We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Judging by the many dreadful reviews I have seen regarding Catwoman, this should be a turkey of epic proportions.
Well… bollocks to that.
It actually is not that bad. Sure, even a connoisseur of B-movies such as myself can see that it is not a great movie… the special effects were pretty good in places but during some scenes it was painfully obvious that they were computer generated. The dialogue was serviceable rather than inspiring, the story was derivative and predictable with some feminist claptrap tacked on. The acting was of variable quality – Halle Berry’s job was to shake her ‘thang’ and be alternatively sexy, confused, sexy, predatory, sexy, all of which she did to perfection; Ben Bratt’s job was to shake his ‘thang’ and be a ‘tough-but-nice-guy’, which he did engagingly; Sharon Stone’s job was to be sympathetic, unsympathetic, menacing and sexy, all of which she utterly failed to deliver which was rather disappointing.
But what strikes me is not the failings of this flick, which are indeed many, but the fact I found it vastly better than the reviews would have lead me to believe. It was by no means a waste of a few quid/bucks/euros and just confirms my suspicions that for most reviewers, sneering at things is a safer and more ‘credible’ option, a default mode in fact.
It is not a great movie, or even a particularly good movie… it just does not suck. Bored this weekend? You could do far worse than look at the exquisite Halle Berry strutting her stuff very effectively in Catwoman.
This is without a doubt the movie I have most anticipated seeing since spotting a certain trophy in the background of a few frames at the end of Predator 2 back in 1990.
Oh yeah. I mean, OH YEAH!
This is exactly the time one one should avoid writing: immediately after being poured out of a Belfast taxi on a Saturday night. But it is also the time when “In Vino Veritas” holds most true and one will say what comes to mind rather than considering details like flow and cute turns of phrase.
I go out for music. If a woman happens to fall into my lap during the search, that is certainly a plus, but not a prerequisite. Tonight, I decided on the Shaftesbury Square/Botanic Avenue area rather than the usual good chat and trad music at my local. For a bit of a change I started at Madison’s. A couple pints, a bit of girl watching… but after three or four songs I simply could not take the music. Not that it sounded bad. Au contraire. It sounded marvellous. The problem was… it was a Milli Vanilli band: karaoke tracks with occasional backup from live guitar, bass guitar and maybe vocals. To most of the audience I am sure it was just two guys making a lot of music. Never mind there was no drummer or cowbell or keyboard player on stage; never mind that sometimes the guitarist was playing a D chord when the sound was lead guitar. The guys on stage were making their nut; the audience was happy… capitalism at work.
But I was not a happy camper… and despite the pulchritude surrounding me I decamped for a more classical low down rock bar.
I found what I was looking for. Not that it was much of a search. I knew where I was going. I would tell you except I do not wish to get them into trouble. They had the real thing. Five live musicians with driving Rock and Roll so loud a Brussell’s regulator would have pissed herself. “If it is too loud, you are too old”. I was, naturally, up close to the stage where I could feel the volume. That is the proper way to experience AC/DC and Judas Priest covers… up where your clothes are vibrating.
Now I may have an advantage over some. I probably blew out half my hearing long ago standing in front of a Fender amp in a Pittsburgh bar band; or perhaps from that time I half laid on the stage at a Patti Smith concert at the Leona Theater in the South Side, my head resting inside the lower Altec Lansing. That was a good few years and a lot of substance abuse ago.
One thing you need not worry about. The rockers will simply not obey the regulators. I have said it here before. ‘Turn it down’ is simply not in an electric lead guitarist’s vocabulary. “Fuck off”, on the other hand, is definitely there.
You can only be enslaved if you are actually willing to obey the law… or, as Robert Heinlein said: “You can never enslave a free man. The most that you can do is to kill him.”
Oh yeah… I went out for a cheeseburger with bacon afterwards. Dripping grease and ketchup… yummy. Screw the Health Nazi’s too…
I am sure David Carr would have approved.
Although Australia and the US have signed a free trade agreement, it is an imperfect document, with many exemptions on both sides. In Australia, there has been a loud campaign to have existing ‘local content’ rules for Australian television excluded, and this campaign has been successful.
The ‘local content’ rules mean that a certain proportion of television programmes that are broadcast on Australian television must be locally made. The scrapping of this rule was an American objective in the free trade negotiations, as it meant that US television companies were restricted in their access to the Australian television market by what in effect is a quota.
Australia resisted this; we should not have.
Australian television has had local content rules for a long time, they provide that at least 55% of the programming on Australian television between 6am and midnight must be locally produced. This creates a local internal market for television, which is actually quite a cut-throat industry. The economies of scale mean that Australian television products are not cost-competitive, but they do rate well. → Continue reading: Cultural protectionists win in Australia
It is not difficult to sneer at the new King Arthur movie. One can sneer at its historical errors – for example where is the mention of Ambrosius Aurelianus, who even writers who believe in the existence of Arthur admit was the original leader of British (or Briton or Romano-British or whatever you prefer) resistance to the Germanic invaders (dividing people into neat tribes ‘Angles’, ‘Saxons’ and so on is harder than might be thought). And Ambrosius Aurelianus was certainly a leader of south west Britian (his centre of power would have been in areas like the Cotswalds – places like Cirencestor). Nothing ‘northern’ about him.
And one can sneer in simple film-story terms. For example if going north of Hadrian’s wall is so dangerous, why is there such a lightly defended villa (containing such important people) doing up there?
But to sneer is to miss the point. This is a very brave film.
For example to make the point that there were different sorts of Christian in Britain and that the ideas of Pelagius on free will and moral responsibility might have political importance is to touch on matters that most films seem to assume are well above the heads of the audience.
The avoiding of “all Christians good, all Pagans bad” or (more likely in a modern production) “all Christians bad, all Pagans good” is brave.
Also brave was the direct treatment of de facto serfdom in the late Roman Empire. Whilst formally free men, peasants had been tied to the soil (originally for reasons of tax collection) since the time of the Emperor Diocletian. The Emperor Diocletian (with his price controls and semi serfdom) did not rule Britain at first (there was great resistance to him in this province), but his writ eventually ran here. → Continue reading: King Arthur: a brave movie
Yes folks, this is a quiet Friday and it is Strange Photographs by Brian time.
This time, what we have is a fake Thunderbird rocket, which has been temporarily installed in Trafalgar Square in honour of the new Thunderbirds movie, which opens in London around now. I took the photos yesterday.
There have been all kinds of ideas floating around about what objects to put in Trafalgar Square, next to Nelson, and (I think) Havelock, and the lions. I think this is one of the better ones.
Here is the general context, which means lots of tourists clambering about on the lions and photographing one another:
Here is the one where the rocket is dwarfed by an earlier and more famous erection:
Here it is looking a bit like a rival church. What this also shows is that actually not much attention was being paid to the thing, because it is actually rather small:
And here is the Samizdata friendly shot:
Apparently quite a few of the scenes in the movie are set in London, and feature many of London’s famous landmarks, old and new, including the new local politician hutch that London has just recently had inflicted upon it.
It seems that you can make a very popular movie (apparently it was described in the New York Times as his best so far – could well be) without it being popular everywhere:
When singer Linda Ronstadt praised Michael Moore’s anti-war movie Fahrenheit 9/11 during a concert at the Aladdin hotel in Las Vegas, the audience walked out.
What’s more, hotel president Bill Timmins was in the audience and took action himself.
Says a spokeswoman: ‘Her suite was cleaned out, her things were collected and security escorted her. She wasn’t happy, but we were very polite.’
She might have been wiser to say a few nice things about Spiderman 2, which has been described by Mark Steyn as:
… the spinning, squirting, swinging antidote to the stunted paranoia of Fahrenheit 9/11 …
Showbusiness. You can please all of the people some of the time, and you can please some of the people all of the time, but …
Yes. The day approaches. Tech work all across planet Earth will grind to a halt. Programmers will twitch in their sleep (if they sleep at all). Network centers will groan under the load and there will be no answers from helpdesks. All this and more will happen in a mere fifteen days. A bit more than two weeks… DOOM 3 hits the stores on August 3rd!
Linux and OSX versions are to follow soon thereafter.
Used with the kind permission of Idsoftware
Addendum: Buying Doom3 makes money for Idsoftware. One of the Idsoftware founders is John Carmack. John Carmack founded Armadillo Aerospace, perhaps the number two contender for the X-Prize behind Scaled Composites. So… buy Doom3 and support your capitalist future in Space!
I could not possibly let the day pass by without reference to the death of Marlon Brando.
As far as I am concerned, there are actors, good actors and then there are stars. Brando was a star. But of all the roles he played, I will remember him best for his potrayal of mafia boss, Vito Corleone, in the Godfather. Not only did his enormous screen presence seer itself into every frame, but he took this character and turned it into a genuine cultural icon.
R.I.P Marlon Brando.
Rob Fisher has discovered a foolproof plan for getting invited to our famed Blogger Bashes…
…advertising Samizdata.net at the Glastonbury festival 
Michael Moore bans Michael Moore?
It seems the new stupid campaign finance regulations in the USA (the result of Michael Moore’s years of vomit among others) are about to be used to restrict distribution of Moore’s latest wind-up.
Because the law attempts to prohibit all sorts of ‘in kind’ donations to the Republicans [I meant political parties], making a movie that plugs one candidate at the expense of another in election year could be ruled “interference” by the Federal Electoral Commission. I wonder how Michael Moore feels being felt sorry for by the US Libertarian Party.
Of course it is a shocking abuse of the US constitution. (sigh) How sad!
You may have wanted to know the REAL reason that ‘Friends’ has been taken off the airwaves. The ‘official’ reason is that the show’s makers wanted to quit before the show became too stale.
The truth is rather more sinister.
In Lyle, the California Court of Appeal held that creative discussions in which writers of the popular sitcom Friends developed ideas and created scripts could constitute sexual harassment of individuals listening to the sometimes bawdy banter of the writers.
So now we know.
[Thanks to Virginia Postrel for the link.]
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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