Falling Down

Conditions: Bah.

Heroes

Say it ain’t so, Lance.

Armstrong stepped down as Livestrong chairman on Wednesday in the wake of detailed revelations about his role at the heart of a doping ring that helped him win seven Tour de France titles from 1999-2005.

"I've been better, but I've also been worse," Armstrong said. "Obviously it has been an interesting and difficult couple of weeks."

A record turnout of riders raised $1.7 million for Livestrong on the eve of a decision by the International Cycling Union (UCI) on whether or not it will follow through on punishments imposed by the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA).

- supersport.com/

So now that it seems Lance Armstrong was a drug cheat all along, one starts to wonder how much of this spills over into his non-racng life? The charity he got started has become a monster, which seems to be a good thing. But now we begin to understand just how dedicated and how organised, and how determined Armstrong was in winning the Tour De France, you have to wonder was he also just as driven, just as determined, and just as relentless in setting up this giant charitable organisation?


Film Review: Looper

“I don’t want to talk about time travel” says Bruce Willis as he sits in a diner opposite Joesph Gordon Levitt, playing his younger self. Given that Bruce has starred in movies where he deals with a younger version of himself, and had to travel through time, I guess the weariness has been earned. Looper is an odd film, set in the future where young Joe works as a Looper for the mob – who are even further into the future. They send back people to a certain time and place where a Looper then shoots them and burns the body. The catch is that eventually the mob sends back the old version of the Looper, and the young version “closes the loop”. Of course when Bruce’s Looper is sent back, he’s able to get away from his younger version. Suddenly it’s all gone a bit Terminator as Bruce is trying to eliminate the new head of the mob, by killing them as a child.

This is where the complications set in, as he also has to keep the young version of himself away from the various thugs and hitmen who are out to clean up the mess. Since the focus on this film is on Joseph's version of the character, we spend most of our time with him in hiding at Emily Blunt’s farmhouse, whose young son turns out to be the ultimate target. Looper then is a morality tale about fate and youth, hope versus experience. The final act plays out very nicely, with a sharp and bitterly sweet ending. This is a thoughtful, well made and very well acted film. There may well be a few head scratching issues with the logic of the film, but it’s made of such good quality, and focuses on the important parts of plot and character, that it doesn’t really matter.

The problem is in its morality. See, there’s no getting around the simple fact that Joe is a killer. He kills people for money. He uses that money to buy drugs. He plans to retire and live the high life, but just ends up killing people for someone else anyway. After finding peace late in life, he somehow forgets what his future holds, and when he comes back he then goes on a rampage in order to get revenge on someone who hasn’t done anything yet. This guy is the lead character, and I don’t like him. He’s a thug and an asshole. He may make a brave choice in the end, but that doesn’t come anywhere near making up for all the people he’s killed up to that point. So while the film is quite brilliant, it leaves me cold. Three blunderbusses out of five.



- Peace out