Not Really Caring

Conditions: Bloody Cold.


The Crumbling of Tony Blair

As the British inquiry into the Iraq war continues to drone on, we were yet again treated to former Prime Minister Tony Blair under the spotlight, giving evidence to the inquiry regarding how exactly Britain ended up in this mess. Let's see how he did.

The former Prime Minister told the Iraq Inquiry on Friday that his cabinet were aware from early 2002 that they had endorsed a policy that would probably lead to an attack on Iraq.

But Lord Wilson, who was Cabinet Secretary from 1998 until 2002, and Lord Turnbull who was his successor, have both told the inquiry that this was not the case.

Lord Wilson claimed Mr Blair told his cabinet in a meeting in April 2002 that "nothing was imminent".

Echoing evidence given by other Downing Street officials, Lord Wilson described a lack of official Cabinet meetings in those crucial 15 months before the invasion in March 2003.

I don't think anyone would have gone away thinking they had authorised a course of action that would lead to military action.

- news.sky.com/skynews/

You know, there's a line in a movie that goes "Power don't come from a badge or a gun. Power comes from lying. Lying big, and gettin' the whole damn world to play along with you. Once you got everybody agreeing with what they know in their hearts ain't true, you've got em by the balls." I believe that sentiment sums up the Iraq war nicely. However, what it doesn't cover is what happens when that power starts to leak away. So far it seems to me the cockroaches are scuttling as fast as they can.



Film Review: The Green Hornet.

I guess superhero movies have been around for a while now, so we should expect more and more variations on the superhero theme. The Green Hornet is your anti-anti-hero super hero. Based on the comic book that apparently pre-dates Batman, and so therefore came up with the concept first, the Green Hornet is a kid born into wealth, who loses his parents and decides to fight crime using the family fortune to devise some cool gadgets. The difference is that the Green Hornet has almost no skills himself, only attitude. That and he owns a newspaper that he can use to talk up how great the Green Hornet is. The actual fighting is done by his unnamed sidekick, named Kato, who builds the gadgets, dives the car, and fights the bad guys. Seth Rogan is in the title role, and is pretty well cast as a madcap stoner Bruce Wayne, as you'd expect. Kato is played by Jay Chou, his first english-speaking role. The two have an uneasy relationship on screen, with Kato basically the entire brains and brawn of the operation, but thrust into the background by Seth Rogen's sheer force of personality.

The plot revolves around the crime gangs in L.A being run by this one guy played by Christopher Walz, who's going through some kind of midlife crisis, and is trying to make himself scarier. Faced with the Hornet blowing up his various drug labs, he basically starts shooting his minions. In fact, I really don't get the bad guy in this film. Both nonthreatening, and yet getting crazier by the scene, Walz seems a bit wasted overall. But the real problems really come down to Seth. I liked Seth in Pineapple Express, he was spot on in that film. But unfortunately here he seems to be playing the same character, only now a wannabe playboy heir who's got a ship on his shoulder. Obnoxious, loud, unfunny, he's taking enormous risks in his quest to take on the criminal underworld, but doesn't really seem to care. It's difficult to really care about any character in this film, they seem entirely cut off from any possible bad outcome that could happen to them. Plus Rogen is a millionaire playboy who enjoys partying, and it's physically impossible to sympathise what that kind of person at all.

Cameron Diaz is cast as a secretary/reporter who's basically here to give Rogen an idea of what's he's supposed to do next. Another wasted opportunity, as is Edward James Olmos, who's the chief editor of the newspaper, and is routinely ignored by Rogen in the handful of scenes he actually gets. No, this is a truly different kind of superhero movie. One where the hero doesn't really care, doesn't really have to try too hard, and no one else has much of a clue either. Two knobs out of five.


- Peace out

Magic.

Conditions: Overcast, tense.

New Tricks

In the middle of 2009, a new computer virus began to circulate around the world. Called Stuxnet, this was a virus unlike anything seen before. Rather than attack computers in general, this one was specifically targeting computers being used in certain types of Nuclear facilities. Iranian nuclear facilities, in fact. As this virus is being examined, it's becoming ever more clear exactly where it came from.

In interviews over the past three months in the United States and Europe, experts who have picked apart the computer worm describe it as far more complex — and ingenious — than anything they had imagined when it began circulating around the world, unexplained, in mid-2009.

Many mysteries remain, chief among them, exactly who constructed a computer worm that appears to have several authors on several continents. But the digital trail is littered with intriguing bits of evidence.

In early 2008 the German company Siemens cooperated with one of the United States’ premier national laboratories, in Idaho, to identify the vulnerabilities of computer controllers that the company sells to operate industrial machinery around the world — and that American intelligence agencies have identified as key equipment in Iran’s enrichment facilities.

Siemens says that program was part of routine efforts to secure its products against cyberattacks. Nonetheless, it gave the Idaho National Laboratory — which is part of the Energy Department, responsible for America’s nuclear arms — the chance to identify well-hidden holes in the Siemens systems that were exploited the next year by Stuxnet.

The worm itself now appears to have included two major components. One was designed to send Iran’s nuclear centrifuges spinning wildly out of control. Another seems right out of the movies: The computer program also secretly recorded what normal operations at the nuclear plant looked like, then played those readings back to plant operators, like a pre-recorded security tape in a bank heist, so that it would appear that everything was operating normally while the centrifuges were actually tearing themselves apart.

- nytimes.com/

As we know, the Americans and the Israelis have been trying to find a way to shut down the Iranian reactor for ages, out of simple fear that once the Iranians become a nuclear power, they won't be able to be intimidated any more. The options have so far ranged from crippling economic sanctions, to assassination of Iranian scientists, to a full-on military strike on the suspected laboratories (this one not yet attempted, but certainly in the works). Now it looks that a fourth option has been employed: the most complex computer virus ever built was somehow smuggled into the Iranian facility (which is not connected to the Internet for security reasons) and set onto the computers there, where it proceeded to wreak enough havoc that the Iranians have been set back at least four years.

This is a new, somewhat Bond-ian approach. However, as clever as it may be, I think it still fails for the same reason that just bombing the facility would fail: the west is not addressing the primary problem. It's not that the Iranians are only trying this because nobody is stopping them, and so will just give up as soon as someone attempts to stop them. It's that the Iranians believe they have to do this to protect themselves. Therefore everything the west has done so far has only reinforced that mindset the Iranians are in - that they are under siege, are surrounded on all sides, and therefore need a nuclear program to defend themselves. Coming up with a clever computer virus may have slowed them down, and done so in one of the least-offensive ways, but ultimately the U.S and Israel are going to have to play this a lot smarter to get the outcome they actually want.



Film Review: Tangled.

You've got to give some credit for persistence. Faced with new animated movies coming out seemingly every other week, created using nothing but computers, and about all sorts of crazy modern nonsense, Disney corporation has decided to remain true to her roots, and so has released Tangled, a somewhat revised re-telling of the Rapunzel fairy story, but still in the grand style of hand-animation, with lots of musical numbers. To be honest, I can't even remember how the classic version goes, but this one has the princess Rapunzel blessed as a baby so that her hair is magical, and then is kidnapped by an evil witch and imprisoned in a tower for eighteen years so the witch can use Rapunzel's hair to stay forever young.

Where things probably get a bit modern in this version is when a debonair thief who's just heisted the royal jewels, bursts into the tower in search of a hideout, and eventually agrees to help Rapunzel temporarily escape the tower in order to see the annual lantern festival in person, a festival that always happens on her birthday. Now I may be getting older, but try as I might I could not really find one redeeming characteristic of the thief, up until the end of the movie anyway. He steals the crown, tips off the guards, abandons his fellow thieves, and breaks into the tower. What kind of modern hero is this? Anyway, Rapunzel can bring out the good in anyone, and away the two of them go. In hot pursuit of are the palace guards, the witch, the thief's two quite-angry former associates, and a particularly dedicated horse. Can they evade their pursuers and get to the festival in time? Well yes of course they can, but that's not the point.

In this retelling, Rapunzel's story becomes one of self-discovery, and self-empowerment, as she learns how to deal with the outside world, falls in love with the thief, and eventually confronts the witch and learns what actually happened to her as a baby, and who she really is. I don't care who you are, or where you're from, this is a magical story that will suit anyone, full of fun and wonder and heart. Rapunzel, in fact the entire cast, are animated and voiced absolutely perfectly, as is the world they inhabit. The story hinges on her reactions to everything, and it's all done so well that you are effortlessly swept along, even through the inevitable musical numbers. And the ending is actually quite dramatic and ultimately very satisfying. Disney proves with this film that they still have what it takes to go toe to toe with Pixar, not by fighting fire with fire, but by doing what they do best. Four lanterns out of Five.


- Peace out

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

Happy New What?

Conditions: Warm, Temporary

Movie Year In Review: 2010

As the year finally, thankfully, draws to a close and shuffles off the stage, to be quickly and desperately forgotten by all who sailed in her, we think back to the films that were watched and, in some cases, endured. Split into three categories, I give you:

The Good:

Well with a couple of exceptions, the "good" is really along the lines of the "okay, I guess." So with no further faint praise:

Sherlock Holmes: A little bit too steampunk, a little too familiar, a lot too grey, but the Holmes reboot was at least entertaining.

Edge Of Darkness: A solid thriller, enhanced through the re-appearance of Mel Gibson, now in Cranky Old Man flavour.

Law Abiding Citizen: Gerard Butler gives us a portrayal of a man determined to get revenge even if it means bringing down the entire system. Shame the movie wasn't as relentless as his character was.

Shutter Island: Dicaprio and Scorsese combine yet again to give an effective and lasting thriller with a darn good twist at the end.

9: Brilliant and heartfelt film about puppet-like characters trying to survive a post-apocalyptic world.

Daybreakers: Damn good vampire movie that thoughtfully commentates on what happens when a society reacts to running out of a natural resource. In this case, humans.

The Losers: Fun, entertaining action romp.

The A-Team: Fun, entertaining action romp that re-energises the classic characters with fresh faces. Maybe a bit stage-y at the end.

RED: Fun spy flick featuring some classic actors having a blast.

And finally:
Inception: The only film to get a 5 out of 5 this year, Inception is quite simply a masterpiece. Exciting, intense, complicated, it's a film that leaves the audience a little shaken, and stays with them afterward. Brilliance again from Christopher Nolan and cast.

Toy Story 3: The Pixar gang wrap everything up with another heartfelt and exciting adventure for our favourite toys.


The Misfires
Iron Man 2: The first film was a fluke, the second is the inevitable outcome of not having a solid script for your huge tent pole action move franchise. Directionless, and toothless, this one essentially undoes all the goodwill from the first film

Robin Hood: Here's an idea, how about a Robin Hood movie where Robin has to become Robin Hood. That'll work, right?

The Last Airbender: How do you mess this up? It's all right there on the Nickelodeon channel - just copy that! Instead somehow M Night Shymalan decided to do away with pesky character development and make an overly-simplified movie about a fairly complicated story.

Resident Evil: Afterlife: The Resident Evil franchise goes back to basics, and in doing so ends up with a fairly boring movie. Albeit one that's shot absolutely brilliantly.


The Bad
The Book Of Eli: Unrelentingly and relentlessly grim downer film about the end of the world, and how important the Bible is.

The Hurt Locker: A made-up documentary that doesn't tell a story so much as show off a couple of sterotypes.

Predators: Oy. Predator 3 has the Predators, the weapons, a good cast, but no actual plot, other than "Bad guys get picked off one by one by intergalactic bullies."

The Expendables: While it may look good on paper, teaming up a bunch of half-known action movie actors and rolling them into a half-baked plot about some island republic that's being repressed by goons really isn't all that special.

Gamer: Bad Running Man ripoff. Really bad Running Man ripoff.

Tron Legacy: Okay, making a sequel to a film hardly anyone remembers is one thing, but making a film that is essentially aimed at geeks and having a plot that makes no sense at all is just asking for it.


So, there you have it. A middling year, with a few highlights, and some deep lowlights. Here's hoping for better in 2011.



Film Review: Toy Story 3

In what's presumably the final outing for Woody, Buzz and the gang, Pixar have made the third film a kind of mix of the first film and the second one. Again, the theme is one of toys being eventually abandoned by their owners as they grow up and grow out of playing with toys. This time it's Andy himself who's now too old for playtime, and the gang is confronted with either being dumped in the attic, or thrown out in the trash. Instead, they make their way to a kindergarten, believing it to be a haven where they'll get played with every day, but instead it's more like a prison, run by a bitter old toy who hates children and assigns the gang to the Caterpillar room, where the kids enthusiastically beat the crap out of the toys daily.

Running counter to this is Woody's story, where he's meant to go with Andy to college, but get's accidentally swept along with the others to the kindergarten, and escapes in order to try and get back to Andy. Eventually he has to make a choice, loyalty to Andy his owner, or loyalty to his own family of toys. And while in the end the decision rests with Andy, it's Woody who really chooses to leave Andy and go with his friends.

And go they do, escaping the kindergarten to a new happy ending with a new child who will play with them all every day. It's pretty much a case of being a reboot for the gang, where they survive being lost out in the real world, the horror of the kindergarten, and finally make it to the haven of a new kids bedroom. Again Pixar work their magic with a touching, character-driven story that still has enough juice in the third chapter to evoke the emotions. There's plenty of humour thrown into the mix as well, and who can really argue with a nice neat happy ending. Three and a Half batteries out of Five.


- Peace out