This month’s issue of Lampa (Lamp) has a few features on Stanisław Lem, who passed away recently. Radek Knapp writes in one of them “One day I told the Master that I had written a story, to which Lem replied: ‘don’t write. You’ll starve to death’.” It’s a tough old profession alright but not for […]
April 14th – Gazeta Wyborcza drops its cover price to 1.50. April 15th – Gazeta Wyborcza publishes an article by Adam Krzemi?ski of Polityka about Das Bild (publisher Axel Springer Verlag) entitled “Tabloid with Blood on its Hands”. April 18th – A new newspaper, Dziennik, appears in Polish shops. Price: 1.50. Publisher: Axel Springer Verlag.
You have to hand it to Gazeta Wyborcza ‘s pictures editor. Wojciech Olku?nik’s photographs in today’s paper of Andrzej Lepper as he slides his way into the job of deputy prime minister do much more to convey the newspaper’s disgust than the tedious and tendentious comment articles accompanying the news that Lepper’s Samoobrona party has […]
Being stuck in a bus behind a button import company van last weekend proved a by-no-means-rare-enough opportunity to subject myself to the horror that is commercial Polish radio. (“I don’t mind the formatting,” a friend of mine once said, “but must they all have the same format?”) All Polish women in advertising went to the […]
I am proud and happy to report that I fell for all five April Fool’s jokes in the last Nie bar one. That Jarosław Kaczynski paid a state visit to the US instead of his (identical twin) brother and president of Poland, Lech? Sure, why not? That Minister Wasserman wanted to drain a lake in […]
Capote is not exactly the preposterous but coherent blockbuster full of wisecracks that I was looking for after the arthouse film festival but it was still a welcome change. Long pauses there were, but motivated. And yes, Capote does tell stories about his childhood but it’s because he’s speaking to someone else about childhood. The […]
After a two-week season of foreign, art house films I’m looking forward to watching a few dumb American blockbusters. There were some good films at the festival but arty films have their cliches too. The long, long… long… silences… The monologic dialogues… The violence. The love of the grotesque. The silent mental collapse of strait-laced […]
In the previous post I mentioned the punishment by the National Commission for Being a Good Little Boy of a TV station for allowing a guest (Kazimiera Szczuka) on a show to mock the voice of a physically handicapped woman. In an admirable display of solidarity, Gazeta Wyborcza printed a trancript of the relevant part […]
Some random absurdities, all from just one issue of Gazeta Wyborcza. The Belarussian KGB has branded the Lukaszenko opposition terrorists. The newspaper is up in arms. Only GW Bush (if you’re not with us you’re against us) is allowed brand the opposition “terrorist”. Marek Zuber, adviser to Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, has admitted in […]
…as in “extraordinary outburst”. Today’s Fakt, a Polish tabloid, carries one on the front page from ?ukasz Warzecha. “I am convulsed with anger!” it begins (exclamation marks, in fairness, are commoner in Polish than in English). He is angry that Poland does not kill certain criminals and angry at the “know-alls” who sympathise with the […]
