Nullius in verba

This film is amazing

...for all the wrong reasons!

Really, forget so bad it's good. This really is in a so freakishly awful it's frickin' hilarious league of its own.

The plot, of Saya - a half-blood vampire/demon killer - on a path to avenge the death of her parents - who she never knew, and she's also kind of hazy on the details of their demise - is such flimsy cardboard cheese that you cannot take it seriously. The script is so clichéd that in many places your jaw will drop at its sheer barefaced plagiarism. The acting ... oh my word, the acting ... is so painfully wooden that it's like watching a school play - where all the kids in the lead roles got chickenpox the week before it was due to run, and another bunch who were never interested in that drama crap got drafted in and the lines crammed down their throats for seven days straight.

This all adds up to an experience I couldn't help but enjoy. It stinks so bad, it's like the most awful pun you've ever heard, which you can't resist being amused by.

But that's not all! Oh no. It gets better...

The CGI would have been laughably bad 15 years ago. The action scenes, directed by Corey Yuen who has previously done some really good stuff in his time[0], are shot too close up, by a cameraman with ADHD on a caffeine overdose, and edited by someone for which time and timing have no meaning. Quick, slow, cut, quick, cut, slow, quick, cut, slow,... aaagh! As for the lighting guy, well, I want to know where they found someone in this day and age who has never heard of epilepsy.

If you've seen the trailer, there's a segment that looks very ethereal, unworldly and dream-like. It's really quite beautiful. But in the movie, the very first thing that happens in that scene is that the sidekick points out, just in case you hadn't figured it out for yourself, that None of this is real. This isn't actually happening. Because obviously you have the IQ of a frog.

Really, this all comes together in such a calamitous train-wreck of bogosity that I couldn't help but giggle at its sheer awfulness.

But! I have not yet seen this movie in all its glory!

Do not go and see this movie at the cinema! As hilarious as it is, you will be paying too much to be missing out on what I believe will be the ultimate way to experience this movie at its simultaneous best and worst.

No, wait for it to come out on DVD (where it should have been released in the first place), and then wait for it to drop to under £5. Then get it, and invite a few mates round. Then get some beers in. Then warm up with another so bad it's good movie. (pharrap should be able to give some good recommendations here, which will probably star Chuck Norris.) Then, and only then, should you watch this movie. Then, and only then, will the true shining spectacle of its awesome suckitude be properly revealed.


That's it. I'm all out of superlative adjectives now.


[0] Corey Yuen was the fight choreographer for The Transporter 1 and 2, a bunch of Jet Li films including The Legend of Fong Sai-Yuk, Kiss of the Dragon and Cradle 2 The Grave, and some Jackie Chan films including Drunken Master. Although, he was only the choreographer for all those films, and this appears to be his first shot at directing.

After much discussion, the Lard Club Cabal has decided to go to The Dam House this Wednesday, July 1. It appears to have a bar, and I can't think of any good pubs in the immediate vicinity (I'm not sure if The Rats Nad Grater is a good pub or not these days) so I'm going to suggest meeting in the bar there from 7, with a view to getting a table at around 7:30.

Oh dear, John Woo, whatever happened?

Many years ago you rocked, with the volume of your rocking possibly exceeding 11. I shall refrain from mentioning by name a selection of your movies which contributed so much to, and for me defined, the Heroic Bloodshed genre; partly in deference to their greatness and not wishing to do them the disrespect of linking them with Red Cliff; partly as a kindness to Red Cliff itself and not wishing to bring to mind other movies which outshine it so dazzlingly.

These days, it seems you just do that weird "dad dance" with two thumbs in the air.

To be fair, Red Cliff is not a particularly bad film. Its main crimes are "trying too hard" and "being boring", often both at the same time. ( In fact, most of the "being boring" can be directly linked to and is caused by the "trying too hard"... )

That said, it's not all bad. The mission to steal 100,000 arrows from the bad guys is ingenious and amusing. There are other moments that work. Unfortunately, those moments are few, and very far between. Red Cliff is two and a half hours long, and feels much longer. I am just glad I have seen it outside of Asia; the Asian release runs over four hours.

Part of me had hoped that the patchyness of some of your more recent films was a result of the constraints that the Hollywood Machine™ put on you, and that a return to Asia would bring renewed life into your creations. That hope is now fading.

Not really recommended.

Hope you made better use of all the daylight and sunshine than I.

(Not that I was forcibly stuck inside or anything, it just seems like I wasted it a bit)

ICHC is pretty good today, with the following making me think of longrat:



And the following just sending me into fits of giggles:

.


Completely unrelated, what is it with the complete environmental design fail for city center bus timetable information towers? When I'm standing at a bus stop, I find it useful to be able to look down the road to where the bus will be coming from, in order that I see it in plenty of time to flag it down. Doesn't everyone else?

So who on earth, in their right mind, and not on some kind of addictive hallucinogen, would think this is a good idea:



???

They're like this all over the city center.

From Mozilla's Asa Dotzler linking to a critique of Opera Unite, I came across this Google Creative Labs video where 50 passers-by were asked "What is a browser".

My flabber is truly gasted. I know I'm generally oblivious, but I'm amazed at how oblivious I wasam to just how niche and specialised some things are, which I mistakenly assume are common knowledge.

I know, I've not posted any reviews in ages. After each new movie, I kept thinking I should do a quick round-up review of all the ones I've missed before doing another full review. As that list got longer and longer, that idea got more and more daunting. So, stuff it, because I don't really have the enthusiasm for it, and I really want to review Drag Me To Hell.

Drag Me To Hell is a lot of fun. It's a tense, scary, gripping-your-arm-rests, makes-you-jump, black comedy frightfest.

It's not very bloody, and the ewww! bits are much closer to gross-out-comedy than torture porn. There's not even that much bad language. This is a movie that never tries to revulse you, or make you dare yourself to keep watching. Heck, there's even an honest-to-goodness Loony Tunes gag in there. No, this film makes you jump out of your seat while putting a smile on your face at the same time.

The plot? Oh yes. Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is the loan officer at a bank, where she declines an old woman's third mortgage extension. This is partly to prove to her boss that she can be tough when needed, hoping it will improve her chances of getting a promotion ahead of a co-worker. The old woman turns out to be a gypsy, who curses her to be tormented by the demon Lamia for three days, after which it will drag her to hell and feast upon her soul. Which means, of course, she has three days to figure out what's going on, and to try and stop it.

There's not much more to say. The characters are all really good and well acted. The pacing and suspense is excellent. The score is atmospheric, ominous, and notably obvious just where it needs to be in order to give you the anticipation of realising you're being set up for a shock. Everything just fits.

I went in with reasonably high expectations of this movie, still really enjoyed it, and came out with adrenalin in my veins and a grin on my face.

Recommended.


I also saw a trailer for Blood: The Last Vampire which appears to be made of pure Awesomium.

... Is Painfully Awesome.

(Edit: What's the word for a post where you do nothing but link somewhere else?)

Yes, I have noticed the advertising that you have placed everywhere to let me know that House has moved to Sky as of season 5.

Why? Why do you do this? You take a show, one of the very few that I enjoy and bother to watch, and have spent time learning to look forward to, and then take it away.

Can't you find your own shows to show from the beginning? Please, find the best show in the world, get it from the start of season 1, and show it to your heart's content. Because I never watch Sky, I'll never know what I'm missing. Well, apart from second-hand when everyone else raves about it, but then people rave about shows like "Britain's Got Dancing Celebrities In The Ice Jungle" and "Lost", so I'm not really bothered on that front.

I suspect that the answer to my rhetorical question is that they do this to try to get me to subscribe to Sky in order to continue to see House.

Uh, hello? McFly? Anyone home? You find something I like, take it away from me, then offer to sell it back to me, and you expect me to reward you for this? With money? Seriously, why on earth do you think that this would do anything except annoy me immensely, and make me associate anger and hostility with the name "Sky"? You're making me want to give you money less and less each time you pull a stunt like this. (See also, The X-Files)

Whoever is in charge of this counterproductive policy should have their head examined. From the inside, with blunt instruments. And no anaesthetic.

Worried about the Terms of Service for websites you visit changing at any time under your nose, and your continued use of that site being taken as an implicit and automatic acceptance of the new Terms, whether or not you've actually read them?

TOSBack was created to help you monitor the policies for the websites you use everyday, and show how they change over time.

Home page, RSS Feed.

It doesn't cover LJ at the moment.

(previously)

...this and thought of lots of little monsters, goblins and assorted other proto-geeks.

Then I did a double take and realised that it's a complete geek fail, because it only measures in inches. I know it's primarily for a backwards USAian audience, but, come on! They could at least have put metric measurements on as well. Do they really want to saddle yet another generation with an outdated and unnecessarily awkward measurement system, barely used by the rest of the developed world?

part 1.

( Ah yes, the rather dodgy gentleman's establishment. )

So, did I have a good time?

That is an interesting question. Concentrating all the time on being somewhat more extroverted than usual, on not messing up the drinking games in order to not have to drink as much as possible, on fitting in enough to not put anyone else on edge was damn hard work. There are quite a few amusing stories out of it, some of which I've not had time to relate here, which give the memories of the trip a good, warm feeling. The closest thing I can liken it to is a hard multi-day hike. On top of being completely exhausting it was fun and rewarding in a masochistic kind of way. So I'm glad I went. But it's not the sort of thing I'd want to do again soon, or regularly, or possibly even ever.

As I said before, the guys I went with were friendly and accepting, and I got on with them better than I'd have expected. This is despite them being the kind of people who if they came into my local while I was having a quiet drink with friends, I'd be resentful of and intimidated by them. Now, the worst that I can say about them is that they simply don't seem to notice how their behaviour might affect others around them - but then I don't think that anyone is very much aware of that most of the time. Drivers who don't indicate, people who suddenly stop walking in the middle of a busy street, people who decide to go through all the ring tones on their phone while figuring out which one to pick on the bus, are just a few examples which demonstrate that most people simply do not pay that much attention to most of the rest of the world around them most of the time. It's certainly not malicious, and I don't think that people are aware of their effects and don't care; it's more that people, in general, aren't aware enough of everything around them to be able to care about it all. So, the worst that I can say about them is that they're human? *sigh*

Anyway, that's enough for now. I need rest.

And an absence of alcohol.

(Note: I started writing this Saturday evening, but didn't get around to finishing it yet. And I'm off to my parents for the day/tonight, so the rest will have to wait for when I get back Monday afternoon...)

Getting back to East Midlands airport this morning, after a couple of days of stag-do boisterous heavy drinking in Prague, one of my fellow celebrators asked me what I was planning on doing for the rest of the day/weekend. It didn't take much thinking to decide I was going to relax, put my feet up, and relish spending some time not drinking for a while.

( Let's rewind a bit... )

To be continued...

Fat Cat again?

...this and thought of morecake.

( nicked from san_valentine, behind a cut )

Yes, it's geeky. But incredibly fascinating.

2006 world record in 1:28, which includes thinking time. This was the best time I'd seen last time I was looking.

2009 world record in 0:47, including memorization. Probably the one Mickey was talking about.

Non-record 1:58. Very interesting watching this girl think.

Same girl, blindfold 4x4 solve.

Honest.

In a way, it doesn't seem entirely fair adding extra layers of oversight to old expenses claims.

I take that back entirely, along with anything else that suggested that what has gone on should go unpunished.

It's the constant "Another shocking expenses story" media meme that is really pissing me off.

I'm sure that drug addicts commit burglary every day. It's terrible, and they need to be caught and punished. Fortunately, we have the police and justice system working on that, and they just get on with it. The difference is we don't have the media shouting "Another shocking druggie burglary case!" every goddamn time it happens. Like I said, it's terrible. But that doesn't make it shocking, unusual, unexpected or in any way newsworthy, unless there are particularly strange circumstances.

Just like the expenses stuff. Really, I don't think any of it should be considered shocking, unusual, unexpected or newsworthy. People in a position of power without oversight caught abusing that power?!? How ... completely predictable.

Yes, it is wrong, and needs to be punished.

But it doesn't need to be the top headline of every news publication/programme published in every single medium for a whole month, with no signs of that slowing down. Can we please just punish them in whatever way is appropriate, as quickly and with as little fuss as possible? There are people on that case; let them get on with it.

Unfortunately, I don't see that happening. The media has got hold of their big "cause" story for the next six months, and it doesn't look like it's going to go away. That's the most depressing thing of all. I'm pretty sure the overly-lenient parts of my previous post was mostly me trying to think of a reason that this shouldn't be the story at all. After all, if it wasn't bad, it wouldn't be a story. Ah well. I guess I'll try to stay even further away from traditional media than I normally do for a while. Someone give me a shout when they've moved on to some other headline.


In other news, a 3-year-old had a tantrum today. Tune in later for our special feature-length programme on this shocking individual case, which is totally different from the feature-length special we did yesterday on that other 3-year-old throwing a tantrum, which was totally different again from the specials we've done every day for the last bajillion years on 3-year-olds inexplicably throwing tantrums.

I'm not going to link to any individual stories here because they're all over the place, so I'm just going to ponder about all the hoohah.

First, an observation. It is in the nature of people to try and get away with stuff. It's what we do. Not all the time, and some are less prone than others, but it's just what people do. To deny that is to either be unrealistically idealistic, unbelievably obtuse, or completely ignorant of human nature.

Sure, there might be the occasional person out there who's never tried to put something they shouldn't on an expenses form, never tried to get away with avoiding a bit of import tax (or any other kind of tax) once or twice, never embellished an insurance claim, never got a dodgy copy of some software, movie or cd, never claimed jobseekers allowance for a week or two when they shouldn't have, etc..., but they're pretty rare. Even rarer are those who not only have stayed within the letter of the law, but also completely within the spirit.

Even then, putting in a request for all the expenses you can possibly think of doesn't sound that unusual. Put in a claim for X, and if it gets paid then it's obviously OK, if the request is denied then it isn't. If the claim shouldn't have been allowed, isn't that a problem with the person who authorised payment?

Now, it would be nice if our politicians could be trusted.

Ha! Ha ha! A ha ha ha! Ahahahahahahahahahahahaha! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

...

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

*wipes eyes* Sorry about that. Where was I?

Oh yes, it would be nice if our politicians could be trusted. But we know they can't. Firstly, they're human (At least, the ones who didn't used to be lawyers are), so see point one. Secondly, the fact that there was ever any oversight at all, even the crap commons oversight that didn't catch any of the stuff that is now coming to light, is proof that we knew they couldn't be trusted. After all, if we knew we could trust them, we wouldn't need any oversight at all!

So, there was some oversight, but it wasn't that great. Hence, we decide to add more oversight, to add more pairs of eyes, to look for more bugs. Inevitably, more bugs will be found. As with software, each time you release some new code to larger and larger sets of victimsbeta testers, you will uncover not only large numbers of bugs which were always there but had been previously missed by everyone, but whole new classes of bugs.

In a way, it doesn't seem entirely fair adding extra layers of oversight to old expenses claims. Yes, more oversight is obviously needed, and I'm completely in favour of the changes. But lets at least give people a chance to take the extra care that is needed to get things right on new claims under the new and improved scrutiny that they're going to be exposed to. Suddenly adding extra scrutiny to decisions made years ago seems both unnecessarily cruel and pointlessly easy, like a cross between kicking puppies and shooting fish in a barrel. Shooting puppies in a barrel, if you will.

As it is, and as I see it, everything that's come to light recently should have been completely predictable, totally inevitable and utterly unsurprising. I don't see how it could possibly be otherwise. So - why the fuss? (Or is it just that fuss is to newspapers as mountains are to climbers - fuss will be made simply because it's there and can be made).


Or ... have I become so cynical, so wearied and worn by the essential crapness of politicians over the years, have I come to expect so little of them, that when they actually deserve everything they get I'm now surprised?

Reading The Metro this morning, I came across the following snippet in a story titled "Why stopping cigs can make you fat" by Miles Erwin:

A fat-busting gene that makes smokers pile on the pounds after kicking the habit has been discovered. [...] [Scientists] found that smokers had raised levels of the gene AZGP1, which helps reduce fat cells.

This makes very little sense to me. Even ignoring the gene/allele distinction, is it even possible to have raised levels of a gene? At first I thought not, but then I considered that DNA is a heck of a mess, with random fragments of varying sizes copied all over the place. Granted, a lot of it is inactive, but as far as I know it might be possible to have active copies of a gene at multiple different sites in your DNA, which might in turn mean that a cell could produce more of the protein "described" (terminology?) by that gene at once, because there are more places that can synthesise it?

But, this isn't the impression I got from what I've previously understood about genetics. OTOH, I Am Not A Geneticist, and haven't done any Biology above GCSE level.

So, what's going on? Can you have "raised levels of a gene"? If so, what does that mean? Or does Miles Erwin have no idea what he is writing about? Has he done the biological equivalent of stating that the Millenium Falcon can do the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, which will need retconning into something that makes sense by someone else at a later date?

If it doesn't make sense, can anyone who does know something about genetics tell me what he might be trying to say with that sentence? Is he trying to imply that some people have raised levels of the protein created by the AZGP1 gene? Do they have an allele of the AZGP1 gene, that can make a particular variant of a protein, which is especially good at doing whatever it is that that protein does ("reduce fat cells")?