Category: Reviews Page 17 of 21

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Conversations with Stalin

On 24th April 2008

Ranković, Tito and Đilas

It’s probably about time I got around to finally writing about some of the books that I read, a little in the vein of the 52-in-52 meme. This probably won’t start a trend, but Milovan Đilas’ Conversations with Stalin is full of sufficient tidbits to make it worth writing about, albeit unfortunately a little on the short side.

Đilas (pictured, right) was one of the key figures in the Yugoslavian Partisan movement during the Second World War, and maintained an influential position in the post-war government alongside Josip Broz Tito (centre), Aleksandar Ranković (on the left), and Edvard Kardelj. He started to write his memoirs in the mid-50s and decided to set his encounters with Stalin aside for separate treatment, but his outspoken criticism of the Yugoslav system resulted in his arrest and imprisonment in 1956. He restarted this work in 1961, which eventually brought about his re-internment.

Daily Links

By Fips

On 9th April 2008

In Daily Links, Music, Science

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 “Eroica” – A wonderful website devoted to one of the most important pieces in Beethoven’s career, and the history of the symphony. Courtesy of Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, the website also features works by Copland, Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky.

Flash Earth – View the Earth using Google Earth, Microsoft Virtual Earth, Yahoo! Maps and more, and switch between them. The site claims to be experimental and works without official consent, so will not necessarily be around for long.

Tenth Dimension – Confused by string theory? Watch this simple and fascinating video explaining the ten dimensions—but be prepared to have forgotten it all inside of two minutes!

Zamzar – Convert between a good variety of audio, video, image, document and storage file types online for free. This includes videos available on a number of popular websites (e.g. YouTube, Metacafe and the like). The paid for version offers a number of improved features, but even the basic free version allows files of up to 100Mb to be converted, plenty adequate for most file types, though the result is emailed to an address of your choice, which could prove problematic for certain inboxes.

Katyń

By Fips

On 22nd February 2008

In Films, Real Life™, Reviews

Caught Andrzej Wajda’s Katyń this week as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival and have to say I was fairly impressed. It will probably be the only film I’ll see since the prices go up at this time of year, and indeed I was quite lucky to catch this one since the first showing sold out with over a week to go, no doubt in large part due to the significant number of Polish people living in Dublin. Sadly, being sat right at the front didn’t give a particularly good vantage point for flicking between the pictures and the subtitles, and this is one film I’ll have to watch again on DVD before I can fully make up my mind, but the screenplay was well written and easy to follow despite the amalgam of different plotlines. Unfortunately, some of the character portrayals were rather wooden and to some extent detracted from the film’s message, if there is one beyond the plain Rankean historical analysis.

Nevertheless, Krzysztof Penderecki provides a beautiful score to underline the images, with a smattering of Tchaikovsky and Chopin thrown in during some of the propaganda scenes. As a piece of cinematography the film probably deserves its Oscar nomination, though it is difficult to tell whether it will be remembered more for that or its political implications. That the film does not get caught in a loop of nationalist propagandism is important in light of the tendencies in Moscow and elsewhere. Power is not what comes from the end of a gun but the ability to make people believe ones lies. Certainly disturbing news from Putin’s Russia.

The film’s climax is a rather visceral, and to some extents shocking visual of what the film is after all about. However it does offer an interesting juxtaposition for those taken by the irrationality of mankind—as officer after officer is dispatched in the name of political idealism, these same go to their deaths with a prayer on their lips. Absurd or simply tragic? One thing however is for certain, and that is that my quest for the non-melancholy Polish film continues…

For a brave new future.

Domesticating Zebras

By Fips

On 1st October 2007

In Books, Reviews

Noble—but undomesticable?

How do you domesticate a zebra? You can’t, or at least that’s the justification put forward by Jared Diamond in his Guns, Germs and Steel for why these wild beasts were never used as draught animals or cavalry in sub-Saharan Africa. Much of what Diamond writes has a logical ring to it, and whilst the evidence is sparse and in places contradictory, his conclusions fit the necessarily teleological approach. Others have accused him of too much geographical determinism, and perhaps they have a point, but the one thing which struck me as being peculiarly out of place in Diamond’s writing was his treatment of Africa’s wild animals as being unsuitable for domestication. He argued that it was only by chance that Eurasia benefited from having suitable species such as goats, sheep, cattle and horses, and that the native varieties of these animals in sub-Saharan Africa were inherintly unsuitable.

Company of Heroes Review

By Fips

On 29th August 2007

In Computer Games, Reviews

Company of Heroes

With some of the highest scores awarded for a real-time strategy, being one of the Top 20 Metacritic All-Time High Scores, Company of Heroes ended up being one of those games I had little excuse not to try out, given that my PC could (just about) run it. Admittedly I’m unable to comment on the graphical splendour which seems to have charmed so many gamers’ hearts, as every setting on my screen reads either ‘low’ or ‘off’, but I’ve played a fair few strategy games over the years, and despite my early cynicism, Company of Heroes has warmed to me after a little experience on the online battlefields.

Whenever a game is released with a major historical theme, such as the ever popular World War II era, cries go up about the loss of realism to the gaming gods. Such and such would never happen, this and that never existed. Of course, many strategy games don’t even attempt to pander to the pedants of realism, and have been all the more successful for it (take the recent Supreme Commander, or any in the Command and Conquer series). Company of Heroes is no saint in this regard either, but its efforts to create a game at once realistic and fun have to be admired. There will always be players who complain about how developers could have stayed truer to real life, but Relic have done a good job in creating a game which at least seems realistic enough, and in ways which make the game fun to play. Shells fired at tanks have a chance of only glancing off the armour, and depending on the situation might even miss altogether; units under heavy fire become surpressed, limiting their movements and actions, or even pinned, leaving them helpless unless pulled out or relieved; and the variety of weapons and vehicles keep the tactics fresh and varied.