Speculation is mounting on the bombers' Modus Operandi. There have been reports that they four bombs were delivered by suicide bombers, though as far as I've checked, Scotland yard are saying no such thing. There's also been an arrest.
Clarke said one of the suspects was reported missing by his family later that morning. That man was on the bus that blew up in Tavistock square 50 minutes after the carnage on the underground.
In the bloody aftermath of the explosion of the bus, police found a gruesome clue: the detached head of a man. This, according to Israeli experts who have experience in such things, was a telling clue that he was the person closest to the explosion. Police believe he was either a willing or inadvertent suicide bomber.
But it wasn't the only clue to the killers. "We have found personal documents bearing the names of three of those four men close to the scenes of the explosions," said Clarke. Clarke also says it's likely at least one of the men died in the blasts, perhaps all four. But he didn't label them as suicide bombers nor did he release their names.
Hmmm. So we don't know if the patsies get hit - but that assumed the kind of conspiracy people are talking about. :)
Jury Duty
I got summoned and so I went. As I approached the table, the crabby looking woman in dark blue with the bogus uniform asked me if I was available for the 2 weeks trial. I said "I guess so. I'm here by summons so I think I must..." - as in, I don't have a legitimate excuse to squirm out of it so I cleared the decks of my schedule (not that there was much). I had my had chewed off by the most rude court officer: "It's not what you think you must; you are required by law to be here!" she snapped. I was taken aback.
I was being polite, damn you stupid woman; not trying to squirm out. I was there because exactly because I believe in civic duties. So excuse me and FUCK ME DEAD YOU SOW BITCH!!!! Really.
What is it about officials who have to ask dumb questions?
You get caught speeding. The officer asks: "Do you know you were 15kms over the speed limit in a 50 zone?"
Errr, now that you mention it after having flagged me down... Yeah.
"Why were you speeding?" they ask.
Like, could there possibly be *any* reason why one should be allowed to speed? Is there a reason on the planet that one could give an officer that would get one off the ticket thing? No, I didn't think so. So WHY DO YOU ASK, YOU DUMB-ASS FUCKING MORON?
See what I mean? Same fucking stupid illogic. Am I available? Well, of course I'm available if I must, excatly because you made me be here for a possible 2 weeks. Don't yell at me for saying I did my best to clear the schedule for you.
Anyway, I sat around for 3 hours, didn't get picked and got discharged. Yay. I just hated the experience and if I ever get summoned again, I'm going to make the utmost effort to get out of it. It might be democracy in action and us ordinary folks participating in the judical system but it's a crock of shit in practice.
ScreenHub
I paid up my subscription for screenhub again this year. They charged me $77 this year instead of $65 of last year. Fuck me dead.
Quickshot Review On 'Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith'
After all the weeks of hoopla passed, I maanaged to mosey on down to watch the final installation in the epic Star Wars Hexalogy. Partly because I was at a loose end and knew there was a 12:30 session straight out of my jury duty discharge; but also partly because I couldn't bring myself not to have seen this film on the Big Screen in the final analysis. Sure, get it on DVD and enjoy it later; but this would be the only only Star Wars film I didn't see at the cinema. So the completist within got a hold of me and I marched into the cinema.
What's Good about it?
Effects and effects and more effects. There are so maany special effects going on the word 'special' seems to no longer apply. The effects come from everywhere and every which direction you kind of get inured to the mass of this stuff. and it gets so overwhelming you stop analysing each shot; suddenly you find you've arrived in the Star Wars universe proper instead of trying to watch it as a film. Now that's interesting because usually one complaains that the effects are the main character in special effects movie, but I don't think I've seen the truth of that observation until I found myself watching this film. It's damn amazing from both a quality and quantity point of view.
Take Yoda, who started out as a muppet in the second film. In this film, he's walking, talking, fighting, interacting with the kind of freedom inconceivable in the first series. The characterisation of Yoda is so good, you forget he ain't *real*. Amazing. And off-putting as it is to see the cloned army of Maoris heck, you just accept it because the action goes so fast and furiously. The film gives you very little timie to pause to think about the contexts of the many light-sabre battles. I think that in the years to come, this film will come to be seen as a watershed in space operas. You simply can't go and make one after this film. It is as if the Star Wars hexaology has totally eaten the genre in the way that the Lord of The Rings trilogy has eaten the fantasy genre whole by being so complete. Now, I'm not ssaying this is the death of science fiction; rather, these films are to their genres what the Empire State Building is to skyscrapers. There will be other skyscrapers, but none will be more culturally important in our awareness as the 'ur-object'.
And maybe that's not such a bad thing either.
Also notable was the relative absence of the comic-relief aspect that plagued Episode I and II. The fights going on were for keeps. Winner take all and death came swiftly to big characters: Count Dooku, Mace Windu and the Jedi council; General Grievous; the trade Federation delegates; all of these folks buy a farm rapidly as the events unfold and truth be told, I liked it that way.
What's Bad About It?
Dialogue. Everybody else has said it; but it can't be said how bad the dialogue is between Padme and Anakin. It actually works to turn these characters into much smaller munchkins than we were led to believe. Even the turning of Anakin that people complain about is bad precisely because the dialogue is so turgid. But how did it get this way?
There are also a lot of arbitrary things about the script as a whole that makes you think 'what the Fuck?!' For instance, Obi Wan seems to readily appear when needed, convenently stowing away or falling fortuitously into water. The thrills and spils are nice to watch, but from a writing point of view, it seems these extrinsic obstacles that are easily surmounted only seem to take up screentime for the sake of showing the action. Even the final duel with Anakin-Now-Vader where Obi-Wan cuts the legs off Anakin, you sit there and think, "Dude, kick him in the river, then complain that he was like brother; don't walk away, man!" but alas, that's what he does.
The directing isn't much better than in the second film, but I have to say it is better than in 'Phantom Menace' for which I am grateful. It sort of sits at B-miuns as an average, but in reality it'ss A+ for the action and the avalanche of effects; it's F- for the interpersonal stuff and logic. IOW, it seems Lucas has re-discovered some touch in this film; a lot of it in the fight scenes, but you take that. It's in the inter-personal material that his inept hand lets down the film. We never get close enough to the intimate space inhabited by Padme and Anakin. They deliver their lines across the room like strangers at a dinner party even when they are in each other's arms. The spectacular backdrops keep eating into the interpersonal space so that the audience is forced to marvel at the sky-line of Corruscant with its flying cars instead of watch the uncomfortable performances of Natalie Portman and Hayden Christiansen. In other words, the focus of the action never seems to narrow down enough to closely observe the emotions of Anakin; and so when he turns to the Dark Side (*gasp*), it seems like it's undermotivated.
Really, fear of future events and a strong desire to stave off tragedy is a good enough motivation. It's old as Cassandra. It's MacBeth, it's any character who has a prophecy placed upon them. - It is reasonably easy to understand the logic of Anakin's actions. but as an audience we have to work so hard to feel its burden because George Lucas as director is counting on our empathy to gauge the mounting value of that choice. Which iss to say, if you can't find the sentiment within, you're condemned to watch the drama as a total outsider. Now this is not a small issue from a directng point of view; however, the tableau that is Star Wars Universe mitigates against the analysis of emotional minutiae greatly. Yet, compared to the subtle, intimate moments played between Han and Leia, or Luke and a puppet Yoda in 'Empire Strikes back', the misc-en-scen (placement in the scene) is terribly clumsy.
However a lot of this is nit-picking. The films together as a whole is a true achievement; the cultural value of which, I imagine, will reveal itself even more through time. I'll post up some more thoughts later.
- Art Neuro
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