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

The Shadowy Depths

Conditions: Close, clouding

Atlantis Lost Again

Remember how underwater sonar maps put together by Google seemed to show the outline of a city under the ocean? And everyone started saying that Atlantis had been found? Well, turns out no.

Overlapping data sets, which created the pattern many thought to be Atlantis, commonly occur in the sonar method oceanographers use to map the ocean floor. Scientists bounce sonar (sound) waves off the bottom of the ocean to measure its topography.

The pattern supposedly resembling Atlantis was located off the coast of north Africa and covered more than 160 kilometres — much larger than the scope of any ancient city.
[...]

“The original version of Google Ocean was a newly developed prototype map that had high resolution but also contained thousands of blunders related to the original archived ship data,”

- smh.com.au/

Science can be such a tease, sometimes. Which is why it's always dangerous to let it near our legends. Let science focus on day to day stuff, and leave the legends to the dreamers.



Film Review: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Welcome back to the heady days of the cold war. John le Carre has written a series of novels concentrating on the British Intelligence services and how they battled the Russians. This story concerns a double agent at the very top of British Intelligence, who has been leaking information to the Russians for quite some time. Our hero is George Smiley, a veteran in the intelligence services. He's been forced into retirement due to an operation in Hungary that went horribly wrong, but has been brought back in order to figure out who is the spy.

Gary Oldman plays Smiley, heading a very strong cast in this very, very deliberate and careful cold war thriller. Set absolutely in the mid seventies, the film is very British in how it delivers. There are no car chases or gunfights, it's all about conversations and thoughtful pauses, and traveling about. If your idea of a spy film involves jerky cameras and constant gunfights you may be disappointed. As we proceed through the tale we understand more about George, his marriage, and how he relates to his Russian counterpart, a man he met once and tried to convert over. This is a particularly complicated film in that you have to keep track of the names and faces of the participants.

While the dreariness of London during the seventies is quite prevalent, the pieces to the puzzle keep you interested. There's like a boatload of nuance in this film, and pretty much everything ends up being important. And while the characters are all very British and reigned in, there's a feeling of barely-contained passion and action that seethes under this film - a particular scene where a drunk Smiley reenacts a conversation he had once with his great Russian rival, that is just brilliantly done. Proper cerebral spy films are hard to come by, and this one is top notch. Four chess pieces out of five.

- Peace

Dot the Eye

Conditions: Dreary

Favoritism

You'll be unsurprised to know the injustices surrounding the U.S military in Iraq are still not being addressed. The latest is for a killing spree carried out by marines on Iraqi civilians who were near where a bomb had just exploded

BAGHDAD — Iraqis were outraged Tuesday to learn that the Marine considered the ringleader of a 2005 massacre that left 24 of their countrymen dead in 2005 was sentenced on Tuesday to a reduction in rank but avoided any jail time after pleading guilty the day before to a reduced charge.
[...]

The Marine, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, 31, pleaded guilty on Monday in a military court in California to dereliction of duty, telling the judge that he regretted ordering his men to “shoot first, ask questions later,” according to news agency reports.

Although the reduced charge carried a maximum sentence of three months in jail, which the military judge said he would have imposed, The Associated Press reported that as part of the plea deal, prosecutors had agreed that Sergeant Wuterich would receive no jail time. He had faced up to 152 years in prison if convicted on the charges of manslaughter and assault on which he stood accused.

- nytimes.com/

Wow, 152 years, guy pleads guilty and he doesn't serve a day in jail, and doesn't even get kicked out of the army. I think they were actually tougher on Lindsay Lohan, which shows you just how much they actually care about Iraq, or Iraqis.


Film Review: The Darkest Hour

Cheap alien invasion movies are usually disappointing in how they try to emulate the likes of Independence Day, but with bad camera work, blurry effects and wooden actors. However The Darkest Hour actually manages to deliver a nice alien invasion film that has a bit of depth and reality to it, while minimizing on the special effects. It no doubt helps that the film is set in Moscow, and the aliens are mostly invisible, but these points are used to the film's advantage as we are introduced to Sean and Ben, two American web entrepreneurs trying to sell their website idea to a Russian corporation. All is cut short however once the aliens start dropping in.

Our heroes team up with two American girls on vacation and together they all try to figure out how to get out of Moscow. Along the way they'll meet some new friends, discover what the Aliens want, help set up the resistance to them, figure out how to kill them, and get killed by them. The first step is discovering the Aliens are generating some kind of electrical power that lights up any light bulbs nearby. This gives our heroes a chance to figure out where they are. Combined with a chance discovery that the Aliens cannot see through glass, and they are on the way towards survival.

All the elements for an invasion survival story are present. The awkward introductions that are hurried along by menacing circumstances, the desperate initial run and hide. Then an evaluation, and even a trip to the mall to get more appropriate clothing, along with a joke about what the correct attire is for the end of the world. While the film doesn't delve too much into it's characters, it at least allows them to come across as reasonably real. The aliens themselves are simply monsters to be avoided, and then fought. And then finally the ending is more of a stoppage than a finish, leaving us wide open for a sequel. The upshot of all this is a real-feeling, but ultimately somewhat hollow experience, where the audience is more detached from what's happening than we should be. The actors do their best with what they have, but the movie just seems to sink out from beneath them. But a solid try nonetheless. Three streaks out of five.


- Peace out