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April, 2006

  1. All good things…

    April 25, 2006 by dafyd

    The West Wing - finale coming soon!

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  2. Film round-up

    April 16, 2006 by dafyd

    The rest that I want to talk about, but that realistically I’m not going to get round to doing…

    Good Night, and Good LuckGood Night, and Good Luck

    An uncanny performance by David Strathairn as CBS newsreader Edward R. Murrow, the first presenter to publicly stand up to Joseph McCarthy’s Communist witchhunts of the 1950s. George Clooney directs in black-and-white, recreating the smoky newsrooms of the fifties, raising a lot of questions about Hollywood toeing the government’s line… just as relevent today as in 1958. A tour-de-force performance by Strathairn and beautiful directing by Clooney.

    MunichMunich

    Is it ever justified to kill in revenge? After Palestinian terrorists murder the Israeli team at the 1972 Munich Olympics, the Israeli government orders a secret team to hunt down and kill leading figures in the Hamas organisation. Steven Spielberg’s sensitive direction alternates between top-notch action thriller and moral drama. Eric Bana gives a gripping central performance, with great support from Ciaran Hands, Geoffrey Rush, Matthieu Kassowitz.

    FirewallFirewall

    Absolute tosh. But, to be fair, pretty enjoyable tosh. Harrison Ford gives his normal performance as a “normal family guy” who is head of internet security at a bank. Surprise, surprise, he is asked, nay, forced by British badguy Paul Bettany to steal money from his own bank, with his family held at gunpoint. Patriot Games, anybody? There are really no surprises at all in Firewall, the dialogue leaves a lot to be desired, and there are a couple of fairly big holes in the script. But all the same, Ford shows that he still has the action hero in him. Indiana Jones IV, set to start filming soon, should be interesting, though, based on his panting and wheezing thoroughout this…

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  3. Teabing / Baigent

    April 8, 2006 by dafyd

    The Grauniad’s story on Dan Brown’s High Court victory over the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail is a wonderful, brilliant piece of parody of which Craig Brown would be proud:

    Renowned author Dan Brown awoke slowly. A telephone was ringing in the darkness. Slowly the fog began to lift. He picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

    “Mr Brown?” a man’s voice said. “I hope I have not awoken you? You have won your case in London’s renowned Royal Court of Justice.”

    Brown was pleased. His book on the Da Vinci Code had made him a reluctant celebrity and his visibility had increased a hundredfold after his involvement in a widely publicised incident at the court in London, England. The past weeks had taken a heavy toll on him but now it was over.

    It was all coming back to him now. Court 61, high in the building, its walls lined with leatherbound books, almost all of them as thick as his, and lawyers, dressed in their mysterious black robes, with their secret language, weird headgear and private signs and their Earl Grey tea, bitter, with milk or lemon.

    The judge, Peter Smith, portly and ruby-faced like villainous Sir Leigh Teabing, with jovial eyes that seemed to twinkle as he spoke in his thick north country English accent, had ruled in his favour against the authors who had claimed he had copied their work.

    Why, he had never heard of their book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, published in 1982. The judge knew that: he said that Brown’s wife Blythe had done the research and given him all the facts he needed. Where he had used the words of these men, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, he had put them in the words of Sir Leigh.

    The voice on the telephone was reading now. It was a weighty judgment at 62 pages, but nowhere near as long as his book. Judge Smith’s words came thick and fast: “The claimants apparently are upset at the way in which they have been treated. For my part I find that surprising … I do not see the anagram of their names as being anything other than a compliment to them.” So he had spotted the code!

    “I suppose in the world of publication 40 million buyers cannot be wrong.”

    Right Sir Smith, muttered Brown.

    [link to more]

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  4. Conservative Future…

    April 8, 2006 by dafyd

    Not the best photo of David Cameron:

    David Cameron: HANG

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  5. Inside Man

    April 2, 2006 by dafyd

    Watch out, spoilers…

    Inside ManInside Man

    When a heist movie set in Manhatten opens with a montage of shots of New York set to a track from Bombay Dreams, you know that you’re going to see something a little different…

    Master thief Dalton Russell (Clive Owen) calmly tells the audience sparse details of the perfect crime, before he and several associates storm a New York City bank dressed in blue hooded jumpsuits. Detective Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington) arrives with his loyal partner Bill Mitchell (a very understated Chiwetel Ejiofor) in tow. Unfortunately, in addition to bank robbers, Frazier also has to deal with edgy SWAT leader Willem Dafoe, and an icy power broker Jodie Foster, hired by bank owner Arthur Case (Christopher Plummer) to protect certain interests – Nazi links to his past – within the bank vault.

    The plot and script are remarkable, but details are what really make this film stand out. Lee has successfully shot two distinct films, a heist flick and a police procedural and blended them together without a seam. Two different musical scores highlight the contrast, with bold brass accompanying Frazier’s reactions to the softer yet sinister orchestra of Dalton’s schemes. It’s Lee’s street-level direction that joins the two films in one underlying world through the diverse mixture of people, both held inside and outside the bank. Lee concentrates as much on the hostages as he does on the robbers and the cops, creating a sense of confusion and claustrophobia for both characters and the audience.

    Unfortunately, Madeline White’s entry comes late in the film, and her story seems more a connecting, fairly unconvincing, subplot instead of a film all of its own. Because of this and the film’s inherent complexities, the running time seems to drag on at times. However, the movie’s presence is never unwelcome and the script’s energy never seems wasted. Something about this film seems classic beyond nostalgia – reminiscent of The Sting or even Z-Cars – but something else still feels cutting edge and relevant. Although the movie doesn’t end as concisely as it begins, it nevertheless proves to be an extremely enjoyable experience.

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  6. April Fools

    April 1, 2006 by dafyd

    Ah, that time of the year again.

    A few of my favourites:

    1. New BMWs will be fitted with ZIP – Zoom Impression Pixels – to give the impression of speed to avoid proposed penalties for slow driving
    2. ThinkGeek presents Wireless Extension Cords – beam mains power wherever you want it; the USB Desktop Tanning Center – “if we can’t get you to interact with sunlight, we would do the next best thing and bring the sun to you”; the iZilla Digital Media Monster – “like having an entire home entertainment system in a handy 30 pound white briefcase”
    3. Google launches Google Romance: “we’ll send you both on a Contextual DateTM, which we’ll pay for while delivering to you relevant ads that we and our advertising partners think will help produce the dating results you’re looking for”. Google Earth added some visitors to Area 51…
    4. Possibly uniquely, a spoof spoof was created for Google by the Google Blogoscoped blog, which reported on the planned launch of Google Rooms
    5. The Today Programme reported that “the 5 minute medley of tunes at 5.30am every morning [the UK theme] is to be rearranged with music reflecting Britain’s place in Europe”. You can listen again to the full Euro Theme, featuring the Ode to Joy and, bizarrely, the theme to Van der Valk (what else for Belgium?!)

    Check out the ridiculously comprehensive list of pranks on Wikipedia…

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