Snow

Zermatt looking snowy

God knows what this is.

For some reason this reminds of the head of a giant cockroach.

Ship Recycling

More of the Tricolor's final voyage

The Poster

Book and the Film

A seriously good read. As the adage goes, films based on books are never as good as the book...

Last King of Scotland

I also saw Last King of Scotland

This was pretty good. Mel Gibson should have watched it to see how to use gratuitous violence to good effect. More words and phrases to describe it:

Forrest Whitaker is absolutely brilliant

James McEvoy was such a hateful character that I wanted to see him die. This is never a good sign. I wanted Jaguar Paws in Apocalypto to suffer an excruciating death too but there were too many plot devices and coincidences for him to die.

James McEvoy was hateful because his character was at once naïve, selfish, immoral and blasé.

There was no timeline so one minute Idi was sane if eccentric, the next he was as mad as cheese.

It felt like somewhere in the middle about ten minutes ended up on the cutting room floor.

Still, its shot on lovely film stock and is exciting and different.

My score:

8/10

Apocalypto

I saw Apocalypto at the weekend. I’d write a review but instead here are some random words and phrases to describe it:

Formulaic

Boring

Tedious

Dull

Ridiculous

Implausible

Violent

Gratuitious

Here’s how Mel could have improved it:

Edited half an hour out

Not gone quite so far up his own arse

Named the characters

How about no slow-motion.

And what was just fine?

Fantastic costumes and make-up

The first 20 minutes were great – a fascinating depiction of what Mayan village life might have been like.

And how do I feel?

Like I had amnesia for 2 1/2 hours. Disappointed.

Score 3/10

ApocaCrapo

I want one of these for Christmas

Big ship, broken cars, tiny man

Ship requires massive cheesewire

Remember that car transporter that capsized in the Channel a couple of years ago and was chopped up with a giant cheesewire so that it could be carted away in bite-size chunks?

I found some pictures.

Toyota Madness

I’ve been tasked at work to buy a Toyota Landcruiser for a project in Tanzania. Amazingly enough there’s a 12 seat version. So I’ve three sites to look at, http://www.toyotatz.com/landcruiser_gx.html where it takes 20 days to buy a car. I was also told to have a look at Toyota Gibraltar who it turns it out supply 30% of all those Lancruisers you see on the news in disaster areas, famine relief and so on. I then had a look at the Japanese site, and ended up on their robot page.

Toyota have invented a scout walker:

http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/vision/emerging_tech/p_robot/details.html

Foolish Smorgasbord

Spot the shoes

I just googled Niketown and I see that just about every big city has one, but I did manage to find a picture of the one in London. See if you can spot the shoes in this picture.

Nike no shoes town

I was in the big Nike shop on Oxford Circus yesterday. Its called Niketown. Its very big – three floors, but it was remarkably difficult to find some shoes. I’m not convinced that they sell much in there. I mean there isn’t really that much to buy so they can’t feasibly sell much. Its just one of those brand placement places. You go in and ooh and aah at how big it is and you leave impressed that Nike have this big shop with glitzy stuff and you tell your friends, wow have you been to Niketown in London, then other people come and everyone has a jamboree about the size of this place. But they don’t buy anything.

Methinks I’ll end up on Neal Street buying my sneakers at Offspring. And why sneakers over trainers? Well, I’m more likely to go sneaking than training.

Very funny

http://www2.b3ta.com/heyhey16k/

Wonky Eyes's Album

The Eraser - Thom Yorke's new(ish) album

I was halfway through a tirade about Queen's Innuendo album that took 5 years to make and resulted in 12 paltry songs and then Freddie Mercury died, and somehow the long wait wasn't worth the money paid. And then I was going to say that this offering from Thom Yorke has been, oh I don't know, 2 years in the making, and its only 41 minutes long but it really is bloody good. Then Firefox crashed for the second time today and that pissed me off. God forbid the new Internet Explorer 7 should somehow be better than Firefox. It still has a long way to go.

So where was I? Thom Yorke may have a funny shaped head and some serious misery issues but his drum machine is on the Kid A settings and its all very hummable. There's a song called Black Swan where the chorus is: "Its fucked up, its fucked up", but really its not. 'I'm Going Slightly Mad' on Innuendo is fucked up. I especially admire the lyric, "I think I'm a banana tree". But I suppose Freddie was half-dead so I shouldn't be too harsh.

Grand National: A cracking album

A Jockey Slut special. That was a good music mag. Gone now, more's the pity.

Look: a 1980s Flake Ad

I'm so hip that I post videos on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEOVRhUUnCw

That said , I just don't get myspace et al. I mean the saviours of mankind the Arctic Monkeys came from Myspace but how much shit must you have to trawl through to find something half decent? Not that I've listened to the Arctic Monkeys. I've only just listened to the first Kasabian album. I bought it when it was released, listened to it once - I liked that Madchester single which I heard on xfm, thought the album was unutterably shite and got my money back from virgin. Then I heard it in Thailand and it was good (I was stoned...) and downloaded it and its all good apart from track 4 which is irritating like Led Zeppelin. Stupid whiny voice.

Grand National are good. One of the best random albums I've bought (Kicking the National Habit). Talking of which I spent £25 on random cds in Fopp the other day. Its a great shop for that. I got some good ones too. Problem is that they get loaded into my mp3 player and the next day I can't remember what they were and can never find them. Its like I never bought them in the first place...

Should get on with some work now...