February Rule of the Month

This month every post will have at least one reference to English actress Kate Winslet.

With the film awards season in full-swing everyone is talking about her - not least for her role as former concentration camp guard Hannah Schmitz in 'The Reader'.

Spooner's Zeitgeist will look at her acting and any other little tasty titbits about her.

Reader's opinions welcome!

Get Your Obama T-Shirt Now!

If you haven't got an Obama t-shirt yet, you better get your skates on. Now he's actually the President of America and the 'Yes We Can' bubble could burst at any moment.

Isn't it fascinating though? Where else apart from the USA would ordinary people start to wear t-shirts of living politicians? Well, ones that show them in a positive light at least.

Take the UK for example. It doesn't help that Gordon Brown has got a face like an English Breakfast. You might see a few spotty students wearing a t-shirt bearing Brown's likeness and reading 'Gordon is a Moron' or with him holding a sign proclaiming 'The End is Nigh'. Yep, the British are a cynical bunch of bastards.

The Americans on the other hand can be infuriatingly optimistic. Maybe they have a right to be with Obama. So catch ya laterz alligators coz I'm gonna order my black XXXL 'Obama Is My Homeboy' shirt right now!

Visionary Architect: Jan Kaplický (1937-2009)

Narrow-minded conservatives in Prague despise it, but Kaplický’s National Library design is one of wonder, beauty and daring.

It recalls the curvaceous streamlined structure of his media centre at Lord’s cricket ground in London, albeit on a far grander scale.

Although the library won an international design competition in 2007, building has been blocked. And public debate in Prague has raged ever since. The library even has its own nickname: the ‘octopus’.



Based in London since he emigrated from communist Prague in 1968, Kaplický realised many adventurous and uplifting projects around the world with his group Future Systems.

The National Library was to be his first building in his homeland, and the pinnacle of his architectural career.

He died this week aged only 71. It is a great shame that he did not live to see his library built. Let us hope that we are more fortunate, even though the signs are not promising.

GALLERY

‘Entropa’: EU Art Controversy

‘Entropa’ made a great news story this week.

The sculpture was commissioned by the Czech government to mark the start of their European Union presidency and illustrate their slogan: ‘A Europe without Barriers’.

Instead, Czech artist David Černý created a work lampooning crude national stereotypes.

With Bulgaria shown as a Turkish toilet the Czech ambassador was summoned to Sofia to explain himself. Germany is presented as a patchwork of motorways vaguely resembling a swastika. Britain is missing altogether.

Most government art is unobtrusive and bland. This piece is challenging and interesting.

Another English Cricket Cock-Up

Kevin Pietersen is the most entertaining batsman in the world. He is also temperamental and actually mad. But so is every genius.

It is scandalous that he was pressured into relinquishing the England Captaincy after only 5 months on the job.

KP told the bureaucrats that the coach, Peter Moores, was useless. And they couldn’t handle it. Who’s more important in a team, the best player or the coach?

I thought he was hired for his direct approach.

It’s a shame he won’t lead England in the Ashes, but thank god he’s still in the team!

VIDEO

January 2009: Rule of the Month

Happy New Year, readers!

Rule of the Month: each post will be less than 100 words long.

This is a new feature I'm introducing to spice up Spooner's Zeitgeist and get you lot out there coming back for more.

If you have an idea for February let me know!

SZ

Latest German History Movie A Violent Collage

Two and a half hours of endless violence, garbled ideology and much posturing. And I'm not talking about 'Quantum of Solace'. No, this is the latest film about modern German history. But it is not about the World Wars or the East German dictatorship. It is about West Germany's terrorist group of the 1960s and '70s: the Red Army Faction (RAF).

[Watch the trailer on the official film website]

'The Baader Meinhof Komplex' tries to sum up around 30 years of complex social tensions in West Germany: the post-war generation that had to deal with the role of parents and grandparents in Nazi Germany; the student movement and the reaction of older people to its liberalism; and the radicalisation of left-wing ideology that resulted in terrorist tactics.

What results is a collage of scenes that supposedly show 'what actually happened' at the time. We see a student demonstration brutally put down by police and of course the catalystic shooting of the student Benno Ohnesorg by a police officer.

The left-wing intellectual Ulrike Meinhof joins the extremist Andreas Baader and away we go. Political assassination follows bombing follows shooting.

The graphic depiction of violence in this film is shocking in itself, but does it really make one think about the social issues of the time. I left the theatre feeling numb. I can imagine others leaving the theatre feeling elated. For example, this movie would go down very well with any member of Antifa - a German group that sees a need to fight fascists hands on.

It made me more convinced than ever that the use of terror is wrong. What did these people achieve apart from expressing their anger in the most apalling way? The film provided no new clues or perspectives. Given the amount of time it spent looking at the terrorists after they were caught and tried, it's portrayal of them is rather too sympathetic.

German director Uli Edel might have been better off sticking to the realms of myth as in his last movie - 'Ring of the Nibelungs'. He's tried to create an epic, where a single story could have told a lot more. To prove my point, look at 'Downfall' by German director Oliver Hirschbiegel. He took Hitler as his material, but he did not make a film about the entire Second World War. His powerful drama plays out in a bunker in Berlin in 1945 and reveals a lot more about German history than Edel's violent collage.

That said, see 'The Baader Meinhof Complex' yourself and let me know what YOU think.