The Swallows of Kabul is deeply affecting and graphically brings home the misogynistic barbarity of Taliban rule, writes Barry Healy.
Barry Healy
Barry Healy suggests grabbing a glass of nice red wine, settle down and laugh watching Edmond until you hyperventilate.
Cloudstreet is one heck of a theatrical experience, one that was greeted with repeated standing ovations at its Perth opening night, writes Barry Healy.
At the height of the US invasion of Vietnam, about 500,000 United States military personnel were involved in the conflict. Of those, more than 50,000 lost their lives — and the US lost the war.
Two new books illustrate the enormous breadth, depth and courage of the soldier (GI) movement against the war.
Waging Peace in Vietnam is an ideological hand grenade thrown at the war mongers. Winter Warrior, for its part, uses a graphic, comic-book style to show the terrible personal cost inflicted on at least one anti-war Vet.
Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society: The Life of Karl Marx and the Development of His Work
Volume 1: 1818-1841
By Michael Heinrich
Monthly Review Press, 2019
390 pp., $46.00
In the opening lines of this book Michael Heinrich quotes from an 1868 letter in which Karl Marx mentions a publisher’s request for a biography. “Not only did I not send one”, said Marx, “I did not even reply to the letter.”
Maryanne & Leonard, Words of Love
Documentary film directed by Nick Broomfield
In cinemas
As I emerged from the media preview for this film, I heard another viewer mutter that it was “the most self-indulgent film I’ve ever seen”.
So, beware! This documentary about Leonard Cohen’s personal and artistic life will cut the sheep from the goats of fans and detractors – much like his music and atonal singing have always done.
How to Read Donald Duck
By Ariel Dorfman & Armand Mattelart, translated by David Kunzle
Pluto Press, 2019
192 pp, $17.00
Today, as the streets of Chile burn with rebellion, it is timely to look back on this book, which was burned by the military during the 1973 overthrow of the socialist Salvador Allende presidency.
Mrs Lowry & Son
Directed by Adrian Noble
Starring Vanessa Redgrave & Timothy Spall
In cinemas as part of the MINI British Film Festival
This film adaptation of the stage play by Martyn Hesford shows the early life of one of the titans of modern British art, L. S. Lowry, famous for his paintings of “matchstick people” going about their lives in working class northern England.
His simplistic style evokes beauty in what was considered squalid and lower class.
Finding Evald Ilyenkov: How a Soviet philosopher who stood up for dialectics continues to inspire
By Corinna Lotz
Lupus Books, 2019
57 pp., $8
Order online
The Report is based on the real-life work of US Senate staffer Daniel Jones, who led the investigation into the Central Intelligence Agency’s international torture program that followed the 2001 World Trade Centre attacks.
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