You know that 80s song, Angel is the Centrefold? Someone should do a new version of that song ... but instead of a centrefold, the high school sweetheart is a terrorist.
We caught a matinee of the Da Vinci Code this afternoon and it's not so bad ... it's not a great flick, but it's fine. The movie critics who trashed the flick are just reacting to the hype and not giving honest reviews. Ebert's is the only one I've read that keeps some perspective. Many of the critics complaining about this flick gave Star Wars III the nod, and Da Vinci Code is much better than that load of crud.
But like I wrote, it's not a great flick. It sticks too close to the book and that wrecks the pace. Whole chunks of stuff don't make any sense (for example, the Silas flashback) in the context of the movie and could ... should ... have been chopped.
Now, if you want to talk about CRAP, watch LOST. It wraps up this week. Second season was a complete waste of time, and displayed a drop in quality rivalling the plunge that happened when original Battlestar Galactica morphed into Galactica 1980. There were two key problems with LOST S2: 1) nothing happened, and 2) what happpened was stupid.
Here's an example: in the nothing happened department, Charlie almost got on drugs ... but didn't. Then he tried to help build a church ... but didn't. And last week he finally kicked the drugs he wasn't addicted to and Locke was able to take a break from his own crisis of faith to approve even though it had been strongly demonstrated in the previous episode that if someone gets shot in the gut, those drugs come in handy. See? When Charlie finally gets to do something, it's stupid.
The first season of LOST worked because of the tension, pace and because it was scary. All that was absent from season two and what was left was either boring or unwatchable. I hate LOST but I hate more that I have to keep watching just to find out what happens to those idiots.
Wait, there's still one thing I like about LOST and that's the way it depicts power and force. On the show, all of the characters are trying to get the guns because, obviously, you get the guns, you get the power. But, in the course of events, every time a character gets hold of a gun something unintended and terrible happens. That's a nice flip, too bad the rest of the writing isn't that smart.
Smallville had a good season and ended well. Things happened that mattered, the characters changed (or croaked) and Lex's descent accelerated at a satisfying pace. Also, the show gets full points for treading into Queasyville by having both Clark's mom and Lana hooking up with Luthor father & son. Ew. There's also a second trailer for Superman Returns ...
And then The Fiance will say, "And that's why you are who you are," which I take to mean that when I have free time, I'll use it to work and make $1500 doing a freelance assignment (Check out this month's Chatelaine - it's actually a pretty good mag), while other's spend their time writing about me, or sending me evil (but hilarious) e-mails, instead of focusing on their own careers.
Another video: But that is not the question. Why are we here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear ... [ via boingboing ]
I'm not often on the highway, but I was this afternoon and have two observations:
1. The most dangerous people are the ones driving below the speed limit in the centre lane.
2. If you were suddenly transported from the year 1988 to the present and flipped through the radio dial, you would notice no change whatsoever. So, it would be difficult to make the movie Back to the Future today and have it be believable.
I'm not buying Liam Neeson's moustache ... and how the heck could Gotham afford a double-decker monorail? I don't buy that. The 9/11 thing has a better story despite the obvious plot holes (I'm more LIHOP than MIHOP).
I can see why Katie Holmes latched on to the Tom Cruise. Her career has a clear expiry date: one facelift and she's Jennifer Grey. Bah, the 9/11 thing is still more entertaining. So many people told me Batman Begins was 'good'. Were they on crack? It's such a hammy piece of Hollywood cheese ... when Christian Bale lowers his voice for the second half of the flick, it sounds totally forced. If you can suspend your disbelief for THAT, you've got stamina.
Ok, the 9/11 thing raises a bunch of interesting points but moves itself to the fringe by accepting accolades from racists and other crackpots. The MSM would never be that sloppy ... I just flipped to FoxNews and Sean Hannity is arguing with a Jesus freak about God stuff even though she's got obvious mental problems ... oh, now Mark Furhman is on as a correspondent. Mark Furhman? WTF???
Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, public health and peanut butter & banana sandwiches, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Saudi Aramco's mature crude oil fields are expected to decline at a gross average rate of 8%/year without additional maintenance and drilling, a Saudi Aramco spokesman said Tuesday.
The biggest uncertainty, however, is from Saudi production. A massive increase in Saudi capacity of more than 4.2 mb/d over the period up to 2013 has been assumed, 1.2 mb/d from Khurais in 2009 alone. Total Saudi production would then exceed the “maximum sustainable capacity” of 12 mb/d by 2016 which Aramco announced in early 2004 at a conference in the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
In all of the historical cases they examined, it was not obvious that peaking was going to occur until about a year before the event.
Also, the peaks were followed by sharp declines in oil production — it did not gently slope or flatten out as some forecasters have predicted global production will.
YEEHAW!
