER was so far up his own fundament as a man and as a writer that he could never relate to the real world enough to create believable and credible dramas after 1980. This is exacerbated here by references to his better work buried in this drama.

Like so much of Stephen King's work, the story here focuses on a writer who is ill and burned-out and unable to separate fact from fantasy. No wonder British tv is so awful when this is the very best that it can produce: Self-indulgent mediocrity pretending to be art.

Not particularly well-cast and indifferently-acted, the characters are never more than clichés and stereotypes. And what is this really all about other than its own existence and the ineffectual characters presented?


Copyright © 2011 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

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Science:



No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.



Jacob Bronowski… (1908 - 74), British scientist, author. Encounter (London, July 1971).


Sleep of Reason:



The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty.



Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes… (1746-1828), Spanish painter. Caption to Caprichos, number 43, a series of eighty etchings completed in 1798, satirical and grotesque in form.


Humans & Aliens:



I am human and let nothing human be alien to me.



Terence… (circa 190-159 BC), Roman dramatist. Chremes, in The Self-Tormentor [Heauton Timorumenos], act 1, scene 1.


Führerprinzip:



One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves… There is no organ of conciliation or mediation interposed between the leader and the people, nothing in fact but the apparatus - in other words, the party - which is the emanation of the leader and the tool of his will to oppress. In this way the first and sole principle of this degraded form of mysticism is born, the Führerprinzip, which restores idolatry and a debased deity to the world of nihilism.