Meg just threw me a list of songs with questionable lyrics that she found on the web. Songs – presumably – that people have decided not to play during the current events. Which possibly explains why everyone feels so suffocated. Part of me thinks that some of these songs should be being played. Why can’t John Lennon’s Imagine be heard? It’s message should be more true now than at any other time, surely? And “Walk Like An Egyptian”? What possible reason could there be for not playing that? [lyrics]. And while I understand why it’s not being played, I desperately need to hear REM’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” at the moment. There has to be some release for the anxiety that seems to be building again.
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I can't find My Own Private Idaho on DVD…
Does anyone have the slightest idea when My Own Private Idaho might be coming out on DVD? I miss River Phoenix. When I visited Kerry in LA, we went to a shop directly opposite the Viper Room where he died.
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Third pilot of the week: Alias…
Third pilot of the week is Alias. When a young woman reveals to her fiancé that she works for the CIA, he is executed by a hit squad hired by her employers. How she deals with this, whether her employers are actually the CIA, and what she needs to stay alive and redeem the loss of her lover are the questions addressed in the first part of the series – which is essentially yet another Nikita rip-off with a couple of twists. That’s not to say it isn’t entertaining, because it is. That’s not to say it isn’t exciting, because it is. And that’s not to say it doesn’t have potential, because it does. But it’ll have to do something new pretty soon to maintain people’s interest.
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The Taliban declares holy war on the US…
Just when you begin to think that the threat of an escalating conflict is behind us – or at least that enough distance has emerged to make a World War less likely – the Taliban declares holy war on the US. And it must be bad, because it’s forcing idiots like Jerry Falwell to make half-hearted apologies for saying that it’s the fault of feminists, gay people and liberals.
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A most entertaining pile of crap…
My second pilot of the day is Thieves, which was frankly the most entertaining pile of crap I’ve seen in months. The plot is totally ridiculous – two crack thieves – one male and one female – are foiled during an attempted hoist. There is continual sexual tension between them and – apparently for this reason – the government keeps them on to recover stolen items for the government. Complete hokum and glorious fun. Hart to Hart meets Nikita with a dash of Moonlighting thrown in for good measure. The copy I saw was clearly mid-production – a variety of special effects shots hadn’t been added yet, and the music was directly lifted in from ‘relevant’ movies as a placeholder (particular treats including bits of music from Out of Sight, American Beauty and Snatch). The end of the episode was a bit mid-budget / Baywatch Nights abandoned warehouse-style final confrontation cliché-of-the-week, but generally, everyone was pretty cool, pretty good and pretty damn pretty.
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I made my first Flash movie…
This afternoon I made my very first ever Flash movie. I’ve struggled with Flash before, many many years ago, and found going through the instructions supplied with it so frustratingly awful that I gave up and consigned myself to the ‘bit technically dim’ category. But today I decided to confront my demons and go hell for leather, and having discovered a considerably more helpful article at Webmonkey, I can now present some circles, moving. I can’t believe that I am so ridiculously proud of this absurdly simple (and basically broken) piece of rubbish. Sigh.
A month after the film opened, usatoday confronts the burning question of our times: “What the hell was the ending of Planet of the Apes about?”.
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Getting my mitts on US TV show pilots…
I’ve got my hands on a few previews of upcoming American TV series, and I’m planning to plough my way through them over the next few days. First up is 24. Kiefer Sutherland stars in this high-concept piece of TV programming. The series contains 24 episodes, each one is in real time and occupies one hour of one day. In the first episode the Counter Terrorist Unit of LA hears about a potential threat on a US senator, who may or may not have something to hide. In the meantime, our hero’s daughter has gone missing.
Watch out for this series, because it’s pretty damn good. It’s fast-paced, uses a lot of split screen techniques to keep you informed as to what’s happening at any one time and it’s pretty involving. My main anxiety is that people won’t be prepared to spend nearly six months watching one tight and short story – and that we’ll get bored of Kiefer’s clothing.
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Grant Morrison's take on the whole thing…
Grant Morrison’s … unique … take on events in New York contains this comment: “Did we bomb Boston to stop the Boston Strangler ? Did we level New York City to get at Son of Sam ? No we did not. So why the fuck should we flatten Afghanistan just to get at a bunch of murderous bastards who have the country’s people in a repressive death grip?”. [via Darren, the Linkmachine]
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An Afghan-American speaks…
An Afghan-American speaks: “What can be done, then? Let me now speak with true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. When people speak of “having the belly to do what needs to be done” they’re thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing innocent people. Let’s pull our heads out of the sand. What’s actually on the table is Americans dying. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden’s hideout. It’s much bigger than that, folks. Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we’d have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I’m going. We’re flirting with a world war between Islam and the West.”