Armed and Dangerous

Why are women that can kick my arse so sexy?

George R R Martin is the anti-christ

George you’re killing me.

Yesterday my brain exploded as I saw a new-looking book with the Martin moniker….. could this be… could it possibly be? No…. apparently not. Feast for Crows has undergone the same process as the earlier books, cut into two sections and released again to torture me and the other addicts awaiting in the wings with baited breath.

I know there are a lot of good authors out there….. but Song of Ice & Fire…..

…. don’t make me write the ending myself… I’m sure none of us would like that. In fact I’m damn sure of that.

Life in Queensland

Pro

Plunging cleavage & tight shorts

Con

Land Whales & Boguns

No Korean Babe Today

Just some unnamed bodies from the archives

 

Fashion Newsflash

Today is the first day of the landmark Animal Testing Elimination Act across Europe.

And on a completely unrelated note, Revlon/Dior daycare centers open their doors across the world in a coordinated launch this week.

Juno Departs Spata

Yes I know it’s a rotten tittle, but when you’ve got a review of The Departed, Meet the Spartans, and Juno, what can you do.

Lets save the best for last and start with… Meet the Spartans is a spoof movie, which means it is going to be full of lame jokes and visual gags. In this case they actually caused a few chuckles, yet it suffers from the same malady as other spoof movies. The good ideas that make up the spoof, the primary piss-takes and the scene setting all take place at the start of the movie, the first section is nearly always the best and it dies in the final parts as the writers run out of good ideas. In Meet the Spartans this rings true, with the chuckles fading as we move into extended dance-offs. However this movie left me with one great philosophical question, “Is it compulsory to go commando in Hollywood?” We had the Britney beaver shot, the Hilton beaver shot, and the Lohan beaver shot. If I want to be a hot young Hollywood actress would I have to burn my panties first? If so would I have to do this before or after the sex-change and time-travel that would be required to make me a starlet?

On to The Departed. This movie was so intense that it blew me (and most of the characters) away when I saw it on the big screen. A second viewing however has left me full of praise for Sheen and (can’t believe I’m saying this) Baldwin, but less for the main two players. The acting is intense, so intense that it goes beyond the surreal and can be mistaken for nothing but acting. My little woman thought that de’Caprio looked all hot and grown up, but that doesn’t float my boat so it didn’t save the movie. Jack Nicholson played… well… Jack Nicholson. It also didn’t help that it was a big-budget rip-off of the far superior Infernal Affairs, and as for the last visual pun…..yeesh!

Last comes Juno. A-grade acting, awesome writing and a believable story. I wish the pregnant teens I’d met had been this smart/savvy, and maybe that’s why I liked the movie. This was a sweet movie, not necessarily realistic in a teenage muddled emotions kind of way, but worth watching.

No photo today, I’m having a respectable phase. Fear not, this too shall pass.

Chicks with Guns

After insulting the KKK this is an effort to placate the NRA (the Political Correct evolution of the KKK)

so…. chicks with guns

um…. think that worked?

9-11 Angst

We are coming up on my least favourite time of the year, that time when America grinds to a halt to contemplate it’s vulnerability to attack by a hostile nation…….. no, scratch that…..

….when America grinds to a halt to contemplate it’s vulnerability to attack by a hostile organization….. nope, that’s not exactly right either……

….when America grinds to a halt to contemplate it’s vulnerability to attack by a hostile individual and his few fanatical followers….. no, still not right…..

 ….when America grinds to a halt to contemplate it’s vulnerability to attack by a hostile, foreign, individual and his few fanatical followers….. better

The rest of the world has lived with terrorism for centuries, the Basque Separatists have been assassinating politicians in Spain since the 1970’s, while the IRA spent the time blowing up buses of school children in Ireland and in the UK. In Asia, Eastern Europe, Australia, Europe, the list of terrorist attacks and deaths goes on, sometimes performed by CIA trained forces such as the Mujahedin (who would go on to become the Al-Qaeda). America itself has lived with terrorism since its inception with the executions, bombings, lynchings, and burnings of the KKK and other domestic terrorists.

However it was on September 11 2001 that America was finally shocked into action by this murderous legacy into invading not one, but two countries. Afghanistan, and Iraq would bare the brunt of American ire, raised by the PR machine into a paranoid fear of further attacks. While the move against Afghanistan might have conceivably been justified as an attack against a government that supported and protected terrorists (the same could have been argued of Northern Ireland and a dozen other nations), the movement against Iraq had no such justification. The Hussein tyranny, that rose to power with US support, was a staunch foe of Al-Qaedaand Osama Bin-Laden.

… but I’m getting off topic again. 9-11 is the time when the world stands still to watch a real man-made disaster, one that has been compounded by the destruction of Iraq and the terrorism of a propaganda campaign designed to keep entire nations so frightened of their own shadows that they blindly go to war with a phantom enemy and heir own personal freedoms. In one day 19 hijackers, and 2,974 civilians died another 24 are missing and presumed dead. This is not funny, it is not something that conspiracy theorists should play with, this was a human tragedy.

Having said that lets put this tragedy in perspective. In 2001 there were 29,573 firearm related deaths in America, making the twin towers death toll equal to 10% of the national deaths by firearms. There are an estimated 400,000 smoking related deaths in the USA each year, meaning that the twin towers death toll was 0.7% of the number of deaths caused from smoking cigarettes. To put it another way, for each person that was murdered on September 11, around 134 people choked their last nicotine permeated breath in hospitals around the United States of America.

As of today there have been 4152 confirmed allied casualties in Iraq, exceeding the 9-11 death toll by over 1,000. Civilians deaths in Iraq are somewhere between 151,000 and  1,220,580 depending upon whom you ask. Sounds more like a war of terror to me, and that is only Iraq. The world is a horrific place, death can lurk around the next corner. America, which till recently was only scared of its own gun toting criminals, is starting to learn this. Next time 9-11 flashes across your screen ask yourself how many are starving in Africa, how many are dying in Eastern European wars, and how many children have been born with Aids. 

I’m depressing myself now…. girlie pictures next post….. possibly with guns in the hope I can placate the NRA…..

The bigger they are the slower they move

I was wandering the net in my usual befuddled state and I stumbled across the best summary of the American involvement in the second World War (you know, the one that doesn’t exist in Japanese textbooks).

Disclaimer: Don’t watch if you’re an Ameican with no sense of humour that doesn’t understand history.

Dark Knight, Silent Night

wow

just wow..

This was not the movie I was expecting. Christian Bale (drool shot for the girls to follow) was as awesome as always, but he didn’t have a lot to work with, this was the Jokers movie. Heath Ledger did an awesome Joker, if I didn’t know who was playing the role I wouldn’t have picked it. Aaron Eckhart also gave a major on-screen performance, possibly as good as the one in Thank you for smoking let down only by the over-the-top burns. Don’t get me wrong, the CGI was wonderful, however the excessive nature of the ‘new face’ blew away the whole suspension of disbelief.

The love story also seemed a bit of a let down, Maggie Gyllenhaal just didn’t seem comfortable in the Rachel Dawes role, but maybe the lack of ’spark’ between her and Christian was intentional. As to the rest of the cast, who wasn’t there? We had the always excellent Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, and Gary Oldman (one of my personal favourites). Eric Roberts can be hit or miss, but he was a hit in his mob-boss role, and even William Fichtner and Tommy “Tiny” Lister made a brief but memorable appearances as the Bank Manager and Convicted Felon respectively.

 The excellence of the actors aside the end product was sadly lacking. I’ve always liked the Dark Knight more then Batman, and they are two very different entities inhabiting the same corny suit, but this isn’t what I was after. The pacing seemed rather strained, with the movie seeming to drag on at the end, and characters like Rachel existing as plot devices rather then living characters. Worst of all Bruce Wayne seemed to bounce back from the death of the love of his life all too easily, and what is a Dark Knight movie without a tortured hero?

I actually wished I had watched this movie back in Korea where the cinemas cut chunks out of the movies so they can pack in more sessions. I would have missed the (very cool) visual details of two-faces’ alter ego, and maybe the cuts would have picked up the movies pacing. Surprisingly I’m not the only one that thinks the Dark Knight has a few kinks in his armour. Denby was hardly impressed by the blockbuster, and I agree with every point he makes, while Dave Edelstein has a shot at the dark hero as well.  

And for the girls here is the promised shot….