Donny Recommends: Lecture screening - "Page One: Inside the New York Times"

Who would have known while we are aspiring to become a journalist, we can also indulge ourselves into being a little bit of a film critic? For this week's lecture, the whole lecture room has moved to the Schonell Theatre, where we are very honoured to participate in a premiere screening of "Page One: Inside the New York Times", a fascinating documentary about several issues in journalism.

While we are watching it, I couldn't help but think of how many issues exactly that the film has covered. I believe there are almost 10 of them, covering in a variety of topics like media reporting, plagiarism, the current media landscape, blog-like journalism, being a foreign correspondent in the war-torn Middle East, bad outcome of evil news business, and many things that surrounds the history of the New York Times.

In the film, we get to understand how they write news, personally I found it not surprising, but breathtaking that they have to write almost 5000 words for a featured topic; how they have meetings on what to put on the front page, and looked at how pessimistic other people working on alternative media see the traditional, and declining newspaper industry.

We also followed David Carr, who was a cocaine addict but turned journalist in the New York Times, his interviews are sublime and outstanding, and most of the time, funny because of his cheeky personality. His prominent role in the film helps me understand his role as a journalist is very important on informing and uncovering truths behind the shades, in this case, the scandals surrounding the ex-CEO of Tribune Company, Randy Michaels (NYT feature by David Carr), about his misconducts towards colleagues and sexism across the newspapers under the company.

This film is a must-watch, and since I'm not a professional movie critic I'm very good at writing details and opinions about this film, but I wholeheartedly recommend this movie for everyone, especially people who are interested about the news industry, because you'll never know anything about it until you've seen it.

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Donny Recommends: The Island (2005)

Time to have a movie recommendation for my readers. For me I don't really like to see those holiday movies where everything was either 'BAM!', 'WOOSH!' or 'SPLAT!'. It doesn't serve any purpose for me, and I sometimes even find it revolting just to watch with my friends where they were simply watching it for the explosions and actions. Well, not for me. I paid tremendous attention to the plot and the meaning behind films so that makes me usually watch it either with one or two friends, or even alone. Sad? Not really, I'm just enjoying the time spent with myself.

Poster of The Island

Enough with the crap, let me introduce this movie The Island. The Island is a science fiction movie about an apparently futuristic compound with people living in it. The people there were told that the outside world was contaminated and therefore they have to follow a very strict regulations in there, from daily diet to social relationships in order to regulate the population and breed.

However the protagonist of the film, Lincoln Six Echo, did not feel competent with the situation he is in, plus more evidence that made him know probably the world outside was different from what they were told to be. So he investigates.

Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) and Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson)

One of the main subplot of this film was the Island lottery, where everyone will have a chance to win and escape from the isolated compound. People in there were really anticipating that one day it will be one of them to win the prize. However, behind this so-called lucky draw, it was actually a myth, and Lincoln found out the people inhabited in the compound were actually clones of real people of the 'outside' world, where wealthy people sponsored to clone their body and once ever they have body parts malfunctioning, they can harvest the clone's body and no one will know it. And the lucky draw's use was exactly for that.

As Lincoln found out more and more about this immoral doing of this company which told the sponsors and the government the cloned parts were do not gain consciousness, so he escaped with Jordan Two Delta, a friend who has just won the lottery and try to find their sponsors.

Cloned human fed with fake memories

This movie is really reflecting about the ethics of cloning and it gives me an interesting view on what if this really happens in the future where body parts are simply genetically grown and be transplant into dying people's body. It's a sad to see so many people are being killed just to replace body parts and yet they never know that the so-called lottery was the final destination of their lives where they are being harvested. One scene, where a pregnant woman has won the lottery as she started to labour, and as Lincoln followed the medical staff that escorted her into the surgery room, he found out after she gave birth to a baby, she was instantly injected with toxins and killed in the spot, where the baby was given to a wealthy family. That was really screwed up.

So, I do recommend this film to everyone who wants to have a special perspective about human and their cruelty, not to mention that selfishness and the contrastive morals towards the other kinds of people.



D.

Donny Recommends: The Cinematic Orchestra - Ma Fleur

"Donny Recommends" features little gems, loots and treasures from me to share with you. It's intimate and don't tell others I shared with you ONLY!

As you may know, I am an avid music collector. And as I've got a blog that I have the freedom to write whatever I want, I can write things about music! Since I've got a super large collection of music, I'd love to share some of my gems to others since my friends tend to listen to more mainstream kind-of music like pop, rock and whatnot. So whenever they want to listen to something alternative and artists that are not so well-known, they would turn up to me and ask for recommendations.

So without further ado, I would like to introduce this album called Ma Fleur, by The Cinematic Orchestra.

According to Wikipedia, The Cinematic Orchestra is a music project/band since late 1990s created by Jason Swinscoe. And here is a little description of them:

The Cinematic Orchestra is a British jazz and electronic outfit, created in the late 1990s by Jason Swinscoe. The band is signed to Ninja Tune independent record label. In addition to Swinscoe, the band includes PC former DJ Food member (Patrick Carpenter) on turntables, Luke Flowers (drums), Tom Chant (Saxophone), Nick Ramm (piano), Stuart McCallum (guitar) and Phil France (double bass). Former members include Jamie Coleman (trumpet), T. Daniel Howard (drums), Federico Ughi (drums) and Alex James (piano). The most recent addition to the band is Mancunian guitarist Stuart McCallum.

It's not a very popular band I know, but this album from them is quite different than you would normally expect from a band. It's a very chillout-styled music, which is slow in tempo and deep. For me I'd love to listen to it while I'm reading, since it's relaxing and slow-paced style helps me to concentrate on my reading. No matter it's textbook or ordinary novels from store. It's just a nice touch to add into your ever-expanding music universe. Go check it out!

Official Website
Ninja Tune Website of Ma Fleur



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