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    Difference and Repetition

    There is only one ghost scene in ‘Phantom Thread’, Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, which is a little surprising, given the title. (The spoilers start right here, I’m afraid.) The hero, played by Daniel Day Lewis, glimpses his long-dead mother as he lies in a fever induced by a poisonous mushroom secretly administered by his […]

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    Keeping up with the changing times

    Those journalists of my vintage who have seen ‘The Post’ on the big screen were struck by memories of the ‘good old days’ of journalism and for once the term ‘good old days’ actually rings true. There were great performances from Meryl Streep as Katharine Graham the paper’s owner and publisher, Tom Hanks as the […]

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    Irish is beyond weaponisation

    Some years ago, I read about an anonymous former participant of the blanket protest who recalled a visit from an RTÉ Irish language reporter. He remarked upon her “terrible elitist attitude toward the language” and, in particular, her claim that the brand of Irish which developed in the H-Blocks made her shudder. He quickly retorted, “When […]

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    Required Viewing

    The last day of November this year marked the seventieth anniversary of the death of Ernst Lubitsch, whose greatest works, such as ‘Ninotchka’, ‘To Be or Not to Be’, ‘The Shop Around the Corner’ and ‘Heaven Can Wait’, are now widely unknown. Lubitsch himself, who started his career in silent movies in his native Germany […]

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    Old Lady weds De Paper

    A s early as last February, the Irish Times reported that Landmark was in talks with Independent News & Media (INM) over a possible takeover, as the company struggled to service its €21m debt. At the time, INM was undergoing a competition review of its plans to purchase Celtic Media. The Competition and Consumer Protection […]

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    Don’t Feed The Bots

    One in four Twitter followers of Philip Boucher Hayes is a fake account, the RTÉ broadcaster announced on his Twitter feed recently. Around the end of August, Boucher Hayes had noticed an uptick in new followers on Twitter, which he had monitored since. “Previously 100/150 people would follow me every week”, Boucher Hayes posted on […]

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