The Rewrite

Conditions: Wet, Wet, Wet.

The Unfriendly Skies

I find it difficult to not be insulted by this one. Virgin airlines has a policy whereby any unaccompanied minors cannot have a male passenger sit next to them. A female passenger, fine, but not a male. It’s policy.

An off-duty fireman was left feeling like a "potential pedophile" after a national airline stopped him sitting next to two small boys on a flight - because men are barred from sitting next to unaccompanied minors.

McGirr described how he moved from his window seat to the aisle to allow the boys to look out of the window, but was then pulled up by an air hostess, asking him to trade places with a female passenger.

McGirr said: "She said it was the policy and I said, 'Well, that's pretty sexist and discriminatory. You can't just say because I'm a man I can't sit there,' and she just apologised and said that was the policy."

- huffingtonpost.co.uk

This is disgusting. The fact that the airline is perfectly happy to greedily take the minors on board, but clearly have admitted they are totally unable to provide any kind of supervision at all, and so react by making a blanket and sexist discrimination against an entire gender in order to cover themselves. This is pathetic, and frankly deserving of a massive lawsuit.


Film Review: Abraham Lincoln – Vampire Hunter

Well, I do enjoy me a good vampire movie, so I had to give this one a shot. AL:VH posits the idea that before he became the 14th U.S president, honest Abe was actually a vampire slayer following the death of his mother from a vampire bite. He is tutored in the ways of Vampire killing by a ‘good’ vampire, but decides to use a silver-tipped axe rather than a gun. The better to splatter blood across the lens, I suppose. Anyway, with powerful vampires in the southern states using slavery as a cover for a plentiful supply of fresh meat, Abe has his work cut out for him. Hence his eventual rise to president and crusade to rid America of slavery.

It’s absurdist revisionist history at its best, with a young Abe meeting his future wife while working by day as a humble store clerk, which is really just cover so at night he can kill various vampires in the township. He finally puts down the axe in order to take up the lawbooks and become president. We see the anguish and pain of the country tearing itself apart from the perspective of Abe and a few close associates pondering how to defeat the powerful southern vampires, which culminates in Abe and friends needing to transport all the silver they have to the battlefield of Gettysburg, while in hand to hand combat with vampires determined to stop them.

Directed by the same guy who did Wanted, we are treated to another very stylish and slick-looking film, with a nasty streak to it. However, while there is a legitimate and strenuous attempt to have some dramatic scenes from our characters, for some reason it just doesn’t come across. Despite what is at stake, the absurd premise seems to undermine any attempt the film makes to get the audience invested in the struggle to save a nation. The actors are trying their best, but just seem a bit lost both in the crazy scenario and in the formalities of the era. Three stovepipe hats out of five.


- Peace out