August 13, 2022
August 12, 2022
Captain Z-Ro - Ep. 22 The Great Pyramid of Giza (1956)
"Like early episodes of Doctor Who, which premiered in the UK more than a decade later, most episodes were melodramatic history lessons for children. No serious effort was made to explain how the time machine worked, and time travel conundra (such as the grandfather paradox) were likewise glossed over.
"Each week after the last commercial, the announcer would intone: 'Be sure to be standing by when we again transmit you to the remote location on planet Earth where Captain Z-Ro and his associates will conduct another experiment in time and space.'"
August 10, 2022
Frontline - Comrades: аll that jazz (1986)
"Sergei Kuryokhin is a popular Russian jazz and rock musician who is disapproved of by the state because his music is difficult to control. Made without the permission of Soviet authorities on a home video camera, Frontline takes a look at the Soviet music subculture and this one talented musician."
Stiob (from the Russian stebat’, to lash or lash out)
"In the mid-2000s, Alexei Yurchak focused on stiob’s formal properties. According to him, stiob requires an ‘overidentification with the object, person, or idea, at which this stiob was directed’ — to the point that is ‘often impossible to tell whether it was a form of sincere support, subtle ridicule, or a peculiar mixture of the two’. Crucially, the ‘practitioners of stiob’ would not be drawn on their positions, ‘producing an incredible combination of seriousness and irony’. This unusual kind of mockery can be interpreted as a reasonably safe strategy of poking fun at an authoritarian regime (e.g. the USSR) when such a regime is going into decline and is no longer scary enough to laugh at in secret only — but is still scary enough not to laugh at openly."
August 08, 2022
August 07, 2022
BBC Archive - Peter Howell gives the Doctor Who theme an '80s remix (1982)
August 06, 2022
Marvel Anime: Blade. Season 1 Ep. 1 His Name Is...Blade
Episode aired Jul 1, 2011