Film review: Cover-Up (2025)

This gripping documentary directed by Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus, about the work of legendary reporter Seymour M. Hersh has just been released on Netflix. It is must-see viewing for anyone who wishes to know more about the murder, war crimes, rape, torture, and other abuses committed by the US government and its military, many of which were revealed because of the dogged work of Hersh. I have written about Hersh and his work multiple times before but if you have time to read just one of them, I would recommend my review of his memoir Reporter published in 2018. He is also scathing about the complicity of the mainstream media in enabling so many cover-ups, while patting themselves on the back for being courageous truth-seekers.

What made him distinctive was that he did not suck up to the top people, as so many ‘star’ reporters do in the effort to get what they consider ‘scoops’ but which in actuality made them conduits for government and military propaganda. The New York Times and Washington Post are particularly guilty of this. What Hersh did was to seek out lower level people who had principles and consciences and also had access to important information but were not careerists desperately seeking to climb the ladder by acquiescing to their superiors. He would go to great lengths to protect their identities, often speaking to many people whom he knew knew nothing about the story he was reporting, just so that his source could not be singled out. As a result, word got around that he could be trusted and more people would come to him with information and copies of secret documents.
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Can breaking stuff be cathartic?

I am sure that everyone has seen a variation of this scene in films. Somebody gets really mad about something and then starts throwing stuff, either at another person or at the wall, or sweeping everything off their desks so that they crash to the floor, scattering debris everywhere. Whenever I see that exceedingly common scene,I always wonder to myself, “Do people really behave like that?” I personally have never felt the urge to do anything remotely destructive like that when I feel angry. Apart from the danger posed by broken crockery and glass flying around, there is also the cost of replacing them and cleaning up the mess. Even if it provides some catharsis, the costs are definitely not worth it, for me at least. No one I know has ever done that either, at least to my knowledge. I doubt that we are particularly placid people. It may just be that this kind of scene is an easy way for filmmakers to show rage as well as providing some action to spice up the film.

But one side-effect of showing them is that it might make people think that breaking stuff is a good way to release pent-up feelings of anger. And there are now things called Rage Rooms where, for a fee, people can go and break stuff when they feel angry.
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Weird behavior

I am not a gourmet. I am not a foodie. I have little interest in food other than to sustain life. While I can tell when food tastes awful, I cannot distinguish between good food and really good food the way that connoisseurs can. Hence I do not seek out eating ‘experiences’, going to fancy restaurants to try out their wares. However, I can understand people who do if they can afford to eat at such expensive places.

What I find hard to understand is people willing to risk going to prison for the sake of eating a fancy meal, the way that this 34-year old ‘influencer’ (seems like pretty much everyone is an influencer these days), who has come to be known as the ‘dine and dash diva’, did.
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Politico fails at basic journalism

I came across this news item that said that Democrats have a glimmer of optimism about their chances to win a special congressional election in a deep red district in Tennessee.

I was intrigued since I had had not known about this election and so I looked for the fact that interested me the most and that is the date of election. But the article did not say. The only references to a date was to say that the election is ‘upcoming’, which is not helpful at all since it is obviously not in the past, and that it will be held ‘next month’ which is irritatingly vague.

This is infuriating and I consider this journalistic malpractice. The date should be in the opening paragraph. How hard would it be to just state the damn date, which is surely one of the most significant facts? But unfortunately, this kind of omission happens quite frequently, as I have complained before.

So I looked online and found that the date will be Tuesday, December 2, less than two weeks away.

What is the appeal of horror and gore on screen?

This article looks at why so many people enjoy seeing even horrific violence on screen, most extremely in what are labeled as slasher films, and what types of people are attracted to them.

Some people are more likely to enjoy violent media than others. Being male, aggressive and having less empathy all make you more likely to enjoy watching screen violence. There are also certain personality traits associated liking violent media. Extroverted people, who seek excitement, and people who are more open to aesthetic experiences, like watching violent movies more.

Conversely, people high in agreeableness – characterised by humility and sympathy for others – tend to like violent media less.
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More recent research, derived from studies of horror films, suggests there may be three categories of people who enjoy watching violence, each with their own reasons.

One group has been dubbed “adrenaline junkies”. These sensation seekers want new and intense experiences, and are more likely to get a rush from watching violence. Part of this group may be people who like seeing others suffer. Sadists feel other people’s pain more than normal, and enjoy it.

Another group enjoys watching violence because they feel they learn something from it. In horror studies, such people are called “white knucklers”. Like adrenaline junkies, they feel intense emotions from watching horror. But they dislike these emotions. They tolerate it because they feel it helps them learn something about how to survive.
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A final group seems to get both sets of benefits. They enjoy the sensations generated by watching violence and feel they learn something. In the horror genre, such people have been called “dark copers”.

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An academic takedown of The New York Times

I know that many of the readers of this blog also read PZ’s Pharyngula so this post may be a bit redundant for them but I followed a link he gave in a recent post that was so good that I wanted to give it more publicity. The link was to an essay by Peter Coviello who used to be the chair of Africana Studies at Bowdoin College, an expensive elite liberal arts college in Maine. It was also the department in which Zohran Mamdani majored while in college.

Coviello says that whenever an alumnus of a college becomes famous, and especially if they are controversial, reporters come calling to get some background on that person and this was no exception. Reporters approached him to ask about Mamdani. He warns that little good comes of talking to the reporters because they usually have an ax to grind and they will take what you say and make it fit their agenda, which will often be opposed to what you stand for. But it is hard to resist such an approach. For one thing, academics love to have the opportunity to spread greater awareness of their work and the popular media provides a major platform. There is also the issue of vanity. Being quoted in the media can be seen as a feather in one’s cap, a sign that one has had some impact, and can improve one’s standing among colleagues, provided it is not a takedown of you.
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TV review: Maigret (2025)

Georges Simenon was a prolific author who wrote a large number of novels featuring the French detective Jules Maigret. There have been many dramatic incarnations of this iconic character as this article discusses. About a year ago, I reviewed the 2016 British TV series Maigret starring Rowan Atkinson in the title role.. That series stayed close to the original in terms of period and the way that Maigret, his wife, and his supporting team were portrayed.

Now there is yet another version of the Maigret series, again called simply Maigret, that makes quite dramatic changes, while still keeping him as a chief inspector in Paris. For one thing it takes place in the present time so this Maigret has all the modern technology at his disposal. Maigret himself and his wife have been transformed from a sedate couple in their mid-fifties where the wife is a homemaker, to a hot young couple where his wife now works as a medical professional. Maigret’s team, all white men in the original, while retaining their old names, has also become younger and gender and ethnically diverse, with the addition of an insubordinate and insolent inspector who is jealous of Maigret and thus provides some internal tension within the team. The actor who plays Maigret, Benjamin Wainwright, has a disconcerting physical similarity to the actor who plays the annoying goofball Jonah Ryan in the comedy series Veep which I found a bit disconcerting at first, but that feeling soon passed.
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The oddities of the English language

I like puns and other plays on words. This is why I like doing cryptic crosswords, which depend more upon linguistic puzzles than the recall of facts, far more that the standard type. For that reason, they are harder to construct. Cryptic ones are more popular in the UK and other non-US English speaking countries, where newspapers often offer them on a daily basis. In the US The New Yorker magazine at one point offered a good cryptic crossword puzzle every Sunday but stopped doing so a few months ago, I presume because not enough people were doing it.

Because of my liking for word play, I often find humor in interpreting things differently from what the writer or speaker intended. And for someone like me, English idioms can be endlessly fascinating.
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Film review: Bad Shabbos (2025)

In these days of relentlessly depressing news, a good comedy comes as a welcome relief and this is such a film.

It is about an observant Jewish family in New York who host a Sabbath dinner to meet the Midwestern Catholic parents of their son’s fiancée, when something happens that leads to the evening going completely awry.

The humor depends on some extent on the practices of observant Jews on the Sabbath, especially the many restrictions on what you can do, but I thought that it was not offensive. But then, I am not Jewish and hence not the best judge.

Here’s the trailer.

Meet Tilly Norwood, who may be the next big star

She is introduced in this clip.

As you would have read in the first frame, she and everyone else in that clip are entirely the creation of AI.

Meet Tilly Norwood, an up-and-coming on-screen talent who might just be the next big thing.

Norwood, as can be seen in the exclusive clip above, appears to be a talking, waving, bona fide person – she can even cry.

Except she’s not a real-life person: she doesn’t exist off a screen (yet), having instead been birthed via the increasingly sophisticated capabilities of AI software.

But then again, so has the entire sketch above, including all the other actors you see.

Norwood and the sketch are both the work of Particle 6, the UK production company created and led by Eline van de Velden, a former actor-turned-producer who also happens to have a Master’s degree in physics from London’s Imperial College.

“We want Tilly to be the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman, that’s the aim of what we’re doing,” van der Velden tells Broadcast International.
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The sketch is also acting as the first on-screen appearance for Norwood, and discussions are now in the works to see if talent agencies want to sign up the AI creation.

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