Not alone

Yet another horror film worthy of the flick - Film - Entertainment

Further to my post about Richard Curtis films, it's good to see someone else with strong opinions about him, and British cinema generally:

We have a knack in Britain of making movies which are not only very bad but bad in an odious way, self-indulgent and self-regarding, knowing and cute, all false sentiment and mirthless humour. Bridget Jones's Diary sets the tone...

Even by those standards, Curtis is grim. Anyone who sees a film which dares call itself Love Actually has been warned. Martin Amis described one of the bleakest evenings of his life as watching Four Weddings, desperate to leave but unable to. He had gone to the cinema with Salman Rushdie, who had to stick to the timetable he gave his police guards. And so they were forced to endure every last minute.

Parky speaks his mind

Sir Michael Parkinson: 'Jade Goody was a wretched role model' - Times Online

Of course, like everyone outside of England, I only knew of the Jade Goody story from news reports, and I never saw her on TV at all. However, the coverage given to her illness and death (see the photo in the article - the funeral procession looks like it was for minor royalty) made me suspect it was all ridiculous talentless celebrity worship.

Now Michael Parkinson has confirmed this:

“When we clear the media smoke screen from around her death, what we’re left with is a woman who came to represent all that’s paltry and wretched about Britain today.

“She was brought up on a sink estate, as a child came to know drugs and crime, was barely educated, ignorant and puerile. Then she was projected to celebrity by Big Brother and became a media chattel to be exploited till the day she died.”

An unusual recommendation

Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and Wall Street's ownership of government - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

Rare is the day that this blog suggests reading a post by the always hyperventilating Glenn Greenwald, but this lengthy one about how Obama's bailout is guided by the same people who got the world into the mess is worth reading.

(It also makes it clear that the need for regulation of the debt swaps that seem to be at the heart of the crisis was first apparent, and dismissed, in the 1990's under the Clinton administration.)

Modern faith

Madeleine Bunting: Real debates about faith are drowned by the New Atheists' foghorn voices

Madeleine Bunting starts her article with this good point:

What other system of belief has collapsed at such spectacular speed as British Christianity?

and goes on to discuss the annoying New Atheists in a way with which I can more or less agree, even if she quotes Islamic apologist Karen Armstrong with approval.

Her article also helpfully mentions a special edition of New Statesman called "God 2009". (I guess that would be the God that communicates via the internet now, instead of burning bushes.) It looks as if most of it is on the 'net. Plenty of Easter reading for all of you pagans out there.

Noted from the PETA website

Green iguanas are some of the most frequently abandoned companion animals, likely because people find out too late what is required to care for them.

Reptiles count as "companion animals"?

The list they then give of potential iguana raising issues is dryly amusing:

A properly cared-for iguana can live for more than 20 years and grow to be more than 6 feet long. The enclosure for a full-grown iguana should be at least 18 feet long, humidified, and maintained at a particular temperature with specific timetables for darkness and ultraviolet light. Common problems for captive iguanas are metabolic bone disease from calcium deficiency, mouth rot, respiratory disease, abscesses, and ulcers. ...

It takes about a year of daily interaction to socialize an iguana, and even then, sexually mature males will be very aggressive six months out of the year if they see their own reflections or if confronted with other iguanas.

They convinced me, at least.

In other PETA pages, 82 year old Cloris Leachman is their pin-up girl:

She chooses to eat vegetarian. Now Cloris is sharing the secret behind her vitality with her fans by posing in a dress made of cabbage for PETA's newest "Let Vegetarianism Grow on You" ad.

And on a seasonal note, if you're Jewish, you can find out how to have a Vegan Passover:

Traditionally, most Jews include an egg on the ritual seder plate—to symbolize spring and life—but many now replace it with a flower. ... In place of the shank bone set on the seder plate to remind us of "the mighty arm of God," many Jews use a beet, as allowed in the Talmud.

A vegetable to remind them of "the mighty arm of God"?

The ice thins

Arctic Literally On Thin Ice, According To New Satellite Data

This link has one diagram you probably won't see at Andrew Bolt's. It illustrates the following:

Until recent years, measurements have shown most Arctic ice has survived at least one summer and often several, said Meier. But the balance has now flipped, and seasonal ice -- which melts and re-freezes every year -- now comprises about 70 percent of Arctic sea ice in winter, up from 40 to 50 percent in the 1980s and 1990s, he said. Thicker ice that has survived two or more years now comprises just 10 percent of ice cover, down from 30 to 40 percent in years past.

Your cat is killing the planet

Save the planet: Get rid of your cat

Hey, we love a good anti-cat article as much as the next dog and rat person, and this one is pretty comprehensive. For example (quoting the New York Times):

Coco, like most American cats, ate fish. And a great deal of them — more in a year than the average African human, according to Jason Clay at the World Wildlife Fund. And unlike the chicken or beef Coco also gobbled up, all those fish were wild animals, scooped out of the sea and flown thousands of carbon-belching miles to reach his little blue bowl....

The pet food industry now uses about 10 percent of the global supply of forage fish.

Yes, your cat has an enormous carbon footprint. Unless you can train it to start planting trees, it has to go.

The problem with modern technology..

..is you might realise old technology has missed its prayer target:

Gulfnews: 200 mosques in Saudi face the wrong direction

Riyadh: Around 200 mosques in Islam's holiest city, Makkah, point the wrong way for prayers, a Saudi Arabian newspaper reported on Sunday.

According to the Arab News paper, the mosques were reportedly not built exactly based on the qibla, the official alignment with the holy Ka'aba shrine at the centre of the holy city's Al Haram mosque.

People looking down from new skyscrapers in Makkah found the niches in many older mosques were not pointing directly towards the Ka'aba, and some worshippers are said to be anxious about the validity of their prayers.

Counting people

Population: some boom, some decline - On Line Opinion - 6/4/2009

Online Opinion re-prints an interesting article on the growth of humanity.

(Hey, it was either that or more puzzlement over the mystery of a Prime Minister who is seemingly only unpopular with those who know him. I see little reason to change what I said in 2007: it's either a pact with the devil, or a Jedi mind trick, even if there weren't cheques in the mail to be factored in at the time of that post.)

Sleeping dog

This video has gone viral, by the looks. (It got a mention on CNN). The remarkable sleep running dog:

Bikie Rudd

No word on bikie 'breach' at Lodge - National News - National - General - The Canberra Times

This is a very curious story. (The Age's version has more details.) A couple of bikies, looking like bikies, get access to the Lodge for an hour or so to do "maintenance work" under (apparently) forged accreditation. (Well, I assume that's what "suspect accreditation" means.)

Why on earth would bikies want access to the Lodge? If it' s all a misunderstanding, and they really were doing maintenance but the accreditation was somehow botched by a government official, why haven't the bikies concerned come out and said "see, this is just typical of the discrimination we face"?

Maybe Kevin's Harley needed work. That's his secret pleasure: cruising the streets of Canberra on a hog at 2 am, wearing a bandana, to wind down after a long day of abusing staff. [Update: he probably drives up to the 24 hour MacDonalds and orders a chicken salad. There's trouble if they are sold out.]

Or, less implausibly, they were restocking the amphetamine supplies that keep everyone awake while the PM works them through the night. Or setting up some indoor hydroponic marijuana that a rebellious Minister insisted Kevin start smoking as a way of taking the edge off his personality (probably under threat of leaking some video of a spleen-vent to the media.)

[Hey, I think I'm pretty good at fevered conspiracy theories about Kevin. Someone has to do it.]

Alien report

As previously indicated, the kids and I saw Monsters Vs Aliens in 3-D over the weekend. It's the first full length animated 3-D film I've seen, and it's an interesting experience. As you are aware that everything on the screen is a construct, it continually gives the impression of watching a moving diorama; like watching the action play out on some model train enthusiast's vast set up. It's a pleasing sensation.

The movie itself is very witty both visually and in the writing, and is certainly a crowd pleaser.

One other odd thing is that, for me, Stephen Colbert is one of those actors who has such a distinctive voice that it's actually quite jarring at first to hear the sound coming out of an animated face. Still, the segments his character (President of the United States) were in were pretty funny.

As for 3-D and the kids eyes: one loved it, but the other complained after half an hour and had to take a break from the glasses. It's not for every kid.

Tough goose

Making Ends Meet in the Great Depression - NYTimes.com

The New York Times is providing recession survival hints by interviewing a few old folk about how they got through the Great Depression.

The article is of some interest, but are geese all as tough as this?:

We used to make featherbeds out of chicken feathers and geese, but we’d pick the goose without killing him: all you do is pick him up, yank the feathers off when he was still alive. He don’t mind it. It grows back in two or three months.

End result: an upsurge in candy tycoons

Next: career counselling for toddlers | The Australian

Successful cheap Penguins

The "Popular Penguin" titles (with orange and white covers and all priced $10) were mentioned by me here (and on someone else's blog, I think) a while ago, and it's good to see that they have been a commercial success. So successful that another 50 titles will be released in July. Yay.

The 3-D question

3-D movies like Monsters vs. Aliens hurt your eyes. They always have, and they always will. - Slate Magazine

Oh. I was planning on taking the kids to see Monsters vs Aliens this weekend in 3-D version. Now, I'm not so sure after reading the above article.

One interesting thing I didn't know:

Five percent to 8 percent of the population is stereoblind and can't convert binocular disparity into depth information. That means they can't appreciate any of the 3-D effects in a RealD or Imax movie. An additional 20 to 30 percent of the population suffers from a lesser form of the deficit, which could diminish the experience of 3-D effects or make them especially uncomfortable to watch.

How do you know if your kids are within the 20 to 30 %?

And here's something presumably rare, but surprising none the less:

There's already been one published case study, from the late-1980s, of a 5-year-old child in Japan who became permanently cross-eyed after viewing an anaglyph 3-D movie at a theater.

Meatgate

Kevin Rudd losing his temper in spectacular enough fashion to make a RAAF attendant cry is in desperate need of a good "- gate" name. As he was apparently upset at only a meat dish being available, meatgate will do for now.

Journalists have often commented that Rudd, in private, swears a lot, flies into rage with those who he keeps working all night when he perceives they have made a mistake, and is an absolute control freak. Yet it's only the meek, mild Milky Bar Kid image that the public is allowed to see. (Occasional sh*t storm excepted, and even then it was a pre-recorded apparent slip which he or his minders let go through because they thought it wouldn't hurt his image.)

Opinion Dominion predicts: one day, someone (probably from his own side of the political fence) is going to turn up with a recording or video that will show the PM in private acting in a spectacularly unflattering way.

Lack of talent finally recognized

The success of Richard Curtis' output as a writer/director has always puzzled me:

* Four Weddings and a Funeral: why so well received when the romance between the leads happens in such a perfunctory manner? You get a more charming and realistic romance in a fantasy like Groundhog Day.
* Notting Hill: bland romance dominated by Julia's cavernous mouth and Hugh's floppy hair.
* Bridget Jones Diary: ho hum girl's comedy, notable only for an American able to do a British accent. Charmless endorsement of the right of young women to make stupid decisions about who to sleep with.
* Love Actually: haven't seen all of it, but sections seen seem twee and improbable in the extreme. Hugh Grant as PM? Oh please.
* Vicar of Dibley: full of mugging overacting, and simply not funny. Listening to its laugh track is like watching those 1970's black american sitcoms where the audience goes wild while I sit at home wondering what is wrong with them.

As far as I can see, he's never been involved in anything good since Blackadder, and then only as co-writer.

Come to think of it, the decline of Curtis's talent is strangely reflective of the moral and cultural decline of Britain over the same period.

In any case, at last it seems he's come up with a certified failure. Early reviews for The Boat that Rocked are (mostly) very bad. From The Times (I should say Spoiler Warning, I suppose):

The all-male rebels on the boat, plus an honourable lesbian, expend most of their energy on the weekly liferaft of horny Carry On nurses and securing a steady supply of drugs. When it becomes embarrassingly obvious that there is basically nothing worth saving on the ship apart from the fabulous soundtrack, Curtis has the ingenious idea of blowing a hole in the hull and turning his film into a disaster movie. Frankly, it’s too absurd for words.

From Scotland on Sunday:

a truly Titanic film, in the sense that it is a disappointingly wretched thing that takes ages to sink from sight.

From someone commenting at Time Out:

This is truly appalling stuff. Do not touch with a barge-pole. Excruciating throughout. The main jokes are that there's a lesbian on the ship and someone has the surname Twatt. Hilarious stuff eh? Proof that Ben Elton was the funny one behind Blackadder.

Retirement beckons, Richard.

Netanyahu talks about Iran

Benjamin Netanyahu gave an interview for The Atlantic a couple of days ago, and it's well worth reading.

I suspect the Iranians will simply view the "let's just sit down and talk" approach of the Obama administration as buying time to plough ahead full steam with nuclear weapon development. At some point, Israel alone will act, possibly in a strike that is basically suicidal (for the airmen or soldiers involved) but the timing of that is anyone's guess.

China and reciprocity

China and foreign investment | Unfavoured nation | The Economist

An interesting column in The Economist pointing out that, even though Chinese companies meet resistance in their investments in foreign companies, China has been doing exactly the same to foreign companies looking to buy into China. For example:

Anti-investment forces in Australia were emboldened when China blocked Coca-Cola’s $2.4 billion purchase of Huiyuan, a juice producer, using a new anti-monopoly law that increasingly looks like nothing more than an impediment to foreign buyers. Coke’s rejection was unique only in the method used, and the lengths to which the company gone to establish its commitment to China—it gave billions of dollars in investment and support of the Beijing Olympics even when other companies were bailing out.

As for the issues that arise when dealing with Chinese companies, the final paragraph is of note:

Chinalco contends this is a misunderstanding of China’s state-owned enterprises, which operate independently. To some extent this is true—Chinese companies do compete with each other—but it is also false: they follow government policy, have government-appointed management and enjoy privileged access to the vast Chinese market. These issues have been aired before in Asia, most notably in the case of Singaporean companies, but China’s wealth, and scale, and the opacity of its government and laws put them in starker relief.