Before I get to any more lucid thoughts – was it just me or did the two water zombies marching around look a lot like Ray Liotta and Mark Kermode?

So the long awaited second Doctor Who special The Waters of Mars was on tonight.   It was good fun.  From the trailer I’d expected a lot more of the creaping horror in space and not so much of the Doctor running through corridors.  Which brings me to a little gripe: if lifting a bicycle from Earth would have used so much fuel how much did lifting those long corridors use?  It’s the daft things like that that pull me out of the show.

Good points the acting was good, the effects didn’t let it down.  Excellent points: the early parts with the scary, martian, water zombies.  Best bit: the Doctor walking away – Tennant’s wordless performance reminded me of Bob Hoskins at the end of The Long Good Friday.  Part of me wishes he’d just kept walking because that would have been more powerful and dramatic.

Anyway I’m looking forward to the next special. Especially given who it looks like is coming to Christmas dinner…

Update: Dark Dwarf and Kim Knox have now posted their thoughts too.

A render of Mars made using Vue 7.5 Infinite

Just a quick render of Mars made in Vue 7.5 Infinite using planetary settings and tweaked to remove the atmosphere.

So I went to see Wanted tonight. More on that later…

I also bought a crab to have for my dinner tonight. Stick with me through this, hopefully I’ll make some sense at the end. I bought a crab because I remember having crab in the hotel we used to go to on holiday when I was little. I had one of the crab shells for years. I had a memory of crab as some sort of exotic, cool experience. Somewhere along the way the crab shell was broken and found its way into a bin. I still had the memory though.

So back to Wanted. I have a liking for escapist action films. The Matrix, Hard Boiled, The Killer, Under Siege, Hot Fuzz… the list just goes on and on. Each in its own way has a certain cool quality. Wanted does cool. It has cool special effects (the curving bullets), it has some cool cast members (Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie, Terence Stamp), there were some cool ideas and some well constructed action scenes (for the last two you can watch the film). The problem was it left me feeling like I felt after I’d eaten the crab: unfulfilled.

The problem with the crab was it smelt like the memory and it looked like the memory but it didn’t taste like the memory. It just tasted of crab.

Wanted did cool like The Matrix. It did body count like Hard Boiled or The Killer. Unfortunately it left out heart and soul entirely – instead it had a by the numbers plot woven together by a committee who forgot to read the instructions on how to use a loom. It had some mystical mumbo jumbo spun in a loose knit pattern to try to justify wholesale slaughter and the death of innocent bystanders in a nihilistic aberration (I was tempted to say train wreck but that was just one reference too many) that placed no sign of any value being placed on human life. It cynically tried to press buttons: the assassins have a code. The death of a few, chosen by some higher power, saves the many and stops bad things happening to nice people so they don’t end up as assassins.

You may ask “Isn’t that true of all the films you mentioned earlier” – I’d disagree. Under Siege – Stop bad people stealing weapons of mass destruction. The Matrix – save humanity from aliens who have taken over the world. The Killer – he only kills bad people. Hot Fuzz – for laughs. Sorry let me try that again: Hot Fuzz – to satirize action films by showing how silly they are when placed in an incongruous setting. Yes and but also because its funny to see a whole older generation of Britain’s finest actors in a shoot out that isn’t embarrassing to watch. So the grammars a bit ropey at the start of that last sentence – its like the plot of Wanted.

Fortunately, unlike the crab, the next action film I see hopefully wont mistake cool for at least some sort of moral structure. No matter how flimsy.

That’s where I ought to finish. I should at this point not write anything else. Anything more is just me messing up my central thesis and sounding even more pompous than I already have. After all its just an action film that like 99% of its relations will be consigned to late night TV, three quid DVDs in the sales a year from now and taking up space on some film archive shelf and being added to lists of action films kept by people who keep such lists. No where near the top 100 I hope.

However a few parting thoughts that flitted through my mind…

David O’Hara – wasted in more than the literal sense at the start of the film.
Marc Warren – no picture on IMDB? Actually Marc Warren – why did he do this film? To say he’d worked with the cool people or because he gets a gun fired inside his head for part of an action sequence? Thousand Year Old Cult of Assassins – except the Hashshashins didn’t come into being until around 1090 so that would be a rounding error of sorts? OK I’m just being picky but if they predate the group the word comes from wouldn’t this be a film about something called something else. I know I’m losing it somehow here. I really should give up. Sorry I’ve more…

Weavers who a thousand years ago could convert binary found in the cloth produced by a loom and discover that it was a list of names of people to bump off (I did say there were spoilers) – yes the ancient Indian writer Pingala knew about binary some time BC. However we have to wait to 1605 for Francis Bacon for a mention of a system to use binary to encode letters of the alphabet. Six hundred years after our order of killers has been bumping people off. Even then if (whatever mystical force is directing the appearance of binary in the cloth) hasn’t sent a cypher key how do they know that they are bumping off the right people? Plus back when names were more flexible (as little as a couple of hundred years ago) how did they know they were bumping the right people off. Sorry I shouldn’t pick apart the fluff. Except when the fluff is used to justify so much violence someone should have made certain the weft hold the rest of the plot together.

In the way that dark chocolate became a lot darker a few years ago In Bruges takes dark comedy gangster films and makes them a lot darker. Its an action thriller with little action. An 18 film that definitly deserves its certificate without being gratuitous. A film which isn’t what you’d expect but certainly doesn’t disapoint for it. A comedy where the audience isn’t certain when thet are supposed to laugh.

Where Tarantino would cut the camera away just before Martin McDonagh holds a shot on the repercussion of violence till its uncomfortable. This isn’t a film that glorifies hit men but it does paint them as humans. Nasty vicious men but still human.

Imagine pulp fiction stripped back to the two hit men, a couple of well drawn supporting characters and Marsellus. This is, from the start, a film of 107 minutes which mostly consists of a few characters talking. Often they are spouting rubbish but its well written, well delivered interesting rubbish.

Oh and Colin Farrell turned up with his acting hat on for the first film I’ve seen him in since Tigerland. Now if someone can remind Vin Diesel to do the same…

Really enjoyed the first episode of Ashes to Ashes on BBC 1 tonight. I’ll avoid saying much more because far too easy to drop a spoiler if I do. I did enjoy the switch from Life on Mars’ take on the Sweeney to something more akin to Dempsey and Makepeace or, maybe, The Professionals. Fingers crossed they can keep up the good work and don’t slip in to too many issue based episodes.

Which reminds me I really must dig out Serious and Organised and get it finished.

1. Boy Meets Girl – Waiting for a Star to Fall
2. Bob Marley – Iron Lion Zion
3. Beverly Craven – Promise me
4. Tasmin Archer – Sleeping Satellite
5. Jennifer Warnes – First We Take Manhattan
6. Level 42 – Running in the Family
7. Pearl Jam / Neil Young: Rockin in the free world
8. Michael McDonald – Sweet Freedom
9. Mark Cohn – Walking in Memphis
10. tanita tikaram – Good Tradition
11. Starship-Nothing´s Gonna Stop Us Now
12. John Farnham – You’re The Voice
13. Midnight Oil – Beds are Burning

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

1. Adulescent – Dresses and acts like he’s 16 although he’s now in his 30s.
2. Barbiedcutie - Would be attractive woman who has spent too long on the sunbeds.
3. Brandroid – Everything in their life has a brand on it not just their clothes.
4. Imobilised phone – In front of you at the check out with only a few items but too
   busy on their phone to pay, pack and move on. Shop assistants won’t challenge them if you do your clearly a lower form of life.
5. Robbin’ Hoodies – Hoodie wearing youths hanging round wherever there is light with no where better to go.
6. Mosher – Neo Goths in their all black uniforms hanging round where the Robbin’ Hoodies aren’t.
7. Sugar Plum Scary – Some mothers used to dress their kids to look like them and that was frightening. Now some mothers dress like their 8 year old which is far, far, far scarier.
8. Anorakxia – Thin, pale individuals who frequently lack social skills but who can bore you on a diverse range of subjects from Apples latest Operating System to a TV show that isn’t available over here yet but they’ve downloaded the first three series from the US.
9. Black Collar Worker – People who work in marketing and other creative jobs who who wear a uniform of designer jeans and polo neck shirts in ten thousand shades of black.
10. iPod Shuffler – They move in a rythmic way that suddenly jumps as their iPod randomly picks another track.
11. Sticker Stacker – You see them in the supermarket. They came in for milk and bread but the lure of Buy One Get One free was too much and now they can’t decide how many they need so they’ll have to take the lot.
12. Saga Louts – Over sixty, Over there and Over the Top. But most of the time over here wanting to be over there. You may find them, as I did tonight, hanging round bus stops. My Saga Lout told me about the football score and then told me a dozen jokes. Badly. Then he wandered off without catching a bus.
13. Google Eyed – Someone who has spent too much time on the Internet and now has a rather odd stare

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

Miss January 2008: Skenan Ann Bones ~ She wants to be a famous model at all the best shows.

Miss February: Finnea Bone ~ She’s got a great sense of humour

Miss March: Di Bones ~ She Welsh and she mixes a great martini

Miss April: Bona Fide ~ An Italian lady who cannot tell a lie so please don’t ask her age

Miss May: Bon Voyage ~ Wants to see the world

Miss June: Boneshaker ~ She loves to dance

Miss July: Boneanza ~ She just adores Lorne Greene

Miss August: "Hip" Bone ~ She’s just one cool chick

Miss September: Bonhomie – A little ostentatious but benevolent too

Miss October: Bon Marche ~ She’s French and she likes discount shopping

Miss November: Bonehead ~ Not the brightest skeleton in the pack

Miss December: Talulah Bonny ~ A good looking lass with great ankles

Bonus Girl: Shelly "Bob" ~ Favourite TV Show: Blackadder

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

1. Yesterday my Wordless Wednesday picture was of this vase full of nuts and I promised I’d post an explanation.
   
2. I was walking in Newsham Park in Liverpool a year ago. As I went under a Horse Chestnut tree a gust of wind brought a liberal shower of Horse Chestnuts down on me. Fortunately it was a chilly day so I had a thick hat on. The one at the front is new and shows what they looked like when they fell on me.
3. I don’t know why but I collected them up – it seemed like the thing to do. I probably wasn’t thinking straight – I’d just been nutted by a load of nuts on my nut.
4. I dried them out, got rid of a few bad nuts and put the 122 that remained in a glass vase from Woolworths.
5. If I were a modern artist I’d sell them to a gallery and call it "What the sky looks like when it falls on your head"
6. The Common Horse Chestnut tree (Aesculus hippocastanum) was introduced to Britain from the Balkans in southern Europe in the 17^th century. They have distinctive oval leaves. A typical mature Horse Chestnut tree is around 25m tall although some reach 35m.
7. The nuts are inedible but much sought after by children. In Britain we call them Conkers and children play a game with them.
8. Now the science bit: They weigh 0.6kg (1.3lbs) so the average conker is 0.05kg (0.01lbs).
9. They have a volume of 0.55l or 0.0005m³ (0.12 imperial gallons 0.15 us gallons) giving an average volume of 0.0045lm³ or 4.5cm³ (0.001 imperial gallons 0.0012 us gallons) each. That gives a density of 1090kg/m³ (68.1lbs/ft³).
10. Assuming the tree is 25m tall a conker falling from the top of the tree will take 2.3s to hit the ground. Assuming the conkers on average fell from half that height 1.6s to hit the ground.
11. The velocity of that theoretical falling conker will be 16m/s (51ft/s) or 56km/h (35mph).
12. The impact energy for our theoretical conker is 0.6J (0.8 foot-pound force). As a comparison the impact energy of a brick falling the same distance would be 370J (500 foot-pound force). Or if I was a journalist being hit by a conker is equivalent to being hit by two three millionths of an elephant falling out of a tree.
13. I’ll take getting conked on my cranium by conkers over elephants any day.

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!
1. (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

1. When they say it will only take a minute of your time it never is. I wouldn’t mind but they’ll never give me an address for me to send my bill.
2. 99% are a waste of my time and the company paying for its time. I don’t need new double-glazing tested to withstand the long artic winter.
3. When they pretend to be calling on behalf of a company you actually deal with for something important but can’t tell you which one or my name. The law has two words for that – False Pretences. I also have two words for it but I’m too polite to say them here.
4. That they call at times their statistical models say they will catch me and make a sale. Otherwise known as dinnertime and when I’m in the shower.
5. When you ask them nicely to go away they’ve been told they have to keep trying. They’ve been taught we are too polite to hang up. I’m not too polite I apologise and do it anyway then I feel bad because I’ve been rude and that makes me angry for about five minutes. Then I think why am I the one who is angry and hope their boss has an accident at a demonstration of stone cladding double glazing and ends up with an attractive new look.
6. That an over-paid marketing executive is so uncreative; so burnt out; and so lacking in ideas at their job that they think this is the best way to make me like their brand and buy their mythril framed double-glazing. If you can’t come up with a better strategy why not get work doing something you’re good at. Something honest. Like robbing banks.
7. I’m signed up to the Telephone Preference Service (UK) so the ones that call me are they’re ignoring that. Basically I only get the really unethical cold callers with the cheapest scripts, Dickensian sweatshop conditions and the staff who’ve already taken the most stick.
8. They have to have my number either from a company I’ve given it to for some important reason or be using hardware that calls banks of numbers. One is a breach of trust the other is an abuse of the phone system. At least when you get an obscene call your not the only one getting abused*
9. Friends use answer phones to screen calls for cold callers and I hate speaking to answer phones. The beep makes me a gibbering idiot. I can’t put words together in the right order. I’m more coherent speaking to an attractive woman than an answer phone. The only worse thing is an attractive woman’s answer phone.
10. Sometime I get more cold calls in a month when I’m in than I get calls from people I know. Make your own punch line up for that one.
11. When the phone rings and you’re expecting a call you get a bit excited. A bit like a small child, maybe it’s an attractive woman calling, but no it’s a cold call to sell me raspberry ripple flavoured double glazing.
12. A section of the most talented and well educated part of many developing countries population is sat around trying to sell me antique style double glazing because it’s cheaper to employ them than to come up with a smart targeted way of selling me double glazing for my car. The only experience of westerners workers in foreign call centres get is from cold calling. We hate their calls and they think we’re rude, obnoxious, angry bores who need double glazing. . That’s great form of cultural exchange.
13. That’s a great message to send when one of those workers is the leader of their nation in twenty years. One day one of them may have nuclear launch codes.

* This joke was "acquired" from Margaret Smith

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!