The Ire of Power

Among the greater qualities of Frank Herbert's recently re-lauded Dune saga is the question of power, and how it is not a feast of . And apart from the truly disgusting, to most of its non-contemporary viewers, examples the 

Equally true, it must seem now, is the notion that the president of the United States, the informal "leader of the free world", quotation marks to observe the too-obvious contradiction, could not be the firm authority demanded by the office, short of a Palpatinesque performance now wielded against his chances of maintaining that office, and thus - from the far cry of opposition, rather than succumbing in name to a successor - the power flowing from (if not alongside) it, imperium and potestas and auctoritas in all. 

A Sloping Roof

The metaphor of roof, substituted for the more appropriate "ceiling" in a famous clash of minds, usually utilised to herald the limits (or non-limits) for political , saw a swift to the exterior with the humbug excuse offered 

How much, it must now be asked, has this sloping roof cost the Biden campaign, perhaps undeservingly. Notwithstanding, as some have observed, elements in the Democratic party have rallied to legislate away the once and future president's already questioned security detail, 

Day of Liberty - and Death

 

The supposed juxtaposition, or very real in verbal terms, of "liberty" and "democracy", sometimes with "peace" and "co-operation" juxtaposed just as much against a menacing "division" (begging, yet again, the qeustion the frontier between opposition and division lies within this healthy democracy) are seldom taken to the extreme so much, and perhaps so earnestly, as with the flying of lead and passing of steel. I myself wrote, now nearly six years past and near half the lifespan of this publication, of the attempt on the Brazilian "Trump's" life, the lugubrious and since-convicted (following a proud Brazilian tradition, or perhaps - or not - of its judiciary) 

The ANC, trumped

 

The unspoken rule, whilst never acknowledged as an eternal truth, was the ANC would win the next South African election. While that has now been broken, the decisiveness and sudden upset - sudden being questionable for a political season of months, but seen from the cold and relatively peaceful north - has come harder than might have been expected. The reformer, Ramaphosa, so decisive in his rhetoric but pragmatic by his hand, has been bested - if not in raw numbers - by his disgraced predecessor, who has effectively wrestled the KwaZulu out from the reaches of the ANC, and much the Inkatha, in favour of a new political force combining ANC rhetoric and dreams with the verbal radicalism of an ostensibly tamed, and at any rate meek, EFF. 

This has been welcome, in terms of ensuring , for no liberal democracy can endure with a single-party dominance. We know this from Hungary, although the same experts profusely counsel that a return to Republican governance in the United States, say, may mean the end of democracy. 

The Tide of Justitia

 

If it came of pass that a presidential candidate 

This, I would posit, poses no great critique of the seldom cherished American legal system in general. 

As Beriya said (or was it Vyshinsky) that if a man could be found, a crime could be as well, or less beneficially interpreted, invented. Do expect, I say now (as if it were not already a long-dusted notion) for a Democratic candidate to be indicted, whenever a crime could plausibly be found within a friendly red-ish judge, and where an overwhelmingly GOP-esque jury could be expected, the odd . 

Revoluçao dos Cravos

 

A revolution, or revoluçao as spoken in the noble Lusitanian tongue, which has hardly been forgotten but - like the regime which it ended - overlooked in its execution, ,composition, result - and largely, which is hard to disentangle from the legacious and enduring war in Angola, or rather, the Savimbi phase of it, its causes - is that which sprung out like a quickly blossoming spring on the 25th of April, or 25 de Abril, the name of the previously named Ponte Salazar still making a red scar across Lisbon, five days and five decades ago. It was in reality a revolution both long and short in the making, which preceded the more anticipated, and more present - although arguably more violent - one in Spain the following years. 

And it should be called a revolution, not only for the mark of the time and the drastic circumstances which it changed, if perhaps inexorably, with the toppling of the civilian bureaucratic regime by its (as it turned out) new military leadership, the ejection of Caetano and Tomas to its long-lost colony of Brazil, not or only late to return, respectively. 

Ever Agatha

 

The great Agatha Christie, known as Lady Agatha in her closing years as so many of her peers, passed nearly half a century ago, closing a final page on a literary career begun over another half before with Curtain and Sleeping Murder (and a number of less-read short stories), cutting short a career as extensive as her own... two, including the slightly less iconic and extensive one of the ever-Miss Marple (herself never a Lady) and, quite complimentary, immortalised by an almost cancerous stream of adaptations, second only to her peer, colleague (their publishing overlapping, in fact) and countryman Sir Conan Doyle, a name used (perhaps unintentionally, although her style and sense of detail may preclude only a direct intent on her part, if we are to judge the queen of murders by her own standard) in Death on the Nile. 

As Kenneth Branagh . I must confess to not liking this strongly, although I felt a certain glee against my poor expectations (either a good or a bad feeling, depending on your personality) that it felt, above anything, to be complimentary to its nearly insurmountable 1974 predecessor, which even the talented Branagh could impossibly have rushed to shoot himself, much less playing the iconic lead (doing both, to this Lumet-Finney backdrop, is impressive enough). As I rewatched it, with its competing (or, diplomatically, complimenting) movie siblings I found these strengths played stronger, and having re-read the book it is indeed both surreal and quite charming. More beautifully shot, but with some crazy, hence not too impressive CGI imagery, with a cast intending to , . 

Sadly, some (inescapable, but here almost deliberately obvious) anachronisms are glaring from the letter, specifically relating to current-day, or perhaps eternal, questions of ethnicity and gender. The considerations of an exiled white Russian noblewoman for the possible (and then quite noticeable) ascent of an American actress to a directorial position, however personally explicable through the relationship therein exposed, is plain ridiculous, if overshadowed (at least in terms of very contemporary American political discourse) by the assumption that royal Yugoslavian police would, naturally, slate a Hispanic passenger for judicial murder. Really? Not the Italian, Austrian? How about, just for sake of variation and anticlimax, pose the danger of the police covering the thing up? The addition of Johnny Depp, among no less impressive contemporaries (here seemingly pressed by things current, and about to come flailing in his face the following years, but to no damage to his take on the obnoxious American, as if he were - in the words of Fantine - already dead) . On the subject of overacting, the action sequences. Overplay? Sure, though perhaps . On the note of action; if Branagh's Poirot, undeniably more physical and athletic than his illustrious predecessors - and, as the script very clearly puts out, a former policeman at that. -he might as well match the over-dramatic, almost perversely decadent moustache with some physical discipline. As far as , the clear departure from the Finney, and more so Suchet (Agatha's favourite, for my money) adaptions, 

 

One of many incarnations. Ken's Poirot and Daisy as Mary Debenham, previously viewed by millions of fans of the 1974 picture cherished even by Christie herself (a rare gem) and the 2010 installment in the series - bearing her name - by Albert Finney, Vanessa Redgrave, Jessica Chastain and the David Suchet. 

The following adaption, just as audaciously chosen to be Death on the Nile, one of the favourites certainly of the post-Christie era, and just as undeniably a 1970s cinematic classic, and . This I liked a bit more, although if failed, more so upon rewatch, to live up to the illustrious mark. Adding to the 1978 classic, which was decadent and elephantine in its magnitude if nothing else, but with certain narrative perplexities (such as the continuity in the moment of Doyle's solitude, and the subtle cut to his widower status) and ultimately Ustinov's ability to supplant Finney as a credible Poirot, doing so by playing to a different character. The Suchet adaption is, adding to this, magnificent in its own right and, while with a smaller budget (even in dollar figures) and fewer minutes, admittedly also with less famous actors (although Emily Blunt would certainly eclipse Gadot or Lois Chiles eventually). Suchet, although then very established in the role since Ustinov's twilight, added , with even some sadistic impulses unleashed quite coldly on the breaking culprit.