What is it with the demand for ‘realistic’ movies all of a sudden? Case in point: Roman Polanski’s new film The Ghost.
Sidney Perkowitz suggests that every film should be allowed to ask us to suspend our disbelief on one occasion only. Currently, movies fly seemingly permanently in the face of what would actually happen in reality. Misguided attempts to recreate or re-enact what we’ve seen on screen notwithstanding, what’s the harm in letting the special effects department use it’s collective imagination to entertain us for 90 minutes? Have we become so entranced and convinced by Hollywood cataclysmic disaster movies that NASA is forced to assure us that the world won’t end in 2012?
It would appear so.
The reason that we have science-fiction and not science-fact is simply one of entertainment: one is and the other one usually isn’t. Watching a hacker craft a buffer overflow exploit – while more realistic and non-offending to computer professionals – isn’t exactly going to make for edge-of-the-seat thrills.
One of my old flatmates used to scoff at virtually every movie at least once, using phrases like “Pfft! As if!” or “Well that’d never happen” to the point where I stopped going to the cinema with him.
‘Realistic’ exists already: it’s called a documentary.
There’s talk afoot of the next iteration of the iPhone and it’s operating system and multitasking is getting a lot of mentions once again. Frankly, I can’t say that it’s personally something that I’m overly bothered about but maybe that’s because I’ve not experienced what benefit it can offer.
However, two very simple things that are on my wishlist are:
An icon in the status bar that indicates if the ringer is turned off.
A feature that I’m sure I had enabled on my Palm Pilot in the 90s: assigning the home button double click action to toggle between the last two used applications.
“He is educated who knows how to find out what he doesn’t know.” - George Simmel
As I alluded to in my previous post, finding out what you don’t know has never been easier. While the mobile Internet has all but curtailed the fevered pub discussions about pointless trivia, Google is far from having made us dumb.
Now I’m not an economist by trade nor training but in this day and age of Google and Wikipedia, educating yourself is far easier than it ever has been before.
The odds are that we’ll have a hung parliament in a few months. Despite the tempting mental image that this conjures in light of the expenses and other MP scandals of late, this is not a good thing.
There’s a good chance that the UK would lose its triple-A credit rating because investors would more than likely view a fragmented government as being unable to form a concerted and focused effort to get the country’s finances back on track and thus making it more expensive for the country to borrow money. As has happened in recessions of the past the feared double dip looms large. Whatever happens in the election, I think that a rise to 20% VAT is inevitable this year and despite being kept at a historical low of 0.5% once more, interest rates will obviously rise again.
While greater than expected, a 0.3% rise in the economy is still little more a statistical anomaly when taken in the bigger context rather than any concrete indication that the worst is behind us. The spin that we’re out of the woods is just that.
I don’t want to spread fear but it certainly does look like the UK is in a heap of trouble and many people far more versed in this kind of thing think that we’re in for a long Kondratiev winter and choosing when to start the serious and inescapable cut backs will make a massive difference to the outcome.
The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games got off to a horrible start with the death of the 21 year-old Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili during training and there’s no doubt that this terrible event will cast a dark shadow on the memory of an otherwise excellent couple of weeks.
If this terrible accident was the low point, then the highlight had to be the debut of skier cross. A lot of people here in the UK dismiss the Winter Olympics, regarding the events as the mountain passtimes of the rich and spoiled, failing to recognise the years of training and sacrifice each and every athlete dedicate to their sport.
Throughout the Games, these athletes displayed tremendous feats of not only physical but also mental and emotional strength. None more so than ice skater Joannie Rochette who competed only days after the death of her mother and Petra Majdic who won bronze with five broken ribs and a punctured lung.
After Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang’s injury forced him to withdraw from the Beijing final in 2008, his sponsors offered their immedite support – Nike quickly releasing a special advert (from Wieden + Kennedy) with this message:
“Love competition.
Love risking your pride.
Love winning it back.
Love giving it everything you’ve got.
Love the glory. Love the pain.
Love sport even when it breaks your heart.”
You may think this was merely cynical corporate marketing but personally it beautifully encapsulates the spirit of the Games. Our day-to-day view of sport at the moment tends to be all about match fixing allegations, drug taking, personal scandal or cold-hearted business deals.
For some, the best Olympic moments feature the brave have-a-go underdog like Michael Edwards (you’ll probably know him better as Eddie the Eagle) or Eric “The Eel” Moussambani. However, in my eyes, nothing will ever eclipse the memory of Derek Redmond and his father on the track in 1992 and I don’t mind admitting that I well-up every single time I watch it.
