It was five years ago today
Quick plug for my latest Guardian blog, this one about Newsnight's run of ten ten-minute dramas, 10 Days To War, or more specifically, last night's opening episode, A Simple, Private Matter, starring Juliet Stephenson as Foreign Office lawyer Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who resigned over the illegality of the invasion of Iraq on March 10, 2003. (Each drama is broadcast five years after the actual day on which its event took place, you see.) It's still up on the BBC's iPlayer, if you missed it. (I have now fallen in love with the iPlayer.)
posted by Andrew Collins @ 4:50 PM
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10 Comments:
I have to point out Radio4 are doing ten minute slots on the Today programme interviewing people involved in the build up. I see the point of your blog about fiction but I just prefer to hear opinions rather than somebody's dramatisation that inevitably is scued to one particular point of view.
Yesterday they had Clare short on doing her best to pretend she is a woman of principal and not the professional embittered politician she has become.
I have not forgot that she tried to play the moral card while trying to keep her job to. What a contrast to the late, lamented Robin Cook and Elizabeth Wilmhurst.
Last night's Newsnight drama wasn't skewed to the writer's point of view, it simply laid out the facts of Elizabeth Wilmhurst's resignation, with actual footage of Blair being grilled on television by a studio full of anti-war women (hosted by Trevor McDonald), which did not editorialise, it just showed snippets of the event. I don't need opinions either. I think the writer Ronan Bennett - a strident lefty - should be applauded for allowing the drama to speak for itself.
I'll always read a non-fiction book over a novel.
I did not see it Andrew so was certainly not having pop at the drama I am sure it was excellent. I just cannot escape feeling we are being sold a history of events when the drama is written. If you like the message then you will think it is fair. But I am not so sure.
I am afraid I could not bring myself to watch it as I am allergic to Juliet Stevenson since she did that awful propaganda film for Andrew Wakefield portraying doctors who think the MMR jab is a good thing as Dr. Mengele.
Surely a mixture of fiction and so called "nonfiction" helps one get to the nub of any argument/event. I'm sure I don't need to list the non fiction books which shouldn't be the basis of anyones opinion.
The fact remains, and it may be my loss, I prefer to read non-fiction. I prefer the idea that at least some journalistic rigour was applied and I find that my thirst for facts is more active than my thirst for stories. (I fulfil that urge with movies and TV.)
And then we come to "Redacted" the new Brian de Palma effort. Supposedly a collection of media (home movie, documentary, webcam, etc) telling the ["based on a true"] story of some American soldiers who rape and murder . It's a serious and interesting subject, but I thought so ineptly done - the acting and script were bad amateurish - that the result is almost insulting to everyone supposedly depicted.
He's playing around with the fiction / non-fiction, who do you believe question, which is a valid thing to do, but it didn't work for me at all.
Guardian blog? What happened to the stand against their editorial policy on CAM?
Keep up! I stopped buying the Guardian, bought the Independent instead, realised that the Independent, though admirable, is too dull, so I switched back to the Guardian. It has its faults, but there is no better daily newspaper.
Amen to that!
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