Earlier this week, on a chance comment from one of Tave‘s myspace buddies, I decided to have a look at some of the news coverage of the weather in Blighty. In my home town of Worcester, it’s a fairly common occurrence to see a sponsored swim across the cricket ground at Easter, and a few years back some of the staff from Motex Harley Davidson took their surfboards down to New Road as a publicity stunt…

So, leafing through the viewers’ pictures on the Beeb’s flood coverage pages, I saw a photo of what could easily have been my car being swept down the river Severn and smashing apart as it hit the bridge between North and South Worcester. The worst of the flooding has hopefully passed, but the sewage and water contamination will certainly take time to clear up, and the impact on the economy may very well push the rocketing prices in England even higher.

The weather (and, as a Brit I get to obsess about the weather) has been truly awful this year, claiming several lives, and leaving hundreds of thousands of people without water, electricity and or their entire home. Ian posted mind boggling rainfall statistics yesterday at his blog.

The photo above is a still from Tony Mitchell’s prescient movie, Flood. Doesn’t bear thinking about :-(

I wasn’t disappointed, the movie was excellent throughout. The cinematography was at once stark and beautiful, with a clear distinction between the fantasy scenes with over exposed colours, and the reality scenes in natural colours… but as the film progresses and Carrey’s character, Walter Sparrow, begins to lose his grip on sanity it becomes harder to distinguish between the two. And it’s fun watching Sparrow find the number 23 everywhere, wondering where the next occurence will be; the film starts on his 32nd birthday — 23 reversed; the letters of his name transposed to numbers and added together make 23; he wakes up from a nightmare at 2:30am….

My theory is that the human brain has evolved over millions of years to match patterns, and much like how after buying a new car you didn’t think many people owned but then start seeing everywhere on the road, on the TV and so on, once you attention is focussed on something you will begin to notice that thing all the more. Try closing your eyes for several seconds, relax and imagine the colour red holding it in your minds eye the whole while. Once you open your eyes, red items in your field of vision will “pop out” as your brain continues looking for red. Another example is that I have a bemused attachment to the number 666, which you may have notice already if you’ve been following my blog for even a short while. In any case I notice 666 occuring in my life all the more often simply because I’m looking for it.

Much the same with 23, I came out of the film thinking about it, and noticed that the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie was advertising its release date on March 23rd; the digits of my birthday (03/03/1970) add up to 23; the clock was reading 8:50 as I left the theatre, the hands on the clock reflecting the positions of 2 and 3; if I take the the letters of my name where A=1, B=2… Z=26, then my names (Gary, Victor and Vaughan) equate to 51, 87 and 74 respectively, adding the digits of those gives 6, 15 and 11, and totalling those makes 32, the reverse of 23. Try it yourself, it’s not too hard to find a way to reach 23 from almost anywhere if you take a little time :-) I wonder whether I’ll start noticing 23 or 666 more often from here on in?

Curiously, according to Wikipedia 23 has strong arcane links to synchronicity and magic and is mentioned repeatedly by Aleister Crowley and Robert Anton Wilson in connection with the Illuminati, as does the The Principia Discordia along with the number 5 (sum of the digits 2 and 3) key to drawing a pentagram.

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Not normally the kind of thing I would watch, but having seen the trailer the last time I was at the flicks… my interest was piqued. I had thought that Spike Lee’s movies were generally political racial commentaries that wouldn’t appeal, but I’ll eat my words: This is a really clever movie.

There seems to be a nod in the direction of Quentin Tarantino with the tone of the dialogue, and the offbeat flashforwards’ interspersed through the body of the film. Lee takes an overused premise from a 60′s and 70′s scripting mainstay, “The Bank Robbery”, but uses a completely fresh approach. The story isn’t focussed on the robbery particularly; it is more of a character movie. The interplays among the characters of Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Christopher Plummer and Jodie Foster are intriguing and carry the movie in their own right.

Bad stuff? Well, I thought it odd that we never learn what inspires the bank robbery, or why Clive Owen’s character ends up in that peculiar predicament… maybe that is being saved for the “Director’s Cut” on DVD ;-)

Minor gripes aside, well worth a visit to the cinema.

Dog shit.

I was captivated by the trailers when they arrived on Apple Movie Trailers last year… slightly worried that the movie would be a typical lacklustre sequel; that the trailer contained the only good bits from the entire movie; that it would be a victory of style over substance with a vacuous plot and thin characterisation — however, after wasting ten minutes of the opening sequence reminding us of the contents of the previous movie, the action hots up. Yes, the plot is light; but, OMG the effects are amazing, and even the most jaded critic would be hard pressed not to be entertained. Rest assured, if you enjoyed the original, then you will enjoy this one just as much. The twist in the plot is much more laboured than in the first outing, but that is of small consequence compared to the overall effect of the movie.

We have the same writer again too, so there are no sacrifices of continuity. In fact, many of the gaps left by the original are filled in: We find out what really happened to Amelia, why (and how) Selene’s family were all killed but she was spared, what Viktor was plotting leading up to the events in the first movie, and more.

The makeup and CGI for Marcus, the winged vampire overlord, are incredible. I’m hooked. When is the DVD released?

It looks like zombie movies are making a come back this year, first we had the remake of Dawn of the Dead, then the hilarious Shaun of the Dead. Now, in Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Milla Jovovich returns as Alice in the follow up to 2002′s Resident Evil. This time, the T-Virus has made her even tougher than in her last outing, which is fortunate as there are more than just Umbrella Corp para-militaries and zombies trying to kill her this time around!

First and foremost, if you are the kind of person who gets all bent out of shape about films that are “merely” entertaining, this isn’t for you! There are no complicated twists, no complex interplay between the developing characters, and no socio-political undertones. It’s just a no holds barred, non-stop action movie with chases, gun fights, martial arts, explosions and top notch effects. My main criticism is that the camera work for the hand to hand scenes makes it impossible to get a good look at what is going on, presumably cutting together all the different angles so quickly to make it appear that everything is moving faster than it really is.

Anyway, that one minor gripe aside, we lads also have two strong female leads to drool over, and just enough suspense to keep us on the edge of our seats without detracting from the all out action. Don’t be put off by the critics, just kick back, do your best to relax, and enjoy the movie for what it is.

Milla is currently filming for Ultraviolet, a cool looking near future vampire flick, due out next year. You may have noticed that my two favourite genres are Horror and Sci-Fi, so as you can imagine: I can hardly wait! :-D

The screen adaptation of the second of Robert Ludlum’s Bourne Trilogy novels starts at Palolem beach, in one of my favourite places in the world, Goa. It also shows a brief glimpse of the capital, Panaji, which I actually visited last year :-). Furthermore, there are also some scenes in Amsterdam, another city I visited last year.

The film is just as fast paced as the first, and if anything the cinematography accentuates the frenetic speed that the fights and chases are happening at. It is difficult to say too much without spoiling the plot, but there are a few unexpected twists, and plenty of action to keep you rivetted.

I think I preferred the Bourne Identity, simply because of the added intrigue of Bourne having no idea about his past for the bulk of that film made it even more engaging than this one. More of Bourne’s past is unravelled in the Bourne Supremacy though, so it is a minor nit really.

Definitely one to watch.

Went to see the new Jackie Chan flick, Around the World in 80 Days, last Thursday, and despite being a bit underwhelmed, I did at least manage to get out of the rain. As always with Jackie Chan, the stunt and martial arts choreography was impeccable, and as a bit of light hearted fun, the film delivers. Such as it was, I quite enjoyed it, but it doesn’t pass the acid test for me: I won’t bother to buy it on DVD.

To take her mind off tomorrow’s Dan gradings, I took Val to see Van Helsing tonight. Oh. My. God! This film seriously rocks; non-stop action; fantastic effects; vampires; Kate Beckinsale ;-)

The studio that produced the CG effects used the new skin lighting techniques first seen on Gollum in LOTR, and I have to say that the quality of the CG characters made it pretty difficult to tell them apart from the real actors — except of course that they were 10 feet tall, or making aerial turns at 10g or more :-)

There was plot, which is often lacking in action driven movies of this ilk, and they didn’t give away the climax 15 minutes into the film! I won’t spoil it either.

This isn’t a high brow movie with a moral message. I’m sure the critics will shred it, but if you want to be entertained, then you need to see it. Go and buy tickets for 2 consecutive showings now. 11 out of 10 :-D

On Thursday, after TaeKwonDo, Steve and I often go for a curry and a beer at the winebar. There’s nothing quite like a pint of beef madras and a a scoop of guinness with naan bread when your blood is pumping :-) Anyway, I was unusually wide awake when I got in bed, so I thought I would surf for news. One of the google searches I did threw out an interesting link to an independent movie, Fight Circle, that looked like it might be worth a watch. The cool think about this movie is that you pay your $7 (standard US cinema admission I believe), and you get 25 tickets in exchange… The film is broken into 9 chapters, each about 10 minutes long, and you can watch one chapter, streamed over the net per ticket (the spares are incase your connection falls over or something). That’s right, the whole thing is distributed over the internet, exclusively!

Even better, I bought a Quicktime Pro license last month that unlocks a bunch of features in the Quicktime browser plugin, including the ability to save the streams to disk for playback in full screen. Better yet, I have an Elgato EyeTV, so I can play back on a television set.

Actually, Fight Circle itself wasn’t half bad either. The acting was pretty decent and the fight choreagraphy, although a little fake looking to start with, was impressive too. It was obviously made with almost no budget at all, with props and sets few and far between… the characters spend a lot of time travelling on foot through the woods. The biggest let down is the end. The whole film comes crashing to an abrupt halt leaving several lose threads and a very unsatisfactory climactic duel. I’ll probably burn it to DVD later and watch it again with the chapters stitched back together.