New Job

Well, with impending fatherdom getting ever closer I finally bit the bullet and joined a temping agency. I was getting absolutely nowhere applying for things myself and this lot have found me a job inside two days. True, it's a crap job (counting traffic) but it means regular income.

So far we had to endure almost 11 hours training. To press one from six buttons when a vehicle passes and every 15 minutes write down how many of each type you've recorded. Shows the state of the employment pool if that's what they think is needed. In fairness much of the time was spent sitting doing nothing and it included driving/walking to a couple of locations and 'having a go' so the second stint was better. Now I have a nice, yellow high-vis jacket. Does this mean I'm a worker now?

Announcer sacked over spoof messages - Yahoo! News

Announcer sacked over spoof messages - Yahoo! News

Shame on London Underground. I hope Equity are going to do something about her case.

DIY AT-AT Baby Stroller « The Official Star Wars Blog

DIY AT-AT Baby Stroller « The Official Star Wars Blog


WANT!WANT!WANT!

Review: Beowulf

Let's be honest, unless you're a serious scholar you have no more than the vaguest clue about the story of Beowulf. An Old English poem written practically before there was literature may be a great work, but it's totally impenetrable and utterly tedious as far as most of us are concerned. I've tried to read it several times and never got terribly far with it. So let's dismiss the criticism this film has suffered because of the 'liberties' it has taken with the original. The vast majority of the audience are never going to read it and if this keep s the tale alive and in the minds of a new audience then only good has been done. It's not like the mess Hollywood made of William Wallace's story which was a) history rather than legend and b) better in the original than in the adaptation. It will no doubt encourage a few to read the original, too, and that is even better.

It is, though, the film I am concerned with here and I find it as flawed as I do the source material.

There are points, such as the race with Breca, where the pace dips and the narrative flow is interrupted for no really good reason other than making an attempt to appease the 'stick to the source' faction. Without them it would be quite a bit shorter and much punchier. Despite some stunning sequences, some excellent vocal performances and a much more accessible version of the story it does still drag on a bit.

The animation is absolutely stunning, and that is not hyperbole. The level of detail on the characters is incredible, fight down to pores, flaws and little hairs growing out of the old men's noses & ears. Photorealistic is a term too often used to describe animation but this is actually there. At some points you won't be sure whether or not it is animation or film. The 3D is excellent and, apart from a smattering of the usual effect shots, is used to enhance the film rather than for cheap thrills. It never, though, feels like reality rather like being immersed in a really good computer game. It's never more than an animated feature (despite how real some of it can look), and that's down to how good we are at identifying fakery. The animation always suffers from the same flaws, even at this superlative level; Things just don't quite touch each other somehow, certain movements don't look right (Especially the horses for some reason. The fictional dragon seems to move more 'realistically' somehow.), hair and fur still aren't quite there
and eyes just never look alive. The latter is always the most telling and in addition to occasional lip-synch'ing problems are what keeps us actors safe for the time being.

The ability to age a character, have flawless makeups, and better creatures is the strongest argument for this kind of project and Beowulf uses all of them to its advantage and credit.

Ray Winstone, as fond as I am of the man as an actor, is wrong for this character. Perhaps it's because his voice is so distinctive and you know he doesn't look like that, but his voice from Beowulf's mouth just doesn't look right. It's like watching Jimmy Sommerville sing. Wrong. Perhaps it has to do with him having a totally different accent to everyone else in the film. True, he's meant to be from outside, but so are his men and he sounds different to them, too. Elements of the character are also rather unpleasant. Arrogant, rude and openly covetous of his host's wife this is likely just how such a hero would have been, but when added to the lies we see him tell it makes one wonder how much is boast and how much is reality. And what is all this fighting naked business? If he's going to do that why does he wear armour in the first place? Oh yeah, as an excuse to do a striptease. This is then followed by a, frankly, ludicrous sequence of objects being conveniently placed to block any view of his tackle that would have looked more at home in a sit-com. Considering it's his armour that saves him in the poem the whole nudity thing is just daft.

It also leads to a big continuity error.

Beowulf brings with him fourteen warriors as his crew and companions. In the poem one is killed by Grendel. Here Grendel kills at least five of them. After the battle Beowulf and his remaining crew are seen standing in front of the wrapped corpses. There are still thirteen members of his crew with him.

It's a big, bold, mostly exciting, novel and entertaining film. The 3D version makes it much, much better and where you have a choice is the only one to pick.

One more thing. It has a 12a certificate. It is not suitable for young children. Especially the sequences with the horribly deformed Grendel whose attacks are violent, brutal and gory. Yet another example of studio pressure overriding common sense for the sake of getting to a 'wider' audience.

Main Page - Dickipedia - A Wiki of Dicks

My kinda site.

Main Page - Dickipedia - A Wiki of Dicks

And, no, it's not quite what those of you with dirty minds are thinking.

Review: American Gangster

Biopic affair about a cop & the drug-dealing gangster he pursues and ultimately befriends, starring Russell Crowe, Denzel Washington and a whole cast of A & B list stars. Directed by Ridley Scott this is an at times leisurely, often brutal and always classy piece of celluloid. The period is captured well, the performances are fine if not electrifying and the story is captivating though lacking in any real depth.

For me, the trouble with this project is that it involved the real protagonists in the production. This is fair enough as it is their story and if you're playing someone it's good to have them around for research and reference. In the case of Frank Lucas, Denzel Washington's character, this means that a vicious, drug-dealing murderer who brought misery to the lives of thousands is given credibility and a sensitive treatment. Whilst the film doesn't shirk from showing some of his brutal excesses the effects on the lives blighted by him and his trade are not reflected. The female workers forced to cut & pack his drugs naked so they can't steal all seem very happy to be working for him, we don't see the damage he's causing nearly enough. There's one very clever sequence where we go from Lucas's Cosbyesque family Thanksgiving to the junkies shooting up and the squalor and misery of their lives. It's powerful and beautifully pitched. It's then followed up with Lucas having an altercation with one of his dealers who has been cutting the drugs too much giving a clear impression that it was this which caused the misery & damage & not anything Lucas was doing.

His 'redemption' at the end when his house of cards came tumbling down is pretty much also dealt with in one scene. Whilst it may be true that the dealer & the cop became friends the switch seems to be very easy. Surely having this man on the set and involved must have gained him an easier ride?

Crowe's character almost seems the usual cliche and if it wasn't for the historical content it could have been dismissed as such. Straight cop, shunned by other for being too honest, divorced, fighting to keep contact with his son, partner turned to drugs and killed by the product of the man he later hunts down, blah, blah, blah. But it was this guys life and stereotypes come about for a reason. Crowe is reputed to have requested tapes of Richie Roberts to get the voice right and Roberts has said he got the walk spot on. Sadly, the accent was shaky with moments of pure Australian creeping in. Not the worst I've heard, but Crowe can do much better.

Washington is clearly a powerful and talented actor. Sadly, I think he's becoming very lazy and it is hard to see the difference between this portrayal and most of the other characters he has played recently. Repetitive physical tricks, like the chewing gum when he wants to be angry, but controlled, the tilts of the head etc etc have all been seen before. Repeatedly. Denzel, you need to watch your DVDs and break some of these habits.

Worthy, watchable and witty in places there are a great many worse ways to spend some time. It would just have been better if you could give a stuff about any of them or there was any real sense of threat towards the hero.

Bloopers. Denzel's character buys a big mansion and moves his whole family into it. Apart from the fact that it doesn't appear to have a drive up to the door forcing the whole crowd to walk across the lawn where they've parked their smoking bangers the sequence of scenes is weird. The family arrive, then there's a big dinner scene and everyone's got changed. Then Denzel shows Mom to her bedroom. After they've been in the house for hours? Where did she change? Why does she act as if it's a surprise she has a room there? They all brought their belongings strapped to the back of their cars like the Clampetts at the start of Beverly Hillbillies.

BBC NEWS | Scotland | Glasgow, Lanarkshire and West | Bike sex man placed on probation

BBC NEWS | Scotland | Glasgow, Lanarkshire and West | Bike sex man placed on probation

I wonder what this guy rates on the Purity Test?

Seriously, though, why was he arrested for this never mind convicted? He was in the privacy of his own, locked room. Deviant and shocking as his behaviour may be to some (and I do actually include myself in that group) he wasn't harming anyone.

He should be appealing that decision.

FBI hunted terrorists by checking felafel sales in San Francisco - Boing Boing

FBI hunted terrorists by checking felafel sales in San Francisco - Boing Boing

Jesus wept...

Least Likely 2 Breed

Least Likely 2 Breed

Should I let Abby see this?

Maybe buy her some?

Passport incompetence

My passport's up for renewal and, as I'm off to Kyiv just before the baby's due, it had to be done early enough to sort out visas for a side-trip to Chernobyl. (I thought that glowing in the dark might make it easier for baby to recognise Daddy). So, rather than pay the post office to look at my form and send it in, I did it all myself. After all, it's only a renewal and there was little to do on the form. Before you go down that train of thought, I haven't got it wrong, but my passport is still not renewed after over two months and I got another call from them this morning telling me it still hasn't begun processing.

The first couple of times I didn't know why here was a hold up other than that they said my cheque was 'invalid'. I called after the first letter to ask why and was told that they couldn't say why, just that it had been rejected. So I wrote another and got the same response. This time I got a call from a manager telling me that it had been rejected because I had written it in Gaelic. The manager was rather apologetic as, she admitted, there was no legitimate reason to reject a cheque presented in this fashion. However, since they had rejected this one also could I please provide another? Since the postal strike was on I went into the office, suffered the near-strip-search they subject people to these days and stuck it - clearly marked with their own 'urgent' label into the box and left.

I got another call from the manager this morning asking why I hadn't sent them another cheque.

Not only that, but it turns out they still have my first cheque, haven't done anything to begin processing my passport. Why? Because they were waiting for the cheque.

At the moment the manager is 'trying' to get the original cheque onto the system, but this may not be possible as they have cancelled it. Surely I'm the only one who can cancel my cheques? Not only that, but why do they still have a cheque of mine which they rejected? It should have either been returned or destroyed.

Incompetent, careless, useless, time-serving, jobsworth prats.

Hitachi finger-vein scanner to replace car key News - PC Advisor

Hitachi finger-vein scanner to replace car key News - PC Advisor

Sounds like a great idea until you read that different fingers will be programmed for different functions. Makes you wonder which finger most people would programme for paying congestion/parking charges...

Best Laugh in Months

Once more George Bush made me laugh out loud. True, it was more ironic than usual, but a good laugh is always welcome.

This time it was watching him try to tell the world that Turkey had to seek a better option that sending troops into Iraq. He said Washington was

"making it clear to Turkey it is not in their interest to send more troops in... there is a better way to deal with the issue".

What a fucking hypocrite.

The best part was that you could see even he knew it. He was practically squirming. In a week when he vetoed $35 billion for sick children in America then requested $45 billion to continue the occupation of Iraq (That's about $14m per hour!), perhaps he was just thinking about how they might mess up their economy. America was never threatened by real terror attacks from Iraq, but Turkey actually is being attacked by Kurds from Iraq. Whatever the rights & wrongs of that situation they have a more defined 'right' to invade than the coalition ever did.

Pity he never thought to look for 'a better way to deal with the issue' when he started his own invasion and took the world one more step along the road to oblivion.

Review: Last Legion

It's good to see that Di Laurentis films are carrying on in the same style as always: crap.

True, it's the kind of crap I like, so it's not necessarily a bad description in relation to their films.

Usually.

In this case, thought I really can't make up my mind about it. It has a good, one might even say great, cast. They mostly do a pretty good job. The fights are excellent and it looks pretty good. Yet I just couldn't settle into it.

There is one big issue I have with this film that I must get out of the way from the beginning. Racism.

It is set during the fall of the Roman Empire to the Goths and supposedly explains the origin of Excalibur (and it sort of does, but I rather preferred the idea of it being a magical weapon bestowed upon the Pendragon line by the sithe, not a really good sword made from bits of an asteroid. That's just personal preference, though). Apparently it all happened rather quickly and around a few short battles. Many of the characters are said to be either Roman or Celtic and these good and noble races are depicted with cast members of all representatives of the latter playing Celts. Apart from Scots because they play the Goths and are played as uncouth, psychopathic, barbarians. For some reason, despite actually being Scottish, many of their accents sound fake. Go figure. Kevin McKidd has perpetrated this oddity in the past. When I first heard him in Grand Theft Auto I was shocked to discover that it actually was him it sounded so fake.

Yet, I'm ambivalent about the use of Scots as the bad guys. Hey, at least it made the villains a discrete racial unit and it meant that many Scots (the usual suspects, mind you) got work out of it.

Ashiwarya Rai is good in it, but - as with almost all women playing warriors - she's just not physically believable. As always her gender is disguised, but you can tell a mile off it's a woman. Frankly, she's just too elegant, beautiful and well-groomed to be believable as a warrior. She still has a really good manicure! And where did they get than standard roman leather breastplate with mouldings in it for her breasts? For that matter, where did the boots with rubber soles come from?

Much of the digital work, again, looks shoddy. I'm beginning to think that this is an artifact of HiDef as it surely can't be every effects house making the same look intentionally. In this case there are shots so badly out of focus they made my eyes cross!


Oh, and Hadrian's wall faces the wrong way. The side with the Roman defenders on it is the Pictish side.

Review: Stardust

With more imagination in five minutes than J.K. managed to give Harry Potter in the entire series this film is just a wonderful tale.

It tugs the heart-strings in the right places without ever becoming mawkish, it has thrilling fight scenes often done in ways you'd not expect to see them. It has modern morality right in amongst the fairy-tale elements and they all blend pretty-well seamlessly. The acting is excellent, the effects dramatic and the scripting sharp and witty.

See it.

Are there no problems for me to gripe about?

Of course there are!

Some of the digital backgrounds are piss-poor. The just don't blend well with the action and it looks like someone went far too heavily on the 'add noise' button in the editor. Ricky Gervais is every bit as tedious as he was at the Diana concert and having two in-jokes which were about as unsubtle as the man himself within the time his three minute first scene took was pathetically self-indulgent. I wonder who wrote them in?

That brings me to another gripe. To listen to many of the comments made about this film you'd think that Jane Goldman gave birth to it herself rather than doing (an admittedly excellent job of) the screenplay. It's a Neil Gaiman story and his imagination knows no bounds. I've not read Stardust but I shall certainly have a look. I have heard quite a lot of negativity about it, though. I'll let you know my totally unhumble opinion.

I'm Back

Finally got the PC sorted out.

Admittedly, since it went online last week, I've spent more time playing Lego Star Wars II than I have in reconfiguring the machine and getting on with the the work I need to do, but hey! I've not been able to game for two months. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

I've also missed a load of great stuff to blog on and I may get around to talking about some of it soon.

Ish.

PC

I've ordered the stuff, it's even arrived, and yet I'm still sitting in the library.

I've just not had a moment since the box arrived from Novatech. With any luck I'll at least get a look in it tonight. Trouble is, I've not had 5 minutes since the kit arrived. Teaching in Edinburgh all week, running around after the people-carrier and trying to get work has just left me without enough time to do it.

Oh! I've arsed up the order, having got a 256Mb model rather than a 512Mb version of the graphics card. Why the various iterations weren't listed on the same page, never mind beside each other I do not know. Their loss, though. The other one was a good deal dearer.

Eek!

Today, I had my 1st proper job interview in about 20 years.

The joys of impending fatherhood. Oh well, at least I'll finally have some money coming in on a regular basis. You'll notice that I'm confident enough in getting it...

Biggest problem is that, being for NHS24, I'll be providing 'out-of-hours' cover, so back to nights and holiday weekends and so on. Yet another reason I'm going to have to have driving lessons and buy a car. I knew having a baby was going to be dear, but I didn't realise that getting a job to fund having a baby was going to be so bloody expensive!

How Hard Can It Be?

The search for a new PC continues. I spent 2 hours in Hillhead Library with Cairnsie & still haven't ordered anything. It seems that most of the research I've done is pretty useless when it comes to actually doing the purchasing. All the websites that do bundles &c use their own codes for, especially, motherboards & memory.

If I wanted to go to the individual manufacturers & order separately I could get the components I've traced. Getting what I want in the combination I'd like from Novatech or Ebuyer is impossible. I can't even figure out what some of the pre-build places offer. This used to be sooo much easier!

Annoying!

Just realised I'd already done that last post. Sadly, I can't delete it as the button doesn't work on the PDA.

Boom!

Posting may well be limited for the next wee while as the new 2Gb memory stick I bought from eBay shorted out itself, the rest of my memory and the motherboard. So much for trying to save money and only upgrade a bit.

Well, at least I'll be back at the cutting edge of computing for a while. About a fortnight, probably.

Bugger!

Well, just when I had decided to save some dosh by upgrading rather than replacing my PC, the first components I bought blew it up.

A 'new' 2gb stick of DDR RAM shorted out, frying itself, the socket and the rest of the memory. No choice now but a full rebuild.

Great News!

I've had to keep this quiet for a while, but no longer.


Abby's pregnant!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah, I know; it's been a long time coming. In my defence I think Abby's employers have had a lot to do with that. The stress they've put her under for the past couple of years has been obscene. I'm sure that there's no surprise that the month after she went part-time she fell pregnant.

So, we're excited, thrilled and all those other good things. I'm also quite nervous and even a little sad. Not because of the baby, but I'm being somewhat selfish I suppose. It means I'm finally going to have to grow up and be responsible. It probably means an end to trying to make something of being an actor. The work's been far too scarce and I have now finally left it too late to do any time abroad looking for work.

I have, therefore, been looking for day jobs. Of course, having done nothing even remotely straight for years my CV is utter pants. I've already been refused for two jobs. Kinda like still being an actor really....

So, sometime around the end of March there'll be a new little person around to help buggerup the planet and probably one less actor.

Protestors at the Airport

Interesting that there are several protests against the expansion plans for Heathrow airport. One story and lots of links here:

BBC NEWS | UK | BAA wins Heathrow protesters ban

As far as I can see there are more things to be worrying us in the climate change debate. The evidence I've seen all points to air travel being only a minor contributor to the problem but even so, is this really the right time to be expanding our airline capabilities? Is a protest directly in and around the airport really a good idea? Given its likely status as a major terrorist target it has to be likely that such an ongoing disruption may cause security breaches.

Whichever side of this debate you come down on there's been one part of the reporting which instantly grabbed my attention. This was seeing just how quickly our police began threatening to use the anti-terror laws against our own citizens engaged in peaceful protest.

Again.

You know those laws which they swore blind that, if they were granted them, they would only use in emergencies and to protect us? That's right, the ones they've used in such circumstances as throwing an old man out of the Labour Party Conference for heckling, shutting down several protests against anything the government didn't want us kicking up a fuss about and, oh yes; shooting an innocent Brazilian seven times in the head whilst he was being held down.

Look, you can't blame the police for wanting stronger powers to combat the terrorists, but most people realise that what they had was pretty well enough already. The vast majority of the uses of these powers do seem to have been abuses. The fact that the vast majority of these abuses have centred around people engaged in legitimate protests or even debate within their own party tells me a lot about how the powers that be want us kept. Threatening people wiith these laws for wearing anti-government slogans on their t-shirts or confiscating placards, pens such materials just makes them look like the enemies of the people and not the protectors. Which is, after all, what they should be.

Review: Bourne Ultimatum

The third in the trilogy of movies reputed to be the reason the Bond series improved.

This was as truly excellent film. Matt Damon is utterly convincing as the amnesiac spy trying to get on with is life and to find out who did what to him and when. Sound a little confusing? So it is with Bourne's life. The double-dealing and paranoia rife within the agencies involved in creating and hunting him see to that. Who's on his side? Who's against him? For what is, essentially, a straightforward tale there are enough plot-twists and double-blinds to ensure that you're always engaged with the characters. Unlike the aforementioned Bond where the characters are only there to hang the action sequences on, this has characters you can actually care about and believe in. Heck, there isn't even a traditional villain. The 'bad' guys are all on the same side. The moral ambiguities of American foreign policy drive their actions and they are firmly in the 'end justifies the means' camp. Unlike in Bond where villains are bad because they're evil, these guys are evil because they want to do the right thing, but have lost sight of right & wrong. Very relevant in our tumultuous world.

But I'm making this sound like a heavy political polemic and that it most certainly is not. It is a high-octane, turbo-charged thriller. Although the characters have depth and feelings they do not block the flow of the film or slow the pace of its action. Director, Paul Greengrass, uses only the merest sketches of those more emotional scenes to show us what we need without succumbing to the temptation to become maudlin or self-indulgent. For a great example of this look for the scene where Bourne has his 'successor' at his mercy.

Allowing only the briefest pauses for breath the action is the best I have seen this year. Brutal, realistic and yet still cinematic enough to be thrilling. As a fight director myself I only wish I could work on sequences like these. Better yet, many of them take place in crowded, open, everyday locations. All of which serve to bring home the fact that spooks like these are operating amongst us, only without the fantastic skills.

The performances are uniformly excellent with no one letting the side down. All too often there will be one person who sticks out like a sore thumb due to being badly mis-cast or blatantly untalented. Happily, Greengrass & the Hubbards have assembled an excellent company down to the smallest roles.

Are there problems with the film? Yes; nothing is perfect.

The hand-held style - complete with whip-pans, shots too close to see what's happening and irritating zooms - is the chosen mode of shooting here. Yes, I find it as annoying as ever. I know it helps to pull the viewer into the action and to give a sense of immediacy, but it still drives me up the wall. It's not as bad as, say, Transformers but I really don't think it's needed. Personal tastes, here, so likely not a problem for many.

It has been a while since the last one, so the names,organisations and just who's who bandied around are a little confusing at times. Again, they fall into place as you go on and I daresay the fans will either know them by heart or have a look at the DVDs before going.

I have heard that, as with so many adaptations for screen, the script bears little resemblance to the novels. I don't know, but Robert Ludlum will not doubt be happy to hear that I intend to buy his books to find out.

Crooks and Liars » FOXNews Reporter: Who are you gonna believe? Me or my lying camera?

Crooks and Liars » FOXNews Reporter: Who are you gonna believe? Me or my lying camera?

The more I read these sites the more astounded I am that anyone still thinks this channel reports unbiased news.

How anyone can listen to the Iraqis in this report talk about how bad things are, see the amount of security required to get a reporter (in full battle armour no less) to make a safe report and still believe that policies in that beleaguered country are working is astounding to me.

It's So Funny Why We Don't Talk Any More

No, not a post about the cheesy Cliff Richards song, but about how my PDAs won't play nice.

My X50v started playing up a while back. It says it has sync'ed, I can install files and software, but Outlook information and Pocket Quicken stuff have stopped crossing the USB divide. The logs say they've done their job, but there's nothing being shared. Now, I reckon this was caused by me trying out Intellisync in a wasted attempt to get an online calendar talking to the PDA. Neither Google calendars or Yahoo! seem to have a sensible option so both were abandoned. Since reverting to Activesync 3.8 (AS) I've had all these troubles.

I then finally won an auction for a new X51v and thought that, since I knew I was going to have to upgrade to AS 4.5 that I'd just wait until it arrived. I had hoped that the new version of AS would solve the sync problem, but it hasn't. The 50v is still suffering the same troubles. The 51v has a load of its own!

It won't sync through my copy of Zonealarm free edition. (The 50 still does, oddly enough). I tried following the fix for it, but it refers to using settings not available in the free edition. With the firewall off it does seem to be sync'ing, but it's doing really odd things with some of my programmes.

Pocket Informant 5.2.1.0093 will not show any data, even though the appointments are on the machine. It also refuses to run Options, with the screen beginning to show then vanishing.

SPB's Powerlevel either vanishes completely or is unable to run several features the 50v can run. Like BT & IR business card sending. I think these are down to WM5 just being designed for phone edition machines, really and a lot of useful PDA-type stuff is gone; especially the 'New' button. So, I don't think I need any help with that.

But if anyone can advise me on how to get the sync working right with these machines I'd be eternally grateful.

Oh yeah! As if that wasn't enough, Firefox seems to be incompatible with the updater utility for flashing the ROM. Since it won't offer a choice to 'run from this location' as required. I need to figure out how to get the programme to run the updater without choosing Firefox to view its HTML.

If I had any hair I'd be tearing it out!

Glenn Greenwald - Salon

Glenn Greenwald - Salon

A very interesting article on how the media are going beyond propaganda and into out & out lying about the war in Iraq.

Great Videos

These are by the bloke who did that Citroen Transformers ad' I mentioned earlier. How coincidental that Boing Boing pointed me this way and answered some of my questions.

Now look what you did_Cigarette
Uploaded by nettouch


And a longer one.

A gentlemen's duel
Uploaded by nettouch

Bad bosses get promoted, not punished? - Yahoo! News

Bad bosses get promoted, not punished? - Yahoo! News


Yeah, like this was news!

Why Bother?

DVDs. So much better than VHS was and so many useful features. All that space on a disc. Usually filled with crap, mind you. If I never watch a 'making of' documentary again I reckon I'd learn as much more about films than I would if I watched a hundred. They are so pointless and dull.

What's more annoying about DVDs, though, is the control the disc can take of your player to make you watch stuff you never want to. Corporate logos, for example. Farscape is one bad example of that. You have to sit through about 8 corporate logos before you can watch an episode. The production company's, the authoring company's, the film company's, the original TV stations involved etc, etc. And you can't skip over any of the damned things. Or play them on fast forward.

Then there's the thrill of reading copyright warnings. In some cases in about every language on the planet. Multi-region discs with lazy encoders just trawl through the things for every region you might want to watch your disc in. Often these days that's backed up with a preachy film about how piracy is "A Bad Thing" and will result in another 9/11, the raping of your children and the end of civilisation as we know it. You can't skip of fast-forward that, either. Next comes the animated introduction to the menu, which some prat decided could be used as a marketing tool and classed as a 'special feature'.

Special, my arse!

All they do is add another 30 seconds loading time and anything up to two minutes watching the crap before you can begin the feature you actually bought the disc for and want to watch. At least these can usually be skipped over, but not always. And don't even get me started on trailers. The longer DVDs are on the market, the more of these irritating features are being foisted upon us. The copyright notice is probably the worst and most pointless.

It's illegal to copy or transmit any such material in pretty much every country in the world. The minute something has a copyright it's protected. Putting multiple versions of a piece of legalese on the screen for the amount of time it would take a three year old to read it doesn't make copying it any less legal. And those who were going to copy it and pirate it certainly aren't intimidated by it. All it does is annoy the rest of us.

These notices and logos were all on VHS tapes and we all just fast-forwarded through them. Did it make them any less legally binding? Of course it didn't. So why do we need to be hectored about them nowadays? Copying a VHS was a lot easier than copying a DVD is.

By the time you've waited through all this crap it can be easily 5 minutes. Much more if you've sat through half a dozen trailers. Maybe all you had time for was a quick episode of Scrubs before you went out. It's 25 minutes long.

So here's a request to the DVD producers:

Please stop telling us who you are and nagging us about both your future products and how butch you are in enforcing your rights. We don't care how big your nuts are or how high up the wall your pee reaches. We just want to watch the films for which you took our money. Pirates will steal your work regardless of what you say to the rest of us and usually have their discs out months before you do. If you must insist on these notices being present at least let us skip them. We know they're there and you can slap us on the wrist whether we've read them or not.

That rant's been coming for a long time. It was precipitated today by having 5 minutes spare time and watching Battlestar Galactica last night. Some twat has decided that the select episode feature will operate on a slideshow. This means you have to wait until the episode you want comes up on screen to press 'play'. Miss it and you have to wait until it comes around again. Whoever decided on that one needs to be shoved out the nearest airlock.

Darkside Ravings

I'm having a wee go with LiveJournal as I have a few mates on it. You can see it over here:

Darkside Ravings

petermorwood - RIP

My friend's mother died this morning. She was a great lady and, though I never met her more than briefly, she was such a character and I heard so many tales of her that I feel the loss quite keenly. My thoughts and sympathies are with Peter & his family.

petermorwood - RIP

Another damp patch on the year

Just back from the annual trip to Fort William Highland games and, yes, it pissed down on us all weekend.

Poor Stoney will have weeks of getting the gear sorted, dried & cleaned. And yet we still go there every damn year...

Review: Transformers

I've really been looking forward to this one. Which is a bit of a surprise as I couldn't be arsed with the original series. Trite morals, unimaginative scripts and cheap animation wrapped up in a huge advertising campaign just didn't, for some obscure reason, encourage me to watch it. Odd that...

My initial reaction to the idea of a 'live-action' version of this was "Oh no! That'll be crap." took its first hit when I saw the Renault? ads. That shows how good the campaign was, I remember the ad but not the model of car. Limitead as they probably were for some French car manufacturer's sales they did convince me completely that transforming robots in a real-life setting could be done believably. Then I saw the trailers and I thought "That looks like fun!"

Of course, by this time, the nay-sayers were panicking about the director being one Michael Bay. Let's be honest, both his producing and directing credits include some total turkeys. Pearl Harbour anyone? The likes of The Rock gave me hope, though. Yes, his work is totally overblown, generally shallow, and often patronising. He uses a LOT of product-placement. Oh! Wait. That sounds like just the guy for this job, then.

So, we went along (Yes, both of us as Abby was actually off!) and, as expected had a rip-roaring old time. It is everything those nay-sayers said it would be; overblown, self-indulgent and full of product placement. It is also fun, smart and much more grown-up that I thought it would ever be allowed to be, considering that it's still pretty much just a big commercial for the toys. One of my friends had taken her kids along and they absolutely loved it, as the bruises on my thigh will attest to how much the nearest one jumped and bounced in his seat. Finally, someone jumped and laughed more than Abby!

Are there negatives? Hey! It's me!

It has the corniest voice-over opening I've heard in years which, aprt from the cheese factor, manages to contradict the later script by claiming that the Transformers originated on 'The Cube' (Ah! They're Borg, then.) and not on Cybertron as is stated later. The script's full of holes like that. I mean, DefCon Delta? What was up with good-old DefCon One? Not Sci-Fi enough? The technobabble factor is off the scale. Megan Fox, though gorgeous is about as believable as a teenager as the cast of Happy Days (too much time in the sun, m'lady) and is definitely not someone you'd accuse of wearing a training bra. And the film reference in-jokes are often almost too obscure to notice. (Amongst others I spotted Terminator, Kill Bill & The Matrix)

Worst of all for an action movie is that the action is shot in such a way as to be almost incomprehensible. It becomes not only very hard to track what's going on, but which Transformer is involved. It's almost as if Mr Bay didn't trust the CGI to look good enough to be shown clearly in the fights. Perhaps this is the reason it all just starts to get a little dull. If you're lost and can't actually root for the good guy it's hard to stay involved. Of course, about 2/3rds of the way through it seems as if Mr Bay has enough of the story and just goes all out on the action and that means it goes on for a looong time. Sadly, it begins to feel like it and, again, it's mostly because it's poorly shot. This is a great pity, because the fights are brutal. None of that namby-pamby crap from the series. These are giant, heavy, armoured and armed killing machines. Bits get broken off, people die, buildings get flattened and, best of all, Furbys get blown to bits. Not sure that's quite how Hasbro wanted their products placed, but it made me laugh.

This could, and should have been a great action film. It misses the mark, but not by much. It is thrilling in places, just not enough, and it is great fun. As with most Hollywood actioners it requires brains be checked at the door for maximum viewing pleasure.

Afterwards ask yourself these questions:

1. Why does the Spark only seem to produce Decepticons?
2. Why is there an Australian student working for the NSA? (Rachael Taylor). And just what purpose does her character actually serve?
   
3. How did they manage to get an actor to play a character with a weird name who managed to have an even weirder name that his character? (Shia Saide LaBeouf)
4. After causing untold havoc in a VERY public fashion, what makes Optimus Prime think that the Autobots will be able to "[hide] in plain sight." and which American government would allow them to?
   

Simp ME

Simp ME, originally uploaded by targaid.

Fame at last! My 'appearance' in the Simpsons Movie.

If only it weren't nothing more than a mock-up.

Lousy Timing

Just as I get my feet cleared of all the junk that's been lying around here, mum gets offered free central heating replacement and I have to go clear all my Star Wars stuff out of the loft. So now I'm even worse off than I was before I started to tidy up!

Darnit!

Mind you, it's reminded me of stuff I'd forgotten I have and of how cool some of it is. I still really like the Y-Wing for the action figures, for instance.

Other than that, it's eBay once more.

Boing Boing: Senator Vitter’s "suppressed statement"

Boing Boing: Senator Vitter’s "suppressed statement"

This is really funny.

I have absolutely no clue who this seantor is, but I'm off to find out and to find out why he's getting the piss ripped out of him.

Simpsons Movie Embargo

I got my list of review films through the other day and it included what looked to be a fantastic day on Monday with both The Simpsons Movie and Transformers on the same day. Not only that, but Abby was off, too! This kind of miracle almost never happens. So, imagine my dismay when the following morning another mail comes through telling me that Fox have banned all but the print media from attending the screening.

When a company goes out of its way to stop reviews from getting out before launch it usually means that the film is utter pants. Now, I've seen trailers for The Simpsons and it looks rather good, so what's really at stake here? I mean, it's not like there are likely to be any big spoilers we can give away, is it? Even if there are, what's to stop a newspaper hack from posting a review on the paper's site or going onto his personal blog or logging into a site anonymously and doing just that, anyway? Are they somehow more trustworthy than I am? Apart from anything else, you can already buy the damn thing on DVD! Sometimes you just gotta respect the pirates ability to get their hands on things.

I'm trying to get beyond this because I want to see this film, but just know that the audiences for it will be filled with my worst nightmares. If I don't get along this will mean it'll be ages before I see it. If I even make it to a cinema.

***UPDATE***
Just as I posted this I got a mail from a colleague saying that the list has been extended to broadcast media. Apart from the fact that the Internet IS a broadcast media in many ways, it seems that it's discrimination against online reviewing. Why don't they want reviews on the net? Is this just some petty swipe at the net and against pirates? A lot of these suits have so little comprehension of computers, the Net & how they work that they seem to be unable to differentiate between legitimate workers and pirates illegally copying discs and file-sharing on them.

***UPDATE 2***

At the Transformers preview today I heard from quite a few journos who didn't get to go and quite a few who had decided not to go after the way many others were treated. This latter group cited friends of theirs who were invited to the London press screenings only to discover that all they were shown was 10 minutes of film.

How to get good reviews, boys!

And, no, I didn't get in and, no I probably shan't bother, either. Let's face it, it's no more than an extended episode and has nothing that makes seeing it in a cinema essential. That's not sour grapes, by the way, it's always been my attitude to going to the cinema. I want something to make it worthwhile getting off my lazy ass and spending all that money to sit with proles munching sweets and talking on phones. This doesn't qualify.

Change?

Speaking of change, is anyone else getting fed up with shop staff just not bothering to give small amounts of change?

For example, feeling a bit peckish the other day I went into KFC and ordered one of their mini-fillets. Just right for a quick bite and probably the healthiest way to eat fast-food. I handed over a £2 coin for this 99p munchie and was given a pound coin in return. When I asked for the penny you should have seen the look I got. Low-brow wage slave behind the counter then says "I've nae pennies." and turns his back.

Not a good way to deal with me.

"Then you'll have to give me a 2p, won't you?" says I. The glare in return for this one almost rivalled one of my own dirty looks, but since he wasn't able to outstare me he then made a big thing of asking the other cashiers for a penny. This is when it became apparent that none of the tills had them. So, is it company policy in the hope that no one will ask? Think about it, most of their products cost something and 99p. They'll see, at the very least 100s of customers every day. Multiply that worldwide and the amount to be, effectively, stolen from their customers is in the millions of pounds.

Don't let the bastards away with it!

When I got my change -practically flung at me - I made a point of very ostentatiously putting it in the charity box. I didn't need it and, had it been in a corner shop & they'd explained, that would probably have been fine. Probably wouldn't actually happen in such a place, mind you.

But that ignorant wee butt-fuck just got my back right up. If I hadn't been in a good mood it might have been calling the manager time.

Brass Neck

Wandering through town today I was approached by a bloke who muttered something at me. Asked to clarify himself he said "Help out a beggar?"

Bastard was listening to an i-pod, drinking a latte from Starbucks and had highlights in his hair.

Care to guess how much money he got?

First correct guess wins 10x that amount.

Review: Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix

Harry's latest cinematic outing is likely to be the biggest children's movie of the Summer. After Shrek the Third proved to be such a washout and FF4 proving to be rather less than fantastic it's left to the boy Wizard to take up the slack in the family movies department. He does it pretty well.

The Weasley brothers all steal the show, with the twins doing rather better out of it this time around than Rupert Grint. Imelda Staunton is perfection as Dolores Umbridge and shows Helena Bonham Carter how to do character without descending to caricature. Speaking of which, you'd think that Emma Watson could have developed some degree of subtlety by now. The girl seems only able to act with her, nonetheless impressive, eyebrows. When you see this count how many scenes she does before she manages not to look like she's trying to audition for a one of those period bodice-rippers. Here's a wee acting tip for you, hen; stop top-breathing.

Daniel Radcliffe does seem to have benefitted from his time in the West End and has settled into a much stronger performer, albeit still saddled with a dull character. The problem with being the hero is that you're usually just no fun. Normally there's a side-kick who has to have everything explained to him so the audience can get a handle on the situation. Ms Rowling decided to make the hero the outsider who has to have everything in the Wizardly world explained to him. Therefore he's not only dull, but stupid-seeming, too. You'd think by his fourth term he'd have got a better handle on the place by now.

The script, despite the tone of the book, is not as dark as the last installment and has pared the flabby text down considrably. This time around perhaps a little too much. The direction is competent and pacey, if not exactly inspired.

Then we come to the effects. Despite being done by ILM this film has been smitten with some of the shoddiest CGI I've seen in recent years. Hagrid's brother and the Centaurs being particularly poor. In the scene where Dolores Umbridge is carried off by the latter, her model looks like a doll, although, in fairness, that kind of movement is still very hard to depict believably.

In short, a fine, entertaining film which manages to rise above both its own failings and those of its source material.

BBC NEWS | UK | Are UK's imams modern enough?

BBC NEWS | UK | Are UK's imams modern enough?

Well worth reading and realted to the previous article.

There are many more issues than this, but it surely is an important factor?

Odd Brushes With Fame

LAst week we did a gig up at Urquarht Castle. Some years ago we also did the promotional video for the, then, new visitor centre and this was our 1st chance to see it.

The staff tell us that it was cut by about 15 minutes last year to get more touroids through the cinema. That must be where all the actual fights went. Not to mention all the footage from the full day we spent up in the hills.

What's weird is going in & having my image all over the place. Of course, it's been silhouetted, but I know who it is. I'm also on a range of fridge magnets, a badge and a notebook cover. All I need now is an action figure and I'll have the full set.

It would have been nice if they'd paid me for the use of my image, mind you. Or is that why it's all been silhouetted, perhaps?

BBC NEWS | Scotland | Glasgow and West | Hundreds attend anti-terror rally

BBC NEWS | Scotland | Glasgow and West | Hundreds attend anti-terror rally

Hear, Hear!

If I had known this was on, I'd have gone along. There wasn't nearly enough advance media coverage of this highly important event.

Hopefully this is why it wasn't terribly well attended, but it was a good start.

Shame on those who chose to participate in a sectarian march on the day this took place. Sectarianism is what is creating the world's most terrifying problems right now and it's time Glasgow stood up to its bigots in whichever shade they occur.

Tech troubles (again!)

My PC is a very sick puppy right now. It resets itself about every 5 minutes which is not only bad for the hardware, but has probably humped my Windows installation, too.

Doesn't take much to figure out why I christened the thing 'You Bastard', does it? I think it's more awkward than Pratchett's camel ever was.

*** Update***

Whilst disconnecting things to take the PC away today I noticed that there was an odd noise coming from the USB hub. It's disconnected at the moment and, so far, all's well. Apart from having run some checks & discovered that my secondary (larger) hard drive has begun to develop faults.

Glasgow Airport Attack

Warning! Contains some pretty foul language.

So, Tony & George's foreign policies have now brought the terrorist attacks to Glasgow. Can't say it's a big surprise.

I had a wee bet to myself to see just how long it would be on news reports before someone used the phrase 'fears of a backlash against Muslims' and even I underestimated it. Less than one minute into the first news report I saw. This morning I heard a call from a British Asian woman who had been stopped and searched by the police whilst driving in the vicinity of one of the attacks. By her own account the police were courteous, polite and even somewhat apologetic, yet she still claimed to have been traumatised by the incident. She said she was 'terrified' and left 'shaking' afterwards. By police officers who asked her permission for everything they did and were polite to her? How does she think those families at Glasgow Airport were left? Or the people who tried to help what they thought were victims of a car crash and who were attacked by terrorists?

Bashir Maan was quickly on TV condemning the attacks on behalf of Muslims, but as usual most of his comments were directed at making sure the rest of us don't blame his community. I agree that ordinary Muslims are every bit as outraged as the rest of us. I know that Moderate Islam is as contemptuous of these maniacs as the average Irishman was towards the paramilitaries operating from within their community. What doesn't help is when your representative thinks you're all doing your bit for national security by 'not listening' to the hate-mongers who attempted to spread their vileness in the mosques in Glasgow. Yep, that's right, the hard-line fanatics came to Glasgow and attempted to spread their hatred here. What did the Muslim community do? Asked them to leave the mosques.

Whilst I applaud that reaction, maybe the rest of us would feel more like they're doing something to counter this terrorism if they had called the police and had them arrested for spreading religious hatred.

The woman I mentioned earlier was complaining about how "all brown people are now suspects." Well, sorry, ma'am, but that's what happened to the Irish and to every group whose lunatic fringe began to attack the rest of society in this most cowardly and indiscriminate fashion. The biggest change in that perception of the Irish and, in my opinion, the biggest single contributing factor to the beginning of the peace process in Ireland was when two ordinary Irish mothers took a very public stance against the terrorists within their communities.

Until we see moderate Muslims do the same those outside the Islamic communities will continue to suspect them. All we see of our Muslim communities in Scotland is when they take to the streets in protest against something the UK government has done that they don't like. Maybe if they were as keen to take to the streets in protest (and I applaud their tendency to protest publicly and vocally as opposed to our apathy) at what is being done by fanatics in their name then the rest of us could feel that they are on our side.

In the meantime I got sent an email that shows the pragmatic way Scots deal with just about everything. Yes, it's mostly humorous, but again that's what we do here. If you're the type who's easily offended by humour related to actual incidents then don't read this. You should, though relate the humour to the actual quotes from witnesses listed at the end.

Eyewitness accounts.


American: "Oh my God! There was a man on fire! He was running about, I just ran for my life..I thought I was gonna die, he got so close to me."


Glaswegian "This cunt wis running aboot oan fire, so ah ran up n gave him a good boot, then decked him."


American:"I just wanna get home,away from here..I just wanna get home. I thought I was gonna die!"


Glaswegian: "Here Shug; ah'm no leavin' here tae ah'm oan a fuckin' plane!"


American: "There was pandemonium,people were running in all directions, we didn't know what was hapening. I thought I was gonna die!"


Glaswegian:"Fuck this fur a kerry oan; moan we'll get a pint in."


American: "We thought he was gonna blow us all up. He had a gas canister,and was trying to get into his trunk, I thought we were gonna die. I just ran for my life."


Glaswegian: "Ah swaggers by the motor that wis oan fire, and the dafty couldnae even open his boot! He wis in fire an a' so ah ran up an gave him a good boot to the baws."


American: There was this huge explosion, it sounded like war. I thought I was gonna die."


Glaswegian: "There wis this big bang, ye know? Like, when ye throw BO basher intae a fire? It wis like that."


American: "I'm too traumatised even to speak, I thought I was gonna die."


Glaswegian: "Here mate, gie's 2 minutes till ah phone ma auld dear, if am gauny be oan the telly ah waant her tae tape it"


Oh and if you want to hear a real hero have a look at www.johnsmeaton.com

Dirty Sasha 01

Dirty Sasha 01, originally uploaded by targaid.

My niece doing her best Harry Callahan impression.

She STILL got out early!

Paris Hilton left gaol yesterday. Her sentence was halved. Disgusting.

Worse: she's set to make millions from interviews about the experience.

I thought it was meant to be illegal to profit from the proceeds of crime?

Review: Die Hard 4.0

All you need to know about this sequel is whether or not it follows the template of its predecessors.
So...

• Yes; it features Bruce Willis as wisecracking Det. John McClane.
• Yes; it's stupidly, cartoonishly violent.
• Yes; it features thrilling stunts.
• Yes; there's a pantomime villain.
• Yes; there are incompetent senior officers getting in the way.
• Yes; a member of McClane's estranged family ends up involved in the action.
• Yes; it's full of plot-holes and absurdities.

In short, yes; fans will love it, the rest of us will be entertained.

In truth, the wisecrack quotient is down and those which are there aren't nearly as funny, the characters are weak cyphers to the point where you don't care what happens to any of them and - since the plot revolves around the American secret service getting its comeuppance for ignoring warnings - it's hard to not want the bad guys to win. Indeed, the Live Free or Die Hard title used in the States is dropped here, wisely, because of the jingoistic tone so sadly common over the Atlantic post 9/11.

Maggie Q is criminally underused, the bad guys are - as is becoming depressingly common in Hollywood flicks concerning terrorism - mostly French and Justin Long plays the same character he always does. If you can believe Warren P. Cheswick from Ed as a hacker extraordinaire he won't irritate the arse off you as he did me. The same goes for the depiction of all computer users as sci-fi obsessed geeks.

Check your brain at the door and enjoy the big bangs.

Clangers: Watch out for the abysmal lip-synch'ing in several scenes.

Review: Hostel 2

I've never seen the first of these films. I wasn't getting to press showings when it came out and I really wasn't interested enough in the theme to pay money to see it. However, I decided to see what all the fuss was about this time around. Having gone to the sequel I have to say that my opinions have not been changed, rather confirmed.

Now, before anyone says I had made up my mind before I went along, you may well be right, but I was prepared to be persuaded so I kept my mind open. If they had managed to make anything scary, disturbing or said anything about what might motivate someone to do the things done in this script it could have been forgiven. Despite excellent cinematography, sound design and surprisingly good acting I cannot even begin to recommend this reprehensible piece of dross.

The original, along with Saw and its sequels, have coined the new genre of torture porn and that is exactly what this is. Random people are kidnapped and sold to rich perverts to be tortured, humiliated and ultimately murdered. Unless you share the mental deviance of the idle rich who indulge their sick fantasies in these films there is no reason whatsoever to watch one. There is no tension, no drama and nothing to be gained from the experience other than a voyeuristic indulgence in watching twisted mutilation and depravity of the sort rarely indulged in by anyone outside of the Inquisition.

That porn' is becoming more mainstream is one thing and whatever your opinion on it, it is here to stay. The difference is that most of us have a healthy interest in sex and can relate in some way to watching beautiful people doing it for our entertainment. Human bodies are designed to be attractive to us. Ironically, those who suppress those desires and make sexual acts out to be depraved and dirty tend to be those who wander down the paths into sado-masochism. I do not refer here to the majority of modern SM players who indulge in a bit of spanking, bondage & nipple-clamping. For someone to develop a desire to inflict serious damage and or humiliation on a 'lover' it requires misogyny, a deep-rooted hatred of sex, one's own sexual desires and the other involved who 'makes' one feel these desires. Exactly the type fostered by the religious right. The more the Victorians publicly denied sex the more perverted they became in private. (Sweeping generalisation, I know but you get the drift.)

**Spoiler alert***
Given that Manhunt 2 has just been banned by the British Board of Film Classification, which condemned its “ unremitting bleakness and callousness of tone in a game context which constantly encourages visceral killing with exceptionally little alleviation or distancing,” and “sustained and cumulative casual sadism in the way in which these killings are committed and encouraged” why has this not met the same fate?

There is no redemption, no retribution upon the bad guys (with minor exceptions) and the only motivation for this film is to 'enjoy' the pain & humiliation of the characters. The only character to survive this slaughter-fest is - contrary to the usual rules of horror films where only the morally corrupt get killed - the only one with sufficient money to buy her way out, along the way killing the guy who 'bought' her. If the implication under usual horror rules is that the immoral will suffer retribution then the implication here is that only the wealthy will survive, possibly even that only they deserve to survive. Had they not made a point of killing off the sole survivor of the first film (twice - once in a dream & once for 'real') in the opening scenes then they could have avoided that accusation, but they didn't and money and power won out over determination to survive. The added implication is that the 'heroine' is not going to do anything to end the situation which saw her friends tortured to death and finishes up with her committing a 'shock' murder in the most obvious 'twist' I've seen since M. Night Shyamalan lost his originality to ego.

If society is reflected in what we allow to be seen in our entertainment media this muck makes me very worried indeed by the state of our society. In a culture where images of adults indulging in consensual, natural erotic behaviour is considered to be the very definition of a pornographic image (defined as 'likely to corrupt or deprave the viewer' rather than the more recently accepted 'designed to sexually arouse') and therefore subject to the strictest regulation, restriction and censure but this is considered to be fit for mainstream consumption what does that say about us? Nothing good, I'm afraid.

Remember, too that one of the supposedly strongest taboos remaining about porn' is depictions of sexual violence. This is about nothing else. Just because actual rape doesn't feature, don't think for one minute that sexual gratification is not what's on these characters' minds.

BBC NEWS | England | Merseyside | Game pulled over Bulger complaint

BBC NEWS | England | Merseyside | Game pulled over Bulger complaint

Why is this a big issue all of a sudden?

When I first heard the story this morning I was as annoyed by it as everyone else is at present, but having read the article I'm now more confused than anything else.

Yeah, yeah; I'm an insensitive moron etc, etc. My point here, though is that contrary to the way it's being reported the game does not show the video and does not make Jamie's abduction a part of the action. If I'm wrong about that, it's because I cannot find any reference in any of the articles about what connection the still has to the game.

Furthermore, since the game has been out for years why is this happening now? Or is it just that the white label version has just been released and this is stirring up some free advertising?

Daily Mail

We're just back from a weekend with the in-laws where I had the unfortunate experience of reading the Daily Mail. Several pages of Scotland-bashing at its worst.

This contemptible rag has always been discriminatory and inflammatory, with the emphasis on the last syllable. Last weekend they spent several pages whining about how NHS patients in Scotland can be prescribed drugs those in England can't. Apart from the fact that they seem to think the border somehow prevents people from each country living in the other and suffering the whims of the local NHS the articles were derogatory, factually inaccurate and divisive.

They imply that Scotland's NHS budget will increase because of the Executive's decision to prescribe these drugs. It won't. Scotland's NHS will have to find the money to fund these treatments from within their allocation. Why this becomes an excuse for such racist and unpleasant jock-bashing I can't quite comprehend. Surely, instead of bitching about how we've decided to use NHS money to save lives or improve the quality of life for some of our patients should be a cause for celebration? Or are we supposed to continue to spend the money on consultants & managers? I can see that people would be unhappy to be denied these drugs by their NHS, but that's an issue with how their MPs and local Trusts are running their local health boards, not with how Scotland is running hers.

Of course, these pathetic whinings are not printed in the Scottish version of the rag. Oh no, that might cost them readers. If they're going to have these opinions they should have the courage of their convictions and say them to our faces, not talk behind their hands. Have a mature debate about it and argue about what the real issues are, not this tripe. The more this kind of sludge is passed off as reasoned debate the more it makes the English look churlish and petulant. "If you're not playing by our rules we want our ball back." kind of thing.

Except it wasn't their ball in the first place.

The Hilton Shuffle

As Her Matchsticky returns to jail in California, crying & yelling for her mom, those of us who give a damn about law & order breathe a collective sigh of relief.

Nobody in their right mind believed the spoilt little brat when, on a red carpet hours before handing herself in, she avowed that she was going to face the music, use this as a positive experience and grow stronger from it.

When her own family doctor turned up, diagnosed her with a mystery medical condition condition which required her to be released from the holiday unit she was in to face a 'punishment' of 40 days grounded in her own luxury mansion, we all knew that this was a faithful family retainer or paid-off lackey working a flanker to get her out. Apparently, not only was she 'ill' but she was cold due to only having three blankets in her cell, had been crying and wasn't eating. Awww, diddums! I mean, it's not like she does much of the latter anyway!

This spoilt, talentless waste of oxygen thinks she's above the law. Her contempt for it was shown when she ignored her driving ban in the first place. How she could get time off for good behaviour when spotted still driving as she awaited sentence I never understood. So a thunderous roar of approval is due to her judge who, incensed at not being consulted on her even earlier release, has now returned her to jail to serve the rest of her full 45 day sentence. The only thing that could make me respect him even more is if he now insisted that she serve her term in the general population of a real prison.

I can bet you there will be some kind of addition to her 'reality' show where she & that other vacuous bimbo she works with go to jail, maybe with one of them as a warder. The morons who signed online petitions to 'free Paris' before she even went to jail would lap that up.

Legit

So, I've been and done the shoot for this. Can't say I was thrilled. It was clearly extra work despite being paid at proper Equity rates. Another example of being used as a cheap stunt man. Not as cheap as the poor extra they got to hit me with a bottle, right enough.

I'm fast coming to the conclusion that this fight-directing lark, although making me money, is hindering my acting career. This kind of job is bad enough, but with the stuff that happened on Rebus this season I'm beginning to think I should drop it altogether.

Lord Vader; Rise

I've managed to get myself a reasonably priced version of a Darth Vader costume on eBay. It's by Rubies and is listed as being the 'Supreme Edition'. Based around the Episode III version of the costume it has good and bad points, not the least of which is that it arrived damaged, with postage seriously over-charged and is now the subject of a Paypal dispute because the spanner who sold it doesn't think he's responsible for selling damaged goods. That, however, is a whole other entry. This one's about the costume. It's far from perfect, but most of my issues with the it stem from the fact that it's based on the Episode III incarnation and there were changes made to that I just don't like.

I've had a Vader costume for years having bought one from the marvelous Marco Enterprises (ME version) during the time when no-one was bothering to do stuff for fans. You know; back when collecting was fun, involved some effort and wasn't about how much money you could scalp for your items on eBay. It's not the best thing Marco made, but it did the job and looked good enough that I got a few personal appearance jobs out of it which paid for the costume. What I never got for it was a body-suit making do with leather trousers and a polo-neck. So when this came out I thought it might be nice to upgrade, especially as I had used the Don Post Studios version of the mask & helmet which were made far too small.

Helmet & Mask
That's the first good thing about the costume: the helmet is excellent. True, there's an odd mould shape on the top which undermines its quality and it is based on the Episode III version which has some issues of definition on the band which goes over the head. It still looks like Vader in ways that my old helmet just never managed.

There is an electronic breathing device built into the helmet. It has a very long wire to run down the sleeve and be stuck in the glove allowing the wearer to press the button and switch it on. You can't leave it on as it's a press-stud and stops the moment pressure is released which is a really bad idea. Finding a smooth button through a glove is going to be pretty hard but to have to hold it throughout the time it's worn is stupid as is mounting the speaker in the helmet. Why? Two reasons:

1. Your hearing is impaired enough as it is in there, having a sound effect running inside with you will effectively render the wearer deaf.

2. The wire from the helmet has to be run down the sleeve meaning that you're then attached to the helmet the entire time you're trying to don the outfit. The helmet has to be the last piece and the suit the 1st. To spend the whole time with the two connected is absurd. The sound unit should have been put inside the chest plate with one of the actual switches there used to activate it. This is how it's done on the ME unit.

Chest Armour/Shoulder Pauldrons
Thankfully, Rubies have now begun to articulate the shoulders rather than being a solid piece with the chest armour which is how it appears in the film and is how the ME version is made. That was fine for Hayden who wasn't moving much in it and didn't have to raise his arms. He also needed to be made broader which is why the armour sticks out about 2" past his shoulders on either side. It also means that the end pieces are silver rather than black as they appeared in all other films and have no sculpted detail on them. This is my biggest issue with this iteration of the costume. I know Hayden pleaded with George to be allowed to play the part, but they really should have done as they did originally and got someone to fill the suit rather than make a suit to fit the man. That decision meant that the armour had to be made wide and sadly all images appearing these days are based upon that suit.

All the rest of my problems with the suit are about build quality, or rather about the quality of materials used.

Rubies claim the following for the suit:

1. Heavy twill cloak.
2. Moulded leather codpiece.
3. Leather belt.

None of these are true.

The cloaks are lightweight cotton. A little back-lighting and they'll be see through. The main one also lacks the leather collar, but this may also be the case with the Episode III original. The chain is actually attached not to the cloak but to the chest armour with the cloak hooked to either end of that. This is a great idea as the cloak will not be able to slip around out of place. Sadly, the chain used is nothing like the original which isn't actually chain at all. It's rigid and hooks onto the chest in the centre.

Both belt and codpiece are made of synthetic materials stretched over a rigid foam base. In the case of the belt this doesn't even go all the way around as it becomes a thin, nylon belt half-way around. My ME costume came with a great heavy leather belt and a metal (Rubies' is plastic) buckle. Guess which I'll be using!

The shin-guards have been given a slip-on Lycra sock to hold them in place. Pretty rubbish if you've bought leather boots to wear with the costume. I'll make some other method up unless I decide to stick with the heavier fibreglass ones that came with the ME version.

The gloves stink. They're really lightweight synthetic leather and after only a few minutes in them I noticed that the gauntlet had folded down around my wrist.

Chest & Belt Boxes

They're not bad as such just not good. Again, much of the problem is being the RotS version. The chest panel is held in place with straps which run inside the suit rather than outside as they did in all other films. The writing on the panel (originally the phrase His Deeds shall not be forgiven until he merits in Hebrew, I believe) is missing, though likely that's the case from the original. Earlier versions had this in place. The bars down either side are plastic in this version and don't look quite right as they should be metal. The ME version has these in metal, but the rest of the mouldings aren't quite so hot. The belt boxes are also slightly better on the ME version for having metal fittings.



I mainly bought this costume for the helmet, the suit and the codpiece as my old one had deteriorated badly over the years. Searching eBay I found I could get the whole thing for about the same amount as these parts. In the long term the suit and the cloaks will have to be replaced with better-made versions, the gloves and belt have been scrapped and the shoulder pauldrons will require re-painting and detailing to make them look like the ESB version which is my preferred incarnation. The SFX module will be removed an put somewhere more sensible, if not replaced entirely.

Had I paid the full $1000 for which this suit originally retailed I'd be furious. It's not worth anywhere near that. I'm not sure it's even worth the £250 I paid for it. I'm not saying it's bad, and it'll impress the hell out of most casual onlookers, but it is certainly not 'Supreme'.

Episodes I-III

So I finally got around to buying the 'first' three Star Wars films on DVD. Quite a difference from how keen I was to get my hands on the original saga.

I was waiting for them to release a box-set of all six, but having bought the recent releases of the original trilogy to get the original release versions I thought I might as well take advantage of HMV's 3 for £20 offer. Let's be honest, there was no way I was going to pay £20 each for them, especially not the Flatulent Menace.

I'll find time over the next few weeks to see if my opinions change on them, but I can't see it really. I do believe they got a bit better as they went along. I still hate the end of Revenge of the Sith. Jar Jar Binks should be excised from history forever. What I did see in the extras I've watched on Sith is that most of the stuff that made Anakin & Padme's estrangement believable ended up on the cutting room floor.

George really hates all that story & character development crap, doesn't he?

What Goes Around Comes Around

Wonder how the fanatics who complain about the likes of Jerry Springer: The Opera will react to this:

Bible targeted in Hong Kong obscenity row - Yahoo! News UK

The story just goes to show that anyone can find offence in anything if they look hard enough.

Review: Zodiac

Following the events surrounding the pursuit of the notorious 'Zodiac' killer in 1970s California this film concentrates as much on the lives of those involved as it does on the hunt itself.
As such this means that it is not sensationalist, voyeuristic or insensitive. Of the murders shown onscreen they are cold, brutal and very realistic. Human beings are rather tough creatures and being stabbed or shot once or twice rarely kills them as it does in most movies. This creep's victims suffer and many survive and that makes them more disturbing to watch than any gore-splattered slasher flick.

Actually, this is closer to a drama-documentary than it is to most run-of-the-mill cinema and has much in common with the likes of United 93 in look and tone. The main difference being a stellar cast giving credible, if all-too familiar performances throughout. Robert Downey jr reprises the kooky, alcoholic junkie once more and one wonders if it's his masochism or the crass insensitivity of the casting system that considers it wise to put a recovering addict in this role. A thought; are they just banking on it not mattering if he falls off the wagon again by casting him in roles where he could turn up as pissed as a fart and just be thought to be acting his ass off?

Even if the latter is the case then one wonders what Jake Gyllenhaal's excuse is for playing Peter Parker? Hell, apart from the lack of red jammies and being a cartoonist rather than a photographer there's not much light shining through the gap between these characters. Or is he auditioning to be Tobey Maguire's replacement?

Oh, and what's with the wig on Anthony Green? He's the spitting image of Kevin Costner in it and that can't be at all helpful for his career these days!

As for the film itself, it's far too long, too waffly and suffers badly from having no central protagonist. It's meant to be Jake Gyllenhall, but as he spends the initial 2/3rds of the film bumbling around in the background, it's hard to relate to him. Characters bow out of the story with hardly a mention and are not really noticed once they've gone. With no resolution, no threat and no tension the film suffers badly and, quite frankly, should have been a made-for-telly drama/documentary. Without the 'character development' it would have been 40 minutes quicker and all the better for it. It doesn't help that this is a story whose main impact outside of the US was in being used as the loose basis for the first Dirty Harry film. It, at least, had tension and pace.

This is getting rave reviews. God knows why as by the final reel you'll be begging for the Zodiac Killer to just get them all so you can get up and get some feeling back into your ass.