Tosh times two

I've mentioned before that we've been getting quite a few DVDs from the Public Library, and that often we turn up a gem that's not previously been known. Not always.

I was in a bit of a hurry the other day , so I grabbed two films that seemed to hold some hope of being worth watching. Piffle. Both of them were twaddle. The first was a 1989 TV movie called The Shell Seekers, which was based on the very popular book of the same name. Angela Lansbury starred as an older woman who'd just had a minor heart attack and wanted to get back on with life while two of her three adult children seemed to think it was about time she sold off her prized possessions and gave the dosh to them. Lansbury, who was hardly old at the time the film was made (63 or 64), was at least twice given the line, "I'm sixty-three years old...etc" as though this was something of importance. So what, was the audience reaction. The film was otherwise notable for some weakish acting, particularly from the girl playing the teenage having her first love affair; she wasn't helped by the young man playing her opposite - he was required to be as dull as ditchwater by the script, it seemed. The character motivations were suspect throughout - poor Patricia Hodge, now playing the manic mother in Miranda, was the middle child of the family, the one supposedly loved more than the others. She was written as a sympathetic character throughout, until the final scene in which she suddenly seemed to have a change of heart and became almost as grasping as her brother and sister.  More than enough said.

The second film was such a piece of nonsense that it's not surprising it took five scriptwriters to try and cobble it into some sort of shape. Cowboys and Aliens concerns a man (Daniel Craig) in the Wild West who wakes up with a solid metal cuff around his wrist that does strange things when he's least expecting it. He's lost his memory, for the most part, so he can't explain where the thing came from. Arriving in the nearest town he and the townsfolk, including Harrison Ford as the local bully rancher, are attacked from the skies by some weird flying things which lasso various characters and haul them off behind their planes. Surprisingly this doesn't kill any of them, though it does leave them a little stunned. The remaining townsfolk go after the aliens who are eventually found holed up in a massive rocket-like ship in the middle of the desert. They're pulling ground out of the ground, literally.

The humans include Craig and Ford, but also a strange woman who seems to know more than she lets on (she turns out to be some sort of alien too, though rather more friendly than nasty, animal-like ones). There's the obligatory 'Doc' who can't shoot a gun, but learns to; the boy who has to become a 'man'; the preacher, who plainly never went near any decent seminary, if what he spouts as Christianity is anything to go by; the half-breed who hero-worships Ford from afar, as it were, and turns out be more of a son than Ford's real boy (his opening stunt is to shoot the windows out of the saloon). Then there are a band of rustlers/hold-up men, and a band of Indians. Somehow they all come together for the big piece at the end, by which time we're laughing our heads off at the absurdity of it all.

Craig plays 007 with a Wild West accent, and a terrible hat, and burning eyes. Ford chaunters around the place barking at everyone, getting particularly annoying when he won't wait for the half-breed to translate from Indian into English, and consequently having to have stuff repeated to him. Olivia Wilde plays the helpful alien, and a bunch of other well-known faces have appearances of various lengths. Total Tosh.

Petition regarding video game

I don't usually copy and post email newsletters that come to me, mostly because of copyright issues, but in this case I don't think the organisers will have any concern with me posting the following:

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has been working for weeks now to get the grotesque "Slaying of Sandy Hook" video game removed from the Internet.  Prior to the one-year annivesary of the Newtown tragedy on December 14, 2012, we contacted the three websites still hosting the game and asked them to delete it from their servers. Despite getting a verbal commitment from one website host to do so, none have done so as of today.
With over 11,600 names on our petition to have the game deleted (including yours), it's time to turn up the heat on those who continue to host "The Slaying of Sandy Hook" video game. That's why I'm asking you to email the following three website hosts to tell them to remove the game from their servers immediately:
Website: swfchan
Admin Name: Mackan Zoor
Email: mikper56@gmail.com
Website: swfcabin
Adminstrator: Pascal Smeets
Email: p.w.m.smeets@gmail.com
Website: Game Jolt
Administrator Name: David DeCarmine
Email: hworld@holo-world.com
Feel free to use the following template for your email:

Dear ______,
I am contacting you because your website, swfchan, is currently hosting the video game, “The Slaying of Sandy Hook Elementary.”  I have signed a petition calling on the creator of the game, Ryan Jake Lambourn, and websites like yours that are hosting it, to permanently remove it from the internet.  So far the petition has been signed by more than 11,600 Americans:
http://csgv.org/action/tell-animator-newtown-massacre-game/
Ryan Jake Lambourn claims on his website that he is a supporter of tighter firearm regulation and intended his game to be a tool in service of that goal. I hope you can see that in this case, however, that the graphic and violent nature of the game is not helpful, but instead very hurtful to the survivors of that tragedy (and other gun-related massacres).
I am not trying to squelch your right to free speech or impinge on your business.  I am reaching out to you simply as one human being to another and asking if you would consider removing “The Slaying of Sandy Hook Elementary” from your website in order to spare some good people unnecessary pain during a very hard time.
Thank you very much.

There is no room in civil society to glorify mass shooting atrocities as entertainment and inflict unnecessary pain on survivors who are still grieving over the loss of their loved ones. We have heard personally from several survivors who find this game offensive and damaging. Enough is enough.
Thank you for your continued help in this campaign. If we stand together and keep the heat on, I am confident we can prevail and do right by those who lost so much at Newtown.
Sincerely,

Josh Horwitz
Executive Director
Coalition to Stop Gun Violence

If you agree with this, perhaps you could send these websites an email too. 

Book to movie

A couple of days ago we watched the movie, The American, and I wrote some notes about it.  It was the most irritating movie I'd seen in a long time.  However, it prompted me to check out the book it was based on, A Very Private Gentleman (though if you search for that book now, you'll find it's been republished under the title The American, which is a bit daft, since the only Americans in the book are minor characters).  The book is by Martin Booth, who turns out to be an excellent writer - one I'd never come across before.  His style, at least in this book, is akin to that of Graham Greene.  Greene used his more serious books (and sometimes even his 'comedies', as he called them) to explore how men think about and deal with religion, women, life and violence.  In this book, Booth looks at all these issues too, while telling an intriguing story.   More of that in a minute.

We also watched The Prestige last night, with Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman.  I read the book this film is based on back in 2008 (according to my records - my memory's not that good) and thoroughly enjoyed it.  The intriguing thing is that Christopher Nolan, who made the film of The Prestige (and retained its title) has so thoroughly adapted it that, while it retains the integrity of the story and many elements of it, it's a quite different kettle of fish.  The American didn't retain the original book's title - which it should have - and it thoroughly altered the original, retaining only what it cared to retain, and adding in things that were irrelevant to the original story, and altering the climax so remarkably that you have to gasp at their audacity. Martin Booth had died by the time the movie was made, which is probably just as well: he might have had a heart attack when he saw what they'd done to it.  Christopher Priest, the author of The Prestige, would have been more happy with the adaptation of his book, I think, because it doesn't take a worthwhile piece of writing and turn it into nonsense.  It remakes it in an excellently dramatic way, and, if my memory serves me right, doesn't do injustice to the original. The American destroys the original, by changing practically everything in its focus, and thoroughly confusing the original story, even adding in detail that makes no sense - making the priest the father of the mechanic, for instance.

Booth's book is a long narrative from an anonymous character who is insistently private, not because he's an introvert, but because his very specialised craft is likely to get him eliminated at any minute if he's not careful to keep his cover safe from those who'd destroy him.  He's nearly killed at the very end, in fact, because someone - an amateur, as it happens - has managed to track him down, much to the narrator's surprise.  He doesn't die - as Clooney does in the movie (for entirely the wrong reasons) - but his cover is so blown that he has to 'vanish' yet again.

In the book the anonymous narrator gradually reveals his secrets, but with considerable caution, as though at any minute what we learn is likely to make us discover more than he wants us to know.  He's cautious with everyone he meets and knows, even his mistress.  But those close to him, the priest and the mistress, are people who ask questions, and gradually manage to dig under his skin.  (Some snippets of his conversations with the priest survive into the movie.)  For the rest, he remains an elusive character revealing only what he wants to tell us; though Booth's craft is such that he allows us to learn more than his narrator thinks he's telling us.  The writing throughout is superb, full of interesting detail (about guns and the making of them, about butterflies, about the Italian countryside, about the contrasts between different nationalities - Booth is quite forthright on this) and full of suspense in spite of the fact that the book seems to move slowly. The difference is that in the book the slowness works; in the movie it's just plain annoying.

The movie of The Prestige is very well-handled, and of course is full of trickery, not just between the characters, but in fooling the audience as well.  The revealing of the trickery at the end only serves to make us wonder even more about what's actually happened (I seem to remember the book was even more ambiguous on this score than the film is) but it leaves the viewer satisfied, something The American certainly didn't do, in spite of its weak attempts to 'round off' the storyline.  


Bale and Jackman present two strong and interesting characters - though I think Bale walks off with the honours, even though he gets second billing.  Furthermore he manages a passable London accent, though I was puzzled as to why he never wore a hat, when it was the norm at that time.  Was that something related to the original character in the book?  I don't remember.  


The Prestige is the sort of film you could watch again straightaway and get more enjoyment out of, because you'd be looking for further understanding of the intricate plot.  The American you wouldn't want to watch again...ever.  But A Very Private Gentleman would be worth reading again, because it's just so well done.  At the very least it encourages me to search out more of Booth's books.  

Police work

This year some 14 young people have died on NZ roads as a result of high speed car chases - with a police car as the one that's doing the chasing.

Young people don't understand - or so it seems to me - that if you do something dangerous in real life you may wind up dead. And dead is for good. Young people have a sense that they're bullet-proof, indestructible. After all that's what it's like when they're playing video or computer games, so that's what it must be like in real life, isn't it?

But it seems to me that the police aren't much better. They might get some specific training in relation to high speed chases, but when it comes down to it, they're taking just as much of a risk as the youngsters. And don't expect any security if you're on the same road as either of them when there's a high speed chase involved. An older couple, still fit and active, were killed after a youngster drove into their car during one of these chases in Christchurch. A grandmother in the North Island was killed in a similar way.

I understand the police have a duty to try and stop dangerous drivers, but plainly this isn't a method that's working well. It seems to me there's a good deal less danger involved if the police pull back from the chase; there's no 'fun' for the young people if no one's chasing them.

Which brings me to the issue of stun guns or tasers as they're generally called here. At the moment they're the kind of substitute for real guns for the police working in the ordinary course of duties (as opposed to those who are trained in high risk armed offenders situations). Once again they're pushing the limits of what NZ police need to do. I understand that stun guns/tasers have a certain value - in the general course of events no one gets killed and that's a plus - but we've already seen some iffy use of them (especially in one overseas news report where a policeman kept on firing his taser at a perpetrator, even though the man had obviously got the message.

And now there's talk of ordinary everyday policemen being able to carry firearms on a more regular basis. Is this what we want for New Zealand? We' ve survived all this time without armed constabulary. Do we want to go down that road?

Flying Boats

I've had a bit of a thing about flying boats for some time. It was one of the topics I did some serious research into preparatory to writing an article on it, when I first began writing for publication, back in 1988 or thereabouts. I eventually published an article online on the topic, many years after I couldn't find a home for the original piece.

I actually went on a flying boat - or rather, it was called a 'float plane' - last year while I was on holiday in Taupo. Once it's up in the air, of course, it's no different to any other kind of plane (though the original flying boats certainly were different) but it's the getting off the water and landing (if that's the word) again that's the interesting part.

And talking about research (see paragraph one) I came across this note in the Te Ara Enclyclopedia today while looking up information on Orakei: The first flying boat to be flown in the southern hemisphere took off from Bastion Point on New Year’s Day, 1915. It was designed and built by pioneering aviators Leonard and Vivian Walsh, with the help of their sisters and an engineer. Later in the year the Walsh brothers opened a flying school on the Mission Bay foreshore, training 100 pilots for the war in Europe. Flying boats were an important part of the Waitemata scene until 1989.

Until 1989! Flying boats were barely visible after the 1950s, according to some sources.

On another topic altogether (typical of the style of this blog) I've just been looking at a site that's advertising itself as one of a number of online Elementary schools. The site in the link will take you to a kind of overview of online schools, which is okay, but they also feature on this page something called 'infographics.' These are kind of like those posters they used to have up on classroom walls so that the kids could absorb the information day by day (especially at those times when the teacher was being excessively boring).

However, what slightly amazed me were some of the topics. For instance: 16 Things about Hugh Hefner; Stats on Prostitution; A Gun for Everyone; The Brief Guide to Boogers; A Passion for Beards; Striptease....

To be fair, the infographic on prostitution is not salacious: it shows concern for the fact that huge numbers of women are forced into prostitution everywhere in the world, and that many suffer badly as a result. It also discusses trafficking. The Gun poster is subtlely critical of the excessive number of guns in the US.

But the Hugh Hefner one is something I wouldn't want on the wall of any classroom where my kids were studying, and the striptease one is no better. Neither of these take any sort of moral stance; they're written as though Hugh Hefner's lifestyle was in some way admirable, and equally, the striptease one comes across as though it (and its variants, such as poledancing) were a pretty okay thing. (Have you noticed how many programmes on TV now feature a scene in a club where poledancing is going on, often right up beside the characters who are discussing the latest bit of the plot.)

I wonder why anyone thinks this is somehow educational? Think I'll go back to flying boats - at least there are no moral issues with them....

Photo of RNZAF PBY-5 Catalina XX-T - taken about 1945 - place on Flickr.com by 'Adelaide Archivist.'

Bullets in the air

You have to wonder if the Hamas and Fatah sects in Gaza will ever make any progress towards peace with each other. They’re the same in essence in terms of aggression towards each other as the two Muslim sects in Iraq. These people appear to have no idea how to come to peace with each other, and no desire for it either.
When you see them on tv in the news, they don’t seem to have any organisation; they’re just bullies or little boys in men’s bodies running round with oversized guns. They destroy and burn and loot. And, as always, they shoot their bullets in the air as some sort of celebration. None of them ever seen to consider that bullets sent up in the air will eventually come down. It always looks as though the think the bullets go up indefinitely!

Links to the left of me, links to the right of me

I can’t say the Optics Planet site is the tidiest site I’ve ever visited, nor is it the most pleasantly laid out. It’s aim is to get on with the job and sell. It’s like one of the old-fashioned stores - gun shops and fishing shops still tend to go for this style - where all the stock is on display and all crammed together in as little space as possible. Fishing rods sprout like supergrass, and tackle swarms; leggings hang like dried seaweed, and there are cases and cases of flies (and sometimes a few flies with legs as well). Gunshops are a bit tidier, on average, but they usually sport enough guns to give you nightmares, and bulletsbulletsbullets and shellsshellsshells.
Optics Planet is the same: its opening page has more words per screen than anything I’ve seen in a while, and though there are pictures, they’re almost nudged off the page by more words. Practically every word is clickable – so thick on the ground are the links that you’re likely to click on Butler Creek and end up in Coronado. (Butler Creek, for those need to know these things, deal with rifle scope covers, slings, binocular straps etc – Coronado is into things telescopic.)
Optics Planet also sells atn scopes– go on, check them out! It’s a site that’ll keep you occupied all day…!
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