Sign 'o the Times

Conditions: Overcast, quiet

This Modern World

There's a lot of fear in our world today. The old fears are as present as ever: fear of death, sickness, aloneness, poverty, etc. But some new fears have crept in under the door, like cockroaches. Some perhaps valid: like a fear of carjacking. Some, not valid at all.

Researchers found 66 per cent of people are terrified of being without their phone, and the younger they are the more worried they are.

First identified in 2008, it would appear nomophobia - defined as 'the fear of being out of mobile phone contact' - is increasing with far more admitting to the problem than when a similar poll was conducted four years ago.
[...]

The study, commissioned by SecurEnvoy, revealed that 41 per cent of the people polled have two phones or more in an effort to stay connected.

- telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/

That's right, the stupid phones people carry about with them constantly, and are forever tapping away at, have now gotten into people's minds so much that a significant number are now terrified of losing them. This is another step towards madness. It's just a phone, it does not define who you are. And if it does define who you are, then perhaps you actually do need to lose it.



Film Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

You know, it's a fundamental belief I have that the principal role of a movie is to entertain the audience. That is the one thing it must do, if nothing else. A film can contain the most brightest of stars, the most amazing of effects, the most dazzling of plots, but if it cannot fundamentally entertain the audience, then it has failed. Well, what is entertainment, you may well ask. How does one quantify it? Can you use a meter of some kind, or measure against some sort of standard? Ultimately, I believe it is simply a gut thing. You know when you've been entertained or not, and so the most worthy of films still has to pass over the bar each of us carries into the theater. Dragon Tattoo had a lot going for it. Based on a popular book, and serving as the Hollywood remake of the original Scandinavian adaptation, with a flock of good actors, a big budget, and Mr David Fincher behind the camera, this, I thought to myself, would likely be a slam dunk.

Lets talk about what doesn't work, first. The start of the film, for instance, is awful. Essentially, after a pointless and distracting opening sequence where CG characters crash into each other over an awful Led Zep cover, we are dragged headlong through the back story of Daniel Craig, playing a discredited journalist. This stuff is played out way too quickly, giving the impression of a film in too much of a rush. And it needs to be, because there's a lot more to go through and it doesn't really matter, hence the hurry to get it out of the way. This film is a murder mystery. Daniel Craig, now suitably discredited, is hired by a rich old guy to try and solve the murder of his grandchild, 40 years ago. He lives in a grand old house surrounded by a bunch of other grand old houses, all occupied by the family, who mostly hate each other. Now this may be my fault, but I couldn't really follow who was who and, as Daniel pieces together what happened all that time ago, what was really going on either. And with that lack of comprehension came an inevitable lack of caring. I don't care who these characters really are, and I really don't care if we find out whodunnit, or not. These people are terrible and indifferent, and we the audience pick up on that fairly quickly and reflect it back.

Now let's talk about the disturbing stuff. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is actually in an entirely different film for the first hour or so. She's a goth rebel hacker, who struggles to make ends meet as all her money is controlled by the government. Anti-social to a fault, she is first abused, then raped by her case worker in a series of awful, shocking and deeply unpleasant scenes. Of course she gets her violent revenge, and it's a mark of how far down the sewer Fincher has dragged us that the scene where she boots a giant dildo up the ass of her former rapist as he squeals in pain is likely the best part of the movie, and the part the entire audience enjoys the most. She then teams up with Daniel Craig, as his assistant and then also as his lover, and then also as his henchman, as the two piece together the most boring mystery ever. Even the fact that we end up uncovering a creepy serial killer crouched in the middle of all the tangle, isn't enough to make up for the three hours of tedium. And why, why did we have to watch a women get raped if it doesn't actually have anything to do with the plot? Does it help explain who the Dragon Tattooed girl is? Is that how we do character development, now?

I don't know exactly what happened to the director who gave us Se7en, Alien 3, Panic Room, and most important of all, The Game (one of the greatest films of all time), but this is not him. What is he doing playing around with stupid lifeless remakes? A film is meant to entertain, and this one fails miserably. One tattoo out of five.


- Peace