Monthly Archives: August 2022

As the title of one book famously proclaimed, everybody poops. That truism really is remarkable to think about. There is one experience shared by every person on Earth, and most people would rather dismiss or ignore it. That is unfair. A few trips to the bathroom were literal pit stops in history. The following list is ten of the most consequential things to ever happen on the toilet. It does not take much to redirect the flow of history. Sometimes, all it needs is a flush

Related: Top 10 Curious Facts Involving Ancient Poop

Even more than most presidents, Lyndon B. Johnson has a fairly mixed legacy. He is responsible for both groundbreaking domestic achievements like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Acts of 1965 and foreign fiascos like escalating the Vietnam War. Whether Johnson reshaped American society for better or worse is up to debate, but he almost did not do anything at all.

On June 9, 1942, Johnson was a just young sailor in the Naval reserve deployed on a bombing mission. He was initially assigned to fly on the B26 Marauder, the Wabash Cannonball. Moments before takeoff, Johnson departed the plane to visit the toilet. When he came back, Lieutenant Colonel Francis R. Stevens had taken his seat instead. Johnson was forced to board the next aircraft in line, another B26, the Heckling Hare.

It was a lucky break. The Heckling Hare saw limited combat and, shortly after, abandoned its mission. The Wabash Cannonball was not as lucky. It was shot down by Japanese forces, killing everyone on board. Johnsons full bladder saved his life.[1]

In 1968, Douglas Engelbart foresaw a new world. One of the first visionaries of the digital future, Engelbart imagined much of what would become the basics of modern computing, everything from graphic apps and video conferencing to word processing and linking files. However, he had help envisioning these new realitiesLSD.

Like many fellow Californians of the time, Engelbart was an enthusiastic advocate for the mind-expanding benefits of LSD. As the head of the Augmented Human Intellect Research Center at the Stanford Research Institute, he and his team took acid for inspiration. Engelbart was initially doubtful that any contraption he conceived while on the drug would have any use once he was no longer under the influence.

He was finally convinced of the drugs possibilities when he came up with the tinkle toy, a miniature water wheel installed to the side of a toilet that would spin when peed on. It could be a fun and practical tool to help potty train young children. Now assured of LSDs potential, he regularly took the drug while working. In those sessions, he conceived much of what would become the computer, even if he did not actually invent it. He did make one tangible breakthrough, though, a small strange rounded controller on the end of a wire that could move items on the screen. He called it a mouse.[2]

Millions of lives have been shaped by pure luck. In 1899, Dr. Oskar Minkowski accidentally bumped into his colleague, Josef von Mering, in the university library. The conversation naturally turned to that classic icebreaker, pancreases. The two got into a friendly debate about if someone could theoretically survive with their pancreas removed. To find out, the two staged a little bet. Later that afternoon, Minkowski removed his dogs pancreas. The dog was perfectly healthy. Minkowski had won the bet and beat his friend. The experiment was over. That was until he noticed one curious side effect.

While cleaning the dogs kennel, Minkowski noticed an inordinate number of flies flocking to his dogs pee. While most people would have just dismissed that observation as flies being gross, Minkowski started investigating. He discovered that the urine was now full of sugar, a clear sign that the dog was diabetic. Because the dog had no signs of diabetes before its pancreas was removed, Minkowski hypothesized that the organ must have some role in metabolizing sugar.

It took a while, but other scientists eventually figured out how the pancreas secretes insulin. Because of Minkowskis medical breakthrough, diabetes went from a death sentence to a treatable disease. Some victories really are that sweet.[3]

The goal of all 17th-century alchemists was to discover the philosophers stone, an impossibly elusive elixir capable of turning base metals into gold and granting immortality. With powers like that, it is pretty understandable how someone would take extreme measures to find it. Even then, Henning Brand probably took things a bit too far.

Starting in 1669, Brand collected more than 1,500 gallons of urine from his neighbors and friends. He baked and boiled the urine until the residue was all that was left. The experiment followed a certain kind of perverse logic. Water, he presupposed, is the basis of life; therefore, the cure for a longer life would be found in water. If that water passed through a person, it would have even more of a mystical connection to life. Put that all together, and it is not that absurd to think the philosophers stone might be lying among kidney stones.

While he never found gold in his golden treasure, he did find something arguably more valuable. The final distilled product was a white powder that glowed in the dark. Named for the Latin for light-bearer, Brand dubbed his discovery phosphorus. Phosphorus is, of course, a bedrock of modern life. Industries from fertilizer to steel production rely on phosphorus to exist. So next time you go to the restroom, feel free to light a match, something only possible because Henning Brand did the same thing all those years before.[4]

By 1937, the tension between Japan and China had reached a breaking point. A series of escalating military maneuvers over the past decade pushed the two nations to the brink of conflict. Every time before, cooler heads prevailed, and soldiers retreated before things spiraled into all-out war. That was until the Marco Polo Bridge incident.

On July 7, 1937, Japanese troops gathered around the city of Wanping in a clear antagonistic display. During the exercise, a private of the Japanese Imperial Army, Shimura Kikujiro, broke ranks to relieve himself. Because there were no appropriate facilities nearby, he ducked into the woods. Once finished, he tried to rejoin his unit, but they had already left. Lost in the darkness, it took him a while to find his way back to base. He did not know it, but his bowel had started a movement.

In the meantime, Kikujiros absence caused the army to panic. Japanese officers dispatched troops to Wanping to find their missing soldier. When the Chinese refused to let the Japanese enter Wanping, a small Japanese infantry tried to breach the citys walls. They were successfully repelled. Forty-five minutes later, a larger group tried to siege again and fired the first shots of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

The Japanese had the excuse they had been looking for. The minor skirmish became the pretext for a full-scale invasion of China. The resulting conflict was the largest Asian war of the twentieth century. By the time of Japans surrender in September 1945, the war had claimed the lives of more than 33 million soldiers and civilians.[5]

King George II was not a particularly popular ruler, but he got things done. His reign from 1727 to 1760 was marked by firm leadership in foreign policy and military appointments. On domestic issues, he acquiesced most power to Parliament. He was too busy gorging himself in his castle. As far as last meals go, its hard to beat hot chocolate.

On October 25, 1760, the King finished a nice cup of hot chocolate and retired to his chambers. Moments later, his body was discovered slumped over the toilet. He had so strained himself that he caused an aortic aneurysm. While the doctor on the scene could not save the king, he did help save many others. The doctors extensive notes on the Kings condition contained the first known description of an aortic dissection. With those findings, other doctors had the knowledge to diagnose a secret killer before it was too late. Today, thousands are saved from something that is silent but no longer deadly.

His death had another unintended consequence. Logically, King George II was succeeded by King George III, an infamous reign marked by moments of erratic behavior and insanity. To treat his condition, doctors tortured the king with a series of painful and unnecessary experiments. Burdened by personal problems, George III delegated much of his responsibilities to Parliament.

Without guidance from the King, Parliament enacted strict taxes on their colonies in North America. Perhaps a more present and invested leader would have asserted more control over Parliament or taken the leadership to quell the insurrection forces in the American colonies before it escalated into a war. It is impossible to know how George II would have handled the crisis, but the distracted King George III failed to respond as the gears of revolution were set in motion.[6]

During World War I, the brilliant mathematician and physicist William Lawrence Bragg was stationed in France. He thought he could better serve the war effort with his intelligence rather than fighting. As great as his brain was, his most important inspiration came from a different place.

In 1915, Bragg visited an outhouse in a field. The room was completely closed off from the outside world, except for a pipe that ran under the toilet. While Bragg was using the toilet, a British six-inch gun 1,000 feet (304 meters) away fired a round. The energy traveled through the air until it shot up the pipe. A puff of energy lifted Braggs bare bottom off the seat. Surprised that something was coming up from the drain instead, Bragg tried to track down the source of the energy.

He soon realized that the pressure was caused by the guns low-frequency infrasound. If these unique frequencies could be traced back to their source, Bragg could locate any enemy artillery. He created a small empty wooden ammunition box with a thin platinum wire that could detect infrasound. With this device, the Allies could pinpoint enemy weapons within 150 feet (45 meters). The new technology was a crucial development that helped turn the tide of the war, securing victory four years later.[7]

On February 12, 1946, 26-year-old African American veteran Sergeant Isaac Woodard returned to the U.S. from fighting abroad in World War II. He boarded a Greyhound bus toward his home in Winnsboro, South Carolina. Along the route, he asked the bus driver if he could pull into a rest stop. Furious over having to make the stop, the bus driver called the police on Woodward. The police forcibly removed Woodard from the bus. In custody, they beat him unconscious and gouged out his eyes. Denied medical care for three days, Woodard was left permanently blind.

Such brazen police brutality was a political awakening for President Harry S. Truman. Spurred by Woodards blinding, Truman created a presidential commission on civil rights. Per its recommendation, he issued Executive Order 9981, the order that formally desegregated the U.S. military in 1948.

Another federal official was similarly moved by the injustice against Woodard. Judge Julius Waring, the judge presiding over the case against the police officers, was outraged when they were acquitted of all charges. He dedicated the rest of his life as a fierce advocate for civil rights. His judicial decisions played a key role in dismantling school segregation. His dissent in Briggs v. Elliott was the first federal case to argue that segregation violated the fourteenth amendment.

When the NAACPs defense lawyerand future U.S. Supreme Court JusticeThurgood Marshall lost the case, Waring was the one who encouraged him to appeal the decision. That appeal ultimately culminated in the landmark Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education. Segregation was officially unconstitutional.[8]

In 1946, 13-year-old Charlie Wilson could not get control of his dog. The little mutt kept straying into his neighbors flower bed. Eventually, the neighbor had enough. Because the dog could not stop peeing, he would have to stop breathing. The neighbor buried some shards of glass into the dogs food bowl. Wilson vowed to avenge his dogs death. His first method of payback, burning down the flowers, would only sting for a little bit. So he had to stick it to him where it would really hurt.

The neighbor was a Texas councilman named Charles Hazard, who was up for reelection. Wilson organized a campaign to oust the dog-murderer. He went door-to-door, telling people about what happened to his dog and asking them to vote against Hazard. In total, he swayed 95 voters or nearly 25% of the total electorate. As a result, Hazard lost his reelection bid by a mere 16 votes. Gloating at Hazards loss, Wilson went to his house and told him he shouldnt poison any more dogs.

That personal victory inspired Wilson to spend his life in politics. He eventually climbed all the way up to become a Congressional Representative. In that role, he spearheaded Americas covert operations in the Soviet-Afghan War. He funneled funds and training for the Afghan Mujahedeen. While the Afghanistan forces helped America score a decisive victory in the short run, the sect soon broke off into splinter groups, including the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, that victory soured. A new age of terrorism had begun.[9]

Unlike all the other entries on the list, this last one is not about any particular trip to the toilet. Instead, this one focuses on an uncoordinated series of millions of participants stretched over eons. The only thing that connects them is that they really needed to go. Although to be fair, there wasnt much else going on.

Most of the Earths history is nothing. For three billion years, simple primordial organisms littered the planet. They ate, pooped, and made more cells. That was it. Then, suddenly, there was life. During the Cambrian explosion, clumps of single-celled bacteria rapidly evolved into complex life with nervous systems, internal organs, and backbones. It is arguably the most important event to ever happen. Yet, no one can explain it.

The rapid divergence has baffled generations of scientists. There is no settled answer, but one theory proposed by Australian geoscientist Graham Logan has gained some acceptance. According to him, the incredible beauty of life exists from its most disgusting elements.

Before the Cambrian explosion, the oceans were full of carbon but void of oxygen. Any oxygen-photosynthesizing plankton produced was quickly offset by the slower sinking carbon. The chain was finally broken with the rise of multicellular organisms. When multicellular organisms ate the bacteria, they processed the waste into carbon-rich feces. As the carbon fell to the ocean floor, the oxygen levels rose. Oxygen threw the ecological gates open. Animals finally had a chance to grow and take form. So if you ever feel like your life is pretty crappy, take solace in knowing it has always been that way.[10]

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10 Bathroom Breaks That Changed History - Listverse

The Uncanny Counter

The drama is set in the fictional city of Jungjin, where a group of four demon-hunters called the Counters bear the arduous task of searching for and banishing evil spirits (akgwi) that escape from the afterlife to gain immortality. These evil spirits possess local human hosts who have committed murder or have a strong desire to murder, encourage their host's desire to kill, and consumes the spirit of the victim. The Counters were once under coma when a partner spirit from Yung, the boundary between the afterlife and the world of the living, possessed them and gave them perfectly healthy bodies and consciousness along with superhuman strength and supernatural abilities. Four of the CountersGa Mo Tak (Yoo Jun ang), Do Ha Na (Kim Sejeong), Choo Mae Ok (Yeom Hye Ran) and So Mun (Jo Byung Gyu) pose as workers in Eonni's Noodles, a noodle restaurant which serves as their hideout.

Healer

Ji Chang Wook, Park Min Young and Yoo Ji Tae starrer drama follows a decades-old incident involving a group of five friends who ran an illegal pro-democracy broadcasting station during the Fifth Republic in South Korea brings together three different peoplean illegal night courier with the codename Healer (Ji Chang Wook) who possesses top-notch fighting skills, a reporter from a second-rate tabloid news website (Park Min Young), and a famous journalist at a major broadcast station (Yoo Ji Tae).

My Name

Following her father's murder, a revenge-driven woman puts her trust in a powerful crime boss and enters the police force under his direction. The drama deals with various aspects of revenge and how it can destroy a person when it becomes the sole thing that keeps them going. Yoon Ji Woo (Han So Hee) becomes a different person after she sees her father die in her arms and the actor did an amazing job at making the audience invest in Yoon Ji Woo.

Descendants of the Sun

Shi Jin (Song Joong Ki) is the captain of the special forces. He catches a motorcycle thief with Sergeant Major Dae Young (Jin Goo). The thief is injured during his capture and is sent to the hospital. Dae Young realizes his cellphone was stolen by the thief and goes to the hospital to retrieve his cellphone. In the emergency room, Shi Jin meets Dr. Mo Yeon (Song Hye Kyo) for the first time. He falls in love with her immediately. Mo Yeon mistakenly assumes Shi-Jin is part of a thief's criminal gang. He proves to her that he is a soldier with the help of army doctor Myeong Joo (Kim Ji Won). Shi Jin and Mo Yeon begin to date, but due to their jobs their dates don't go well. Due to an incident, she was assigned to lead a medical team in Uruk. There, Shi Jin and Mo Yeon meet again.

K2

Kim Je Ha (Ji Chang Wook) is a former mercenary soldier for the PMC Blackstone. While in Iraq, he gets framed for the murder of his lover Raniya, a civilian. As a result, he runs away and becomes a fugitive. He returns to South Korea and by chance is offered work as a bodyguard by Choi Yoo Jin, the owner of JSS Security Company and wife of presidential candidate Jang Se Joon. He accepts the job in exchange for resources that he needs to get his revenge on another presidential candidate, Park Kwang Soo, who previously ordered Raniya's killing. Je Ha is assigned to guard Go Anna (YoonA), the hidden daughter of Jang Se Joon whose life is always threatened because of Yoo Jin, her stepmother. Anna, who has been a recluse and lonely all her life, starts relying on Je Ha, who shows concern for her and protects her at all costs. They slowly fall in love, causing Je Ha to be torn between having to work with his boss, Yoo Jin, to enable him to take revenge on Park Kwan Soo and protecting his newfound love, Anna, against the wishes of Yoo Jin.

D.P.

Set in 2014, D.P. tells the story of a team of Korean military police with their mission to catch deserters. The series magnifies the undesirable nature of the military, especially within a South Korean context. The widespread bullying and hazing as well as the mindset for the survival of the fittest are rife, with those presumed the weakest thrown to the bottom of the pile and served horrifying experiences at the hands of their superiors and compatriots. Private Ahn Joon Ho and Corporal Han Ho Yul both team up to find the deserters, and end up in an adventurous journey.

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Which drama have you added to the list? Let us know in the comments below.

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Katalogue: 6 blockbuster action K-Dramas to add to your list feat. The Uncanny Counter, Healer and more - PINKVILLA

By Nehru Odeh

The child is father of the man; and I could wish my days to be bound each to each by natural piety William Wordsworth

The greatness of a literary work lies in the writers ability to make his individual experience a collective one; in his ability to make the reader relate not only to his work but also be engaged by it and be immersed in that aesthetic experience. And this is what Ogaga Ifowodo, poet, lawyer and activist, has succeeded in doing with his latest collection, Augustas Poodle. Ifowodo has not only made us part of his childhood experience but he has also made us own it.

Own it? Sure. Though the poet once said in an interview that Augustaspoodle is a recollection of childhood, a journey into the past to thread into a narrative spool those memories that have managed to survive the fog of forgetfulness, to re-experience the sense of awe, wonder and elation which the child discovers and enacts his being in the world, it is more than that. It is more than just a mere recollection of childhood in the sense that it is not just his childhood but ours as well. It is not just his childhood but that of his people, the people of the Niger Delta.

Singing about his experiences growing up, the poet also reminds us about the collective experience of everyone who ever tasted childhood like the succulent coloured fruits of his natal days (and who didnt by the way?), that childhood innocence, vulnerability and sense of wonder about a world peopled by beings (both human and supernatural), rivers, flora and fauna, a world peopled by storied beings and things beyond our comprehension at the time.

A child is always a child, no matter where the placenta was planted or where it (the child) is growing up. It is that universalist sense, that strange familiarity that feels like dj vu, that Ifowodo has demonstrated and conveyed with Augustas Poodle. In the writers world, everything, whether animate or inanimate, tangible or intangible, comes alive; and the imageries are so palpable and metaphors so strong that the reader cannot but feel them and be drawn to them.

What I am doing in Augustas poodle is to return to childhood, my earliest childhood up to the age of 12, to raise the submerged sensations of that past, thereby commemorating flora and fauna, places and phases, rites and rituals to renew allegiance to it, Ifowodo once said in an interview.

Asked at the NNLG/ CORA Book Party in Lagos what inspired him to write the book, the poet spoke about how he experienced displacement at such a tender age when life happened to him. His father died when he was a year old and was forced to relocate with his mother. And of course, that is the reason he is his mother, Augustas poodle: My aim here has no grander manifesto than to recapture some memories, a rather usual, relatively speaking, childhood. Like I said, I was born in one place and open my eyes to the sun in another. My father died when I was a year old. So my mother left my fathers hometown to my mothers hometown, which is where I grew up.

And sharing my time between the village and the city, it made me see life in a different way. And because as post-colonial, as people who had to live under colonialism and imperialism and its ideology of denying the colonized place, history, identity and culture I felt it as a mission to by recapturing those experience of childhood thereby commemorating and representing, thereby affirming identity and place. Of course, in every coming and going, in every displacement, there is always a return to ones village. Just as T.S Eliot said, a mans destination is his own village.

A very important feature of the book, which must not be ignored and which makes it stand out, is that it has satisfied the reader both in terms of form and meaning. As form, the 55 cantos in the collection, divided into three movements, are related and each of them represents a year in the life of the poet. The poet himself confirms this in the prologue of the book. And I have rendered it in fifty-five cantos, for this is a song of myself as composed by the many selves of a five-and- a-half decade existence, Ifowodo said.

As meaning, it is a recollection of not just the poets childhood, but also anyones that sense of awe and wonder, and as the poet himself puts it, the surprise and elation of becoming conscious of ones existence as an autonomous being.

Still, one of the writers major strength is his uncanny ability to take us into a world of wonder as experienced by a child. For instance, the writer gives the reader a foretaste of the magic experience, that sheer delight of waking up to something memorable, in the opening canto of the 55 cantos that make up the collection. I wakened to the soft-green-filtered light / of my second residence on earth, some place / unknown to the wider world; the orange trees / had ripened to that yellow green/ of enchanting juice pressed from the pulp/ by both hands of a child

In the 9th cantos, the writer makes the reader experience this sense of wonder, even against the backdrop of the Nigerian civil war. The poet sings: I saw a soldier and a motor-car / for the first time in front of Ugbos compound; / One of Ezes sons had joined the army / (no surprise, the forebears name means courage) ; he came in a grim and grey Land Rover.

And if you delve deeper you would recognise the fact that while singing about his childhood experiences, the poet also sings about the sight and sound of the Niger Delta, where the poet comes from. By singing and telling the stories of the Isoko people, the poet also sings of the sight and sound of Niger Delta, an area rich with flora and fauna, folklore and magic, mythical beings and legendary warriors, rites and rituals; thereby affirming identity and place.

The poets ability to tell his story so vividly is worthy of note. Here we are made to feel the beats of the Isoko people in the Niger Delta, as they interact with one another. We are made to experience mythical beings and their environment (mud houses, farmlands, creeks and freshwater fishing ponds), and legendary characters like Pa Ukuevo, who lived the bounty of his name; Pa Edhemuno, who was slight of build, steely in mind; and Oneroha, who swelled with the strength of seven warriors.

A significant thing about Augustas Poodle is that, apart from its aesthetics, the reader is taken on a journey into a world that is strangely familiar but no longer present, the idyllic world we all seem to have lost, as the author tells the story of his lifes journey in three parts: 1. First Residence, which was the second. 11. Second residence, which was the first and 11. Ramdom Recollections. His kind of pastoral poetry reminds one of Thomas Grays Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard and William Wordsworths Ode: Intimations of Immortality (from recollections of Early Childhood.

The power of Augustas Poodle, therefore, lies not only in the poet experiencing a world long gone but in his bringing back that world through remembering and memory, remembering not just his childhood but also that of us all. And as Ifowodo said, The idea is that whatever survives forgetfulness, that does not resist recall, is something worth recounting. And the hope is to commemorate the rites and rituals, the faces and places and the flora and fauna that shaped the poets earliest consciousness. For example, the poet sings of Emete-ame and medicine men and snake charmers in the 12th and 17th cantos.

Emete-ame. Watermaidens who for their beauty / or divine covetousness are chosen devotees / of the water goddess. For a boy yet to crack / the mysteries of water and float in it; their processions to Eterobo, those lucky / days, were solemn rites that taught me, / perhaps too early, the profaning aura, of altars.

Ovunuvboye. Everyone comes of a lineage; / his, of medicine men and snake charmers / or so it had to be: such frightful powers / come handed down from times lost in mists / beyond memory.

The sheer lyrical power of Ifowodos poetry is well represented in the 18th acantos, a poem about his mother, Augusta, after whom the poetry collection is entitled. If Im partial to the women, if I love with only Augusta / by my side she whose fingers softly their morning scent and evening chatter / after sun-sweated labours or hard bargains ; for salt or fish more than the fragrances of France or rise gardens. Know that I saw / the world for the first time with only Augusta / by my side she whose fingers softly / opened my eyes to sunlight and Poetry was my refuge / before I knew of something called poetic justice.

Ifowodo has once again demonstrated in Augustas Poodle, the lyricism of his poetry, his mastery of metaphors, lines that dance as well as imageries that bop up and down in a rhythmic manner. The book is indeed a sheer delight. And since he has succeeded in making us know what it is to be and feel like a child and to be displaced due to no fault of ours and still go back to ones origin to affirm identity and place, I recommend this book to everyone who loves good poetry and wants to be engaged by it.

Nehru Odeh, journalist and writer, is the author of The Patience of an Embattled Storyteller.

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Displacement and collective memory in Ifowodos Augustas Poodle - P.M. News

The phenomenon of actors playing funhouse-mirror versions of themselves has been turbocharged over the past 30 years from Being John Malkovich to This is the End, via TV comedies such as The Larry Sanders Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Trip. Johnny-come-latelys, the lot of them: the practice goes back at least as far as 1964, with Billy Wilders glorious Kiss Me, Stupid, which starred Dean Martin (born Dino Crocetti) as a womanising crooner named Dino.

Now its the turn of Antonio Banderas to make merry with his persona. In Official Competition, a sharp-clawed comedy from the Argentine film-making duo Gastn Duprat and Mariano Cohn, he is Flix Rivero, a movie star with a lucrative US career. When he is cast in a prestigious literary adaptation opposite the highfalutin Ivn Torres (Oscar Martnez), commerce meets art. Ivn is all about rehearsal and immersion; Flix, who reaches for the menthol stick when tears are required, wonders why they cant just get on with it.

The director who has brought them together to play warring siblings, and to exploit their off-screen tension, is Lola Cuevas (Penlope Cruz), the nutty maverick auteur behind The Inverted Rain (a perfect spoof arthouse title). With a wicked glint in her eye, Lola forces them to rehearse with a giant boulder suspended above them on a crane (Use it, use it!), and makes Ivn go over the same piece of dialogue repeatedly until he invests it with the necessary layers of conflicting emotion. The line is: Good evening.

[See also: Meghan Markles Archetypes podcast review]

Ivn has nothing but disdain for actors who defect to Hollywood. I dont want to be the Latino who puts a little bit of colour into entertainment for those numbskulls! he huffs. Hearing this, we cant help but scroll through Banderass English-language credits the Zorro films, the Shrek series and its Puss in Boots spin-offs and marvel at what a good sport he is.

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There is also a scene in which Flix parades armfuls of awards, some of which (Goyas, Golden Globes) Banderas really has won or been nominated for. Ivn claims not to care about such trifles, though privately he rehearses a speech, brandishing a kettle in place of a trophy, in which he scorns the idea of artistic competition. (He even makes an adorable little cheering sound at the end, to suggest an off-screen audience awestruck by his integrity.) Like Banderas, Martnez is spoofing his public image: he is a highly regarded theatre actor in his native Argentina and not short of silverware himself. (His last film with Duprat and Cohn, The Distinguished Gentleman, won him the Best Actor prize at the Venice Film Festival.)

The initial joke of Official Competition is that this whole film-making endeavour has been conceived simply to burnish the reputation of a pharmaceuticals billionaire, Humberto Surez (Jos Luis Gmez), who cant decide whether to build a bridge to ensure his immortality or finance a movie. The eventual and far superior gag is that Lolas apparently cuckoo methods start to bear fruit: both men become more limber under her tutelage. The visual humour as she puts them through their paces is heightened by the austere setting of the Surez foundation. Its pristine, soulless spaces (glass-walled rooms, stone forecourts cleanly delineated by knife-like shadows) suggest both opulence and spiritual emptiness.

Reality makes itself felt only fleetingly: once in a brief shot of a homeless person outside a burger bar, and again in the reflection of a plane crossing the sky overhead, which recalls the plane mounted above Lolas bed in a nosediving position. Christ is crucified on it, arms spread out across its wings a gaudy pop-art homage to the statue of Christ the Redeemer dangling from a helicopter at the start of La Dolce Vita.

Official Competition appears at first to be a standard movie-business takedown la The Player, but it has far more faith in the art form than that. Among its tastiest pleasures is the chance to see Cruz and Banderas sparking together on screen at last; theyve both benefited extensively from the patronage of Pedro Almodvar, yet have coincided only briefly in two of his films, Im So Excited! and Pain and Glory. Now they can properly let their hair down, literally so in the case of Cruz, dragging on cheroots and tossing around her untamed copper torrent of Louis XIV curls.

Official Competition is in cinemas now

[See also: House of the Dragon: sex, violence and top notes of incest]

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Antonio Banderas and the art of self-parody - The New Statesman