3.12 - VERONICA GUERIN (2003) & Fear

Our Schumacher mini-season concludes with the 2003 biopic VERONICA GUERIN. For a second week running (savour it), we’re largely in agreement with our reviews of the film, and then we talk about how these events passed us by, the difficulties in bringing a real life to screen, and the parallels between the protagonist and a quite surprising tortured genius.

Next Week’s Film Sam’s off on parental duty, so the next month sees Rob — with a number of guest hosts — get stuck into the oeuvre of Steven Spielberg, starting with the 1991 ‘classic’ (Sam’s quotation marks) HOOK.

This Week’s Media
HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE (2009): David Yates, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint MINDHUNTER (2017—): Joe Penhall, David Fincher, Jonathan Groff
STAR TREK: DISCOVERY (2017—): Bryan Fuller, Sonequa Martin-Green, Doug Jones

Recommendations
CON AIR (1997): Simon West, Nicolas Cage, John Cusack
IN BRUGES (2008): Martin McDonagh, Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson
HOME ALONE 2: LOST IN NEW YORK (1992): Chris Columbus, Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci
PUSHING TIN (1999): Mike Newell, John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton

Footnotes
In the vein of starting with a light-hearted subject, our first link for this episode is to Tim Murphy’s book Rethinking the War on Drugs in Ireland: books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=9e2KT-zW6bcC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=drugs+in+ireland&ots=bS3Lal7lQB&sig=Q3E4nnS0hhbv1Cew7QeGy_H2bsw#v=onepage&q=drugs%20in%20ireland&f=false. Veronica Guerin’s life makes for an interesting read (although the jury’s out on the film): books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Pm37P54fAzMC&oi=fnd&pg=PT3&dq=veronica+guerin&ots=vDl85zPDa6&sig=zP1aC2D1YBaqTRUm9EbAFJTG7QU#v=onepage&q=veronica%20guerin&f=false. This account of her funeral (included at the very end of the film) is good: www.independent.co.uk/news/tears-and-applause-at-journalists-funeral-1339427.html. The IMDB Trivia page, as usual, is a good one: www.imdb.com/title/tt0312549/trivia. And finally, Rob mentions considering Guerin as a tragic protagonist or ‘hero'; for more on this, this is a useful — if very basic — source: http://www.litcharts.com/literary-devices-and-terms/tragic-hero

7 years ago