Movie Reviews

OK, time to give my usual ranting a break and blog something easy on the brain. So, i'm a movie fan, i go to the movies about once/twice a week, generally with my small and cute girlfriend Claire. Here are my thoughts on some of the flicks i've seen recently.

1) Stealth. Bad news first. This movie sucks so much that it puts dyson vacuum cleaners to shame. To say it is poo is to denigrate poo. Its like top gun, if top gun were made 20 years later. Characters: one white boy, all american hero type, square jaw, zero talent, crap. One black guy, all "i'm proud blakc american made it to the top, blah blah blah", crap. One foxy lady, all "i'm a woman and have to be twice as good as the guys, its a mans game but i made it, blah, blah, blah", crap. Its not that the characters aren't diverse, its that they're so blandly, predictably diverse. Plot: well meaning but foolish command places an AI in a plane instead of a pilot, complete with obligatory "calm yet creepy" voice. AI predictably gets struck by lightning. Goes insane and starts killing everything. Eventually recognises the right course to follow and saves day. Just for once could we have an AI that does not a) go insane or b) have to follow its grisly programming and kill everyone.
So, lots of explosions, pretty people and a script with all the depth and character of McDonalds.
Overall Rating: Crap 1/5

2. Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit. Sheer genius. Gromit is as lovable as ever. Wallace is pleasantly mad as are all the villagers. The bunnies are hugely cute and cuddly. The story is blissfully simple and yet you laugh all the way through. Its hard to write a long review about it really as it was so good. You knew exactly what to expect and you got exactly that, and it was good.
Overall Rating: Comforting 5/5

3. Nightwatch. Dark and scary, reminds me of the gritty 80's vampire movies, all decaying cities and tramp like supernaturals kicking the shit out of each other across the centuries. Disturbing and enthralling at the same time. The story was good but clearly needs a sequel to finish the plot off, i hate open endings. The main character was good and the good vs evil stuff was ambiguous enough to make you think.
Overall Rating: Spooky 4/5

4. Serenity. I love Firefly, i thought it was a great series, funny without being ridiculous, cowboy without being cliche, sci-fi without being techno-geek. The characters are amazing. Mal as captain is kinda fun but with iron resolve and has great one liners. Zoe is sassy and well 'ard but also totally in love with her dorky husband Wash, who himself loves Zoe and the ship and flying and little else. Kaylee is just hugely cute, although this didn't come across quite as well in the film as the series. Jayne is pleasantly violent without really having a malicious bone in his body, just very mercenary. The movie rocked, Reavers are just about the scariest things ever, even more so for the fact that they are basically humans, the agent was suitably determined and philosophical about himself and his job, Shepherd Book was suitably mysterious as usual. The movie has some shocking plot twists for fans of the series, which i won't give away here. River also gets her usual excellent lines. Particularly after the chase near the start, where after the explosions and gun fire her only comment is "I swallowed a bug".
Overall Rating: Awesome, how sci-fi should be done, 5/5

5. Deuce Bigalow:European Gigalow. Yeah its low brow humour, yeah the jokes are obvious and tasteless, yeah the plot is non-existent, yeah its crude, rude and generally offensive but i still laughed my arse off the while way through. Some of the jokes have you laughing to stop yourself grimacing, like the russian she-john with the penis for a nose, especially where she starts sneezing. Not a good film to see if you are at all easily offended. Very good film to see if you can manage to stoop to such comedy lows (i can).
Overall Rating: cringingly hilarious 3/5

Tune in next week for more of Oli's movie reviews!

Environmental

Ok, the Environment. We all live in it. We all have to breath the same air and drink the same water. We have to walk the same streets and go to the same beaches. Why then do some people have such a blatant disregard for the environment, both locally and globally.

There are some incredibly easy steps you can take to making your life more environmentally friendly. If we could just get more people to do them truly vast amounts of energy could be saved and truly vast amounts of litter, garbage and destruction could be cut.

Here are my five TOP TIPS TO SAVE THE WORLD!

1) get your office to switch over to recycled paper. Only buy recycled paper for your own use. Greater demand for recycled paper will mean more companies selling it, more paper saved from landfills, cheaper prices due to competition and less trees hacked down. Modern recycled paper is good quality and you really won't notice the difference from normal paper.

2) leave the car at home. For short journeys walk. For longer journeys see if there is a public transport route you can take. I'm not saying no one should drive, many people don't live/work in suitable locations. But if you live innercity and you work innercity, its probably as cheap and as quick for you to take public transport. Doing so cuts down on fuel use and wear and tear on your car which is a) cheaper for you and, b) better for the environment. Where public transport isn't an option see if there is anyone you can share a car with, carpooling is easy and cheaper for all involved. Plus it beats trying to find and pay for parking in town. As an added bonus, less vehicles on the road means less pollution, especially innercity which means health benefits for all.

3) turn the heating off. Some people leave their heating on all the time or turn in on when they get home and then leave it. Try running your heater for 1 hour and then turning it off. Put on a jumper or hoody, find the draughty areas in your house and plug them with draught excluders and curtains. Your energy bills will plummet i promise. And as a bonus, you help the environment by less burning of fossil fuels and less heat wastage.

4) Recycle. Google recycling find out where your local recycling bins are and what services there are. Where i live they will give you a free wheely bin for paper and glass. all you have to do is fill them up. Its such a little thing that can really help. Ask your office manager to get a recycling service set up. Don't skip old electronics, send them to a recycler, it'll cost the price of a stamp. Recycling means less strip mining for ores to make the metals/plastics/whatever in your goods, less energy to refine them and less waste when they are thrown away.

5) Conserve. Reduce your actual consumption. Buy music online where you can (no CD's, no cases, no transport costs, etc), check out charity shops every now and then (some good bargains and everything in them is basically recycled), buy food in bulk to reduce packaging (say 20 frozen chicken breasts rather than 10 lots of 2 spread out over the weeks). little things like this make a huge difference.

In fact that last sentence should be the catch-phrase of the environmental movement.

"little things can make a huge difference"

As an example. Lets say my house hold (3 guys) chucks away 2 beer bottles each a week (a figure i plucked out the air). Thats 6 bottles a week. Or 312 bottles a year. Now lets assume that (another random figure) there are 10,000 households like ours throughout the UK. Its most likely way, way more than that. But even with that low figure, we are now looking at 3,120,000 bottles a year. Thats a lot of bottles, from only 2 a week from a light drinker. Now how much do we get if we add in the bottles from families that have a bottle of wine once a week? Or where real boozers live?

If we re-cycled ONLY glass, its obvious from my uberfuzzy study that we would be saving ourselves enormous amounts of landfill, enormous amounts of energy (its easier to recycle than make bottles) and enormous amounts of money (cheaper too).

Now add in the cardboard you food is packed in. The paper your newspaper is made of. You see where this is going. Yet on the individual scale its so very easy to do. You don't even have to be perfect about it. It doesn't matter if 1 beer bottle a week gets in the normal trash by accident, if the other 5 are in the recycled bin its going to make a difference.

So, faithful readers (all three of you), your mission should you choose to accept it. Put into operation at least 1 of the above. If you already do more than 3, give yourself a pat on the back for being cool.

Computer Games

I am a computergame junkie. This is neither contestable or even that bad. To say i am addicted is reasonable. If i spent as much time boozing as i do playing games, i would not be an acoholic, i would be dead.

I tend to fixate on one (or a small handful) of games at a time and i'm VERY picky about what i'l play. Firstly, it has to be on PC. I'm not a fan of the instant gratification of most console games. The sole exception to this is beat-'em-ups which as a rule, don't come out on PC. Secondly, it has to be intelligent. Although i bought Doom 3 it didn't hold my attention. Half life 2 and Deus Ex however did (although not Deus Ex 2, that sucked. Dumbed down for the console market). I like strategy, roleplaying and MMORP games.

Current favourites are:

World of Warcraft - Where i have 2 characters, Obould the Orc and Vardigan the Undead Warlock. Saying that this games sucks hours of your life is like saying the ocean has some water in it. Vast understatement. The real joy of Warcraft is in exploring. The game is truly beautiful in a cartoony gothic kind of way. The regions are so varied too, you can run on the savanah of the Barrens, climb the Stonetalon mountains, Go Swimming near Fenris Isle, fish for Mudsnappers off the coast of Durotar, take a zeppelin across the continent to the festering jungles of Stranglethorn Vale, run across the blasted wasteland that is Desolace, hunt werewolves through Silverpine, the list goes on and on. And i haven't even been to a lot of areas or played on entire half of the game (as i only play hoard at present).

EVE online - Just amazing. You start as a basic pilot with a small space frigate and are let lose in a galaxy of corporations, battling empires and capitalistic greed (which generally i'm against but is fun in a game). Players join corporations (or found their own) for mutual protection and profit and then go off and make their fortune. To make money you could try trading goods (buy low, move goods, sell high) , be a courier (transport goods for others for commision), become a bounty hunter (hunting NPC pirates and player criminals for cash), become a miner (and mine asteriod fields for the juicy minerals they give up), become an industrial tycoon (making things people want from the aformentioned minerals using factories) or any of the above. The game is so vast and the possibilities are endless. My corporation, the Spartan Elite, are a mining corp with very strong views on mutual defense and looking after our own. We are currently trying to build a POS (player owned station) in a risky sector which will allow us to mine very lucrative areas. I personally support myself with a combination of pirate hunting and mining. When i want something made it trade cash or minerals for the good which is made by someone else, generally someone in my guild. Plus, flying around in space ships, blasting pirates apart is just cool.

Dawn of War - Excellent RTS (Real time strategy). I'm a strategy freak but i have strong defensive tendencies. I only like to attack once i have overwhelming force so my battle plans tend to revolve around self defense until i can muster a big force to crush my foe. This doesn't work in Dawn of War. If you do that the enemy will just control more resource points than you and simply out produce you, leading to your messy demise. You have to fight the computer all the way. One of the best games i have ever played (of anything) was with three human players (me and 2 mates) versus 4 computer players. It took three hours and was DAMN HARD. We fought tooth and nail and eventually beat back the computer and destroyed their bases. After we won we just looked at each other and kinda went "wow". It was that tense.

Theres been a lot of negative press about computer games recently. The standard "Corruption of youth thing" that gets aired every 10 years or so. People tend to focus on Manhunt and GTA and ignore all the amazing games like Deus Ex and Knights of the Old Republic (i actually cried out "NOOOOOOO!" when the plot twist happened it was that good). I think some ofthese games are approaching art forms just like movies are. Games can make you scared, angry, happy, tense, nervous, satisfied and peaceful, they can hook you up with players all over the world (example, some of my Corp mates in EVE are based in the states). And the some pitiful hack like Jack Thompson comes along and says to the World "Video games are evil!". Of course he hasn't played Eve, or Warcraft, or Deus Ex, or Knights of the old republic or Baldurs Gate or Torment. No, he hasn't even payed attention to the 18 stickers on Manhunt or GTA. Nope, he just says Video games are evil. What an arsehole.

God

More Musings.

I am very much an atheist. I have almost zero belief in the supernatural. What little belief there is i reckon is stuff science has simply not got around to explaining yet.

One of the big differences between atheism and theism is the desire to explain something. Atheism in general and science in particular wants to explain everything, but when it finds itself unable to do so, or when an atheist or scientist doesn't know something, they are quite content to say "I don't know".

Theist on the other hand have their handy "A wizard did it" excuse. Namely, god.

Classic example is the beginning of the universe. There is no scientific theory at present that explains the beggining of time and space. There is a generally accepted hypothesis which it is acknowledged has a few grey areas, but no solid theory.

Theism however simply says "God made it" and thats fine for them.

If they kept it to themselves and didn't force it on others then i'd have no problem with this. However religion has a habit of forcing their ideas on others. Even in the field of science. Look at Galileo for instance.

Religion should be a personal thing. It shouldn't be something that you use to force others to act in the ways you want.

So, in no particular order, here are my top ten "religion is a blight on mankind areas of the day"

1. Intelligent design. Creationism with longer words. This is NOT science. Teach it in RE classes if you must but it is not science. In science we tak a hypothesis and then test it and expose the idea to rigorous examination and testing from our scientific peers. Creati...sorry, intelligent design, proposes no hypothesis or detail. It just says "life is too complex to occur naturally (without trying to prove this of course), therefore god did it." Small surprise that intelligent design base camp is in Kansas at present.

2. Islamic Jihads. Just fuck off you arseholes. I mean really! I can totally see the cultural grudges against the persistent meddling by the West in Muslim countries as justification ill feeling but sort your own house before coming to sort ours. Many of the Muslim countries in the world are some of the most corrupt, dictatorial and vile regimes on Earth. Sort your own house and take out the trash, then come to the UN and demand your due from the west.

3. Herr Ratzinger/Pope Benedic 16th. How the Roman Catholic church is still in existence except as a historical curiosity is beyond me. And Rattzinger, "Gods Pitbull" has taken the church back into politics in a MAJOR way. His frocked minions are now interfering in both Spanish and Italien politics. If you remember, thats what started the reformation and the whole protestant movement in the first place. Church meddling in the secular world. This guy also pisses me off for his stance on abortion, contraception and homosexuals. Let me get this straight. God prefers that we raise children in poverty and need with mothers that could be totally incapable of raising a child, rather than aborting the fetus while it is still a pin head sized ball of cells? God prefers that sexual disease and teenage pregnancy spread rather than deny a sperm to merge with an egg? God prefers that people BORN GAY should repress it and be hated and outcast rather than having the chance to marry and live as equals to straight people. Fuck off Rattzinger.

4. Door to Door christians. I actually love these folks but i can understand why many people don't. I particularly like talking to them about leviticus. Once you ask them to defend slavery, stoning people for shaving their beard, wearing cotton/polyester blend clothing/eating shellfish they start to act a bit embarassed. Silly sods.

5. Televangelists. We don't really get these guys over here, its more of an American thing. Of course. What right minded person seriously sends these scum money? I mean, have you seen how rich some of these guys are? Pat Robertson is a billionaire for dogs sake! And corrupt? man, some of these guys put the Italien government to shame.

6. Religious politicians. Tony Blair and George W Bush both are Christian, Bush insanely so. Both have final say on the deployment of nuclear weapons. Bush certainly believes the bible literally, including the fire and brimstone ending bit. Which he can make reality with nukes. Scary no? Would you elect people to such offices who claimed they had an invisible friend called Ted who told them what to do? Of course not, but its ok if your imaginary friend is called Jesus.

7. Stem Cell Research. Genetic stem cell research has the potential to cure many of mankinds woes and lead to further technologies that may go even further. And people want to stop this why? I do not recall Christ or Muhammed ever mentioning the hell that awaits genetic scientists. What chapter was that in? What particular line? Base superstition fuelled by pseudo-religious nonsense conspires to scupper key scientific research, its madness.

8. Sex scandals. Its a no brainer. You get a guy when he is young and virile, say 19/20. He takes orders and vows and swears never to have sex. Even masturbation is dubious. You then put him in a position of stress and public responsibility where a good shagging every now and then would help let off some steam and you are SURPRISED when after 30 years he turns out to be a twisted sexual deviant. Of course he is. He has been repressing perfectly natural human desires for 30 years. I get twitchy after a fortnight of no sex, let alone 30 years.

9. Rational thought. People who believe in religion or god or something along those lines stop thinking at some point along the way. Even the smallest glimpse into history regarding the bible will show you so many translation errors and so many cases of early christianity ripping off other religions (Judaism obviously, Mithraism, Cult of Osiris, Dionysus, etc), and so many excluded gospels and so many early councils among largely forgotten men who selected and edited the first bibles that its obvious the "divinely inspired holy book" is a load of tripe. And if you don't base your views on the bible? what are you basing them on? a gut feeling? Thats gas you muppet, not the divine spirit. Great example, Hell. No such place in the original bible. Strange but true. There are three different hells in the original greek version. Tartarus, Hades and Gehenna. the first is where naughty angels go, and there is no bit about people going there. The second is a place where you sleep for eternity (doesn't sound so bad) and the third is a real life valley outside Jerusalem where the bodies of the dead will be burnt after the end of the world. Most of the other world religions are the same, they all draw from existing religions, change a bit here, a bit there. Its so clear that religions are MAN MADE that i can't understand how people think otherwise.

10. History. Similar to No. 9. People today (pagans aside) don't believe in Thor or Odin or Zeus or Hades or Set or Osiris or Mithras or. . . . . . you get it i'm sure. Indeed talk to a follower of an abramic faith and they'll perhaps chuckle about such gods, mostly cartoonish characters with big beards. And yet they totally fail to see how their own god is most definately included in the same crowd. They'll say something like "hahaha, of course those gods were inventions of man made to explain things we didn't understand like lightening or the suns passage through the sky. No, they are false gods, we know all about storms and the orbit of the earth now. No, my god is the real god. My god explains how life started and what happens when we die." They can't see the similarities between the gods of old and their own bearded super-dude.

Been Reading politics lots recently. American politics mainly. Strangely i can tell you far more about American politics than I can about British politics.

Anyway, here is my current politic belief structure expressed as bios for the main players in Yank and Brit politics.

Yanks first

Bush = Chimp (vile and evil)
Cheney = Vile Evil corporate Facist
Rumsfield = Vile evil career warmonger
Condi Rice = Vile evil neo-con bitch
Colin Powell = has lost whatever honour he once had by whoring himself and lying. Shame on you Colin.
Paul Wolfowitz = lives in his own little "happy neo con" dream world, oh, and runs the World Bank, bad call i feel
Doug Feith = in the words of General Tommy Franks "the dumbest fucking guy on earth"
General Tommy Franks = Shameless war whore. Should have stood up and told the people the truth
Senator McCain = The last best hope for Republicans everywhere
Senator John Kerry = Herman Munster, the least appealing presidential candidate since Bush
Senator Barack Obama = The last, best hope for the Dems
Howard Dean = I don't agree with him on some stuff but i admire his integrity and energy
Tom Delay = Hopefully about to end up in the slammer where i can only hope he makes the aquaintance of large burly men looking to make him their lady.
Judge Roberts = Has warm squishy bananas in his pants (hat tip to Bill Maher)

Overall Assessment = A corporate system to extract money out of citizens and spend it on villas and jets. Institutionalised bribery and endemic corruption. Anyone not a millionaire voting for the Rethuglicans is a moron, any millionaire voting for them is a heartless bastard.


Time for the Brits

Tony Blair = Lying machiavellian bastard
John Prescott = hahahahahahaha
David Blunkett = Corrupt Fascist
Charles Clarke = Blunkett but fatter
Mo Mowlam = Awesome, why did she have to die
Robin Cook = Gimp, but at least he had the courage of his convictions, shouldn't have died
Peter Mandelson = Lying machiavellian bastard
Alastair Campbell = Lying machiavellian bastard
Sir Ian Blair = Keep your nose out of politics you Fucking Hack and do your job (or resign, that'd be good too)
Ruth Kelly = Destroying the school system
Alistar Darling = Gimp, privatising the railways didn't work so he throws more cash at them, also totally fails to promote car sharing, bike riding or walking in any meaningful way
Ken "Red Ken" Livingstone = Best politician in the Labour party. Red Ken for Prime Minister!

Opposition
Michael Howard = Pantomine Dracula
Ken Clarke = see John Prescott
David Davies = Facist
Oliver Letwin = Inexcusible gimp
Charles Kennedy = Britains best hope at present (sadly)

Over all assessment = Corrupt bunch of Machiavelli's who answer to the beck and call of private companies. Tory's in the worst sense of the word in both parties. Lib Dems tell the truth as it is because they don't have a hope of winning. Yet. Every Election they get stronger. Hopefully once they get power they won't sell out (a vain hope i feel)

You could probably put me slightly to the left on the political spectrum.

Spooky Morning

OK, I'm a zombie in the morning, i usually drift through my early morning ritual and leave the house for work in a kind of daze. Its easy for me to forget things like house keys, bus money, phone, etc. To combat this i have a very organised way of doing things. My wallet and keys go in my right hip pocket, my change, bus pass and phone in my left hip pocket. This way i can check if i've forgotten anything with a quick pat on my pockets.

Today i managed to leave the house fully dressed with all my usual gubbins. When i got into work i found i was an hour late.

I often late by a few minutes and i have been known to saunter in 1/2 hour late. I make this time up on my lunchbreak on most days. The difference is that usually i know if i am running late.

Today went like this:
7.15am - alarm wakes me up, turn alarm off, go back to bed.
7.25am - get out of bed, look at clock, not too late, thats ok.
7.30am - 7.50am - in the shower.
8am - getting dressed
8am - 8.20am - getting ready, brush teeth, gel hair, etc
8.25am - leave house, walk to bus stop.
at this point i start reading the metro and don't check my watch until.....
10.00am arrive at piccadilly gardens, check my watch and say "shit" followed by "huh?" followed by "meh".

So somewhere i lost an hour. Now usually when people say that, they mean they skipped an hour and they know exactly when and why. e.g. i lost an hour and woke up late. Clearly here the hour is not lost, it is spent in blissful sleep.

I have however lost my hour. I honestly have no idea at which point i lost it or where it went.

The only thing i can think of is that upon waking again at 7.25am and looking at my clock and then from that time until i left the house at 8.25am i was actually misreading my clock and reading 8.30 as 7.30. This becomes more difficult to believe when you consider that i have a digital clock with big glowing red numbers.

So either i have (over the course of an hour) misread my hard-to-misread clock, or some kind of alien abduction took place on the bus and i was carted off, anally probed and returned without my knowledge.

Yay! I live!

Well, after envious years of reading my mates blogs, finally my own lives!

Now comes the tricky part where i scribe my thoughts down for all to read. For those who know me, hi! For those that don't, I'm a dashing(ish) and debonair (sort of) 26 year old living in the amazing English City of Manchester. I'm a geek, a political junkie, a ninja, a computer game addict and now. . . . a blogger!

Expect my posts to be largely nonsensical, extrememly geeky, unashamedtly left wing and packed with large words to try and make myself look clever. I'll post as often as my head fills with enough detritus (see, long word) to put down in words.

As will always be the case, please feel free to comment on any of my posts. I despise censorship and will do my best to leave all posts as they are entered unless compelled to do otherwise by law, morals or boredom.

Gribble the Munchkin