news from a coup

Twitter tells me by way of local freelancers that the TV station seized in the Malian coup yesterday is now playing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I don't know whether that's the proper one with Gene Wilder or the remake.

Elsewhere, here's a theory from a few years back as to why coups always seem to be led by mid ranking officers. I have four words: Master Sargeant Samuel Doe.

UPDATE: By way of actually providing some information to go with the blogging, here's an extensive backgrounder on the coup and the developments leading up to it. the gist is that the Malian army were unhappy with the support they were getting in their conflict with heavily armed Tuareg returnees from the Libyan conflict.

Comments

[dsquared]

My son still can't watch the Gene Wilder one - he was five when he first saw it, then half way through he just stood up and shouted "THIS IS HORRIBLE!! WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ALL THOSE CHILDREN?!?" Having read the book, I promised him that they were OK really and fast-forwarded to the end to prove it. But no, in the film version they are basically never seen again.

[belle le triste]

I am somewhat related* to Mr Dahl, and can reassure everyone that the traumatisation of his smaller readers would have pleased him enormously.

*My dad's mum's sister's husband's brother

[dsquared]

it's just struck me that with its plot of "sinister reclusive entices people into a factory, then tortures and mutilates them with a variety of self-constructed machines, in order to teach them a somewhat spurious lesson about morality", Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is basically the lineal ancestor of the SAW horror movie franchise.

[Richard J]

Given Dahl's adult fiction...

[ajay]

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is basically the lineal ancestor of the SAW horror movie franchise.

Nice one. And, of course, A Christmas Carol is basically the bedtime story that O'Brien tells his children when he gets home at night after a hard day at the Ministry of Love.
"Gin-flavoured tears rolling down his face, Scrooge finally realised: he had won the battle over himself. He loved Christmas."

[Phil]

"sinister reclusive entices people into a factory, then tortures and mutilates them with a variety of self-constructed machines, in order to teach them a somewhat spurious lesson about morality"

I ran that past my family. My son got it in five seconds flat. (He reads a lot of Cracked.)

[belle le triste]

Isn't it also the plot of A.Christie's Ten Llttle er Indians?

(haha and Theatre of Blood)