No Heart To Be Seen

Conditions: Holding... Holding!

Celebrate the Madness

So President Bush now has his presidential library. I have ...mixed emotions about Bush jr having $500 million spent on a library celebrating his life and times. And I’m not the only one. Lets delve now, if we dare, back into those troubled times and revisit the presidency of Bush 42

Amazingly, the Bush library seeks to ask visitors "What would you have done?" if you were in this president’s shoes. The ex-president’s defenders are betting that the public will reconsider their judgments after a hefty dose of historical amnesia. Bush has been absent from political debates in recent years, instead making millions in private speeches. Today, his popularity is even with Obama's; both have 47 percent approval rating.

alternet.org/

All that proves is how stupid people are in general. After all, even Bush was voted in twice. And now I need a drink.



Film Review: Oblivion

Tom Cruise is the perfect movie star. He has the perfect face, the perfect jaw line, the perfect form. Even at 50 years of age he’s still utterly convincing as a youthful man of action. On top of all that, the guy can also make you believe in a role – and here he’s done it again. Meet Jack, the last man on earth, who along with Vicky is the caretaker for a bunch of machines that are looking after automated power stations that are sucking up the oceans. See, about 70 years ago aliens blew up our moon before invading and while we eventually won the war, we used nukes to do it, so the upshot is we’re all now off to go live on Titan, once we’ve powered up the giant orbiting spaceship, called the Tet, with the Oceans. You know, when you just say it like that it does sound kind of nuts. Anyway Jack’s maintenance job is made more difficult by the Scavengers, remnants of the alien army who seem to be trying to disrupt the power stations and are fodder for the automated defensive probes that Jack maintains.

So, there you have it, picturesque mornings with charismatic Jack enjoying a very sterile breakfast in his sterile iHouse with his Vicky-bot of a wife before he gets in his whizzy helicopter-plane in order to spend his day charging around fixing drones and getting generally knocked about. Who can really blame him for collecting the odd book, or building a log cabin out near a lake, or being haunted by impossible memories of New York and another woman? And while Vicky can’t wait to leave the office and go to Titan, Jack, who’s immersed himself in what the Earth once was, doesn’t really want to leave. And then it all gets complicated. When a spaceship crash-lands, Jack goes to investigate and finds humans in hibernation. The probes start destroying them, but Jack is able to save one - Julia, the girl from his dreams. Bringing her home causes an awkward 3-sided relationship to develop, but that’s nothing compared to the revelations Morgan Freeman has in store. Morgan is the leader of an underground group of rebels, and he needs Jack’s help. Without giving too much away, Morgan is going go all Morpheus on Tom, then oddly lets Tom go off and make up his own mind as to if he will help or not.

Look, it’s a beautiful looking movie, with some fairly interesting ideas at its core, and some good performances. Obviously it’s borrowing some themes from other science fiction films, but then again that’s what science fiction does. The huge twist in the film is actually handled pretty well, and makes sense of what we’ve seen to that point. In the end the shortcomings are in the relationships between the characters, which are a bit stilted and undeveloped. This is the director who did Tron: Legacy, so he’s proven at how good he is in constructing fantastic worlds, and now just needs to work on how he populates them. Three records out of five.



- Peace out