Mud - A Tale from the Riverbank

Merry Christmas, everybody.

An excellent film through my LoveFilm subscription, a modern day Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Ellis and his friend Neckbone (Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland) find someone living in an abandoned boat they had hoped to take for themselves.

A story of love, fate and growing up, Matthew McConaughey shines as the troubled and desperate Mud. The plot moves at a brisk pace, the dialogue sounds great, and the supporting characters are well played, especially Reese Witherspoon as Mud's girlfriend and Sam Shepard as his father figure. However, this is really the tale of Ellis as he struggles to figure out a complex and dangerous adult world. Very recommended and I wouldn't be surprised if it's in the running for best film or screenplay at the Oscars.

Now You see Me

Through LoveFilm, this is a nice little caper film. Four illusionists (Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson and Isla Fisher) are brought together to stage the ultimate act of their careers, but a much grander show is being played out.

It's a pretty good film, with a good cast (Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman supporting) and a reasonable plot, if a little preposterous, plus the magic tricks are imaginitive. A good, if undemanding, pizza movie.

Killing Them Softly

Via my LoveFilm subscription, this is an adaption of another novel by the author who wrote The Friends of Eddie Coyle. After two small-time crooks rob a poker game, hitman Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt) is tasked to sort out the problem.

If Samuel Beckett decided to write the screeplay for a crime film and got Andrei Tarkovsky or Ingmar Bergman to direct it, you'd end up with something like this. I suppose it's meant to be a black comedy, and it is funny in places, but the bulk of it is deadly dull, weary even. In fact, I'd say that it's better to watch the trailer: those are the best bits. Not recommended.

Gangster Squad

As part of my LoveFilm subscription, I watched this merry little cops-and-gangsters tale centred around Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn). John O'Mara (Josh Brolin) is tasked by L.A. Police chief Bill Parker (Nick Nolte) to take down Cohen and his gang.

What might otherwise have been a run-of-the-mill, and more violent, Untouchables clone is enhanced by a half-decent plot and good supporting cast. It's Penn and Brolin's movie, though, and you can feel every punch in the final showdown as they take each other apart. A decent, if undemanding, pizza movie.

Mob City, a series just started in the U.S., covers much the same story, but seems to have a more ambiguous tone:

A few years ago, I read (or tried to read: it's fairly heavy going) City of Quartz, a social, political and cultural history of Los Angeles by Mike Davis.

Despite it's style, it's a fascinating book on a fascinating subject.

P99:L8:W11	P241:L35:W1	P225:L18:W6
P163:L11:W13	P60:L26:W9	P130:L2:W2

Oxfam Sunday - Wombats and Dodgy £20's

I went up onto the top deck today to take over from Lautaro (it's a Spanish name, but he's a Scotsman), and he'd left on the CD player a reasonably decent compilation, in which was this catchy number from those lovable scousers, The Wombats:

It was a fairly uneventful shift: people seem to be concentrating on getting presents for Christmas and leaving us except for cards and wrapping paper.
I'd run out of £10's at one point and asked Mark to bring any up. He examined one of the £20's in the till and started holding it up to the light. He explained that he had a conversation with one of the tellers at the bank and he got a few tips on how to spot a fake. I compared the one he was looking at with another and they were almost identical, but there is a watermarked £20 which was slightly off in the "fake" note:

If it is a fake, it's a good one! It passed the marking test with our security pen.

I also got a Penguin Special from John, The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard:

It's about advertising, S185, published in 1960.

Dragonmeet 2013

For a change of pace, I went to the games festival Dragonmeet at Kensington Town Hall. There were the usual stalls, including Chessex, the dice makers:

Yummy!

I indulged a little and bought a card game I've played before, Love Letter by Aldaric Entertainment:

It's a lovely little game, very easy to play.

I only managed to play one game while there, Camelot by Wotan Games. They were introducing the game and it was delightful to play. It's a tile laying game, interior designing for King Arthur.

The designer, Julian, is the chap in the middle.

All-in-all a nice day out.

Parker

No, nothing to do with Thunderbirds.

After being double crossed and left for dead following a daring robbery, thief and robber Parker (Jason Statham) plots his revenge.

What could have been an ingenious crime and revenge thriller is let down by the meandering plot, mediocre direction and Statham's lack of enthusiasm, as well as being outclassed by supporting actors like Nick Nolte, Michael Chiklis and Wendel Pierce, who are woefully underused. I'd like to say it's better than nothing, but it isn't. Watch something else.

Drugs 2.0 by Mike Power

Today, I went to see a scouser about drugs! Mike Power is a freelance journalist who's written a very intriguing account about the combination of the Internet and the illegal drug business, topical considering the recent arrest of the creator of the Silk Road web site, and he gave a presentation about the background to the book to the London Futurists.

Mike started out, as every Liverpudlian is obliged to do, with the Beatles and he showed this rare photo of them with a common stimulant at the time, Preludin (or phenmetrazine, which is the chemical name).

He'd got interested in the business and culture of drugs while being based in Columbia, which, at the time, was producing 600 tonnes of cocaine a year. He saw first hand the ridiculousness of the War on Drugs, relating a story about visiting a Coca farmer who, upon being raided and having a field of crops destroyed, told him that it would be replaced within six months. It was a similar story with another drug of choice, MDMA, or Ecstacy. This is usually produced using a substance called safrole, extracted from the roots of a type of camphor wood tree from Cambodia, and much time has been spent in vain blowing up stills in the forests there.

When the credit crunch happened, there was a drop in the demand for both drugs, creating a demand for "legal" highs, initially Mephedrone, and the subsequent moral panic leading to the odd situation of an alarmist article on a new drug on the Daily Telegraph web site alongside a Google advert for the same drug.

This all intrigued Mike and he then set about figuring out how easy it would be to make his own designer drug, a variation of phenmetrazine. Not easily, as he found out, but, through contacts and some considerable study, he managed to find a small, professional pharmaceutical lab in China that produced a small amount of his new drug and shipped the substance via the mail system. It was all a bit dodgy and there was lots of anonymity involved (false names, referring to the drug as "metal cleaning powder", post office boxes, etc.) but he got the drugs, all perfectly legal. Or not illegal. Yet.

He then highlighted the role of the Dark Web, specifically the Silk Road web site and it's many subsequent inheritors, pointing out that it's not sleazy, addled dopers who are doing this but very bright tech people with PhD's. Combined with legal highs, there's a very compelling and rational business case and a lot of money to be made. He also pointed out the scale of the problem: there are currently 200+ new, legal, highs, including two derivatives of LSD.

His solution was somewhat predictable, but based on an unusual premise. The derivatives are usually inferior to the original. He pointed out that only two people died at Woodstock in 1968, and one of those was run over by a tractor, despite there being 500,000 people stoned out of their minds on "normal" drugs. This he contrasted with Brownstock, a festival in Essex attended by 5000 people, where some middle management chap died (and his girlfriend nearly did) taking some new drug, 5-MAPB, hardly anyone had even heard of. So why not, on a case-by-case basis, make the old drugs legal, or at least not criminal.

It was a fascinating presentation about a real, and slightly scary, adventure told in an engaging way.

Almost Human

That Karl Urban, he doesn't half get around. If he's not calling Bruce Wilis "grandpa", or playing Bones McCoy, he's being Judge Dredd, and now he's in a futuristic cop series over in the 'states.

It seems a bit formulaic, but it's nice to have a bit of cyberpunk to balance out all the horror\fantasy stuff.

Oxfam Sunday - Fun Lovin' Criminals & B.R.M.C

Today I did an afternoon shift at the shop, up on the top deck. We did a reasonable trade, but I didn't bring any CD's with me, so I had a scout around and spotted an old album by the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club:

Not bad, but it tended to lag towards the end. Next up was the Fun Lovin' Criminals:

Again, a few hits, but falling off afterwards.

Argo

In 1979, six U.S. diplomats in Iran fleeing from the student invasion of their embassy manage to hide in the Canadian ambassadors' residence. A C.I.A exfiltration specialist (played by Ben Affleck, also directing) hatches an extraordinary plan to get them out.

Based on a true story, it's a very tense film, especially the scene at the airport where they try to convince the guards that they've been scouting locations for a film. Ironically, for a film about faking a film, it has become controversial for being elastic with the truth, and it does come across as Hollywood saving the C.I.A. saving their own people and down playing the role of other countries' involvement, especially Canada. It's worth a watch, though.

It's Been a While

I haven't written much in a good while, so something of an update is in order. I've been a bit snowed under with the amount of paperwork we're doing at the college this year, which has irritated me somewhat. How it all relates to the learning process I've yet to figure out.

We are doing Java, though, if slowly. We were at a bit of a slack point the other day, so I asked the other students if they fancied a code puzzle. I mostly got blank looks, but Ricardo, Dipendra and Richard were game. Basically, the code has to output a pattern of "#"'s, like this:

#####
####
###
##
#

but the limitations are that you can only use two print statements, one for the "#" and one for the CRLF. You can use any other code you like. Richard got it within about ten minutes or so, while the others eventually gave up. To up the ante, I asked Richard to produce this:

###
####
#####
####
###

He went very quiet for a long while!

I have done quite a few shifts at the shop, notably today, where I listened to the Morcheeba album Big Calm:

Saturday - The Energy of Nations: Carbon Bubbles and Shale Games

This was a presentation by Jeremy Leggett, hosted by the London Futurists, concerning his new book.

The presentation covered the current state of energy sources, especially shale gas, peak oil and the carbon asset bubble that some claim could cause the next economic collapse.

Jeremy also talked at length of his experience with the media and their negative view of alternative energy, mostly due to the hydrocarbon companies' use of P.R.

It was an entertaining hour-or-so, which didn't feel like it, despite Jeremy's laid-back style. However, he isn't a technologist (and said so, to his credit), which meant that he couldn't discuss some of the more speculative aspects of his presentation and did become somewhat defensive when asked those kinds of questions. I would also have liked to see him address the issue of energy storage, a part of the alternative energy equation which enables it to replace hydrocarbons and nuclear. His view on shale gas was also revealing.

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Mmmmm. As soon as it happens in the 'States, Channel 4 are also showing the new TV series based on the Avengers.

There's been a few grumbles on the web, but it's not bad considering they're not going to get the A-list to be in it. The acting is reasonable and the plot's pretty good, with a nice twist, and a fair share of special effects. There is the possibility of it becoming Heroes, but it's early days.

Oxfam Sunday - Kylie!

As a break from the usual, I've been playing lots of Kylie in the shop today, Aphrodite and Fever:

Yes, I know it's a bit plastic, but she is really good at it and you can get a bit too serious. To illustrate the point, I played Nevermind by Nirvana:

I'm suprised how dated this sounds to me now.

Lewis on the downstairs till commented that he liked the Nirvana, but wasn't so keen on Kylie. "I'll play some just for you next time", I promised.

Pride and Glory

This is a cop drama through my LoveFilm subscription. A compromised detective, Ray Tierny (Edward Norton), is asked by his father (Jon Voight) to investigate the killing of four officers under his brother's (Noah Emmerich) command.

What might have been a fairly mundane film is elevated by both Norton and Colin Farrell as Ray's corrupt and out-of-control brother-in-law. The support is also excellent, especially Emmerich as a commander realising he's no longer in control. Recommended.

Oxfam Sunday - Penguin Special Blowout!

I've started college this week, so I've been rather busy and therefore been unable to make many blog postings, but I have been to the shop. Today, John had a "few" Penguin Specials. Amongst them was a Pelican Special, which counts as a Penguin Special, and this one is Modern German Art (S6) and the earliest special I have so far:

It's in good nick with an intact dust jacket. The rest are a mixed bag, some with and some without dust jackets, ranging from the thick Penguin Political Dictionary shown to the slight Miners' Day (S149). All-in-all, it's almost doubled my collection.

14 Blades - The Man with the Dragon Tattoo

It's a while since I watched a wuxia film and this is a reasonable effort, from my LoveFilm subscription. The Emperor's chief assassin (Donnie Yen) is sent to kill a government minister only to realise he's been set up and teams up with a mercenary's daughter (Zhao Wei, who played Mulan and was in Painted Skin) to clear his name.

The plot is a little convoluted, but is really just an excuse for a lot of martial arts, which are spectacular. Kate Tsui was also rather good as Qinglong's nemesis, Tuotuo, so one to watch out for.

New Lego - 'Ello, 'Ello, It's the Blues Brothers

I got some more series 11 the other day while in town. Looks like Elwood finally got busted!

All very monochrome.

Saturday - Brighton Mini-Maker Faire

Today I went to Brighton for the annual Mini-Maker Faire. I went by rail, via Victoria Station in London, which took a little longer but meant that I didn't have to drive. Despite being ticketed, it was even better attended that last year, from what I remember, although it was only £5 on the door, or £10 if you wanted a nice badge:

It has been laser-cut, and a laser cutter was being demonstrated by a fabrication company:

There was even a knitting android and I was accosted by a pushy Dalek:

I went for a walk down on the promenade before I headed home and the surf was up: