Ow, My Portent!

Conditions: Warm, Storm on the Way

Falling Down

Something decidedly odd happened in Arkansas around News Year eve, well something more odd than usual. A whole bunch of wild animals just up and died.

In a devoutly Christian state such as Arkansas, it's a sequence of events that could get residents leafing through the Book of Revelation for portents: anything up to 5,000 blackbirds fall dead from the sky, and then 100,000 fish wash up along a river.

Environmental officials, however, insist they expect to find scientific explanations for the Biblical-seeming phenomena.

It began, in portentous fashion, approximately half an hour before midnight on New Year's Eve, when the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (AGFC) began hearing reports of blackbirds falling from the sky in Beebe, a town of approximately 5,000 people in the centre of the state.

- guardian.co.uk/

Officials are citing the possibility of hailstorms and fireworks causing the birds to panic and fly into something hard, but that's not all:

Officials investigating the mysterious deaths of up to 100 birds on a road in Sweden say tests have revealed they suffered external injuries.

Dozens of jackdaws were found in the centre of Falkoeping prompting comparisons with the mysterious deaths of 3,000 birds in the US.

Sweden's National Veterinary Institute said it had tested five of the birds and found evidence of traumatic injury.
[...]

There have been no reports of fireworks or storms in Falkoeping on Tuesday night and fireworks has been ruled by vet officers, who say there is no sign of internal haemorrhaging.

- bbc.co.uk/

Now a truck driver has come forward to say that he hit a bunch of birds, but many of these dead birds were not run over. So what''s going on? I some kind of natural or unnatural force slowly unleashing beneath and around this planet as we head towards the prophesied year 2012? Or are we all just freaking out a little bit after too much eggnog?



Film Review: The Tourist

I can image the pitch of this movie to Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie was as easy as they get. An upper-class spy caper set in Venice, who wouldn't sign up for that? Everyone enjoys movies that are set in exotic locations, and this one makes the most of the city of Venice, swooping over roof-lines, panning across the cityscapes, and showing off the architecture for all it's worth. And speaking of showing off, this is a role Ms Jolie can probably do in her sleep. Look glamorous and act mysterious and aloof? No big stretch there. Basically Angelina is the Lady Penelope of the movie.

So the weight of the film, as it were, falls to Johnny Depp, and he carries us all through the twists and turns. His bookish everyman character keeps us engaged as this fairly straight forward tale of deliberate mistaken identity is played out. Jolie needs a patsy to throw off both the authorities and the bad guys who are chasing her so she can meet up with the mysterious Alexander, but in setting up Depp for the fall she also is inevitably drawn to help him as well.

And so we are inevitably dumped into the finale with the good guys standing off against the bad guys, which is where the big twist occurs. You know there's going to be a twist, but I must say this particular one is quite good. So, a stylish, well-directed film set in Venice and starring two particularly brilliant actors, who play out a cloak and dagger story about spies and gangsters. What's not to enjoy? Three boats out of five.




- Peace out