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You can’t stop the boats: Sorry We Didn’t Die At Sea @ParkTheatre

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Sorry We Didn’t Die At Sea by Italian playwright Emanuele Aldrovandi and translated by Marco Young, has made a topical return to London at the Park Theatre after playing earlier this summer at the Seven Dials Playhouse. In a week when leaders and leaders in waiting were talking about illegal immigration, it seemed like a topical choice . It also has one hell of an evocative title. The piece opens with Adriano Celantano’s Prisencolinensinainciusol , which sets the scene for what we are about to see. After all, a song about communication barriers seems perfect for a play about people trafficking and illegal immigration. One side doesn’t understand why they happen, and the other still comes regardless of the latest government announcement / slogan .  However, the twist here is that the crossing is undertaken the other way. People are fleeing Europe instead of escaping war or poverty in Africa or the Middle East. It’s set sometime in the not-too-distant future. There is a crisis causing p

Movie: Superman Returns


Ok it isn't a photo of mine, but there has been a bit of chatter on cyberspace about the rather phallic looking Florida peninsula that is prominently on display. I'm not so sure about that, but the religious overtones of the poster as well give you an idea about the film as well (which has also been dubbed as "the Passion of the Clark").

But anyway is Superman Returns a good film? Well after seeing an IMAX presentation of it, I thought it was great fun and had an interesting story to kickstart a new series of films. Of course seeing it in IMAX means that you feel like you are in the film at points, and it is loud, very loud at times. The latter is a good thing as it drowned out my exclamations of "Jezusfuckingchrist!" when it was all getting a bit too much (so the family audiences around me were none the wiser).

Being a bit of a devotee to the first two Superman films I could appreciate many of the in-jokes to the film, such as when Lex Luthor steals Kryptonite it was labelled as being found in Addis Ababa in 1978 (the year of the first film and a direct reference within it). The first two films were such great fun in the post-Watergate era. This movie with its relentless religious overtones must suggest something about the era we are living in now. Of course with Brandon Routh in a rather spiffy new costume, some pretty impressive effects and that familiar rousing score, there were plenty of distractions to avoid the religious analogies, even for a Sunday… Comic book stories seem to take themselves a bit too seriously for pop culture anyway so I guess you have to put up with this with your summer escapism...

There was an additional feature of the IMAX presentation that I was unaware of and that was four sequences were in 3D. 3D IMAX is a really dumb thing and you have to put glasses on which suck outs the colour and gives a false depth of field to everything. I don't quite understand the point of this but it no doubt contributed to the reason why the punters were flocking to see it in IMAX, given the screenings today were all sold out. As there were only four scenes you had to rummage for your specs when the icon of Clark's glasses flashed green at the bottom of the screen and then take them off when they flashed red. Oh well, I guess even blockbuster summer films have gotta have a gimmick…

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