Author: Rory

I’ve just turned off commenting on 490 archived posts dating from January 2003 to May 2006. I didn’t want to do this because I think that people should have the opportunity to give their opinion on something even if they only stumble onto it from a random search years after it was written.

But the simple fact is that people don’t give their opinions on things that they stumble onto from searches, unless their opinion is that their scummy employer has better car rental services than his competitors. This month five sixths of the comments left on this site were spam. That’s fifty-four spam comments to eleven real ones so far this month.

Show the spammers who’s boss. Tip the balance in our favour. Leave real comments.

Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), lobbyist for the American tobacco industry, a fast- and smooth-talking professional arguer, goes to hollywood to improve smoking’s image and at the same time tries to protect his industry from an ambitious anti-smoking senator who wants to put a skull and crossbones on every packet of cigarettes. He represents an industry that kills 1200 people a day, a fact which he presents with pride to his fellow MODs (merchants of death), the representatives of the alcohol and firearms industries whose death tolls are (for them) disappointingly smaller. And this seemingly amoral yuppie is a character that the audience is supposed to like. Thank You for Smoking has a premise that should guarantee a good movie.

And yet it doesn’t entirely live up to its potential. I have to confess that I can’t quite tell what it was about the film that wasn’t up to scratch for me. Not terribly helpful in a review, I know, but that’s the way it is. There is one particularly bad actor, Cameron Bright (Leech in X-Men 3) who plays Naylor’s son, but I don’t think he really had that much of a negative impact on the film despite his "I’m reading this off a teleprompter, badly" delivery. I suspect that it’s just a case of too-high expectations on my part. Thankfully that’s not something you should have to deal with now that I’ve told you it’s not that good.

I’ll be fair; it isn’t actually bad. It’s actually quite good, and still in my top five new movies from this year so far. There are a few great scenes and a number of very entertaining supporting characters. It just never goes beyond what the trailer presents. There’s nothing in the whole film funnier than Rob Lowe’s "thank God we invented the, you know, whatever device" to explain the fact that cigarettes don’t explode in an all-oxygen environment in sci-fi movies.

If the concept appeals to you then you probably won’t be let down, but you won’t be wowed either. On the other hand if the premise leaves you cold then there’s no reason to think that the film will do anything to change your mind.

I’ve been sitting here with my laptop for the last few hours, and every time I get my browser’s tab count down to one there’s something new in Bloglines for me to look at. This can be an almost unending process sometimes, so I’ve pushed that temptation aside in order to get this review written. I want to have made at least some cursory observations about Hard Candy while it’s still on general release.

I want to start by saying that it was a very good film. The subject matter—a fourteen-year-old girl (Ellen Page, X-Men 3) who’s brought home by a thirty-something paedophile (Patrick Wilson, The Phanton of the Opera apparently) turns the tables on him and goes a little psycho—might sound heavy. But it’s actually very entertaining. This isn’t one of those depressing or preachy "issues" films that people watch out of a misplaced sense of moral duty. It’s slick, stylish and well paced. Every part of it is of an unusually polished quality.

The film’s visuals are very artsy. Several shots or even whole scenes look like thay started life as music videos or car ads. Almost the whole film is cast in a subdued blue, except for Page’s Little Red Riding Hood hoody (clearly she’s the Little Red Riding Hood from Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes). It just plain looks cool. Not that it’s all style and no substance. The visual design is clearly in service of the mood, with the colour, for example, reflecting the artificiality of the situation that Page’s character has engineered. But mainly it just looks cool.

Everything is in close up or extreme close up, always giving the viewer the opportunity to get as much from the actors’ performances as was put in. Which is a lot. Wilson is excellent. But Page is astounding. I was honestly a little scared by how well she played that role. When I raved about her being the best thing in X-Men 3 I didn’t realise she was that good. For a seventeen-year-old (as she was at the time of filming) to carry the majority of such a performance-driven film so well is really very impressive.

There were moments when I suspected I was being preached at. There’s one scene that has Page sermonising almost directly to the camera. But overall, in retrospect, there doesn’t appear to be any siding with either character. So you’ll be relieved to know that you’re not expected to take the side of either the paedophile or the torturer. Incidentally, I read an interview with Page that suggested that she completely agreed with her character’s position. If I ever get the opportunity to meet her I’ll make sure to wear a cup. And to mix my own drink.

With all of this said, you won’t be surprised that I recommend that you see Hard Candy. However, you might want to bear the following in mind. Guys, you know when you see someone else getting hit in the balls and you can almost feel it yourself? Well in that regard, Hard Candy is the most disturbing film for a man to watch since Springfield Film Festival winner Football in the Groin. One guy actually left the cinema during what I will only describe as a crucial scene. You don’t see anything but, let’s face it, you don’t really have to. Painful viewing. But totally worth it.

Happy Thursday. I just wanted to let you know that I’ve joined a cult and I want you to join too. If you’re reading this sentence it means that the previous one didn’t have you running from the computer screaming in terror. That’s a good start.

It’s not really a cult, though. More of a collective. Mass suicide is frowned upon, and there are no turquoise shell suits. Before I get too far I want to note that some of you already know all about this collective and appear not to have joined. Shame on you.

Anyway, here’s the deal. This bloke named Danny Wallace started a collective for no reason. He was bored and that’s the sort of thing he does when he’s bored. But once people had joined his collective they kind of expected that there was some point to the whole thing. There wasn’t, so Danny had to come up with a point to it all.

What he came up with was Random Acts of Kindness. Every Friday (called Good Fridays) members of the collective, now calling themselvesᾰexcuse me, ourselvesᾰthe Karma Army, do something random to make someone’s day/week/life better. It could be something as simple as giving your seat to someone on a train (actually you should probably be doing this already), or buying a stranger a cup of coffee. Or it could be something bigger. It’s up to you.

In Danny’s words:

People are essentially good. I know that now, beyond any shadow of a doubt, no matter what I read or see on TV.

Thing is, there’s this strange social barrier that every country now seems to have. We may see people struggling in the street with something heavy, and, fair enough, part of our brain will always make us want to go over and help. But somehow, being nice has gone from being second nature, to being fifth or sixth. We don’t go and help, because we’re afraid of being seen as weird, or eccentric, or as a potential mugger, or as an American tourist trying to find a new best friend (I don’t know which is more terrifying). Instead, we walk off, and we simply forget about it.

But my joinees – my proud and noble followers – have shown me that it’s possible to break that barrier down. And not just possible, but easy. If you feel you’ve an excuse for doing something nice, no matter how vague or silly, then it becomes far, far easier. If you can treat it almost as a joke, almost like you’re playing a cheeky prank on someone, you can be nice with almost no embarrassment whatsoever. It’s like a live version Candid Camera, but one in which the victim actually benefits.

There are now over 12,000 joinees all over the world. And there’s a book about it of course (Join Me by Danny Wallace, surprisingly enough). If nothing else the book is well worth the read.

If you think this sounds like a good idea, you can find out how to join from the official website.

I guess it’s about time I related the tale of what happened on Saturday. The summary for those of you too busy to read past the second sentence is that four of us decided, at 2AM on Saturday morning, to walk home from Blackrock to Greystones. Here follows the tale of that event, as recounted by me, in case anyone wants to adapt it into a movie and cast Wil Wheaton as me. We might have trouble getting River Phoenix to play Steve. I’ll let the other two fight it out over who gets Jerry O’Connell and Cory Feldman.

I like to think that I’ve learned something this weekend. Do not create a television series about a group of people who crash-land on an island if you don’t know where you’re going with it. Don’t just make it up as you go along because if you do it’s going to start sucking very quickly. Wait, that’s what I learned from Seth MacFarlane’s Harvard Class Day speech. What I learned from this weekend is that Dalkey is an absolutely beautiful town, but that it’s harder to get out of than the Mafia. It’s like a beautiful flower. You know, like the ones that have slippery insides that sucker unsuspecting insects in and then trap and eat them.

Let me rewind. The night started in Blackrock, in a pub. We were there to say good bye to a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend. I don’t know how many links there actually were in that chain. I don’t know who the person was, nor where she was going. I think there was mention of New Zealand. Or maybe just regular Zealand (in Denmark). Or Zeeland (in the Netherlands). Perhaps she was on her way to a water park named Sea Land. I really don’t know. But I digress. That there was a pub, and therefore alcohol, is the only pertinent piece of information at this stage.

How this circumstance led to the decision to walk the 25 kilometres home is disputed. Some claim it was Stephen’s idea. At one point Brian was being blamed. Actually I suggested it first, but I’m not sure that I’ll endear myself to my compodriates by admitting that here. By the way, "compodriates" is a word. Look it up. And if you say "I did look it up and it’s not a word", that’s because you looked it up in a book. Next time look it up in your gut. Anyway, whoever gets the blame, we all somehow came to the conclusion that walking home was a terrible idea and that we should definitely do it. There were protestations and cries of "it can’t be done" by onlookers. They were ignored. It could be done. It would be done. It was done. But I get ahead of myself.

Two o’clock we set out from Super-Mac’s, adequately fuelled for our journey. I had eaten a Super-Mac’s bacon burger, thereby making a seven-hour walk through the night only the second most reckless thing I did this weekend. South was easy to find. It’s the way that feels like going down hill. We kept our bearings by making sure the moon stayed to our right. Some arguments were made to stay close to the duel carriageway so that we’d know the way. Other arguments were made to go the more interesting route, what might be termed "scenic". These latter arguments may have been made by me. They are what led to us getting… delayed. At three o’clock, still making good time, we arrived in Dalkey. "Nearly there," someone suggested. We found a Shell service station that was still open and there we bought drinks to maintain our fluids. We were going to go about this thing the right way, we thought. Bottled water was the thing. We chatted with some locals, and told them of our plan. They were supportive. They may have wished us luck; I don’t remember.

We still had some distance to go, so we said good bye to our single-serving friends and headed in the vague direction of our next stop, Killiney. I don’t want to spoil the story, but whoever’s working on the movie version should take note: make sure to have a lingering shot of the service station as we leave.

After approximately no deliberation we headed right, which seemed to promise the most southerly route. We passed some really fancy houses. One was a castle, which we referred to as Enya’s house, even though it turns out that that’s in Killiney. If by some chance there’s a spectacularly wealthy Dalkeyian reading this who was woken in the early hours of that morning I would like to take this opportunity to assure them that I didn’t participate in ringing any gate buzzers and running away. Well that’s not strictly true; I did participate in the running away. We passed a building with a flag flying outside. "Look, a Jamaican flag," I said. "Wait, that’s a South African flag." This geographical hiccup apparently didn’t discourage the guys from trusting my sense of direction. Which is a pity.

An hour and a half after leaving Dalkey town we came into another town. It must be Killiney, we thought. Then we saw a sign for Killiney pointing back the way we had come. Great, we thought, we must have somehow passed Killiney. Then we saw another signpost across the street, pointing in the opposite direction. It said Killiney. Then we saw a service station. A very familiar service station. Very familiar indeed. So familiar, in fact, that you might suspect that we had been there before. Some of us found this to be hilarious. Some of us did not.

After approximately no deliberation we headed left, on the grounds that it would take us to the coast. It would be literally impossible to lose our way if we followed the coast. We took this axiom to heart. So when the road stopped at a harbour leaving us no road South we climbed over rocks. And walls. And through gardens (which I think belonged to rented holiday apartments, so it wasn’t really tresspassing). We went through a lane by a school. Thankfully the gate at one end was open. Regretably the gate at the far end was not. Each of us chose for ourselves to climb over the lower barbed-wire fence or the higher spiked fence. It’s difficult to find a "right way" to go in such circumstances. After these fences, some nettles, and another low wall we found ourselves back on a road.

I liked this road. It went South. It had a view of the sea. It sloped downwards in the direction we were travelling. And it had Colby. I think. I mean, he was definitely there, but I’m not sure about his name. I didn’t hear it very well, and I don’t have a good memory for names. Either way, at this stage he was only "naked guy in a towel". He was leaning out his window drinking a beer at 5AM. Brian asked him for directions, where asking for directions involves saying, "How the FUCK do you get out of Dalkey? We’ve been here for FUCKING hours! What the FUCK? I hate this FUCKING town!" This apparently didn’t bother our new friend, who invited us in for a glass of water. Each. He actually offered beer, but who wants that when they’re three hours into a seven hour walk? His oriental lady friend (the guys suggested she was a hooker, but I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt) gave us each a small packet of… I’m not sure. Maybe wasabi. I don’t really know what that is. We thanked her, and quickly pocketed whatever it was. Now it’s what the ancient Egyptians called a "souvenir".

Colby gave us directions. He also gave us a pretty good description of Bono’s house so that we would know which gate to buzz to piss of a celebrity. Hey, if he gets to release How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb I get to wake him in the middle of the night for no reason. An ear for an ear.

We never got as far as Bono’s house though. Minutes after leaving Colby’s house we passed the South African embassy again. Wonderful. We were back on exactly the same route that had taken us in a circle, only this time it had taken us three times as long to get there from the service station. We threw Colby’s directions out the window. Figuratively. We had neither a physical copy of the directions nor a window to throw them out of. We went back to our Axiom of Getting Home: the coast cannot lead you in a circle. At least, not one that doesn’t go through Greystones. We weren’t about to walk the whole way around the country by accident. So the first chance we got we went down on to the beach.

We walked the beach for an hour and a half until we got to Shankill. Walking on sand is much more demanding than walking on pavement or tarmac, but the beach kept us on the coast and the coast kept us heading home. Complaints were being made by this time. Feet were hurting. Legs were rebelling and refusing to operate properly. A train had passed. There was a DART station nearby. Tired minds began to fit these facts together in creative ways. We asked the guy in the station when there would be a DART to Bray or Greystones. Sixty-seven minutes. Nuts to that, we thought. We’d walk to Bray in that time. So we did.

Right about now a screenwriter would have to "embellish" the story a little bit. The truth is the journey was easy once we got back to a route that we knew. Shankill is familiar. Bray even more so. Perhaps you could add some emotional scenes about Owen’s departure to get a bus. That did happen, but it wasn’t exactly emotional. I will note that the road over Bray head is a lot longer and steeper than I would have wanted it to be. On the way up I reassured myself that it would be much easier going down hill. I had forgotten the hard-earned fact that on a steep enough hill going down is almost as difficult as going up. It’s certainly more effort than the gentle slopes of Dalkey. Not that I was feeling wistful for Dalkey or anything; I think I spent quite enough time there.

I tried to photograph the "Welcome to Greystones" sign in Windgates. I felt it was symbolic. The sunlight reflecting off it foiled my plan though, so you’ll have to supply your own symbolism. There are other photos from the trip at Flickr.

I walked in my door at 9AM, seven hours after leaving Blackrock. I could have gone to Paris and back in that length of time. I don’t think it took too long though. I’m pretty sure the 46A takes longer than that to get from Dublin to Dun Laoghaire. Needless to say, my legs hurt for a day or two afterwards. But at least I have the memories. And the little packet of someting that might be wasabi.

Dublin Bus have decided to give me another involuntary day off. My commiserations to the family of the driver who has disappeared. Well either that or someone just can’t be bothered to do their job. But that wouldn’t happen in the Irish public transport system, would it?

• ZachBraff.com is up. Featuring video blog (I want to try that some time), new movie teaser (The Last Kiss), and Borat. What more can you ask from a celebrity blog?
• I spent the early part of this afternoon basking in St Stephen’s Green in Dublin, listening to a live jazz band and reading Join Me by Danny Wallace. That’s Danny Wallace, King of Lovely, The Leader, and Ambassador to the Centre of the Universe. That guy gets an awful lot of stuff done considering how much of a slacker he appears to be. I feel a new role-model coming on…
• I spent the later part of the afternoon celebrating the good news. No, not the stuff about Quake III railgun awards. That game is easy. I’m talking about the footnote. I appear to have managed to celebrate this by letting Jamie buy me a drink, which really doesn’t seem to be the way things should be done, so perhaps I’ll try to rectify that.
• I wanted to mention my beginnings of a plan to get a fancy new Macbook, but it appears that Neil Turner has had exactly the same idea as I had. He beat me to explaining it so I’m not going to bother.

Alright, listen up, people. Our fugitive has been on the run for ninety minutes. Average foot speed over uneven ground barring injuries is 4 miles-per-hour. That gives us a radius of six miles. What I want from each and every one of you is a hard-target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse in that area. Checkpoints go up at fifteen miles. Your fugitive’s name is Dr Richard Kimble. Go get him.

In the last five days I have been asked three times if I am the 98FM Fugitive, part of a promotion by a local radio station. I’m considering asking the station for a job since everyone seems to think I’m so suited to it. On the other hand the evidence does seem to suggest that I’m a little too easy to find so maybe hiring me would be a money-loser for them.

Perhaps I could just carry around a little envelope that I could give to people to trick them into believing that they had won. Inside would be a note: "Sucker! I’m not the fugitive. lolz0rs zomg!"

I’ve just signed up to a new website (currently in beta, in true Web 2.0 style) called fo.rtuito.us. It’s an experiment in serendipity. When you sign up to the site it randomly pairs you with one of its other members with whom you then communicate via anonymous email for four days. At the end of the four days you decide whether or not to keep that person as a friend. Whatever your decision you are then paired with another random member and the cycle continues.

I’ve just sent an introductory message to my first "friend". All I know about this person is that they go by the alias "duster" and have a burning hand throwing up the horns as an avatar. It’s surprisingly difficult to introduce yourself to a person whom you know so little about. I tried to steer clear of the usual Web-profile-blurb boring life summary and add something interesting. We’ll see what (if anything) I get back.

It will be interesting to see what kinds of people will turn up in this service, although I’m guessing the technologically inclined young male demographic may be somewhat over-represented.

Maybe you think the content of Soylent Red is random enough as it is. But if you could do with even more randomness, try visiting a random post. That URL will automatically redirect you to one of the site’s (as of this writing) 489 posts. I’m not really sure what to do with this yet. I just figured you might want to play with it.