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Binoy Kampmark
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.
Binoy Kampmark - Latest News [Page 139]
Sacred Memories: Almodovar's Broken Embraces
Monday, 11 January 2010, 9:51 am | Binoy Kampmark
Pedro Almodóvar is a treasure of the screen, supremely sensitive to surfaces, characters, and the workings of the cinema itself. His devotion to the craft is unmistakable, demonstrated by constant hints, persistent allusions to past greats, and the mechanics ... More >>
“We’re Clueless”: Tricking American Intelligence
Friday, 8 January 2010, 11:01 am | Binoy Kampmark
He was seen as the Central Intelligence Agency’s best hope in years. But Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a Jordanian doctor inadequately vetted and cultivated by Jordanian intelligence, was no such thing. More >>
Omens of Doom: Dubai’s Burj Khalifa Tower
Thursday, 7 January 2010, 3:05 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It is a colossus, towering over the Dubai skyline. The company behind it claims to have made a successful return of 10 percent. The local paper, the Khaleej Times, did not shy away from hyperbole, seeing the building as ‘an example of human courage ... More >>
Airport security and The Terrorist Genie
Wednesday, 30 December 2009, 11:16 am | Binoy Kampmark
The authorities in Britain and the United States are scrambling. They hope to find answers as to how the 23-year-old engineering student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab managed to elude and almost detonate himself on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam ... More >>
Revising Sherlock: Guy Ritchie and the Detective
Tuesday, 29 December 2009, 10:16 am | Binoy Kampmark
Guy Ritchie’s reputation has suffered a bit over time. His latest effort at bringing a markedly revised version of Sherlock Holmes to the screen just might save him, though the critics might disagree. In his latest effort, we have something akin to ... More >>
Film review: Single Man
Sunday, 27 December 2009, 1:58 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Christopher Isherwood is perhaps most known for his The Berlin Stories , featuring Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1939). He took his cultured sharp eye to that most extraordinary of capitals and wrote himself into the annals ... More >>
The Conservative Dissident: Hosein-Ali Montazeri
Monday, 21 December 2009, 3:03 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Grand Ayatollah Hosein-Ali Montazeri has passed into the history of the Iranian Revolution as he was, potentially at least, about to create another. Thirty years ago, he was a vital figure in unseating the Shah, and well placed within the circle of the Ayatollah ... More >>
The ‘inevitable’ War: Blair and Iraq
Thursday, 17 December 2009, 10:21 am | Binoy Kampmark
Even after he has left office, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s remarks on the Iraq War are a source of concern. Surely there can be little surprise about his latest opinions on the subject. More >>
Invictus: Dreams and Realities
Wednesday, 16 December 2009, 10:49 am | Binoy Kampmark
When the Springboks, South Africa’s famed rugby team, returned to the international fold after decades of isolation, suggestions were made to change the name. Drop the label and jersey, went the cry, those hated symbols and reminders of apartheid. More >>
Scripting Climate History: The Copenhagen Talks
Tuesday, 15 December 2009, 12:09 pm | Binoy Kampmark
At the opening of the Climate Change conference in Copenhagen, assembled delegates were told to write the ‘right’ kind of history. Short films portraying gloomy scenarios were shown as an incentive, one featuring a girl’s plea. More >>
A Crusade or Nothing: Brown and the Banks
Monday, 14 December 2009, 10:46 am | Binoy Kampmark
It is seen as punitive, a populist reaction. There is little doubt that some people in the City end of London will think so. But Gordon Brown’s government is intent on winning votes by ‘supertaxing’ banks, exercising a veto over the payment of ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: Just Wars and Obama’s Nobel
Friday, 11 December 2009, 4:13 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The greatest example of how peace prizes can sometimes morph into war accolades was given by President Barack Obama in his Nobel Peace Prize address. Far from being a message about peace, ‘A Just and Lasting Peace’ was a discourse on just war, ... More >>
The Conviction of ‘Foxy Knoxy’
Wednesday, 9 December 2009, 12:49 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It has been a sordid tale, enrapturing audiences in Italy and globally. The murder of 21-year-old British student Meredith Kercher, who was found with her throat slit in her Perugia apartment in November 2007 after being sexually assaulted, continues ... More >>
Film Review: None too Precious
Tuesday, 8 December 2009, 12:25 pm | Binoy Kampmark
What is one to make of this extraordinarily gritty, brutal film by Lee Daniels? An obese 16-year-old girl from Harlem is cooking for her abusive, welfare-addicted mother in a room that rarely sees the light of day. The mother hurls an object at ... More >>
Transgressing with Tiger: The Fall of Mr. Perfect
Monday, 7 December 2009, 11:03 am | Binoy Kampmark
It has been called the spoiling of a good walk and similar to watching flies fornicate, but golf has decided to provide a touch of entertainment for the rest of us. And it should come as little surprise that it has nothing to do with golf itself. But ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: The charge of the 30,000
Friday, 4 December 2009, 2:28 pm | Binoy Kampmark
President Obama’s decision to deploy a further 30,000 soldiers to Afghanistan looks like, on the surface, a chance to people more cemeteries. Politically, it has the effect of reaching out across the spectrum of political attitudes, hoping to, as ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: Banning Minarets in Switzerland
Friday, 4 December 2009, 1:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Swiss are in a spot of bother, at least before the disapproving eyes of international opinion. 57 percent of those from a country described by Jonathan Raban as full of phobic hand washers in a Barclays Bank have voted in favour of banning minarets. ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: When men do stare at goats
Tuesday, 1 December 2009, 4:39 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There is a line at the start of Grant Heslov’s The Men Who Stare at Goats : ‘More of this is true than you would believe.’ The line is off putting – what is, or isn’t true? The audience is none the wiser, and the traces to the original book ... More >>
Coco Chanel: The Fashion of Androgyny
Thursday, 26 November 2009, 3:56 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The scene is an orphanage in late nineteenth century France, a place where children’s dreams are stifled and crushed. Even here, the eyes of a perceptive child gaze with wonder at the funereal habits of nuns. More >>
Contradictory Friends: Rudd and Copenhagen
Wednesday, 25 November 2009, 12:16 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Cynicism, observed H.G. Wells, is humour in ill-health. There is much of that variety of humour present as the Copenhagen talks on climate change approach. Instead of building bridges to the conference, existing ones are being removed or modified. ... More >>
