Mad Without Method

Conditions: Not Overly Bad, Really

Crazy

And so the trial of Anders Breivik has come to an end with Anders himself taking to the stand to justify his massacre of 77 people last year. The family members in the courtroom walked out in protest, and now it's over to the court to decide if he is innocent, guilty, or mad as a hatter.

Taking the stand, Breivik spent 45 minutes going over his reasons for the attacks.

Reading from a prepared statement, he attacked everything he disliked about his country, ranging from non-ethnic Norwegian contestants being allowed to represent Norway at Eurovision to the effect of the TV series Sex And The City on public morals.
[...]

The prosecution said they were not convinced Breivik was psychotic but there was enough doubt to ask for him to be found unaccountable for his actions.

- bbc.co.uk/news/

So is Anders crazy? I guess you'd have to say yes, I mean sane people generally don't kill 77 people because of a TV program. However, is Anders crazy enough to escape prosecution? That's the nutty part. If he's over a certain level of crazy, then he goes to a mental asylum. Anders himself is adamant that he is perfectly sane, something I think contributes to his insanity score, and insists on either being found guilty or let go. Could you imagine the courts letting him go free? Is there even a version of reality where that could happen?

While I don't know exactly how bad mental asylums are in Norway, I picture large white-painted open rooms with a views of nearby fjords and Viking murals on the ceilings, I suspect they'd involve a lot of drugs and doctors and "sessions". While Anders may fear that reality, it seems a lot more comfortable than a prison, which even in Norway must be cold and dank and dark. That seems more fitting. Anders can write his name on a piece of paper, and insists that he's as normal as toast. That's good enough for me.



Film Review: Prometheus

After all these years, director Ridley Scott has returned to the franchise that made him famous by directing a prequel of sorts, Prometheus. And just like the myth whereby a god stole fire for mankind and was punished, so I believe Ridley has tried to steal some fire of his own, and has been punished for it. How else to explain this film, this silly, stupid, gross, ridiculous movie, coming from a man who has crafted such clever and deep films in the past? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the stupidest bunch of explorers in the history of all mankind: the crew of the doomed ship Prometheus. And right off the bat let's not forget that, since Ripley and the crew of the doomed ship Nostromo never knew what they had found, the crew of the Prometheus *must* fail. - A glaring issue with doing any prequel is that we know how it will end, and so we know this will end badly, even if we didn't see the trailer. We begin in a cave in Scotland about eighty years from now, where a bunch of archeologists discover some cave paintings that apparently show a series of stars being pointed at by tall "beings", matching other ancient wall art from all over the world, and before you can say "Ancient Aliens", bam, here we are in deep space, three years later, approaching planet LV_223.

OK, I don't really want to be Mr Nitpicky, but the opening scenes in this film provide a few troubling hints of what is to come. First, Michael Fassbender as the robot David looks after the ship as the humans sleep. That's fine. But why would he be surprised when when the ship reaches LV_223, and rush to the bridge to find out what the alarms are all about? Why are there red-alert alarms at all, when all that's happened is that the ship has arrived at it's destination? Wouldn't he, and the ship, know to the precise second when they would arrive at the planet? Why would that surprise anyone? Then, he goes to check on the crew, starting with his biological not-sister Vickers (Charlize Theron), by walking down a corridor, opening the door and seeing that her pod is empty and wet footprints lead back past him through the door. Surely he should have seen the footprints before he even opened the door in the first place? Now, these points are minor, petty at best. But as I was to learn, they actually point to the problems with this movie: no-one behind the scenes was really paying attention to the bricks and mortar of the script. And as a result, many, many stupid and inconsistent things happen with a depressing regularity.

With our crew defrosted and hasty introductions over breakfast aside, we land next to some big circular "hives" and with that, the research team is off, barreling down a highway towards the nearest structure at 60 miles an hour. Holy shit is this film in a hurry. It should be no surprise that it doesn't take long for things to go drastically wrong, since this time the "aliens" are more of a black bacterial goop than actual clawed creatures, and the android is evil again. Not to mention the stupid, which rampantly affects everyone, like a virus of it's own. Since the crew only starts thinking about quarantine procedures AFTER the research team has been wandering around in some caves, with their helmets off (naturally), and have returned back to the ship for dinner and sex. Of course by then, it's far too late. Have I mentioned how stupid these characters are?

The focus is on the "space jockey" race of aliens, what they are, what they were doing, and why they (maybe) created mankind - a quest for answers of who we are if you like. I'm not entirely sure they created mankind in the first place, but such detail is apparently irrelevant here. And there are no answers to be found either. No, instead the point is a series of gruesome deaths as the alien "virus" works it way through the crew, apparently as just deserts for asking questions in the first place. Not to mention one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen, where the Shaw character gets infested with a squid baby, attacks and escapes her crewmembers, has the fetus cut out of her stomach by an auto surgeon, then gets stapled back together so she can take part in the final action sequence, and nobody else so much as bats an eyelid. It was around this point I started laughing at the film, no longer able to take it seriously or even go along for the ride anymore.

You know, I wanted to like this film, it seemed like it was going to be something very, very good. But somehow a whole bunch of stupid ideas, character decisions and story twists got past Mr Scott, and messed up this movie badly. You know, when you go shining a bright light into dark mysterious corners, you generally end up with a lot of brightly-kit, boring old corners. Two organisms out of five.



Extra: Augh My Superglued Uterus

If you've seen Prometheus, and in need of a pick-me-up, check out this parody by Cleolinda Jones: Prometheus in Fifteen Minutes. Very, very funny, and eases the pain.


- Peace out