Tuesday, February 12, 2008

UK Law

Two lovely examples of why UK law manages to bugger up everyday life for the ordinary folk.

A couple of days ago we heard the quite scary story of how a North Sea oil platform was being evacuated due to a security scare. If Al Qaida could manage to organise an attack on such a facility I'd be much more worried about them than I am now. Then it turns out it was all a panic caused by a 23 year-old woman who worked on the thing having said she'd had a dream about there being a bomb on board. From what I've read this lead to a series of Chinese Whispers which created a panic. Almost funny until you then hear that the woman has been arrested, is being charged with breach of the peace and has been sent to a secure mental unit for 'evaluation'.

All because she had a bad dream and the folk who overheard her discuss it paniced and are now embarrassed by their over-reaction and waste of, reputedly, £1,000,000 in costs for the evacuation.

Case two sees a man who was attacked whilst sitting in his car by thug wielding a knife and a baton get three years for driving over him. Anyone stupid enough to attack someone who is sitting in a car takes the risk of getting run over whilst said person tries to escape. As long as he didn't back up for another go there should be no case to answer here.

I despair.

Review: Jumper

Hayden Christiansen playing a teenager with superpowers, now where have I seen that before?

Well, anyway, the point of this is to tell you if it's any good or not. Put succinctly, it is. True, it's not great, but it is fun, has well-executed effects, good action sequences, pretty protagonists and a good villain in Samuel L. Jackson. It's kind of like an Essex Girl, this movie. ie Easy to get into, pretty forgettable and none the worse or less entertaining for it.

Hayden does little different here than he does in his two Star Wars films, but it works well enough and the supporting cast do an admirable job. Annasophia (didn't that used to be two names not so long ago?) Robb outshines them all in a cameo as the younger version of the love interest, as she is beginning to do in all her appearances. Definitely a major talent developing there.

None of the characters die and there's a minor plot-twist/revelation that looks like it might make a meatier sequel and I hope it gets one. For some reason they felt the need to give Diane Lane pretty obvious blue-tinted contacts over her brown eyes. I guess they thought she needed to have the same eye colour as her son. Shame it didn't cross their mind to do the same for AnnaSophia, as her eyes are blue and Rachel Bilson's are very dark brown. Guess that didn't matter so much to the film makers...