** "I wonder if there is a possibility that a reckoning is coming, elections 2026 potential shake-ups - and was Garland Nixon on the Island...?"

Pacifica Host Garland Nixon joins UK host, politician, and prior host himself on Pacifica, George Galloway, tackling the art of figuring out the world together in the new year. Making sense of global implications of the Epstein Files - and 'suicidal leaders and lunatics' on both sides of the Atlantic...

** "One of her main characteristics I identify with, is that she seems to have lived a lot of life - someone who's come a long way and yeah, keeps going..."

Janelle James Talks Abbott Elementary. From standup on stage to head principal of an inner city public school in the satirical series Abbott Elementary, James juggles somewhat of a mx of defiant and devious on the show. As the teachers struggle for school essentials to survive - not unlike the no laughing matter in the real world.

James is our guest on the show, in a conversation about the four time Emmy nominated actress of color navigating the challenges of race and sidestepping caricature. And including roles in Corporate, the inner city economic struggles playing out in One Of These Days - and the Wall Street comedic noir, Black Monday.

** "Reading Hopkins' book, the first thing that strikes me is his writing voice, just how spare Hopkins is. His voice is in equal measure clipped, distant, repressed - but contains a volcano underneath..."

Anthony Hopkins: A Memoir. A both literary and personal exploration of the screen legend's journey from Welsh working class origins to 'loner, outsider, alcoholic - and world famous actor...'

** "The spirit of European communalism is every day in the process of being betrayed - as the old continent abandons its social welfare state in favor of simply a war machine..."

Bro On The Global Cultural Beat: The Case Of Vienna And The Politics Of The Holiday Season 2025. Arts Express Paris Correspondent Professor Dennis Broe on 'the strangest manifestation of the shifting economic winds.'

Referencing Beethoven, The French Revolution and Victor Hugo; Trump, Epstein, Kubrick and Gary Cooper; fascism, Freud and Marlene Dietrich - and 'an unending consumerist nightmare of European colonialism...'

Plus...New Years reflections on the late Jimmy Cliff, and Arts Express crew actress extraordinaire Mary Murphy, in performance... 

Mussolini: Son Of The Century Review - Spectator Surrealism On Steroids

"The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: Now is the time of monsters," Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks

In a ferociously conceived, back to the future insanely embellished cautionary tale, Joe Wright's simultaneously delirious and calculatingly crafted dramatic series based on Antonio Scurati's works and airing on Mubi, Mussolini: Son Of The Century  sidesteps traditional biopic and historical pageantry for something much more - and far less as well.

Reigniting the persona of the notorious Italian fascist dictator and his combo crafty and maniacal seizure of power, actor Luca Marinelli is nothing less than brilliant, terrifying, and somehow a dangerous and daffy buffoon as well. Add to that the early 20th century backdrop bathed in the period coarse brown and tinted hues of early photography back then, and the 'you are there' captive audience point of view - signaling a deliberately conceived hypnotic, repulsive and somehow involuntarily conspiratorial entertainment as well.

And in what will play out as repeated inescapable audience complicity in the ensuing political horrors playing out historically, Mussolini tears through the fourth wall continually to proclaim, once with an in your face scary, seductive lure, 'Follow me - you'll become fascists too.' And like the masses who could not resist his hypnotic charisma, you've become one of them as well, out of spectator on steroids irresistible curiosity's thirst for more. Not to mention, could Mussolini, and Hitler as well, have been inflicted by PTSD maniacal rage and resentment - both wounded in WWI.

But while the mastery of this production is undeniable, conceptual issues loom - and not just related to how the potent dramatic momentum is inevitably diluted by artificially thinning out the repetitive content over the prescribed eight hour series. That narrative padding could have been infused with, say, the actual, tremendously revealing background history of the time - and that flows, not through arbitrary timelines defining the artifcially imposed beginning to end style of Hollywood storytelling, but the endless momentum reality of world events. 

And what could have been that driving force giving rise to both that traumatic period in Italy along with the impact on Mussolini in seizing that moment opportunistically - the Russian Revolution. Signifying the influence of that revolution on the subsequent imploding uprisings. Though to grab that powerful moment as his own rather than as an ideological follower, Mussolini chose fascism instead, manipulating those WWI physically and mentally destroyed, bitter veterans with an illusion of power that ironically only he held over their rage, directed to his advantage. Along with the powerful capitalist class, in need of the antidote he can provide to potential social upheaval threatening their existence.

And an offscreen irony never acknowledged in Son Of The Century, the communists who in the end brought the historical proceedings full circle when publicly hanging the executed fascist leader upside down. A significance intimating the presence of that other son of the century surviving elsewhere to this day - Lenin.

And an unintended real world fourth wall breakout moment indeed, for both history and this film as Mussolini declares as one point, “I’m like an animal, I can smell the times ahead. And this is my time.” While in a further irony, a brewing communist revolution crushed, not by the fascists, but by the arriving American troops in Italy.

Prairie Miller