Captain Phillips and the Subhuman Pirates

I got some free tickets this week to see Captain Phillips at the cinema. “The true story of Captain Richard Phillips and the 2009 hijacking by Somali pirates of the US-flagged MV Maersk Alabama, the first American cargo ship to be hijacked in two hundred years”, is how it is sold. Tom Hanks plays the captain of the title, and we are promised, “simultaneously a pulse-pounding thriller, and a complex portrait of the myriad effects of globalization”[1]. What we get is a boring film full of American end-of-empire angst with a not very subtle portrait of Somalis as entirely subhuman.

Tyrannosaur

Went to see Tyrannosaur last night. A while since I’ve seen a film with such build-up that hasn’t been generated by the marketing. At least I think it hasn’t -although it would be a clever way of promoting it. Lots of talk about Paddy Considine‘s debut work as a director being depressing or gruesome or unwatchable etc. The Observer today called it ‘Poverty Porn’ – although perhaps the sub-editors just used that headline to generate more comment on their website and get bloggers and tweeters like me talking about it.