The Barrage

Conditions: Awesome

The Grand Voice
A lesson in hubris was handed out recently from the cosmos, as an asteroid showed up out of nowhere and blew up just above Russia. While we may concern ourselves over financial crises, hostile states and the Kardashians, the biggest actual threat to humanity lurks still virtually undetected.

Astronomers know of no asteroids or comets that pose a major threat to the planet. But NASA estimates that fewer than 10 percent of the big dangers have been discovered.

Dr. Lu’s group, called the B612 Foundation after the imaginary asteroid on which the Little Prince lived, is one team of several pursuing ways to ward off extraterrestrial threats. NASA is another, and other private groups are emerging, like Planetary Resources, which wants not only to identify asteroids near Earth but also to mine them.

"Our job is to be the first line of defence, and we take that very seriously,” James Green, the director of planetary science at NASA headquarters, said in an interview Friday after the Russian strike. “No one living on this planet has ever before been hurt. That’s historic."

- nytimes.com/

Oh, horseshit. Of course people have been hurt by interstellar bits of rock before. There was a time back in the past, before twitter, where lots of shit happened. How can the Nasa director of planetary science be that short-sighted? Especially when it’s his freaking JOB to be long-sighted. I consider this a bad start, but at least it is a start. We desperately need a clearer vision and an effective plan to deal with what will eventually loom as a threat to all mankind. The fact that it took cool cell phone videos off the web to kick-start it is merely an annoying detail.



Film Review: A Good Day To Die Hard.

In the absence of things like plot, character, direction, coherence, sense, or anything resembling the components of basic story-telling, let me relate to you how the latest Die Hard sequel works in a similar style to how it comes across. Let’s see, now.

Boom! Screech! Wham! Roar! Ba-Boom! Crunch! Pow! Bang! Bang! Bang! Wham! Boom! BOOM! Love you, Boy. Love you too. Bang! Bang! Boom! Kaboom! Pow! Arrgh! BOOM!

Yes, the latest Die Hard makes me pine for the glory days of 2007 when Die Hard 4 came out. Because as bad as Die Hard 4 was, and it was awfully, cheaply, and pathetically bad, it is by far and away, with no shadow of a doubt, ten times better than this load of crap. Die Hard 5 is set in Russia, where McLane has gone to see his son, Jack, who shot a mobster in order to... you know, who gives a damn. The revelation that Jack is actually working for the CIA in order to save and extract some guy is so completely mishandled that it’s totally a non-surprise. The plot is treated as a side effect. The bad guy is, well, nothing. We don’t really know what he’s trying to do, or how he’d get away with it, or who he even is, because he spends most of the film pretending to be someone else. And it doesn’t seem to matter. The henchmen are literally just disposable fodder. And I can’t figure out the end sequence at all. I think it was literally a case of the filmmakers wanting to wrap everything up because they were tired and just wanted to finish and go home.

On top of all this is the way the film is made. I literally cannot remember a film more badly shot and edited than this thing. Every angle and sequence is slightly wrong and off somehow, feeling shoddy and rushed. There’s an odd hand-held wiggle in places that is annoyingly distracting. The action sequences are completely unbelievable – from start to finish. I honestly can’t remember the last time I sat in a theatre and laughed my ass off while watching an action sequence unfold, it’s that stupid. Ridiculous car chases, gun battles, brawls, bad guy speeches, even simple things like character injuries are totally fake and stupid. Various scenes where John and Jack have dialogue while sporting blood on their heads are astonishingly fake-looking, with red shit just obviously painted on. How can a modern Hollywood film get something like that wrong? And finally there is the “dynamic” between the father and son, where they start out hating each other and gradually warm up as the body count racks up. It’s supposed to be fun and cool, it comes across as psychotic and stupid.

I don’t know where Die Hard went so wrong, I suspect the 3rd movie, while well made and enjoyable, was where the rot started to set in. Die Hards are supposed to be set in a contained location, that provides McLane with a pressure cooker environment to operate within. 3 was still a good film, but it wasn’t a Die Hard movie, and the door was then open for exploitation of the brand. Now we just have McLane running around, not giving a damn, interfering in crazy and outlandish shit, all as an excuse to have a series of large-scale stupid action sequences. I hated this film, it shits all over the previous movies and just comes across as a cheap and fake cash in. I can’t believe how much better this one makes the last one look. If they do make another sequel, it may well be bad enough to cause people to go insane and claw their own eyes out in the theatre, so consider yourself warned. Zero guns out of five.



- Peace out