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mickoc
Reviews
One Day in September (1999)
thankfully not everybody in the media is blindly left-wing
It hardly comes as a surprise to find that many a rabid left wingers nose will be firmly knocked out of joint with a film such as 'one day in September'. No rose tinted spectacles here. This is not an Al jazeera offering. They are forced to view the murderous nihilistic reality of their beloved freedom fighters. So faced with cold hard facts which cannot be readily explained away they try another defense, namely accuse the film of being one sided and not show the situation of the Palestinians.
One question: Is it a documentary about Palestine or about Munich in 1972? To be fair there is quiet a bit early on to put the situation in some sort of perspective and the surviving terrorist and his opinions are given plenty of air time.
You don't hear much crying from the same quarters decrying one sidedness or bias when Michael Moore makes one of his ridiculous, so called, documentaries. I think most people are familiar with the Palestinian situation, but i, for one, had not heard anything about the madness that happened in Munich in 1972. When Kevin McDonald set out to make a documentary on what happened there then its hardly surprising that we see a film dealing with the events on that terrible day. If he set out to make a documentary on Palestine and how it was taken off the Arabs by the Jew's then he would have set to that task and not dwelt too much on how the Jew's had been banished from there two thousand years ago after moses had been promised this and that.
As with the BBC journalist crying when Arafat was lifted out of his compound for the last time or those who would attempt a defense of the Palestinian murder spree in Munich there seems to be a different reality or level of understanding needed when it comes to issues about Palestine or its people so its hardly surprising that a documentary like this would raise hackles.
This is an excellent film.
Eat the Peach (1986)
a solid little film
The 'Eat the peach' of the title comes from a poem by T.S. Eliot: 'The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock' and is about doing whatever you want to do and not worrying about what other people think.
There have been worse Irish films inflicted on the world. Especially those dealing with historical figures and events yet unconcerned with accuracy. INTNOTF and (no names) the one which insulted peoples intelligence by, among other anomalies, having booby trapped cars go off in the middle of Dublin castle in 1919 ???????? Hardly visionary.
Eat the peach, on the other hand, is a solid little film. A work of pure imagination. Set in the early eighties it captured the reality of life for a lot of people with a lot of time on their hands and little money in their pockets, a full ten years before the tiger struck, when there were few prospects other than to go abroad. So here you have a film about a guy that wants to do something different and stand out from the crowd.
Both times I saw it I was abroad and as it was filmed in the area I am from (having watched some of it being filmed when I was a kid) there could be an element of bias borne of sentimentality to this review. though, my partner, an Aussie of eclectic taste, also thinks its a good film. And its hard to please her.
Filmed in the same year as another excellent Irish film, 'Lamb', it may not have a big budget but it has a lot of heart and a lot of honesty. The soundtrack is excellent. Hopefully they release it on DVD at some point soon.
It may look a bit bleak but it was filmed during the wettest summer I can remember, 1985. I love the opening scene of the boys tearing about on the bikes across the bog past the peat machines with the uileann pipes on the soundtrack. It may not be the 'Torres del Paine' or 'the Flinders ranges' but it is home.