electricinca.com

2008-01-16T21:29:00.000Z

I'm Not There

I'm Not There is a brilliant, but flawed beautifully strange movie. As I'm not particularly knowledgeable about the life and work of Bob Dylan I cannot say whether it is an effective study of the man, I would suspect that if you were looking for that then Don't Look Back or No Direction Home would suit your needs better.

All the six actors playing the part of 'Dylan' are wonderful although through no fault of his Heath Ledger's Robbie Clark seems the least Dylan-like. Of the supporting actors I think Bruce Greenwood deserves a lot of praise for his dual roles of Keenan Jones and Pat Garrett. It's packed to the gills with references to or homages of other movies and references to the life and work of Bob Dylan himself of course although I think I probably missed far more of the latter. With the Richard Gere segment being heavily influenced by Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid it is appropriate that Kris Kristofferson be the narrator for the story.

My two main criticisms of the film are that there is almost no narrative flow between each of the segments, the film mostly just seems to cut between them at random and it seems unnecessarily long I don't believe the film would suffer from having many of the scenes cut entirely.

White Dwarf game

2008-01-12T22:06:00.000Z

White Dwarf is basically three games in one involving moving with your mouse a small white circle which exerts a gravitational like pull on other coloured circles which cross the gameboard.

I think the most fun play mode is Original in which you have to collect the green circles and then touch a blue circle to bank the points you've accumulated all whilst avoiding the red circles.

If that description makes little sense I urge you to go play it and you'll soon pick up the knack of it.

My best score so far 15590

Best score on the Avoid mode is around 56 million!

Cinema headaches

2008-01-11T21:49:00.000Z

We're are very bloody busy at the cinema this week with The Kite Runner, Lust, Caution and I'm Not There and my stress levels aren't helped by the number of stupid customers we've had today.

Prize fucking twat of the day goes to the bloke who arrived for a 2.45 pm show of The Kite Runner that didn't flaming well exist! Reason being that being a Friday our programme changed and so the times for today are not the same as they were yesterday.

I explained this to him but he was still very irate and insisted that he looked at the website and he had a piece of paper with the times printed on it for The Kite Runner and also for that matter there was no mention of I'm Not There. I explain again "Okay sir you say that you looked at the website yesterday, are you sure you were you looking at the times for today's shows?"

Cinema weeks start on Fridays and so on so times for Friday and the weekend will not necessarily be the same as the times we display earlier this week. He's irate and won't answer the questions I've asked him trying to ascertain where the mix up might lie and keeps going on about this damn piece of paper that will prove him correct.

So he goes away and comes back for the 6pm show bringing with him the piece of paper that he mentioned earlier. Now I'm expecting that he's either printed off the page from the website or he's got one of our printed programmes or he's got a page from the local newspaper and I'll be able to point out the error that he's made. I'm assuming he's got last week's times.

But no he comes back with a plain piece of printer paper with literally just the film titles and the times. The times on his piece of paper being of course last week's. He brandishes this at me like this is his proof, but there's no fucking identifying bits on it at all. No dates! No logo or other text that might indicate where he'd printed it off from assuming he did print it off from a website. He could have just typed it himself for all I know.

2008-01-05T13:02:00.000Z

Shoot 'Em Up

A strange movie this one as it seems like a bit of a cross between two of Clive Owen's previous movies Sin City and Children of Men with a bit of Looney Tunes thrown in for good measure.

Mr. Smith (Owen) finds himself the reluctant guardian of a newborn when he rescues a heavily pregnant woman from a killer. Upon despatching the hitman with a carrot Smith discovers that the guy he killed wasn't alone and a whole host of armed men are apparently in pursuit of the pregnant woman. Paul Giamatti as the leader of the gang of killers plays Elmer Fudd to Clive Owen's Bugs Bunny, is he like Fudd "a pussy who uses a gun to make him look tough"? Well next to Owen's unstoppable killing machine the answer has to be yes.

Shoot 'Em Up is also peculiar in that it is an anti-gun movie that is extremely violent with dozens of people as the title suggests being shot to death if they are not being killed by the occasional carrot when Smith finds himself out of ammunition. Enjoyable but not wholly satisfying.

2008-01-04T22:41:00.000Z

Enchanted

Paper airplane over New York

2008-01-02T18:08:00.001Z

How many five year olds could you take in a fight?

2007-12-14T17:38:00.000Z

30

I think I estimated about 30 myself when I first came across this internet meme a couple of years ago.

G.W. Bush Happy Xmas (War is Over)

2007-12-13T18:40:00.000Z

Coincidentally I saw a group of primary school children singing this in the city centre late this afternoon along with the more traditional Christmas carols.

Game: Thin Ice

2007-12-07T16:21:00.000Z

Cute little seasonal game from the folks at Nitrome. Thin Ice involves skating a loop around the monsters on the frozen pond to make the ice beneath them fall away.

So when I wrote cute I meant cute in the way that causing monsters to freeze and drown to death in a frozen pond is cute.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

2007-12-05T22:55:00.000Z

I'm practically at a loss for words. Beautiful bleak melancholic portrait of an amiable sociopath and the man who killed him.

Wonderful score, beautiful cinematography with fantastic portrayals of the characters by the two leads make this my film of the year.

IMDB link

The Wire: prequels

2007-12-05T16:24:00.000Z

All you folks who like me are waiting eagerly in anticipation of the start of Season 5 here's a little something to whet your appetites.

Young Prop Joe (1962, Baltimore, Maryland)
Young Omar (1985, Baltimore, Maryland)
Bunk and McNulty (2000, Baltimore, Maryland)

The saga of cleaning the cinema.

2007-11-26T14:17:00.000Z

Since Michael died earlier this year we've had real difficulty finding a decent cleaner to replace him at the cinema.

We've tried two different cleaning companies but they both turned out to be unreliable. You'd think that if the cleaner was ill or wasn't able to work for some other reason that the company that we'd hired would find a replacement to do the job for that day as it is the company we have a contract with not the individual cleaner. But no.

So we gave up on them and tried to hire and employ some cleaners directly. We had no trouble in hiring a couple of people to do the job (let's call them Bob and Margaret, not their real names) splitting the week between them , they both seemed reliable and keen and so we thought our troubles were over.

Until the ghost.

I got a text message yesterday morning informing me that Margaret wouldn't be able to come in as she was ill. So I ended up having to come in early to give the place a quick once over before customers arrived for our free morning screening of The Assassination of Jesse James.

I come in today to discover that the real reason why Margaret didn't come into work was that she was afraid of our ghost. But all is not lost as Bob upon learning about Margaret's fears has decided to exorcise the ghost by burning incense and will accompany Margaret for her next shift to alleviate her fears.

I find that the place is spooky when no one else is around at night, it's a creaky old building, but it shouldn't be that bad during the morning because at least it is light outside.

Let's Do Lunch - Logic puzzle

2007-11-23T16:13:00.000Z

Coudal Partners have published yet another fiendish logic puzzle after their previous doozies such as Einstein's fish and Which Porn Star Ate the Most Hot Dogs?

However I'm convinced that Let's Do Lunch is missing some information as I've come up with four viable solutions.

The Set Up

Four movie actors are in a cafe, sitting together at a square table, like the one shown here with the seats numbered. They are discussing their most recent projects while waiting for their salads. Each has just returned from a different location where he or she was shooting a different type of film, one of which is a costume drama.

From the information provided can you figure out where each person sat, his or her full name, the location he or she had just returned from, and the type of movie each had shot?

The Details

1. York (who isn't sitting in seat #1) shot a science fiction movie.
2. The person sitting in seat #2 didn't just return from Tokyo.
3. Julia is in seat #3.
4. Hannah (who isn't sitting in seat #4) is across from the person who just returned from Hawaii.
5. Marks is sitting next to the person who just returned from Spain.
6. Moon did not shoot an action thriller.
7. Glory and Robert are sitting next to each other; one of them is surnamed Smith and the other had just returned from Ireland.
8. Robert (who isn't Moon) shot a romantic comedy.

My solutions
The words in bold are the ones I've managed to fix down as being the only possible solution but the rest are variable to some extent.

Seat 1, Glory Marks, action thriller, Ireland
Seat 2, Hannah York, science fiction, Spain
Seat 3, Julia Moon, costume drama, Tokyo
Seat 4, Robert Smith, romantic comedy, Hawaii

Seat 1, Glory Marks, action thriller, Ireland
Seat 2, Hannah Moon, costume drama, Spain
Seat 3, Julia York, science fiction, Tokyo
Seat 4, Robert Smith, romantic comedy, Hawaii

Seat 1, Robert Marks, romantic comedy, Ireland
Seat 2, Hannah York, science fiction, Spain
Seat 3, Julia Moon, costume drama, Tokyo
Seat 4, Glory Smith, action thriller, Hawaii

Seat 1, Robert Marks, romantic comedy, Ireland
Seat 2, Hannah Moon, costume drama, Spain
Seat 3, Julia York, science fiction, Tokyo
Seat 4, Glory Smith, action thriller, Hawaii

England lose and so goes McClaren

2007-11-22T11:25:00.000Z

After the England football team's abysmal performance against Croatia last night resulted in them failing to qualify for the Euro 2008 the coach Steve McClaren has been sacked.

Croatia played for and got the win even though it was irrelevant as they were guaranteed to qualify and to top the group unless convincingly beaten by England.

A series of defensive errors cost England the match and apart from a short spell of good play at the start of the second half the players' underperformed.

England shouldn't have really been in the position of needing a draw from last night's match but failing to win matches against lowly ranked Israel and Macedonia earlier in qualifying set them up for the possibility of failure.

Entire Child Benefit database lost.

2007-11-20T21:31:00.000Z

The loss of two CDs containing the personal details of all families in the UK with a child under 16 inspires me with confidence of the Government's ability to ensure the security of the data to be held in the National Identity Register.

Who you gonna call?

2007-11-16T22:48:00.000Z

Gameplay footage from the new Ghostbusters game which features the voices of the original cast and has been scripted by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis.

Looks damn awesome! I had the original game for my Spectrum 48k back in the day so this makes me very nostalgic and happy.

Secur-i-disc is solution to stolen tax discs.

2007-11-16T12:19:00.001Z

secur-i-disc, originally uploaded by electricinca.

In an effort to secure my replacement tax disc so that I don't have to suffer another break in to my car I've used the Secur-i-disc as recommended by both the Police and the DVLA. They describe how it works as follows.

If a thief breaks into a vehicle and steals the tax disc, the unique Secur-i-Disc encapsulation will prevent any alteration for use on another vehicle. Any attempt to alter the details on the tax disc will result in its destruction, thereby preventing the thief from "selling it on".

Hopefully the result will be that the thief sees the warning and will not even try to break in now.

Stole my tax disc.

2007-11-13T16:36:00.000Z

Some fucking cunt broke into my car and stole my fucking tax disc.

Not only that but because I had no tax disc visible I got a fixed penalty notice of £60 from the Police for what they term "failing to display". Yeah so technically it is an offence but I'm the victim of a crime I would have thought the constable would have seen that my car had been broken into and shown some discretion.

It actually says on the fixed penalty notice that they will not accept any mitigation and will not enter into correspondence.

So it's the triple whammy of now having to pay for repairs, pay this damn fixed penalty and pay £7 to get a replacement tax disc posted to me.

Okay sorry I was so caught up in my rant I overlooked that non-Brits probably wouldn't know what a tax disc is.

So basically it is a paper disc about the size of coffe cup lid that needs to be displayed in the windscreen of your car to show that you've paid tax on the vehicle. It can be paid for either a 6 month or 12 month term.

Stupid fucking antiquated system despite it having a fully computerised back end that allows people to check easily via a database whether a vehicle has been taxed or not. So the copper would probably have checked the database and seen that my car was taxed (having an untaxed vehicle on the road is a different and more serious offence) but issued me a fixed penalty notice anyway because there was no disc on display.

Power Thirst II

2007-11-12T16:12:00.000Z

You'll feel like a fighter jet made of biceps! [via]

Warhammer 40KO'd: Fan film scuppered by Games Workshop

2007-11-08T13:46:00.000Z

Damnatus an ambitious fan-film produced by German fans of the Warhammer 40K game, made by the company Games Workshop, may never be seen by an audience according to BBC News due to copyright issues.

The German producers of Damnatus had tried to make the film as professional looking as possible and spent over 10 000 Euros and months of filming on the project. Unfortunately Games Workshop say that due to German copyright law there is a danger of them losing control over their Intellectual Property should they let the fan film be distributed.

Andy Jones, legal and licensing head for Games Workshop, said this law confers rights on the creators of works that cannot be given away.

This means that the creators of Damnatus cannot assign their rights to Games Workshop even if they wanted to.

But by sanctioning the release of the film without this "assignment" Games Workshop would essentially be giving up the title to the Warhammer 40,000 intellectual property.

In a lengthy response explaining the ban on Damnatus Mr Jones wrote: "To lose control of Warhammer or Warhammer 40,000 is simply unthinkable.

"So we must be vigilant, and perhaps sometimes seemingly heartless in our decisions to safeguard the IP for the future success of the business and the hobby."

I have to say that I'm dubious about the truth of Games Workshop's position here. I'm no expert on German copyright law but I can't believe there is no possible work around to this obstacle if Games Workshop truly wished to help their German fans release the movie.

If German law is like any other countries' copyright law then there must be provision within that law to licence the copyrighted works of others to create new works. How else could the movie Perfume: The Story of a Murderer have been produced unless their licensed the right from the book's author Patrick Süskind?

A contract could surely be drawn up to licence the copyright of Games Workshop on a limited basis for a nominal sum of 1 Euro to the German film producers that would allow the movie to be released on a non-commercial basis.

Mr Jones said despite Games Workshop's "admiration" for Damnatus it could not change its policy and allow the film to be shown.

He said Games Workshop was not acting "malevolently" but that this was a case where an agreement has "failed to be reached".

Said Mr Jones: "This is perhaps to be regretted, nonetheless in the final analysis we simply have no choice but to say 'no'."

I have a feeling that the BBC article does not tell the full story, either there is some genuine confusion here or Games Workshop is saying one thing in public and trying to muddy the waters with talk of copyright issues but is in reality opposed to the release of this movie.

Edit: A commenter at TechDirt with some familiarity of German law suggests that the company find a new copyright lawyer as like I wrote above it's perfectly possible for them to grant a limited licence to use their copyrighted works without losing control over their Intellectual Property.

Also another commenter suggests that there might be some confusion and it is actually a Trademark issue instead, I could believe that this might be the case but surely there is a workable solution if this is the case too.

Chat Noir - Addictive Flash game.

2007-10-20T17:21:00.000+01:00

Trap the cat by blocking his path off the gameboard by placing dark circles in Chat Noir [via]

It's infuriating as hell even after having played it enough to get the knack of it, but boy is it addictive.

I don't believe it!

2007-10-18T15:53:00.000+01:00

Richard Wilson just came to see The Counterfeiters. I managed to restrain myself from contriving a situation at which I could say "I don't believe it!" in front of him.

I wouldn't want a repeat of the following.

Plan to split Taliban backed by the UK

2007-10-15T15:47:00.000+01:00

The Guardian reports that the UK is backing a plan to split Taliban from within.

The British government has thrown its backing behind an ambitious Afghan strategy to split the Taliban by securing the defection of senior members of the militant group and large numbers of their followers.

The strategy, spearheaded by the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, reflects a significant shift in British policy, and is showing initial signs of success.

This would seem to me to be a classic case of divide and conquer, a sensible course of action I think as the ultimate goal is to bring peace to Afghanistan not to capture or kill every single member of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the country. It can only be a good thing if more moderate members of the Taliban who are not really adherants to the ideology but are members out of tribal loyalty can be persuaded to lay down arms. politics, terrorism

In Memorium: Prince Henry of Wales

2007-10-11T14:13:00.000+01:00

An Iraq War memorial is to be unveiled at the Trafalgar Hotel today to honour the sacrifice made by His Royal Highness Prince Henry of Wales the younger son of Charles, Prince of Wales and his first wife, the late Diana, Princess of Wales. [via]

Prince Henry of Wales, commonly called Prince Harry aka Sir Robin the Not-quite-so-brave-as-Sir-Lancelot and Harry the Nazi, holds the rank of Second Lieutenant in the Blues and Royals regiment of the Household Cavalry of the British Army, but due to "specific threats to kill or kidnap him" he did serve his tour of duty in Iraq with his regiment.

Hitler Banned From iSketch!

2007-10-04T22:47:00.001+01:00

I've not played iSketch in over a year but I still found this most hilarious.