Conditions: Nebulous

Unfriendly Skies

So instead of quietly dropping the matter and conentrating on more sensible things, Amazon has pressed ahead with it's mad drone-based delivery system, putting out a video hosted by Jeremy Clarkson where the ins and outs of the new drones are gone over. And apparently the idea is to land deliveries into people's backyards.

The video shows the drone switching into “landing mode” and descending onto a “delivery zone” in the customer’s backyard. The drone releases the package onto what looks like a sheet of plastic with an Amazon logo. The larger the yard and the less tree cover, the easier the landing will be.

- washingtonpost.com

So how many homes actually have a large yard that one can land a drone in these days? I'm guessing that the majority of these drones are going to be flying over rich neighbourhoods, which if you think about the liklihood of people shooting these things out the sky in order to score some free stuff, probably makes sense. Nice for some.



Film Review: Sicario

Don’t trust the trailers! They tell you that this is going to be a super-fast action film about busting drug dealers in Mexico. It’s much more complicated than that. We start with Emily Blunt as part of an F.B.I taskforce trying to take on drug dealers. But we soon learn that the F.B.I is basically outmatched in the face of what the cartels are capable of. Enter Josh Brolin. He’s recruiting Emily to his team that is going to take the fight to the cartels. She’s a little unclear on the details (as are we) but anxious to make a difference in this fight. And so we are brought into the shadowy world of what the U.S is really doing to wage the war on drugs.

And ultimately, the news is not good. Many years ago, this kind of film would have featured a plucky young recruit who would fight the good fight, and end the film by arresting the bad guy. Clearly, we no longer live in that world. This film shows what the new thinking is when it comes to the war on drugs. Basically, it’s a war of attrition and abandoned standards. Josh Brolin drags us into the no-holds-barred world of chaos, disorder and anarchy being used to sow discord among the drug cartels, as apparently that is the last tactic left. And Emily becomes more and more discouraged by the whole thing.

Eventually things come to a head, as it was always going to do. Emily tries to stop what is happening, and that’s where the movie takes a dark turn off the already dark path it was on. And I must say, it’s refreshing to watch a movie like this and have no idea what’s going to happen, or even who is going to survive. This is an assured movie from director Denis Villeneuve, and it looks absolutely gorgeous. The leads are all brilliant, including a terrific turn from Benicio Del Toro playing a mercenary with a dark past. The whole film is dark, a grim hard dark tale about the escalation of the drug war, and it’s cost. Four corpses out of five.



Film Review: The Martian

I don't know if you can fairly say this is a return to form for Ridley Scott, I mean after all his disappointments are wonderful looking and brilliantly cast as well. The difference here is that the script is really tight as well. So the combination of Ridley directing the hell out of a film, and the film having a solid script to it (for once) results in a damn fine piece of entertainment. Matt Damon stars as an astronaut on Mars who gets left behind accidentally by the rest of the crew. He still has the habitat and rover that’s been left behind but without a radio to call Earth he has to rely on his skills and resilience to try and survive until the rescue mission can be sent. The movie settles down into a Nasa-themed life on mars, as Matt figures out how to grow a crop of potatoes, and how to use some old technology to establish communications with home. Meanwhile Nasa starts figuring out how they can launch another ship to bring him back.

In some ways I wish there was a bit more to it, some inter-character drama to mix things up, but the nature of the lone man lost story means it is what it is. Matt has his ups and downs while the main story appears to be how the various Nasa officials figure out the logistics of sending another mission back to Mars. Eventually the original crew are given the chance to go back and save Matt Damon and we get the big rescue sequence.

It’s a glorious-looking film, that revels in long sweeping shots of the mountains of Mars. Matt gets more and more thinner and worn out the longer the film lasts, and his joy in surviving the challenges that emerge is fun to share. The Nasa stuff is a necessary contrast to this version of Robinson Crusoe out there in space. Much like last year’s Gravity, this in the end is a little shallow, but here at least there’s a contrast in the story being told to help give it some depth. And it really works, getting that perspective change really helps the story work. Four potatoes out of five.



- Peace out