TV and Film

Follow up letter: The latest in the Deon Jakari Affair

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Follow up letter: The latest in the Deon Jakari Affair

Subject: Your Libellous Review of My Client

Dear Sir,

I am frankly appalled by your continued refusal to reply to me and retract the scandalous falsehoods you published about my client, Mr. Deon Jakari. Your so-called “review” is nothing more than a hatchet job, dripping with elitist sneering and a blatant disregard for the cultural revolution currently taking place on TikTok.

Let me make this perfectly clear: Deon is not merely a “cultural commentator”—he is a cultural architect. His short-form video on “Why the Mona Lisa Would Be Fitter With Sunglasses” reached 4.8 million views in 24 hours. That’s more people than will set foot in the Louvre this year.

You dismiss his Panini football sticker collection as somehow inferior to the works in a gallery. Well, has a gallery ever released a limited-edition holographic Zinedine Zidane? Furthermore, each of Deon’s football binders is accompanied by a playlist from the year of the tournament and a scented candle carefully chosen to evoke the “aesthetic” of that tournament. If that is not curatorial excellence, I don’t know what is.

I am therefore putting you on notice: unless a full apology is issued within 48 hours, I will have no choice but to escalate this issue, giving the truth to some of Deon’s TikTok friends. They have many millions of followers. We will also be considering a Change.org petition entitled “Justice for Deon.”

I urge you to reconsider your position before you find yourself on the wrong side of history—or worse, trending for the wrong reasons.

Yours in fury,

Coral Vincetti

Art with Deon and Amber- a Riposte to the recent Review

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Art with Deon and Amber- a Riposte to the recent Review

To the Editor,

I am writing in response to your recent review of Art with Deon and Amber, in which my client, Mr. Deon Jakari was described as lacking “insight to art, literature, or music” This is not only inaccurate—it is a grotesque distortion of the truth, and frankly, an insult to the vibrant cultural life my client leads.

Deon is, in fact, an extraordinarily erudite man. Only last week he referred to Shakespeare as “the one who wrote all those long plays,” and he can quote, from memory, at least three lines of The Godfather. Once, in my presence, he correctly identified the Eiffel Tower in a photograph taken at night.

Moreover, Deon is not merely a consumer of art—he is a collector. You neglected to mention his extensive and carefully curated Panini football sticker archive, a collection spanning from the 1998 World Cup to the present day. Each sticker is housed in a custom binder, filed chronologically and organised by country. This is not mere ephemera—it is living history.

To portray such a man as culturally barren is nothing short of character assassination. I demand a full and public apology, along with a recognition of Deon’s contributions to the wider arts community—whether that be in the field of sports memorabilia, viral dance trends, or his recent TikTok series, “Guess That Famous Painting (But It’s a Capuccino Art Version).”

Until such an apology is issued, I will be advising my client to consider his legal options, or at the very least, to release a strongly worded video to his millions of followers, suggestion they boycott your company.

Yours,

Coral Vincetti

D.G. Management

TV review: Art with Deon and Amber

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TV review: Art with Deon and Amber

There was a time when arts television was entrusted to scholars, critics, and people who had at least once been inside a museum without a selfie stick. Those days are gone. Now, in the grand tradition of letting algorithms decide who should speak for culture, Art with Deon and Amber has been handed to Deon Jakari and Amber Smith, a duo whose combined TikTok following eclipses the population of Belgium, but who would struggle to score any points in a pub quiz entitled “Very Easy Questions About Art.”

Deon is famous for his 30-second “History in Hats” videos, in which he wears historically inaccurate headgear and mispronounces monarchs’ names to great applause. Amber’s online empire is built on sped-up lip-syncs to famous speeches, occasionally with glitter filters. Their qualifications for hosting? The network insists their “reach” makes them “cultural ambassadors.” The culture they’re ambassadors of remains a mystery.

This week’s line-up began with a discussion of contemporary sculpture. Deon declared confidently that “bronze is basically just metal clay,” while Amber wondered aloud why Renaissance artists didn’t “3D print everything, because that’s faster.”

Yet each of them has one lone island of genuine expertise. Amber, it turns out, is a Crocs expert (the shoe not the animals). Deon meanwhile, is a human encyclopaedia on the subject of jeans and associated denims.

The bulk of the show was spent confidently misunderstanding whatever topic was at hand. A Francis Bacon retrospective prompted Giles to suggest “maybe paint was just bad quality back then,” while Amber mused that his “colour palette would look great on a yoga mat.” A symphony concert was reviewed entirely from the trailer on YouTube; Amber deducted points because “no one did the little TikTok hand heart.”

The closing interview, with a choreographer, reached a nadir with Giles asking, “Do you guys rehearse?” followed by Amber’s penetrating enquiry: “Would you ever add actual cats to Cats,” and refusing to believe that Cats wasn’t a ballet, though she did admit that she hadn’t “seen it for years.”

Art with Deon and Amber is proof that having millions of followers doesn’t mean you should present a TV Arts programme. The presenters lack insight to art, literature, or music. If culture is a cathedral, Art with Deon and Amber is the gift shop fridge magnet someone dropped in the gutter. The only thing Deon and Amber bring to the table is the table itself—because they certainly bring little knowledge to put on it.

Returning to the Submarine: Does “Three Minutes of Silence” Still Stand Up ten years later?

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Returning to the Submarine: Does “Three Minutes of Silence” Still Stand Up ten years later?

By Jasper Clive

Felix Renton’s Three Minutes of Silence (2015) arrived like a whisper in the cacophony of documentary cinema: a 900-minute dive into the lives of submarine sonar operators, notable chiefly for its refusal to have its subjects utter even a single word. No narration, no interviews, not even a stray grunt—just endless, hypnotic shots of men staring at radar screens and listening for pings, punctuated occasionally by the drama of missile strikes.

At the time, critics hailed it as a bold experiment in sensory deprivation. Renton’s austere vision—his decision to strip away dialogue and conventional storytelling—was interpreted as a profound meditation on isolation, surveillance, and the invisible machinery of modern warfare. Its minimalism was praised as a deliberate counterpoint to the bombast of typical military documentaries.

But a decade later, Three Minutes of Silence invites a more tempered appraisal.

The Appeal of Nothingness

There’s no denying Renton’s technical prowess. The cinematography is impeccably composed, capturing the claustrophobic geometry of submarines with a patient, painterly eye. The sound design, dominated by eerie sonar pings and muffled mechanical hums, was said to be immersive—which it is, if you happen to be the kind of person who finds prolonged monotony soothing.

Yet, as the minutes drag on, it becomes increasingly clear that Three Minutes of Silence is less a documentary and more a prolonged exercise in endurance—both for the viewer and the filmmaker. The hypnotic pacing soon verges on tedious; the repeated shots of men adjusting dials and squinting at screens test one’s capacity for fascination with procedural minutiae.

Surviving a Missile Strike (Without a Word)

The film’s much-ballyhooed climax—a huge missile strike narrowly survived by the crew—unfolds in near-total silence, with no explanatory context or emotional cues. While this choice no doubt aimed to heighten tension through ambiguity, it instead leaves viewers grasping for narrative purchase.

Without dialogue or soundtrack to guide us, the sequence feels strangely muted—more like a slow-motion replay than a life-or-death event. The absence of human voices ironically renders the crew almost ghostlike, transforming what should be an adrenaline-fueled moment into a dispassionate tableau.

A Film for the Patient or the Pretentious?

Three Minutes of Silence poses two intriguing questions: One: can cinema convey meaning through absence? Renton answers with an emphatic yes—leading to the second question: even if it is full of meaning, does anyone wants to watch?

For cinephiles who cherish meditative, avant-garde approaches, the film remains a singular achievement. But for anyone expecting a gripping or informative glimpse into submarine life, the experience is likely to induce yawns.

Ultimately, Three Minutes of Silence feels like a film more concerned with the aesthetic of silence than with storytelling. It asks the audience to project their own drama onto blank screens and still faces, which can either be a liberating invitation or an infuriating void.

Does Three Minutes of Silence still stand up? In technical terms, yes—it’s a masterclass in visual minimalism and sound design. In emotional terms, it remains a daring experiment, but one that risks alienating all but the most devoted audiences.

In the end, it’s a film about listening so intently that you hear almost nothing—and for some, that might be just the point. I fear though for others it might simply be 900 minutes of missed opportunity.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Pimlico Wilde’s Head of Film Production: “Britain Needs More Home-grown Pictures”

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Pimlico Wilde’s Head of Film Production: “Britain Needs More Home-grown Pictures”

Q: Lysander, hello. You’ve been described as “the ringmaster of Britain’s oddest cinematic circus.” How’s the tent looking these days?

A: Oh, the tent’s positively bulging, thank you. Hollywood can keep its endless reboots and beige blockbusters. We’re serving up films with flavour. This year alone, we’ve wrapped The Accordionist’s Revenge, a romantic thriller entirely set on the overnight ferry to Hull; Pigeons of the Raj, a period drama where the extras are mostly pigeons; and Cabbage Noir, a crime caper in which the murderer is unmasked in a Brussels sprout festival.

Q: Those sound niche.

A: Precisely! The mainstream has been sewn up tight by Hollywood. How did we get to a point where every British cinema is showing the exact same American films? Madness! Variety is the very soul of cinema. If audiences can’t choose between sci-fi opera, Latvian horror-romance, or a black-and-white mockumentary about the first fish-and-chip shop in space—what’s the point?

Q: Tell us about your past celluloid hits.

A: People still stop me in the street to talk about The Last Bus to Little Haven—that was a runaway success in Luxembourg. And Shepherds in the Mist, our Welsh-language eco-thriller, actually outsold Fast & Furious 9 in one rural Aberystwyth multiplex.

Q: And the future?

A: We’ve got Tea at the End of the World in pre-production—think cosy apocalypse with scones—and Harpist on the Orient Express, which is exactly what it sounds like.

Q: Anything else to add?

A: Yes. If there are any wealthy souls reading who’ve always secretly wanted to see their name roll up on the silver screen—especially on a project no one else would dare to make—get in touch. We promise eccentricity, creativity, and just enough commercial sense to keep the tea and biscuits flowing.

Drizzle to Empire TV documentary: How Bad Weather Built Britain’s Rule of the World

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Drizzle to Empire TV documentary: How Bad Weather Built Britain’s Rule of the World

A Major New Twelve-Part Documentary Series Presented by Dr. Horatia Willoughby

Swagger Filmic is proud to announce an ambitious new landmark history series, Drizzle to Empire, in which acclaimed historian Dr. Horatia Willoughby (D.Phil., Oxon.) will argue her bold and provocative thesis: that the British Empire was forged not by trade, diplomacy, or military might, but by Britishers’ desires to escape Britain’s dreary skies and incessant rain.

Over twelve meticulously researched episodes, Dr. Willoughby will guide viewers on a sweeping journey from the sodden fields of medieval England to the sun-drenched colonies of India, Africa, and Australia. With characteristic erudition—and no small amount of wit—she will demonstrate how a people drenched by drizzle sought salvation beneath brighter skies, building the largest empire in history along the way.

Highlights of the series include:

• Episode 1: “Clouded Beginnings” – How Saxon rains dampened crops and dreams, seeding an outward-looking temperament.

• Episode 3: “Sodden Sailors” – The true meteorological motivation behind the voyages of Cabot, Raleigh, and Cook.

• Episode 6: “The Sun Never Sets” – A literal expression of Britain’s search for the sunlight it so sorely lacked.

• Episode 10: “Rain on the Raj” – Hill stations, monsoons, and the damp logic of colonial administration.

• Episode 12: “Drizzle to Destiny” – A triumphant conclusion proving that without too much rain in those Isles in Northern Europe, there would have been no empire.

Filmed on location in London, Calcutta, Cape Town, Sydney, and Manchester, Drizzle to Empire combines archive material, cutting-edge climatological analysis, and Dr. Willoughby’s uniquely uncompromising scholarship.

Speaking about the series, Dr. Willoughby said:

“For too long, historians have hidden behind economics and politics. I shall show the public the true driving force of Empire: the drizzle that fell upon Britain’s weary shoulders. This is not just history—it is meteorological destiny.”

Drizzle to Empire will premiere in Spring 2026, with all twelve episodes immediately available to stream.

Documentary review: Elephant Polo: The Greatest Sport on Earth

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Documentary review: Elephant Polo: The Greatest Sport on Earth

Directed by Earl Sandton

Produced by Pimlico Wilde Films

Coming Soon to Select Cinemas and Streaming Platforms

Review by Marisol Kensington, London Cine‑Luxe

Let’s be honest: when I first heard about a documentary celebrating elephant polo, my inner cynic raised an eyebrow. But then I discovered it was directed by Earl Sandton, Oscar‑winner for Savannah Skies, and I had to pay attention.

And so, I joined an exclusive preview screening—invited courtesy of Pimlico Wilde—and emerged utterly enchanted. This isn’t a puff piece. It’s a love letter, both affectionate and respectful, to the most improbable sport on the planet.

A Visual Safari of Style and Spectacle

From the opening aerial shots of misty Royal Chitwan National Park to wide‑angle vistas of Chelsea paddocks under a summer London sun, Sandton’s camera treats elephant polo as a ballet in slow motion. Each scene is meticulously framed: lined tusks, tasselled headbands, players in vibrant silks, and bamboo mallets swinging in silent harmony.

The cinematography rivals James Ivory’s India meets Poole + Gabbana safari couture. It is sumptuous, cinematic, and undeniably transportive.

Storytelling: Tradition Meets Modern Drama

Sandton weaves together:

• Heritage: interviews with founders of the World Elephant Polo Association, tracing its roots from colonial-era rajahs to modern courts in Thailand, Nepal, Sri Lanka and beyond (invented by Jim Edwards and James Manclark in 1982)

• Ritual: the care routines of mahouts and players, half-time tusk‑polishes, and pre-match drumming—revealing the sacred bond between human and pachyderm

• Conflict: whistle‑stop ethical interviews with conservationists, balancing the sport’s elegance with concerns over elephant welfare

The pacing flutters between playful and poignant—a goal scored, followed by a powerfully silent sequence of a mahout bathing his elephant in golden sunlight.

Interviews That Resonate

Sandton captures colour with charm:

• A Nepalese mahout describing his elephant by name and personality

• A former champion player who recalls the adrenaline of chukkas and the unpredictability of the animals

• A conservation NGO whose cautionary perspective offers necessary balance

The voices are authentic, never sensationalised. Their stories are threaded together with eloquence and empathy.

Ethical Echoes

Unlike glossy sports spectacles, this film doesn’t shy away from controversy. The documentary intelligently probes criticism: allegations of harsh training, use of bullhooks, and exploitation under the guise of entertainment.

Sandton shows us the sport’s aspirational charity aims—elephants rotating, veterinarians on site, partnerships with local welfare organizations—but he doesn’t oversell it. The weight of history and modern scrutiny is present throughout.

Final Take

Elephant Polo: The Greatest Sport on Earth is more than a spectacle—it’s a quietly thrilling meditation on culture, contradiction, and ceremony. Sandton and Pimlico Wilde have crafted a documentary that pulses with urgency and elegance. He challenges viewers to enjoy the sport’s strangeness while demanding ethical reflection.

Rating: 9/10

Would I watch it again with champagne and a wide-brimmed hat? Absolutely.

Opening in London this September, with streaming platforms not yet confirmed. Expect the official trailer to drop next month.

Film Review: Kilo Barnes’ Oblivion in Reverie

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Film Review: Kilo Barnes’ Oblivion in Reverie

Kilo Barnes, the provocateur best known in contemporary art circles for his “repaintage”—the meticulous obliteration of existing artworks under pristine, spectral layers of white—has made the leap to cinema with Oblivion in Reverie, a work that confirms his talent for transmutation across mediums. Where his canvases demand reflection on absence, erasure, and the fetishization of originality, his film demands immersion in absence as experience, rendering cinematic narrative optional, almost irrelevant.

The plot, such as it is, unfolds like a dream barely-remembered: a man known only as The Cartographer (a monumental performance by Lukas Yeo) wanders through a cityscape both hyperreal and quietly recognisable, mapping streets that shift behind him, as though memory itself were a liquid. He encounters fragmented communities: a choir that sings in inverted tonality, a cafe of patrons frozen mid-motion, and a cinema that projects shadows of films that do not exist. Barnes’ story resists conventional causality, privileging instead the affective architecture of perception—every frame a meditation on void, opacity, and the uncanny.

Cinematically, the film is a masterclass in deliberate erasure. Shots dissolve into overexposed white, recalling his repainted canvases, but with the added dimension of time. Interiors are emptied, streets are depopulated, and even dialogue—when it appears—is delivered with the flat, haunted cadence of incantation. Barnes’ use of sound is similarly radical: he interlaces silence, distant industrial hums, and fractured snippets of classical compositions, sometimes playing in reverse, producing an auditory dissonance that unsettles yet fascinates.

Historically, Oblivion in Reverie situates itself in a lineage of avant-garde cinema that includes the existential austerity of Bresson, the temporal subversions of Godard’s late period, and the structuralist rigor of Straub-Huillet. Yet Barnes is no mere inheritor; he advances the conversation by converting absence into action, negation into spectacle. Where Bresson’s figures are ascetic, Barnes’ are ephemeral, existing between frames, between gestures, and between memory and anticipation.

To call this a “film” risks underplaying its ambition. It is at once a meditation on cinematic erasure, a critique of visual culture’s obsession with plenitude, and an invitation to experience time as a mutable, almost sculptural medium. The viewer is asked to confront emptiness not as void but as a canvas in which perception itself becomes active, participatory, and, at times, ecstatic.

Oblivion in Reverie is challenging, yes—its refusal of narrative closure and conventional spectacle will alienate casual audiences—but to embrace Barnes’ vision is to participate in a rare cinematic reckoning. The film is both a white canvas and a labyrinth: minimalist yet baroque in its conceptual scope, meditative yet relentless in its demands. By the final scene—an empty theatre viewed from a moving gondola —the audience recognizes the genius of Barnes’ audacity: he has turned absence into fullness, and erasure into revelation.

In short, Oblivion in Reverie is not merely recommended; it is essential. For those willing to submit to its austere rhythm and metaphysical rigor, it offers an experience that is, paradoxically, full of life precisely because it is so resolutely unoccupied. It may clock in at four hours fifteen minutes, and the screen may be blank for half of that runtime, but you will not look at your watch until the credits roll.

Film Review: The Thirty Eight Steppes

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Film Review: The Thirty Eight Steppes

To approach Andrei Vlasov’s masterpiece The Thirty Eight Steppes without recalling Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps—and Buchan’s novel before it—would be to miss one of its most intriguing intellectual provocations. The resemblance is neither superficial nor accidental: Vlasov has stated in interviews that his title is a deliberate counterpoint, an “un-numbering” of the espionage thriller’s famous staircase, reducing it by one, grounding it in earth rather than ascending into intrigue. Where Hitchcock’s masterpiece is a paragon of suspense, all flight and pursuit, Vlasov’s film is its inverse: movement without chase, journey without plot.

Set on the endless Kazakh steppe in the late 19th century, The Thirty Eight Steppes follows Sanzhar, a taciturn horseman guiding a group of exiled families across vast landscapes. Each “steppe” represents a stage in their passage, a ritual of endurance rather than a clue in a mystery. If Buchan’s novel stages the fantasy of individual agency—one man outwitting a web of conspirators—Vlasov dismantles the very premise of agency. Here, the landscape absorbs human effort, rendering the travelers’ fate less the result of will than of elemental indifference.

The film’s relation to Hitchcock is most potent in its treatment of suspense. Where Hitchcock tightens narrative screws, wringing anxiety from every glance and gesture, Vlasov cultivates a slow, almost geological dread. The audience is not concerned with whether Sanzhar will outpace his pursuers but rather whether he, or anyone, will leave a trace upon a terrain that resists inscription. The tension is existential, not narrative.

Cinematically, the contrast is stark. Hitchcock framed his story in brisk montage and witty dialogue, designed for popular delight. Vlasov lingers: 10-minute takes of horses inching through snow, the wind eroding language itself into murmurs and silences. The soundtrack is composed of storms, hoofbeats, and Sofia Erdenko’s avant-garde cello, which transforms dissonance into landscape.

If The 39 Steps dramatized the anxiety of modernity—the individual caught in networks of conspiracy and surveillance—The Thirty Eight Steppes turns its gaze backward, to a pre-modern threshold where the individual scarcely exists as such. Sanzhar is less protagonist than witness, a figure dissolving into ritual, into myth, into dust. Where Hitchcock’s stairwell ascends toward resolution, Vlasov’s plains stretch outward into ambiguity.

This is not to say that Vlasov repudiates Hitchcock entirely. Rather, he refracts him. The Thirty Eight Steppes is what happens when you subtract from Hitchcock’s architecture of suspense the scaffolding of plot and urban modernity, leaving only the raw materials: journey, danger, uncertainty. It is Hitchcock’s “steps” made horizontal, scattered across earth rather than climbing toward revelation.

The film will undoubtedly divide audiences: some will find its 163 minutes of silence and slow movement a provocation bordering on parody; others will experience it as a rare cinematic pilgrimage, a work that asks us to sit with endurance, with history, with the impossibility of inscription upon the infinite.

In the end, The Thirty Eight Steppes may be less a film than a response—a meditation on what cinema becomes when it renounces suspense yet retains its structure. If The 39 Steps made the chase a metaphor for modern life, The Thirty Eight Steppes makes endurance its own form of suspense: the drama of continuing at all.