Shine on you Crazy Diamond

I recently went to see the film ‘Walk The Line’ which had received a number of very good reviews. I knew very little of the Johnny Cash story beforehand, and I could only vaguely remember one dark number where he sang about cutting himself to see if he could still feel any pain - the sort of image you don’t forget in a hurry.

I absolutely adored this film from start to finish. I could identify with “JR’s” relationship with his unforgiving and overbearing father. In one scene, which I doubt very much is based on reality, the now adult JR challenges his father to answer the same question he asked Johnny as a child, “Where were you?”, the day his older brother died in a saw-mill accident. To me the idea that this question haunted Johnny for most of his life is very profound. In fact, in the film Cash’s character during one dark moment wishes it was he that died instead of his brother because his brother would have brought so much goodness into the world whereas Johnny felt rotten to the core; it took June Carter’s love to turn him around.

As a fan of the blues myself I like to think this dark part of Cash’s psyche goes to explain some of his lyrics, their inherent power and imagery.

On a lighter note, Witherspoon impressed me with her performance of the 50’s country singer June Carter. (She also reminded me very much of an old girlfriend I used to have too). I was in a quandary as to whether Witherspoon was actually singing or not - her voice sounded so authentic. Well, when I say authentic she sounded very much like I imagined a 50’s country singer should sound (I later learned when I bought Cash’s back-catalogue the modern music production in the film was far superior to the original version). Moreover, Reese’s portrayal of Carter was far removed from the comedy roles I’m used to seeing her in. There was no hint of ‘I’m blond but I’m not stupid, stupid!”. I’d say she was the star of he film except for the fact that Pheonix’s performance was quite literally ‘awesome’.

What I particularly liked about the story was Cash messing things up, time and time again, but sticking to his guns and eventually getting the love of his life. I is one soppy SOB. *sniff*

Well, that’s what the neat little badges said during the film, ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’. But by the end of the movie he was golden boy again. Yipee!

As a more mature fan of Harry Potter, I’d say that overall the film was very good. Towards the end when Harry goes toe-to-toe with man-without-a-nose (or more commonly known as Lord Voldemort) and the spirits of parents turned up to help him, I felt quite moved. I’m a sentimental sucker for stuff like that.

The film is darker than previous ones: the way that Cedric is murdered is absolutely brutal and shocking to watch. Even though, as an adult I’m used to seeing characters being shot to pieces with blood and guts flying all over the place, I was still stunned to see in a ‘children’s film’ someone being slain (with no blood and guts) in such an abrupt manner. “Kill him”. Bang. He’s dead. Writing at it’s best if you ask me.

There were some things about the film I found disappointing, however, these all fall into the category ‘I Want to See MORE!’. The actors playing Krum and Cho Chang were excellent in the film, but like a greedy teenager I felt cheated that their characters weren’t developed more. I know Cho is a recurring character and I look forward to seeing more of her, but I have to admit I can’t recall from subsequent books if Krum turns up again. If someone does remember please put me straight.

Finally, I’d like to take my proverbial hat off to young Daniel, who spent weeks working underwater for the sequence set in the lake with the merfolk. I thought they claimed it lasted 8 minutes on-screen, but it felt more like two. I can only say that the 2 hours 40 minutes just didn’t feel like long enough. Give me MORE!

Here in the UK, BBC2 have just started showing ‘Making Slough Happy’^*. The idea behind the series is that a group of experts will carry out a social experiment to make the population of Slough happier folk. The premise being, if it works for Slough, it’ll work anywhere. The experiment includes stuff like participating in some simple activities and workshops, e.g. singing, speaking to strangers, and planting stuff, etc. You can find the complete list of steps to happiness here.

I’m very interested to see how the show develops - I’ve read loads of self-help books including, ‘The Art of Happiness‘ a book cataloguing some interviews with the Dalai Lama on the subject of Happiness.

Part of the experiment is to take a sample cross-section of the town and workshop them using the latest psychological techniques. However, it’s not all plain sailing: out of the small group of fifty people they’ve discovered someone with a serious phobia of singing, a woman who relatively recently tried to commit suicide and another lady who’d experienced 3 bereavements in quick succession. Another expert who was cheerfully trying to give away free flowers was stunned when the first person to accept one wanted it to put on her son’s grave. Being happy, as we’re finding out is a tricky business.

The Challenge:

Besides being the setting for the hit TV series ‘The Office’ - I have to admit I never liked the series, John Betjeman wrote in his poem, Slough:

“Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn’t fit for humans now,
There isn’t grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!”

^*Slough rhymes with “wow”, but those who’ve become acquainted with the town, myself included, sometimes prefer to use the disparaging version - ’slof’ to rhyme with shit-hole.

While I’m still waiting for the Harry Potter film to come out, I went to see Lord of War at the movies. I vaguely remembered that it received a lukewarm rating from RottonTomatoes. (rechecking this morning I see it only received 41%). Much to my surprise, I actually enjoyed the film.

My guess as to why the film didn’t enjoy higher approval ratings is that it contains a strong - albeit humorous - political message. It’s essentially about a nobody, named Yuri, (played by Nicholas Cage) whose family settled in the States after leaving the Ukraine. When the main character gets bored with his tedious life he hits on the crazy idea: the path to a better life is through war. Quickly realising that the big bucks are made not selling arms (there are too many people doing that), but selling them illegally.

As the film develops, Yuri manages to remain detached from the death and destruction caused by his increasing success. As he puts it - he just sells the guns, it’s not his fault that his customers want to hurt one another. As Yuri’s wealth amasses, he fulfils his childhood dream by careful crafting a fake second life, with model wife and blue-eyed son! Yup, that bubble is now ripe for the bursting.

(Inevitably,) the two worlds collide when his brother takes a stand against the impending slaughter of innocent women and children at hands of Yuri’s clients. Bang, bang, bang, bang … bang! This must be Yuri’s lowest ebb. But no - it gets worse. Yuri’s holier-than-thou parents denounce him and his ‘I don’t feel pretty anymore’ wife walks out, leaving poor old Yuri out to dry with the ‘got you at last you rascal’ police.

As the credits roll, the words “Based on Actual Events” appear, just in case you were asleep during the film.

Despite the high moral fibre, I still liked it: it was funny.

I just had a quick look at Microsoft’s new ‘live’ aggregator tool. It actually looks fairly good. Plus, I’m encouraged to see that they’re promising further ‘Firefox support’. I say if Mircosoft are prepared to support non-IE browsers then the rest of the web community should do too.

What would have impressed me no end would have been if they’d included some links to Google; I read Google news everyday. I’m going to keep my eye on it for now. In the meanwhile I’ll continue to rely on my Google Reader, did I mention that it’s been upgraded recently?

[Update]

Guess what. I found a link to Google news! The US edition

I’ve got a nasty shock this morning when I opened my mail. My car insurance is up for renewal and I finally received the quote. If you live in the UK you’ll have seen the advert with the catch phrase “Quote me happy”. Well, I’m not with them I’m with Direct Line; I was quoted absolutely livid. The story is complicated so I’ll save you the tedious details, suffice it to say that I called them up, explained my situation. They said they’d call me back but never did.

With some time to think about it I tried to get a quote from the AA (similar to the AAA in the States). I was instantly relieved to see they were prepared to offer me the same insurance at 60% of the price Direct Line quoted me. When I think about it, this unwelcome dispute with Direct Line may actually be to my benefit. If there hadn’t been a hitch I’d have just accepted whatever they’d offered and felt pleased with myself. But, it gets better.

In the UK car insurance is getting increasingly competitive, so much so that there’s a company called Sheila’s Wheels. They have this really silly advert. Some hot totty (i.e. chicks in American or Sheilas in Australian) sit in a car waving their arms about while singing about how great the company is. Professional it ain’t, but it is entertaining (and Australian, bonzer, bonzer, bonzer¹). I got to thinking about the other less ridiculous internet companies out there. So I tried confused.com.

Their website is actually very good², (the only gripe I have is about the password: some moron decided it should only be 6-8 characters without any numerics). There are a few screens of information to fill in but I was shown a long list of companies, all of them quoting prices hundreds of pounds cheaper than Direct Line. Who still haven’t called me back. Confused.com state that they don’t add an extra premium to the prices, instead they receive some kind of referral fee from the insurer.

In the end, I think I’m not going to go for the cheapest quote as I’ve never heard of that company, but Kwik-fit (who I would never have dreamt of using) seem like a safe bet. Result!

¹I will develop an Australian readership if it kills me.
²Direct Line, on the other hand, didn’t work with Firefox. Will they ever learn?

[Update]

I’ve learned a lot about about online insurance quoting. One big suprise was that the security measures that big companies like Direct Line, the AA, etc use are, in fact, there to prevent online companies like Confused from using a ‘bot’ to gather online quotes. That is, it’s an anti-competition measure. By making it difficult to easily see a range of quotes they discourage current and new customers from shopping around. It’s the same trick large high-street banks use to keep customers for years, despite the fact that their banks services they offer are non-competitive.

In the end, I got a quote from PeoplesChoice for £300 (including breakdown cover, and legal protection). The equivalent rate from Direct Line was £460 pounds, 50% more expensive. The breakdown cover alone cost close to £100. I find it amazing that it’s gone up from last year and I’ve never ever called them out once. Shouldn’t it get cheaper?

My advice is try Confused.com or another online service and see what you could been paying. Then choose.

I recently wrote about my del.icio.us discovery. I’ve been having some fun searching through other people’s lists; you can tell a lot about a person from their bookmarks. I think instead of googling someone to find out what they’ve written or what’s been written about them it’s far more interesting to have a peek at what they like to read. I’ve come across some really interesting sites this way.

My latest discovery in the world of social browsing, StumbleUpon, looks awesome by comparison. It’s been available for a wee while, but it originally refused to run with the latest beta version of Firefox that I’m using (and I’m too stubborn to revert). To my surprise and delight that’s now fixed.

According to the website, it’s a way of sharing favourite sites and meeting people:

StumbleUpon is an intelligent browsing tool for sharing and discovering great websites. As you click Stumble!, you’ll get high-quality pages matched to your personal preferences. These pages have been explicitly recommended (rated I like it) by friends and other SU members with similar interests. Rating these sites shares them with your friends and peers – you will automatically ’stumble upon’ each others favorites sites.

The FAQ page explains that they only currently support Firefox because of technical deficiencies in the competition’s products (Do you think they’re making this bit up?) . Nevertheless, maybe I can tempt you to take try something new with this a little gem I would never have found otherwise. It’s a rather funky Japanese animation. Go on, bash those drums! Bash, bash, bash!

[UPDATE]
Apparently, you can see my all my favourites via this link.

I’ve been laughing my head off the last few days, as I’ve been working my way through ‘Almost French’ by Sarah Turnbull.

Perhaps it’s not a book that would interest everyone. It deals with the cultural difficulties, cock-ups and misunderstandings that come when living in a foreign country. She’s an Australian (in itself very interesting) who falls in love with Paris, France and some bloke called Fred. Short for Frederic. I’ve lived in a few non-English speaking countries, for 4 years if you total them up. So, I know very well what it’s like to struggle with a new language, the feeling of not fitting in and general loneliness. And survived!

What I like especially about the book is learning a little more about the French culture; like most Brits I studied French at school. I have managed to visit France a few times, but as Sarah astutely writes: being a tourist is very different from living in a foreign country.

I find it’s a real pleasure for me to see beneath the surface of the national stereotype - although according to Sarah some of it is deserved. Oh, and I get to learn some rude French words too. Cool!

I’m been giving the news Google RSS reader a try out the last couple of days. Lots of comments at Digg.com complained that it’s very slow, but so far I’ve not had any problems in that department. What I did initially find annoying is the reader’s lack of ability to automatically pick up RSS feeds from various sites. For example, I’ve no idea how you manually find the feed on Blogger sites. In the end I figured out that I could copy the feed urls from Firefox and simply paste them into the reader. Overall, having the combination of Gmail, Firefox and the new RSS reader works very well.

Incidently, if anyone would like a Gmail invite, just give me a shout. I love it!

By now some of my readers will know that I like to explore the internet looking at what’s hot and what’s not. I sign up for stuff just to give things a whizz. Here’s a couple of recent discoveries:

What’s Hot

While I reading some news about problems at ‘friendster’ I noticed a link for Match.com. I’ve seen some TV ads; I was curious but I wasn’t expecting much at all - it’s a newish web dating agency.

On the front page it let’s you do a search without having to write pages and pages of personal details. “Fine”, I thought, “This should be short and sweet, what am I going to find in a backwater like this?” as a pressed click. To my surprise there were quite a few matches, with photos. As I read through some profiles I was increasingly impressed by how well it works. I found myself filling in my profile, just to see where things went. Afterwards, it allows you to do a proper search, based on what you’ve filled in. You’re asking, “Where’s the catch!”. Well, you can search to your heart’s content, like Friends Reunited. It’s when you want to email someone that they ask you to spend some spondulees (I mean money - is this even a real word?).

Overall, the whole thing is very impressive and a great way to find that special someone.

What’s Not.

I signed up for a service called Ning. I’ve read the blurb, click a few buttons but I really can’t see what the point of it all is. It seems to me that they’ve launched this web 2.0 service too soon - what first wave of users have written so far is just witty crap. If anyone feels it’s the next best thing please feel free to enlighten me.