HP Winchester

Logic and Mathematics

2013-05-21T05:16:00.001-07:00

According to John Stuart Mill mathematics is an empirical science, he suggested that you don't simply discover the self-existing truths of mathematics and geometry but that the rules of these subjects are the "results of observations and experiences, founded, in short, on the evidence of the senses." He claimed that in the definition of a number there is the idea of a physical representation of a number.

"Two denotes pairs of things, twelve dozens of things, connoting what makes them pairs or dozens; and that which makes them so is something physical"

However, it is argued by Mill's critics that although it is obvious that low numbers (below ten for example) can be judged as being representatives of a physical phenomenon such as a pair or triplet, it is far less clear what a higher number represents. Could you immediately tell the difference between 25 and 30 people? Or, more difficult still, 10,000 and 10,001?

This idea is the problem with numerical naturalism (as the empirical idea of mathematics is now called) however, it can still be argued that amounts of objects can be measured in a more simplistic way using only three values (not necessarily represented by the numbers I have put down) :

0 - Or the absence of a thing
1 - The existence of that singular object
2+ - The plural of that object

This way it is more easy to establish the value of those ideas, although our minds can't empirically measure the number of blades of grass a cricket pitch might have on it, it can certainly establish that there is neither zero nor the singular.

Because of the vagueness of this system it is obvious that numbers are not, therefore, all empirically measured but proven logically. The number 123,789 isn't representative of a physical amount of objects but is an idea used only for multiplication and logistics etc.

In Pythagoreanism numbers, or more specifically, Prime Numbers are praised as being pre-existing, eternal, supernatural forms. Prime numbers exist in a dimension exterior to human understanding and experience (much like Plato's idea of the perfect form).

The significance of these indivisible prime numbers is reflected in many different religions, for instance three is considered the "magic number" and is heavily involved in Christianity (the holy trinity, three crucifixions, resurrected after three days etc). But it is also intrinsic to the arts (rule of thirds), music (three syphony movement, three chord triad etc) and literature (three part drama - Beginning, Middle and End). One is a significant number to Islam (it is one God, Allah, & denotes unity).

Pythagoras recognised two as the first natural number because it was the first plural (in mythology the Cyclops was called "No One" signifying that a lack of plural eyes meant it was evil).

To me all this is completely ridiculous and coincidental, but to Nietzsche it was the doctrine of Orphism and formed the basis to the religion of Pythagoreanism.

When the idea of zero was introduced by mathematicians in India, after the fall of rome Roman Numerals died and were replaced by Arabic Numerals (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and importantly, 0). Contrary to Aristotelian logic, Zero exists despite being 'nothing' it is the absence of something or it is its own negation. It is a natural number derived as 1-1=0, yet there difference between something and nothing is infinite... and 1.This is existence of 'Nothing' a logical absurdity.

"`I see nobody on the road,' said Alice. `I only wish I had such eyes,' the King remarked in a fretful tone. `To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance, too! Why, it's as much as I can do to see real people, by this light!'" - Through the Looking Glass By Lewis Carroll.

Frege, Russel & Whitehead's work on the logic of numbers in the 21st century put the problem of zero to rest, finally refuting Pythagoreanism and Mill's Empirical science of mathematics. Frege based everything of his work on one Axiom, that "all things which are identical are equal to themselves".

Frege suggested that pairs of things are always the same, regardless of what they are made up from (eg. two apples is a pair in the same way two mugs are). So that means we can assign a symbol or word to that group - it doesn't matter what the symbol is, though we use '2' ,or 'two', or 'a pair.'

Larger numbers can be made up of groups of these pairs, so for example, a pair of pairs is 4 (or whatever symbol or word you wish to attach to the idea of a 'pair of pairs'). And so on and so forth, with other larger numbers.

One, he argued, is a class of amounts which is not associated with other things.

Zero is a class of numbers which are NOT equal to themselves. Because of the axiom, this means that there are no such things which exist, therefore Zero exists as the logical "Null Class" , "the lack of existence of something which isn't equal to itself."

Russel, inspired by Hegel's ideas, argued that numbers are not "things in themselves" as Platonic ideals would suggest and nor are they a category of measuring something as Empiricists would say. He said that numbers only work if you understand the whole system and it all interacts together, without one part of the system it wouldn't work.

My Baking Challenge Blog

2013-05-20T07:29:00.001-07:00

I have to admit that this has been a long time coming. For so many years I've been challenging myself to do this that and the other; the idea to try and set myself a baking challenge has always been in the back of my head.

There's something about baking which is just so therapeutic and fun. It's the knowledge that just by mixing an egg, some flour, sugar and butter together that you have something that can transform into so many delicious creations. From pies to pastry and cupcakes to cookies and every other treat on this earth I have seen but never dared to try and make myself.

The First Challenge

Well now I have no excuse, come rain or shine I will have written 100 posts about all the recipes in my "Home Baking From the Oven to the Table" book by the end of this year. It may not seem like a lot at the moment, 100 recipes in 100 days is do-able but certainly no mean feat. I'm going to struggle and I'm going to grumble and groan and probably never want to bake again after three months yet I WILL do this for two reasons:

One: I love writing.
And two: I love cooking.

So why not enjoy (torture) myself by doing them both at once!

Check out the Blog here, scroll to the bottom to catch up!

The Birth of Existentialism - Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre

2013-05-20T07:00:00.003-07:00

Husserl, like Freud, sought to scientifically study the mind. His ideas developed from the book Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint which said that consciousness is divided into physical and mental phenomena. He saw psychology as the place where philosophy belonged and so all his philosophy was based on realism (that what we experience in our minds isn't necessarily an accurate representation of the world.)

To Husserl what was characteristic of a mental phenomena was that they are always directed towards objects of some kind (this idea is called intentionality). Phenomenology studies the immediate data of theconscious mind without reference to anything conscous might tell (or pupport to tell us) about the extra-mental world. Whether or not Phoenixes exist doesn't really matter because my idea of one remains unchanged.

"It makes no essential difference to an object presented & given to consciousness whether it exists or is fictitious"

Intentionality of our experience when holding a pen is the same whether it exists or I'm simply hallucinating that it is there.
Husserl didn't say that there was no reality other than the phenomena we experience in our mind just that it didn't really matter; they are of no concern to a philosopher (perhaps to a scientist).
We have an infallible immediate knowledge of our own consciousness but only inferences and conjecture about the external world, so therefore the mind is the best place for a philosopher to think about.
Immanent perception - one's immediate acquaintance with your own mental acts and states.
Transcendent perception- perception of ones own past acts & states, the physical world and of other's thoughts.

Husserl believed the more important perception was Immanent perception because it was infallible as opposed to Trancsendent Perception.

Although Husserl could be considered as a believer in solipsism this isn't entirely true, his work consisted significantly of the idea of what goes on inside your own head. But that doesn't mean he believed that the only thing that exists is "the self" he was just agnostic about the idea of whether or not the external world really existed.

Heidegger believed that the concept of "Being" in itself was the most important question to answer in phenomenology. Though Husserl had developed the ideas of phenomenology, Heidegger questioned his use of "inherited phrases" such as 'subject', 'object' or 'act' and therefore decided to create his own vocabulary with which he could truly think outside the box and really delve into the problems.

Martin Heidegger, By Herbert Wetterauer

His invention Dasein is regarded as the most important. He argued that Descarte's cogito (I think therefore I am) presupposes that humans merely exist to think wheras in actual fact that is only one of the ways in which to engage with the world. Dasein is about being in the world not simply thinking about it; reacting to and engaging with the world is just as important as thinking about it - if not more.

Heidegger says that our life isn't self-contained, we are thrown into the world with no choice about the date, the conditions or the eschelon of society we are put into. This "throwness" shows us the truth of Dasein.
The crux of existentialism's main philosophy is developed in Heidegger's opinions about the future. He says that you can be what you have not yet been and that a person's potentials are just as important as what they have achieved in their past, or even more so. To Heidegger the future always takes precedence over teh past and the present, Dasein is an "abiltiy to be" and what you focus on or are trying to achieve determines how useful your present is.

"If I aim to be a professional cricketer when I'm older then the fact that I don't play cricket much means that my present is not being true to my goals."

Heidegger therefore disregards any attempts to understand or prove the existence of an external world, we are part of it; reacting to others. Our actions need not be guided by our consciousness because when doing what we are striving for then we aren't thinking about anything other than our task at hand.

Therefore Dasein has three fundamental aspects; attunement: how we react to our situation emotionally, discursiveness: we must change according to the language and culture we share with others and understanding: activities are directed (not necessarily consciously) towards a goal which will put our life in context. The essence of Dasein is existence, and from that point Existentialism was born.

Existentialism is concerned with the individual and the actions and choices of that individual not moral or ethics from a cultural or mass standpoint. Conformity to society's norms against one's true desires is against one's Dasein and therefore "inauthentic." To live a perfect life according to Heidegger is to be authentic to our individual desires and forget about the impact of society.

Inspired by Heidegger, Sartre said that when we are absorbed in what we are seeing or hearing we have no idea of our consciousness, we simply exist without it. It is only when we reflect on our existence do we actually rhink about ourselves as being something which exists in the world. So, the thinking subject is outside of consciousness and is beyond human experience in a "transcendent world."

Jean Paul Sartre

He attacks Hume's ideas that in imagining something we are simply looking at an interior mental world. He disagreed that perception and imagination both consist in the mental presence of pictures or simulacra (representations of things). Sartre said that imaging relates us to anything outside of the mind, not internal images. When we imagine something which doesn't exist (a dragon for example) we are simply creating an object/idea in the world. In the same way, emotions aren't internal thoughts but more ways of perceiving the world. For instance if I hate someone I perceive them as being someone worth of my hate. Or if I am depressed I see the world as hopeless and melancholy.

If we were to strip away all the distinctions between anything we experience we are left with things that exist; "pure being." This "pure being" is without cause, necessity and reason, so therefore it must make its own cause, necessity and reason. According to Sartre (from an idea by Heidegger) "there is only one being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is Man." He argues that humans don't have to follow a life pattern set out for them, yes they grow, but they aren't restricted in how they develop in the same way that a tree might be or an animal without consciousness is. It is therefore up to each person to decide how they live. Freedom and choice is humanity's greatest gift according to Sartre.

The only thing which it must do is choose. Sartre admits that this is difficult and it is easy for people to adopt a role given to them by religion, governments or other authority figures but in doing so you would live a double life. Being aware of your desires and the freedom to achieve them yet not doing them is living in 'bad faith'.

"I emerge alone and in dread in the face of the unique and first project which constitutes my being: all the barriers, all the railings collapse, annihilated by the consciousness of my liberty; I have not, nor can I have, recourse to any value against the fact that it is I who maintain values in being" - Sartre

It is me and me alone who can choose my destiny and make my choices. Allowing other people to do them for me is both cowardly and living in bad faith according to the ideas of existentialism.

For those studying existentialism right now, try this...

“I took a test in Existentialism. I left all the answers blank and got 100.” ― Woody Allen

The New Industrial Estate - Seminar Paper

2013-05-20T04:57:00.000-07:00

In Marx’s Communist manifesto he argued that capitalism would collapse because of a constant need to make profit, in an argument he called the Wage/Price spiral. In the 1950s Keynes partially solved this problem when he established that money was no more than a superstition, if you gave people more money they would tend to keep working whether or not that money was actually of any value (the raw material to make a £5 note is definitely not worth the money it represents!) and so it stops the issue of this gap between the workers’ earnings and what they have to spend to keep alive.

Despite this, the rise of Keynesianism has been attacked from all sides of the political spectrum for being a form of totalitarian control over society. It is argued that the people who print the money can choose where it goes and how it is used to benefit any particular group and can easily lead to corruption. Heidegger said that the USA, which adopted Keynes’ system in the 50s, was a society of “bureaucratic-technological militaristic nihilism.”

J.K Galbraith

The New Industrial Estate by JK Galbraith said that the old doctrine of Supply and Demand had been replaced by a technostructure controlled by the industrial sector. In the modern age of high-technology every human’s wants and needs can be made in enormous factories controlled by huge companies and so it becomes those people in control of making our necessities having the most control in the way the world is run. According to the New Industrial Estate this ruling elite is made up of highly intelligent bureaucrats like lawyers, scientists, economists, generals and the like. He doesn’t think that it is some sort of secret pseudo-masonic society of intelligentsia who rule the world but simply that the people who do have a large amount of control have been taught the same essential subjects (Law, Economics, Philosophy, Politics) in very similar ways. It would be foolish of us to want to be ruled by anyone other than the most intelligent people in society anyway, Galbraith says this happens pragmatically not by untoward means.

Galbraith does criticise this technocratic society however, he like Heidegger, says that there is essentially no point to the society. Its principle problem is that the control of every human’s wants and needs by the technology means that the majority of people aren’t actually needed to do anything other than sit around and have their needs provided for. This creates ennui in society, a sense of pointlessness to people’s lives, why bother getting up if you have everything provided for you? Existentialism really comes into its own here, if people all live their lives having everything provided for them and never making any decisions they would be, as Sartre would say, living in "bad faith."

This ennui - or the attempte to avoid it - would make Max Weber’s thoughts on bureaucracy come true, we give people pointless tasks to do just so they can earn the money they are given, just so they feel like they’re living a worthy life. Military Keynesianism also plays a part because vast amounts of money are pushed into the military in order to keep people busy; it creates damage people can get to work repairing, bombs people can make, uniforms to be made etc as well as the vital thing, getting rid of the odd person here and there so the government doesn’t need to keep funding their pointless existence. All rather cheery stuff!

A doomed society?

The system is also criticised for being indulgent, decadent, and essentially nihilistic and violent. All very true when you think about it, most of society these days is aimed towards making things which entertain us or give us pleasure but things we don’t actually need, it is nihilistic because there is no real target for society other than simply perpetuating its existence and violent because that’s pretty much the best way for us to keep everyone busy. People like Heidegger criticised the western society as being doomed to destruction, that "only a god could save us now."

The National "Image" Crisis

2013-04-29T09:26:00.001-07:00

Earlier on today I was out buying ingredients for a batch of brownies I had a craving for and I realised I'd forgotten to get the chocolate, so I went to the local Co-Op to buy a bar of their finest (store brand) white chocolate. At the tills the - rather rotund - cashier had a jolly smile on her face as she said, "ooh that's lovely stuff that is!"
The first thing I thought was that it was so refreshing to have someone actually want to speak to me in a shop, more often than not I'm served by some miserable old crone who grumpily demands money off me, grunts "wanna bag?" and stares at me angrily when I say, " I have the 20p if that helps?" She seemed like she was having the time of her life serving customers on her little till, and all credit to her, it made my day that little brighter!
It was only after she giggled, "You don't get looking like me if you don't try all the chocolate eh?" that I connected the comment to her size. At this point I clearly couldn't do anything but smile politely at her joke and move on swiftly. I could hardly say, " Good point fatty!" and stroll out the shop.

"Co-Op's Finest" White Chocolate and Raspberry Brownies

The more and more I think about this encounter the more and more I start to respect this woman for making that joke, all too often you hear about people having abuse shouted at them from down the street or being teased by people at school or anything else for their size but this lady just met it head on. But it's not the joke that I find most interesting it's the fact that she is clearly happy with the way she looks, and knows exactly why she looks like it. It's all too often I hear someone telling me (or I'm being nosy and overhear a conversation) about someone who "wants to go on a diet" or "lose some weight" but who then does absolutely nothing about it.

New Years resolutions which last ten minutes, "Bikini Body" regimes or "Lose x weight in 4weeks" really seem to be the worst way to do anything about your body image, because anything which implies short term means that you still won't be happy how you look afterwards. The heart of the problem is accepting that sometimes one kind of body image just doesn't go with how you want to live your life. If you want to eat a McDonalds every day and a big bag of Doritos for snacking sitting in front of the telly then go ahead and do it, I'm not going to judge! Complaining you want to look like Angelina Jolie isn't the way to do it, either change your whole lifestyle or be happy with who you are and how you look there really isn't another option!

(As a side note, most of these ideal bodies celebrities have come through a massive amount of money and time put into them. If your job depended on you being a size 6 I'm sure that you'd work damned hard at it!)

So back to that lovely lady in Co-Op, you can shout abuse at her for being overweight, you can put a headline on a paper saying "NATIONAL OBESITY CRISIS" and I doubt she'd mind.

She likes her chocolate bar, and she doesn't care what anyone else thinks.

"Paramore" by Paramore - Album Review

2013-04-17T13:50:00.000-07:00

When the Farro brothers (Ex Guitarist and Drummer) left Paramore in a messy break up a couple of years ago the band's future was in a haze of doubt. Now though, it seems that the mix of pop-rock and a feisty, talented and a front-lady voted "sexiest female in rock" was never going to fail, so a single here and there later comes the newly reinvented Paramore.

"Paramore - By Paramore" Rights Owned by Fueled by Ramen

In many ways the self-titled album is both an attempt to try and recapture the magic the band had in its first incarnation but also simultaneously brand itself as something of a rebirth. Unsurprisingly this makes for a confused and messy effort; though not a complete disaster. It is divided roughly into three parts by a few uninspired "interludes" featuring Ms Williams singing in what appears to be a very echoey submarine with a ukele. These do nothing more than signal when to start and stop listening in a messy album full of a massive variety in quality. For the most part, the first half of the album is the one to listen to because it is clearly an evolution from the former Paramore not a mere copy (which is what appears to happen for the last six or so tracks).

The new material sees the band developing into a really quite fun bubblegum rock band, Fast in My Car , Ain't it Fun & Still into You best define what is great about the new album. They are fresh, full of life and are experimenting with some brand new and interesting instrumental sounds. I say bubblegum rock because really what's happening here is a transformation from the Emo sounds of ex-paramore to something which is, on the whole, a cheerful and optimistic sound. On the other hand, songs like Last Hope, Future and Hate to See Your Heart Break are what is worst about the album, they try to create something that the band really isn't capable of doing anymore, bringing a massive rock sound to their music. Future is probably the most disastrous attempt at stadium rock I've ever heard and Hate to See Your Heart Break is a forced attempt to try and re-kindle the formula which was so successful on their previous hit single The Only Exception.

Everything in between these standout successes and flops teeter on the edge of mediocrity and crowd pleasing, but samey, "soon-to-be fan favourites."

I'm not saying that there is nothing else to be enjoyed here for any fan of the band (or for that matter, pop-rock in general) but more that the band seems to be trying to stretch itself into too many different directions. They try to change too much but also please their fans at the same time so they actually end up, as a complete album, doing the opposite.

Paramore is summed up best by its song Part II, a "re-imagining" of old hit Let the Flames Begin. It is a melting pot of ideas, new sounds, rock & pop with an edge of familiarity which is both comforting and confusing. It's clear the band aren't done yet, they just need to focus their energy into either recreating their old sound or - preferably - polishing this new one and ditching the old one completely.

Broken by Daniel Clay - Interview

2013-03-28T11:59:00.004-07:00

Hampshire writer Daniel Clay's debut novel Broken has just been turned into an award winning film starring Cillian Murphy and Tim Roth.
He spoke to me about the book and the process of adapting it into a film.

Click to see the interview.

By Jo Grant

Tankus the Henge - Live Review

2013-03-24T08:31:00.000-07:00

When the oddly named Tankus the Henge take to the stage it's is fairly obvious what sort of band you're going to watch. Scattered about the stage is an accordion, a pinstripe blazer, a piano with a horn attached to it plus a few other quirky artefacts. When the band take to the stage led by the gravelly-voiced Jaz Delorean the room quickly turns into a madhouse. Saxaphones start blaring, the bass starts grooving and everyone starts moving.

It would be fair to describe the band's style as a melting pot of funk, ska and gypsy style music (think of Madness, Stevie Wonder and Gogol Bordello mixed together in some sort of witches brew) but really Tankus don't really sound much like any one of them, yes their influences are obvious but they manage to make each song distinct and in its own way unique. For instance my favourite song, Recurring Dream, opens with violins and piano blaring out something you wouldn't be surprised to hear in a bar somewhere in the backstreets of eastern Europe but then as it works its way into the verse the guitar sound is reminiscent of a snake charmer transfixing a cobra, really these two sounds shouldn't be more opposite yet the blend is cleverly and triumphantly handled.

Although, the Henge have released their self titled album and have shown their chops in the recording studio it's clear that when they're bounding about on stage they're truly in their element. Front man Jaz barks orders at the audience to start tangoing or chanting along and gleefully accept whilst the rhythm department manically increases the tempo to whip the crowd into a panting frenzy. It's clear that they aim to be as fun as possible whilst on stage. There is a growing number of bands who seem to forget that playing music on stage isn't just about being tight as a band but also making those shows worth coming back to rather than just listening to the album, Tankus the Henge really knows how to do that. After the show, the lead singer tells me about his history travelling with a circus and it really shows, he is like a ringmaster in the middle surrounded by an orchestrated mix of chaos and excellent musicianship.

I've been talking to and interviewing a number of up-and-coming bands in the last few weeks and all of them seem to hope to be somewhere, still playing music in five years time but in Tankus the Henge it is the first time I've actually gotten the impression they're going to do that. They tell me they're travelling the country on their "Rotten Boots" tour to promote their new album and that they've given up their day jobs to focus on the music. It's hard to know how successful they'll end up being but what is clear is that they'll keep bringing their dizzily carnival like show to people for a long time yet doing what they do best; entertaining.

Tankus the Henge's debut self titled album is available at www.tankusthehenge.com

"Robot & Frank" - Film Review

2013-03-21T05:51:00.000-07:00

After reading the synopsis for Robot & Frank it would be very easy to make some sweeping judgments about what kind of film it is going to be. The story is essentially a "buddy-caper" film about an aged ex-cat burglar who reluctantly receives a robot as a health care aid in the near-future, but rather than letting the robot look after him he makes it help him to pull off some final heists.

It sounds like it will be about their reluctant friendship and overcoming the differences they have to end on some sort of emotional finale meant to be rousing and tear-jerking. Yet, this could not be further from the truth. Robot & Frank is one of the most surprising, inventive and enjoyable films of this year.

Image Rights Owned by Stage 6 & Park Pictures

Frank Langella is terrific as the dementia riddled main character Frank; capturing the complicated affliction he suffers from in such a touching and yet not pitiful and weak way takes some real skill and Langella pulls off the task with deftness and real heart. He never becomes the patient that his family members seem to sometimes think of him as, especially his hippie daughter (played by a well cast Liv Tyler) who comes to look after him when really he doesn't need anything more than someone to just keep him company (something Robot was doing fine at). In some ways the film actually plays some of Frank's forgetfulness for laughs, not in a cruel or mean-spirited way but wittily and respectful of the seriousness of the subject. Frank's determination to remain independent and truly alive is shown time after time in his witty cutting remarks about his robot friend: "My god, I'm talking to an appliance."

For the debut feature by director Jake Shreier, it is remarkably well constructed, the narrative becomes increasingly complex and in-depth as it progresses; it is so competently handled. It never loads too much on at once but steadily and carefully unwraps the finale to ensure that everything ties it all together is dealt with properly. It is certainly far more complex than you would imagine from the opening few minutes, and far less schmaltzy and cliched too.

The robot, as is to be expected, is where the success of the film really rests though, if he doesn't work then the rest would be pointless. But no matter how low-fi he looks, Robot truly is a great character. Somehow the film makers have instilled a kind of charisma into something which by nature (and its own testimony) cannot, and does not, have any form of personality. He is an empty suit of plastic without a face yet, also in his own way funny and adorable. And by introducing the slightly melancholy question of how alive Artificial Intelligence is, the film adds a subtle sense of poignancy to Frank's relationship with his only friend; it really leaves you with something to leave the cinema thinking about.

With excellent performances all round, particularly from Langella, and a story which is quirky, witty, touching and exciting Robot & Frank has immediately become my favourite film of the year so far. It's a must see.

Robot & Frank is out now in limited release. We saw it at Everyman Cinemas.

"Perlasca - The Courage of a Just Man" - TV Movie Review

2013-03-19T14:31:00.000-07:00

As the title of this Italian TV-movie makes all too obvious, Perlasca is the story of one man's courage, Giorgio Perlasca. He is a little known hero of the holocaust who, whilst trapped in Budapest during Nazi occupation, managed to save the lives of over five thousand jews, almost four times as many as the more well known Oskar Schindler. Disappointingly though, this film of his story is on nowhere near the same level of Spielberg's masterpiece about that hero.

Image courtesy of Aim Publicity

No matter how heartrending & powerful the subject of Perlasca is, the two part tv-movie never quite elevates itself to the level necessary to do this courageous man's story justice. It must be respected for its attention to detail and its scope, it certainly doesn't leave any stone unturned or leave any part of the story untold, yet ultimately Perlasca is just a stale film listing endless brutalities committed by the Nazis during the holocaust. No matter how important it is to remind people of the wrongs which happened in that era this really doesn't do much other than that.

The title role goes to Italian actor Luca Zingaretti who seems to do the character justice, he is charming, intelligently realised and instantly believable as one who would have the drive to save so many from the nazi death machine. But unfortunately not everyone in the expansive cast is as effective. A few of the main characters Perlasca saves never seem to bring that element of realism to a subject so essential to be true to life. Although the stakes are ridiculously high, it seems that you never get the impression that these characters are really in as desperate a situation as we know the real people were. After a while it does become a lot of narrow misses, which isn't exactly true to the nature of the Holocaust, and in many ways disrespectful to those who did lose their lives.

The film really delves into the idea that Nazis were simply "following orders", a line which was heard no end of times during the Nuremberg trial, here most of the Nazis are depicted as remorseless, unthinking and amoral puppets in a bureaucratic system. For much of the film numerous bureaucrats with red armbands let Perlasca save jews because of his use of legal loopholes. To me this seems incredible, for so long Nazis have been depicted as unrelenting and monstrous creatures with no mercy, yet here they are something completely different. The film almost gives Nazis an excuse for their crimes, something which made me feel very uncomfortable whilst watching.

Despite this, György Cserhalmi as the ruthless villain Captain Bleiber bristles with venom in every word he utters. And the exchanges Perlasca and Bleiber have are tense, nerve-wracking and easily the most enjoyable moments of the film. Bleiber regards Perlasca with such contempt and hatred yet he only lets it bubble to the surface on occasion and instead treats him with a cold courtesy which is simply chilling.

Although Perlasca deals with an incredible story and has within it enough to keep you engaged, it is a very mediocre attempt at capturing the horror of the Holocaust. Perlasca's story is one which needs to be known by more people but this overlong and shoddy TV movie really doesn't do enough. There are dozens of films and TV programs which treat the difficult subject with far more emotion and talent.

Perlasca - The Courage of Just a Man (Une eroe Italiano) is Released for the first time on DVD in the UK on 8th April.

Open Letter to JUSTIN BIEBER

2013-03-11T06:53:00.001-07:00

After Justin Bieber's outrageous tirade of foul mouthed abuse at a press pack this morning our reporter Harry Parkhill wrote to the teeny bop star to apply for the job of his Press Officer.

Dear Justin Bieber,

I am writing to you to apply for the job of your press officer or press manager. I know you haven’t actually advertised for this post but I think it is clear at this point that you are lacking in a certain amount of control when it comes to handling the press and your fans.

Obviously everyone has their bad moments and wakes up on the wrong side of the bed but I think that I could help there, obviously as a trained journalist (well almost trained, but at least I’ll be better than whoever is controlling your press coverage at the moment). Obviously no-one likes having a camera shoved in the face at all points of the day but then again, not everyone is a multi-million pound earning teen sensation. So, I guess you’ve got to forgive the odd person wanting to take a photo now and then. I can give you a little bit of training in that respect…

Apparently only real fans start hate campaigns against "non-beliebers"

With a fan base as large as yours and a back catalogue of songs as annoying as yours there is going to be the odd person who gives you a bit of flack. As a young person who has had little time to get used to it, cause you’ve only been a celebrity for ten minutes, these minutes of fame won’t last much longer (especially since your voice is finally on the verge of breaking). Not to worry, I can give you the training essential to handling those angry fans of yours. Mainly asking you to calm down and think about the millions of fans that are overwhelmed by the mere thought of you, that should cheer you up a bit.

While we’re on the subject of your fans, there’s something I have to say. Of course, you’ve got a few (a few million) big fans who are real “beliebers” that you are the best thing since sliced bread, sometimes they can go a tad too far. As your new press adviser it would be my first task to ask you to tell those fans that they shouldn’t be so mean spirited and aggressive towards other fans who are slightly less obsessive. It’s always nice to hear that message from their idol, not the police following a hate campaign run by these wonderful teeny-bop fans.

In short, your press coverage needs a little bit of spin to make you look like the fresh faced youth you once were, it’ll be a big job after your recent exploits but I’m willing to put my all into it, though i will obviously expect a slice of the rather large fortune you seem to be making it is, after all, an enormous undertaking for you to keep yourself under control these days.

Yours Sincerely, Harry Parkhill

Image By Makaa Bieber Cyrus (WikiCommons)

"My daughter grew another head..." - TV REVIEW

2013-03-07T05:43:00.002-08:00

We've all seen those headlines on magazine covers, "I snogged a DUCK", " I ran over my FIANCE" "I married my HALF-SISTER" etc Let's face it, they're the weirdest and most wonderful headlines and stories in the whole of journalism. The sniffier of us might say that they're pure schlock, garbage and not worth the time and effort to read or write, yet you can't deny that there is something instantly interesting about those headlines. Of course we want to know about the woman who accidentally killed her own fiance or the man whose marriage broke up because a banker offered his wife half a million pounds to leave her husband.

My daughter grew another head & other true life stories is a documentary which attempts to explain how the journalists behind these stories find and reveal these odd stories. In truth, it really does no more than simply follow a couple of these journalists around and get a few laughs from all these different peoples' odd stories.

There is really very little worth in this supposedly "cutting edge" documentary because it lacks the key ingredient of ingenuity or insight into the subject. Yes, it is a very interesting subject and one which there is a wealth of great material to delve into but the makers really struggle to find anything other than a number of really interesting headlines.

Much is made of a few journalists who do the bulk of the work but then there is so little questioning of these writers on their motives or the morality of it that it becomes nothing more than a "day in the life of a journalist" which is made up of watching these people on the phone and driving to meet the subjects of their stories. Only once in the entire documentary was the idea of how moral it is addressed. Is paying someone money for their shame to be published across the front of a magazine acceptable?

Without the answer to this question it becomes a mere freakshow of people simply telling their story in one line, yes they're funny and interesting but it's never detailed enough to get the full story so it fails in almost every respect. The doc would have been more suited to being a "Top Ten funny true-life headlines" feature in a magazine because ultimately, that's all there is to it.

Image rights owned by Channel 4

"Sound City" - Film Review

2013-03-05T09:07:00.000-08:00

When I first heard that Dave Grohl was going to make a movie I feared the worst. He may well be musician extraordinaire from Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age, Tenacious D etc and may have even had cameos in a number of films but that does not make him a film maker. Just take a look at how well Madonna's film career is going, Fred Durst's failed go at a film making career and Rob Zombie's stuttering inconsistent attempts at horror films. To be honest, I like the music Dave Grohl does far too much for him to faff around trying to be a filmmaker.

Rights owned by Roswell Films

Yet, Dave Grohl's debut as a documentarian is an assured and engaging effort on a subject which he himself is both passionate and knowledgeable about; rock music. Sound City concerns itself with the eponymous recording studio which has seen great rock legends go through its hallowed halls to record some of the greatest albums ever put on tape ( Nirvana, Rage Against the Machine, Nine Inch Nails, Queens of the Stone age, Metallica, Fletwood Mac, Barry Manilow, Neil Young, Tom Petty and many MANY more). But in essence the film is a retrospective on the progress of music and the impact technology has had on it. The Sound City studio was one that always stuck to using actual tape and never fully embraced the digital era of music and here it is used as a case study for a melancholy look back on the "good ole days" of rock music.

Although Grohl himself features in the movie, and it could be argued that this is an odd move considering he made it, it works very well because the film is clearly split into two very separate entities. There is one story about the past and another about the future and Grohl is essential when talking about the future of this studio and the music the film idolises so much (I would explain this more clearly but it is getting into spoiler territory). Regardless of whether Grohl was on camera or not, it is clear that there is no shortage of big names willing to talk on the subject. Almost all of the artists I mentioned earlier are featured as talking heads plus some other key players who worked behind the scenes. Sound City covers the subject so thoroughly and so confidently that it is hard not to enjoy it, even someone who isn't a massive fan of rock music will have their heartstrings tugged at a few times. And for fans of this music it really is a must watch. There have been a few excellent documentaries about rock music over the years, including Sacha Gervasi's fantastic Anvil: The Story of Anvil and I'm glad to say that Grohl's debut attempt at film making sits comfortably alongside that film. Will he direct another film? Perhaps, but I hope not, this feature was borne out of the musician because of a passion for the subject and a desire to tell the - very interesting - story of Sound City Studios. The drive to do this has ebbed through every frame of it, it really is a joy to watch.

Sound City is released on DVD on the 11th of March and is Available for Download here.

Also published for Winchester News Online

"Wreck it Ralph" - Film Review

2013-02-19T01:33:00.002-08:00

In the last decade or two, digitally animated films have become increasingly clever, artistic and grown up. It's a fact which is, I suppose, understandable considering those who grew up seeing Toy Story in the cinema are now maturing or are mature adults. Yet it still surprises me that when I watch what is, on the face of it, a "kid's" film I find so much to enjoy. Wreck it Ralph is Disney's latest 3D offering which pretty much fits the bill in every desirable feature in one of these animated films, it keeps the kids quiet for a couple of hours and isn't coma inducingly painful for the paying parent. There is however something not quite right about it which I can't put my finger on.

Image Rights Owned by Disney Animations Studios

Wreck it Ralph takes the Toy Story formula and swaps toys for video games; once the arcade closes all the characters get up and leave the screen and interact with each other, whether at the bar, parties or in group therapy sessions for bad guys "who want to be good". Ralph is one of these bad guys, he's fed up with always being beaten by the good guy in his game and so doesn't turn up to be the bad guy one day.

Although the general idea does seem a little worn out by the excellent Toy Story trilogy the strength of this film is its inventiveness. There are no-end of ideas and clever quirks which are woven into the background, whether you're a fan of retro games or not it is still fun to see that the aforementioned "bad guy group" is revealed to have taken place in the middle of a pacman game when it pans out.

The animation is also cleverly done, for instance a character from a First Person Shooter game is crisp and high definition whereas characters from the retro games move in juddery ways and look pixelated, it's quite remarkable and endlessly enjoyable to pick out these little surprises.

But ultimately the film lacks one key element; laughs. Although it was quite witty and made me smile noticing the references (and of course the now cliched "cute child" character was, well, cute) there wasn't a moment in it which I thought was laugh out loud funny. A titter here and there won't make me remember Wreck it Ralph, and nor will those clever video game references and ultimately that's what it is, forgettable. A part of me thinks that the film is a cyincal attempt to tick all the boxes for the studio so it's "sellable." Does it have the 3D? Yes, so we can charge more for a ticket (even though there was no attempt to actually use the extra dimension). Does it have something to make the parents happy? Yes, there are retro gamer jokes the kids won't understand because Qbert hasn't been around for years. Will the boys like it? It's got action and guns. Will the girls like it? It's got cute kids and pink stuff. I could list more and more but you get my point, it all feels very engineered to be successful but somewhere along the way they forgot to inject a little bit of heart and hilarity into it and so it suffers.

5/10

Wreck it Ralph is out now in Wide Release. You can see it at Everyman Cinemas.

Opposites by Biffy Clyro - Album Review

2013-02-02T08:42:00.001-08:00

Hidden in the serene opening of Biffy Clyro's new album Opposites, is a message that this is a genre of music which isn't easily defined. You could call it soft-rock at this stage but when the pace picks up and the drums kick in it's clear that that would be doing it a disservice. Perhaps pop-rock more accurately describes it? Again, it's obvious that Biffy Clyro's music is mainstream (in the best sense of the word) but pop-rock implies the bouncy fun of Blink 182, Fall Out Boy or You Me At Six. The essential thing about Biffy Clyro is that their music isn't ever defined by one genre but by its outstanding quality.

Rights owned by 14th Floor Records

The first three tracks of Opposites clearly show you that their anthems vary in pace, in style and sentiment. Yet throughout each quieter sentimental moment or head banging riff there is a clear stamp on each sound which is very easy to recognise as the band's style.

Take Sound of Balloons for example, its opening of a bouncing electro-guitar riff accompanied by the syncopated drums is so distinctly Biffy Clyro, yet it is in the clever use of a harp in pauses in the three piece's explosive ensemble which really elevates the track to something truly special. It is the constant changes in rhythms and other additional musical flourishes which make Opposites a truly interesting album to listen to as a full piece of work.

It's impressive that the band was so determined to do a full length album in this age of single downloads where people download the latest hype only to forget they have it a few weeks later. Biffy went a step further with a concept album featuring two discs (individually called The Sand at the Core of our Bones & The Land at the End of Our Toes) the idea being that the first (The Sand...) is more downbeat and pessimistic, The Land... is uplifting and full of optimism. In some ways it is hard to define where one disc starts and the other begins (if like me you listen on a computer or mp3 player where it's all been put there digitally) but actually I think this is the strength of the album; the music is of a consistent style and mindset. The optimism is there but only if you really look into it, the music gives a general sense that things are more upbeat but the lyrics are still somewhat reserved and fearful of an unsure future.

It is clear that Biffy are onto a winner here whether or not their concept comes across completely. Each and every song - that's twenty of them! - is emotionally mature and musically complex. It constantly feels like being thrown on a rollercoaster when listening to opposites, you are thrown about in rhythms and key changes, from orchestral grandeur to the visceral three piece rock band we know well from their old work and of course every song has a storming sing-along chorus to rival any pop singer with a chart hit in the last 20 years.

Opposites is an album which is very difficult to categorise in any genre but its depth and intensity make for a constantly interesting and enjoyable listen. It is truly a masterpiece of the genre... whatever that may be!

Opposites is out now in both a two disc and one disc version.

And for download from all good digital retailers.

"Lincoln" - Film Review

2013-01-29T04:51:00.000-08:00

Steven Spielberg is a name familiar to anybody who is even only passingly familiar with films, yet it is constantly surprising at how industrious he remains to be so long after he first made an impact with Jaws nearly forty years ago. Even the wide variety of films he makes is still surprising, Lincoln is no Tintin and it certainly isn't an Indiana Jones either! We shouldn't really be surprised when he delivers a belting period drama about one of the most popular American Presidents. Yet somehow it is the usual reaction!

Lincoln doesn't shy away from the difficult truth of the matter it concerns itself with, the American civil war and emancipation of slaves, in the first scene we are told by a black colonel in the northern army about the inequalities they face. It's as if Spielberg wanted to face up to the facts in the first scene, by embracing these ideas and setting the tone so early on it certainly makes the conclusion of the film that more resonant.

Lincoln

Other than odd facts here and there, Lincoln the man is largely a mystery to me (and no doubt many others) and it seems that Lincoln is eager to wipe away the "Four Score and so many years ago" image we have in our heads and show us a normal man. And a very convincing and interesting man at that. The bulk of the hard work is done here by Daniel Day-Lewis, who gives an impressive performance of the iconic American. It would have been so easy to be a bombastic, loud, straight backed performance of this "American Hero" but here he is stoop-backed, has a thin and reedy voice and looks tired. Lincoln isn't just about the fight for slavery but also about the impact of the president's obsession on his family and in some ways that is the most interesting aspect of the film.

But Spielberg does do very well to bring the political story to life.He shows us what the politics are all about, soldiers dead on battlefields, he gives black characters empathetic back-stories and shows Lincoln's family life (something those he fights for are missing out on). Although the film is definitely a success it is far from perfect. The final 20 minutes are unnecessarily long and lose focus on the key story of the vote against slavery and sometimes the other story lines the film occupies itself with become perfunctory and often not even that interesting.

Regardless of this, you can still see a master director at work. The key scene which reveals the result of the vote on whether to pass the 13th Amendment (banning slavery) could so easily have become a schmaltzy occasion with sweeping strings in the background but in a remarkable display of restraint Spielberg leaves the scene to breathe and instead focuses on the reactions of those key characters, it's wonderful to watch. It is clear that he knows what to do with his actors and how to get the perfect performances out of them, so just letting them do their work and not making the scene too busy with music is all the more effective.

Too often in Spielberg written off as some sort of "popcorn filmmaker" who only makes big blockbusters which appeal to the masses. Although there is clearly some truth in this I still don't understand why this is a legitimate criticism of the man who has, in his time, produced dozens of outstanding films which can be enjoyed on so many levels. With help from an extraordinary but subtle lead performance by Daniel Day-Lewis Lincoln is destined to join this canon of great films.

8/10

Lincoln is out Now in cinemas everywhere.

Poster Rights owned by Dreamworks Pictures and 20th Century Fox Film Corporation

"Les Misérables" - Film Review

2013-01-19T05:58:00.000-08:00

Les Misérables (2012) -
Poster Rights; Working Title Pictures

The achievement of Director Tom Hooper's adaption of Les Misérables the Victor Hugo novel - although more well known as the stage production I'd wager - is a grandiose and spectacular film to watch. Its two-and-a-half hour running time follows the former convict Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) who breaks parole to try and escape his life on parole and to become an upstanding citizen. But it is about far more than just his story, it is a class struggle and a romance and the violent crushing of an attempted revolution (The Paris uprising of 1832), it has a largely excellent cast (alongside Jackman is Anne Hathaway in a film stealing performance, Russel Crowe, Sacha Baron Cohen, Samantha Barks and Amanda Seyfried), it is exquisitely captured on film by Hooper (Director of The King's Speech) yet, I couldn't wait for it to end.

Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike musicals, I'm a fan of Chicago, Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music etc But the sole problem I had with Les Misérables was the singing. The never ending, repetitive and downright frustrating singing. I liked some songs and I thought that most of the performers did an excellent job of acting whilst singing (Anne Hathaway's rendition of I dreamed a dream is emotional, angry and heart-stoppingly brilliant) but there was no respite from it. After forty minutes I needed a break, a short conversation or exchange without a tune, after an hour-and-a-half I became uncomfortable and distracted and after two-hours I became restless and couldn't focus on the screen. I just wanted it to end.

I found that whilst the big show stopping numbers (I dreamed a Dream, Bring Him Home, On My Own and Castle on a Cloud) were excellent songs and served the story very well but the general conversations between people weren't good songs at all. They repeated the same tunes quite frequently and for me at least I found it tiresome and difficult to actually focus on what they were saying (well, singing).

It's a shame because I thought the story was enjoyable and the acting excellent (other than Eddie Redmayne who seemed to be lacking in any gumption and power). What Tom Hooper has done with this version of the story is translate the stage show into something cinematic and explosive, the technical achievement of it must also be noted because it has revolutionised the way musicals will be made (previously actors had mimed along on set to previously recorded songs but here they actually sang live every time). However, and I seem to be in a minority here, it wasn't the "musical for people who hate musicals." It had no transformational effect on my thoughts on musicals which are non-stop singing and I genuinely wanted it to, I wanted to be wowed, blown away and fall in love with musical theatre but instead I was bored to tears and I will certainly be more wary of musicals in the future.

6/10

Les Misérables is out now in wide release.

Death of the High Street?

2013-01-15T10:12:00.004-08:00

News that high street giant HMV is going into administration this week isn't just sad news for the thousands of people's jobs which are at risk countrywide, or even for the historical importance of HMV as the first music shop in the country. It is really bad news for high street shopping as we know it.

By Mankind 2k, via Wikimedia Commons

For generations HMV has been the face of the high street for countless young people, looking at music, films, games, posters, t-shirts & more recently hi-tech sound systems. But, increasingly these teens are taking to the internet. We socialise there, listen to music there & do our shopping there. Trips "down town" or "to the shops" are far more infrequent in the digital era & tend to be more for the experience than actually shopping.

Big shops are already feeling the pinch as is well documented in the news, Woolworths, Game, Clintons, Jessops and Comet have all either gone bust or seriously changed their business in the last couple of years. But HMV is an important part of the high street because it is a crowd-pleaser and one of the most enjoyable places to look around out there. For me, HMV always made a trip out to find some new shoes or jeans that more enjoyable. Wading through racks of chinos looking for something I can actually "pull off" is always an odious task. Yet, I'd always find respite amongst the DVDs and CDs of HMV. Somehow it was the one place on the high street which was always a cool without really trying so desperately to be so (Fatface I'm looking at you...) the music was young and modern and the decor was reminiscent of an old Punk bar renovated for the Dubstep era.

But in the end, unfortunately, it all comes down to the money. Amazon, Itunes and the like are selling the same product (or digital versions) for a fraction of the price - because let's face it they don't have to fork out for hundreds of stores' rents nationwide.

I think back to only a week ago when I was in HMV myself. It's as if I put the nail in the coffin myself, I've always spent time and money in there but this time I had two DVDs in my hand but thought better of it, I knew I could get them cheaper online. If an HMV fan like me won't pay then why would the average punter do it?

The issue for me is that HMV was such a significant draw for me to go into town, if people like me don't go in as much then it won't be long before the other shops I spent money in will start to struggle too. What about the coffee shops and food places which rely on people going out shopping? No longer will that famous dog in the logo hear "His Master's Voice" and nor will, it seems, those high street dominoes stop falling.

"Life of Pi " - Film Review

2013-01-04T05:02:00.000-08:00

On paper, Life of Pi is an awful idea. A young Indian man (named Pi) who gets caught up in a shipwreck survives at sea in a lifeboat whilst accompanied by a Bengal Tiger. It shouts "This is ridiculous!!" about as loud as it possibly can in your direction, yet Ang Lee's adaption of the best-selling novel is far from frivolous.

Image Rights; Fox 2000

Life of Pi deals not with a superficially childish story about a boy surviving extraordinary circumstances like the one Pi encounters, but more an overarching and significant look into faith and the beauty of the world. There is an awful lot of time spent lingering on shots of animals, nature and the incredible scenery of Pi's world stuck at sea, as if to prove that Pi's sometimes very philosophical voice-over is telling the truth; that there truly is a God. You could argue that by creating these natural phenomena via computer generated images is a little hypocritical and perhaps cheats us out of the true reality of natural beauty but it is a small criticism. Especially when the CGI is quite as extraordinary as this film's is.

Everything looks amazingly crisp and gorgeous, and although the 3D is distracting in some of the earlier dialogue driven scenes when the shipwreck begins and waves are plunging the camera about you forget and are absorbed into the action instantly and irrevocably. Every crash, slam and slosh puts you firmly in Pi's shoes and later, when all is calm, it is put to great effect again in fleshing out the small area in which the camera and protagonist is confined.

Somehow Ang Lee (of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain fame) and writer David Magee (Finding Neverland ) manage to engage you despite the lack of characters in the main portion of the film. There is a perfect balance achieved by the blend of the story itself and the use of Pi's older self - played by the magnificent Irrfan Khan - telling the story to a writer (Rafe Spall), it is a clever device which adds a level of narrative reality to the story.

Though the story itself is wonderful, engaging and awe-inspiring it is the ending which lifts it from a mere fantasy adventure. It would be sacrilege to reveal it now but suffice to say that it adds a whole new layer of ambiguity to the narrative you've just seen; it makes it a truly thought provoking and astounding film.

An absolute must see.

10/10

Life of Pi is out now in cinemas everywhere.

Jack Reacher - Film Review

2012-12-29T08:11:00.000-08:00

I've often dismissed Tom Cruise as being able to be a legitimate actor for some reason. I think it must be his super star persona, it somehow makes me think he's all talk and no walk. Yet every so often a great film with him in crawls out of the wood work and basically sticks its middle finger up at my prejudice. Jack Reacher is one of those films.

Rights Owned By Paramount Pictures

I haven't read any of Lee Child's numerous books about the eponymous military police officer turned vigilante so I didn't form any instant bias because Tom Cruise took the lead role (despite Reacher being described as a huge muscly bloke in the book), to me he seems perfectly cast. Cruise brings everything he's got to the role and really captures the rugged loner properly but more importantly, with subtly and intelligence.

Jack Reacher opens - controversially - with a sniper killing innocent people but the story develops when Cruise swaggers in to investigate and finds there is a little more than meets the eye. As plots go it wasn't exactly groundbreaking or particularly difficult to guess the outcomes but it had that little more intelligence than most modern action films have these days, it is closer in style to the Jason Bourne films than to Taken or another of those shoot 'em up style jobs. In many ways it is the perfect balance between the two though, it doesn't try to be too clever or stylish nor does it dumb itself down; pretty much anyone will enjoy it (except those too young or squirmish to put up with a great deal of bone crunching action!).

Writer-Director Christopher McQuarrie (whose previous directorial effort - The Way of the Gun - sailed straight into the bargain bins at pound shops across the country) manages to pull together everything in a slick and stylish manner but also ensures that every single thud, bone crunch and punch is delivered like a sledgehammer, there is no fancy pants Karate or acrobatics. Cruise just punches people. Hard. And it's a really effective way of making those action scenes far more exciting.

Jack Reacher really gets the balance though, it doesn't deliver fight scene after fight scene endlessly throughout the film strung together with some inconsequential plot device, the talking scene are equally engaging, particularly those with Werner Herzog as a villain who gives his henchmen the choice of chewing their fingers off to survive. It's creepy but somehow so much fun to watch.

In short, Jack Reacher is everything you could want from an action film, interesting characters, well shot chases and fights and a story which holds your interest. It kicks ass.

8/10

Jack Reacher is out Now in Cinemas Everywhere.

"The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" - Film Review

2012-12-16T09:25:00.001-08:00

Peter Jackson's epic fantasy trilogy (The Lord of the Rings) had a profound effect on me as a young moviegoer, so much so that it made me want to be involved with film making in someway. Unfortunately though, I seriously doubt that The Hobbit will have the same effect on young people today.

Rights; MGM, New Line Cinema and Wingnut Films

It opens with Old Bilbo (played by Ian Holm) narrating some back-story about the dwarf kingdom of Erebor being invaded by a dragon, something which sounds exciting but is shot in such a way to make it seem less cool than it actually is. And unfortunately, things don't improve, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey as a whole is probably the least "cool" blockbuster film made...ever. In the opening 30 minutes alone there are two songs which are so cringe inducingly lame that you can feel the disappointment hanging in the air in the cinema.

The problem with An Unexpected Journey is that it tries to be two things at once, and they happen to be opposites. On one side there is the twee English-ness of Tolkien's original children's story (this is based on no thousand page mythological epic charting the battle of good vs evil but a story about a Hobbit who doesn't like adventures going on one!) but also the idea that this must be a blockbuster with big action scenes and battles like The Lord of the Rings had in excess. Unfortunately, it comes across very muddled, for example there is a scene when the company of adventurers (Bilbo & 13 Dwarves) are taken hostage by a horde of Goblins (remember those screeching bug eyed monsters in The Fellowship of the Ring?) who dance and sing a song... Not exactly tense or frightening stuff; how can you fear a monster who breaks into song or hits its fellow monsters with a frying pan?!

Admittedly, this strain of pantomime humour and sing-song fades towards the middle of the film where it settles into a pretty decent fantasy-adventure film. Mainly helped by the barn-storming return of Andy Serkis as Gollum/Smeagol, who is both frightening & funny whilst somehow making you pity and feel for him. The work on the performance capture (a system involving CGI artists copying the actor's facial movements) is extraordinary, you forget that this character made up of pixels is there interacting with his environment in the same way people do, it's seamless.

The visuals of the film are most unusual, Jackson has really championed the use of a new frame rate for his film, it means that you are seeing twice as many frames per second as you usually do (it supposedly makes motion look more realistic) yet its effect is minimal. It may be slightly better but sometimes things did appear to be moving too quickly... then again, that may just be because I was looking out for it, who knows. This was the least of my technical worries with the film though, the CGI looked very strange on the whole, somehow it looked too... high-definition. It sounds strange but everything had a sickly sort of brightness and crispness to it which made it seem somehow fake, like it didn't really take place in real life. That's not to say that the effects weren't good, they were extraordinary, but the whole sheen of the film didn't look right. It was jarring and distracting to the utmost, why not just keep the gritty reality of The Lord of the Rings' visuals? Only once in this film did I feel like I was watching something that wasn't generated by a computer and conversely, that was when Gollum was on screen.

Possibly the most frustrating thing about the film was the ending, it had arrived at a point about 20 minutes before the end which would have been a far more satisfying conclusion but it dragged it out into a conclusion which will be berated almost as much as the eagle sequence in The Return of the King...

For me, ultimately the problem with An Unexpected Journey comes down to one issue and one issue only. It is simply that the world which the fantastic Lord of the Rings films occurred in doesn't correlate with The Hobbit , it seems like the two worlds are incompatible and for fans of that trilogy it will be hard to get over that problem. Fans of the book on the other hand will may be very impressed with its loyalty to Tolkien's source material. In short, it is an underwhelming film with odd and awkward visuals and is a tad too jovial for my taste.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is out on APRIL 8th on DVD & BLU-Ray.

Critical Reflection of my first Semester on Winchester News Online

2012-12-13T05:17:00.001-08:00

This year's WINOL has been a great success I think, mainly because there was a significant change in the site itself. Previously the website looked quite out dated and tended to be very focused on the weekly bulletin (understandable considering its quality) however this year the website has morphed to look more like a broadsheet newspaper's website which is a distinct improvement.

The regular addition of written news articles on the website has meant that the bulletin isn't always the best source of news on the site; there are fresh written news stories up there almost every day. I think that WINOL's main strength this semester has been on features, although it took a while for some to start appearing on the site, when they did they were all of a really high quality. In particular the two feature interviews, of Hitler's Neighbour and Paul Blackburn by Tom Morgan which I think is genuinely incredible journalism.

The news section of the site took a lot longer to start getting to a high standard I think, mainly because there was confusion over what the target audience was, many people were coming into news meetings with stories about old politicians talking about nothing in particular and about things like dustbin collections. It is clear that these subjects don't appeal to our target market of students in Winchester and over Hampshire as a whole. I think this progressed in the second half of the semester though, when we started having more stories which would engage our audience and, vitally, other news sources hadn’t picked up on.

It is clear by the circulation figures that once this focus happened our readership significantly improved and we became the most visited Student Journalism site in the country.

It is clear that WINOL is a standout student website when compared with other course’s sites because most of them seem to be producing the same sort of content week in week out every year. Our site on the other hand is constantly trying to do new things which challenge us students but are well worth the effort because they all worked very well. In particular, the Hampshire Crime Commission debate organised by Louis O Brien was a tremendous success because not only did it sell out but it became an event which drove the news agenda in Winchester; enough for the BBC to cover it. Despite keeping hyper local with the debate, WINOL had the audacity to cover the American Elections in a two hour live show. The fact that such a small organisation was capable of covering the biggest global news story that day - or perhaps even month - is a triumph. Even the daily WINOL 99 programs showed that WINOL was capable of producing a show similar to BBC3’s output on no budget at all, the commitment and work of the people involved in all of these ‘specials’ shows that WINOL isn’t just a run-of-the-mill student journalism site.

For the first semester of working on WINOL I was given the task of being education and campus correspondent for the news team. I think that although in general I have struggled with finding stories that are engaging and visually exciting it has been a good challenge for me to be put thoroughly out of my comfort zone and made to write concise stories and scripts involving complex educational terminology. My writing style has always been very verbose and overly flamboyant on occasion, mainly, I think, because most of my practice in writing would be categorised as features or comment not news. It has been a learning curve attempting to cut those sentences down to make them more punchy and news-worthy but a challenge worth sticking at.

In the first week of WINOL I was disappointed to not produce a package or even a written story, I had attempted to arrange two different news stories, but unfortunately both of the interviews I had prepared were postponed or cancelled. I was instead left with the task of editing together the "Coming Up" section of the bulletin, although it looked good and made the bulletin look a bit more professional I still felt like I'd let myself and the team down by not producing anything in the first week.

In the second week I had a lot more success, I arranged interviews with Elizabeth Stuart the pro-Vice Chancellor at the University and Winchester's Student Union President about proposed changes to university grading. The end product wasn't good in my opinion, the story made little sense in the VT and edited poorly. I found that in my haste to secure interviews and prepare questions for the interviewees that I forgot to think of ideas for GVs and cutaways, this meant that the package was filled with odd looking shots. The scripting was also not up to scratch, I didn't write my script according to the pictures which would have made the two elements seem more in sync as opposed to feeling very separate. Despite this, I think the story content itself was good, my written piece for the story made much more sense, was balanced and flowed well.

In the third week of WINOL I strayed from my beat to do a story on the American Elections, my idea was to promote the live coverage WINOL had been planning by filming a short package at a screening of the presidential debate in London. I was really happy with how well it turned out; it was a really easy way of localising such an enormous world news story. Among the interviews was Bonnie Greer, the famous playwright, and an American politics expert from Birkbeck University in London. I'm proud that the piece was balanced and my final piece to camera looked slick and professional. I was a little disappointed by some of the more technical problems like the lighting, the place we filmed in was pretty dark which affected the overall look of the package. I made a mental note to ensure that I either took a light with me or to make sure I filmed somewhere fairly bright in the future.

The fourth and fifth week of WINOL was all about the US Election live coverage for me, I had willingly volunteered to present half of the two hour show as well as produce a graphics laden package on swing states to help pad out the show. I was really proud of my 3 minute package; I had put a lot of effort into comprehensively planning it in terms of visuals and audio for the entirety, the graphics which Liam Garrahan produced for it were excellent and gave a really impressive looking professional shine to it. When I arrived on the morning of the live show knowing that it would change because the result had already been declared I knew that a lot of the information I'd worked hard to learn would now be largely defunct and the package I was so proud of would either be cut entirely or severely truncated. Despite this, the live broadcast went really well. I felt that I handled the pressure of presenting a live show very well, it wasn't easy trying to engage with the guests and experts in conversation, listen to the production side of things in the gallery and appear calm relaxed and friendly on screen whilst presenting but I think I looked capable and confident. Something the guest editors and others have commented on.

As well as presenting the elections broadcast that week, I have presented some of the sports sections on the bulletin a couple of times, something I found really enjoyable and surprisingly easy to do - especially when compared with the live show!

Having had the break from the "steamroller that is WINOL" I really struggled to get back into the rhythm of producing VTs for the Bulletin in the next few weeks. Despite this I definitely played an important part of the news team by regularly contributing news articles for the online website; something which was needed to make WINOL a more multi-media news site, rather than just a place to put a regular TV bulletin on. Most weeks I managed to produce two news stories for the site.

Although the story ideas I’d had on week seven were scrapped I had already been asked to go to London to help film the student protests, something I knew would be an enjoyable but difficult job. One of my major regrets here is not taking a more significant role in the planning of the excursion. My colleague Tom wanted to organise most of it so I didn’t see a problem with letting him take control however when we got there I realised that other than booking equipment and knowing where it would happen he hadn’t planned anything else! On the day I took control of getting the all-important still images and doing all of the “in the crowd” filming. However I had no idea about how long the upload process would take because he had organised it all, obviously I should have made more effort to learn this part of the process. In the end the footage wasn’t put in the bulletin so our work was largely wasted. In retrospect there are so many solutions which we could have utilised to get some form of our work up on screen despite the problems which befell us. But we learnt from our mistakes and I would really like to give going to London to film a story on the day of the bulletin a go again. I think I could make it work this time.

From week seven onwards I took on the additional role of being a major member of the radio news team which had just begun. My news stories made it into every single one of the bulletins but more importantly I ran a two hour show with news-centric content and a number of guests to "flesh it out." Although I'm fairly confident on radio already, the shows I produced were of a much higher quality than I've ever done and I didn't really get help arranging or scheduling any of it other than the guests' input themselves. Sometimes people think that being a radio presenter is simply “putting a few songs on and talking rubbish” but it is far more technical than that and requires constant thought and attention for the entire length of the show, there’s no time for twiddling your thumbs or singing along to the music!

In the final few weeks of WINOL I was really happy with my impact on the content produced. In particular I was proud of my written articles and my Mumford and Sons VT. Although I had moved out of my allocated beat by this point I found that this really helped me stay motivated towards doing work, I was much more interested in doing the stories I moved onto. For my Mumford and Sons VT took a lot of effort arranging interviews with a fan who had bought fake tickets, I traveled all the way to Bournemouth to get the interview but I think it was worth it because in the end the package would have never worked without it because representatives of the venue refused to appear on camera or in a phone call.

Over the course of the semester I have also kept my blog updated with various other general interest entertainment reviews of films, music and the like. Over the term I've had thousands of hits for my reviews and other blog posts, something I’m proud of considering the saturation of this sort of material online.

In general I think this semester has been a good challenge, I've enjoyed the work that I’ve done but I think it has been a lot harder than I expected. My strength definitely lie in the presenting side of news, I think that all of my voiceovers and on screen presenting work has been far better than the packages themselves. The most difficult thing for me was finding stories which were visually interesting, I’ve always been a more word-centric person but I have learnt a lot and look forward to trying something different for my next semester.

Economics: More Indepth

2012-12-13T05:05:00.000-08:00

Did a post a while ago called "Economics: The Basics" it covers the same themes as this post will but in a bit less detail and less complex terminology, maybe try that one first!

Adam Smith is regarded as the father of economics, he set himself with the task of working out why one nation is rich and another is poor. He came to the conclusion in his book The Wealth of Nations that a rich country is so because it has free individuals and free trade. People's freedom to buy or sell what they like creates competetiveness, stimulates supply and demand, increases consumption and production. With these increases comes more spending, jobs and creates an income flow. His idea was driven my a metaphysical "hidden hand of the market" which controls the ebb and flow of money.*

*The black market could be seen as preventing a nation's wealth from expanding.

Smith used the example of ancient China to prove his theory, in the middle ages China was the richest nation on earth but the economy was state controlled. China's economy eventually collapsed (mainly because of the state's desire to employ people to build an enormous, and ineffective wall to keep out Mongols ...) and descended into a very poor nation.

Morally, Smith said that everyone was out for themselves and to create the most value for themselves (which he said helped a prosperous nation). He said people donate to charity because of the good feeling or social status it gives them so it that loss of money is actually an equal trade for the "good feeling" this is why rich people give a lot of money away, they don't need the money very much so it buys them a feeling of social status or "the moral high ground." £1 to a billionaire is nothing so he gives it away but a pauper treasures £1 because he needs it to survive. Despite this idea, Smith was anti-charity because he said that if a beggar makes money from donations then he will continue to beg (and do nothing to input society positively) whereas if he learnt a trade or entertained people by busking he would be much better off as would society as a whole. Smith believed the "hidden hand of the market" would ensure that he would eventually have a good living.

David Ricardo believed that Smith's idea of where value came from was wrong, he thought it came not in trade but in labour. For example, a diamond 's worth doesn't come from its prettiness, water is pretty in the same way, they're expensive because it takes a lot of manpower and effort to extract them and cut them. If diamonds were as common as grass or mud then we probably wouldn't be nearly as enamoured with them.

Malthus was a 19th Century pessimistic economist who believed that people's unlimited wants and the world's limited resources would mean that we'll eventually all starve to death. He claimed that abstinence or marriage was the only way to prevent this starvation because (in his time) to marry, one had to own their own farm. I think that this theory is outdated though, mainly because Malthus ignored the idea that contraception could prevent overpopulation and because he ignored the obvious proposition that for every mouth a family has to feed there is an additional two hands to help find and work for food.

Economically, Karl Marx was right on the money with his analysis of the problems of capitalism, unfortunately his solutions is very flawed but regardless his problem a hard one to overcome, it is thus:

A man earns £5 to make a chair in a factory.
When he leaves work with his £5 and wants to buy a chair he finds that the price is £10 (to allow for the business' capitalist desire to make a profit)
This means that the man has to make two chairs to earn himself enough money to buy one. So for every chair bought two are made. But now the demand for chairs has fallen because of a surplus, this causes the bosses to cut the workers' wages. The worker now can't afford to buy anything and the business can't sell anymore chairs and so goes bust.

This idea is called the Wage/Price Spiral:
If the worker can't anything he demands increased wages but the business must increase prices to afford this wage (because it still needs to retain a profit) but the worker can't afford anything again and so wants a wage increase...
This also works the opposite way round, firm can decrease prices to increase sales but that means workers have to work harder for the same amount of money or they get wages decreased to keep profits level.

Marx's solution (communism) doesn't seem to work in practice, but modern economists have pretty much come up with a solution.

They established that money was just a superstition, that a country's currency didn't have to reflect the stock of gold it had in its banks. Every economy could just put more currency into the economy because it meant that people spent more which increased consumer confidence and therefore people spent money on luxuries too (creating jobs providing luxuries). If a country needed money to make things (like many did during WW2) the government could just print out more money and give it to them.

This solves marx's problem of the worker's wages being cut to keep profits high, the government can put money in to subsidise the wages and then everyone is happy and capitalism survives. But because the flow of money is essential to keeping this society working governments have to tax people to make sure their money doesn't just sit in banks, to continue the flow the government spends money on creating jobs (in the public sector).

This solution isn't perfect though, inflation is the biggest issue. When there is high inflation people don't save as much because it isn't worth saving (why not just spend it whilst its value is still high?) But people who are retired or have to rely on savings will be effected because the money they put to one side is becoming worth less and less.

This Keynesian system (named after its founder) also means that state intervention in the economy increases and reduces the profitability in the private sector because of subsides in the public sector. It also causes a lean towards militarism because it is an easy way to spend a lot of money and create a lot of jobs but of course, a military needs to be doing something to justify spending...

This can cause war mongering but also can make the government reduce the desires to me a democratic nation just to ensure that the economy is running smoothly and effectively. It's not a perfect solution at all, but it's the best we have right now...

Freud - To solve the Misery of the Human Condition

2012-12-11T09:07:00.003-08:00

Freud was a pessimistic kind of person, but considering his life it is understandable. He wrote his work following two World Wars, the holocaust, the great depression and at a time he himself was suffering from cancer. It is understandable that his ideas were of a dark vision of man. He said that man is miserable despite the increase in life expectancy and living standards because we are alienated from ourselves, that despite thinking we are control of our actions that actually we are slaves to our subconscious desires. To him every person is constantly suffering because of three things:

Our own decaying body. We are all dying slowly, we suffer from aches and pains, we get ill etc
Nature. He said "the slings & arrows of outrageous fortune" were always making our life much harder
Interaction with others. He claimed that everyone was out for themselves, they wanted to beat us, hurt us and make our lives hard (more on that later!)

Plato's had said that humans are "rational creatures" and that our rational self was like a chariot rider controlling two horses (which represented spirit and desire). Freud thought this was completely wrong, he said that reason was the weakest; we are actually driven by desires beyond our control. Freud also attacked Marx's work by saying that his work was too idealistic, to think that man's condition would teleologically arrive at some form of Utopia was ridiculous. Freud believed that people were naturally aggressive and had in built desires to beat and kill others. Much like Hobbe's vision of a time before society: "Nasty brutish and short." His proof came from every day decisions people made which, according to him, he deemed as largely illogical and usually for reasons relating to desire. For Example, people smoke for pleasure despite knowing that it isn't good for them, they eat junk food in excess because it is tasty and binge drink knowing that by the end of the night they'll probably be ill and have a hangover in the morning; all because they get pleasure from it. These things' irrationality is clear and desire for pleasure is the cause of all of them.

Sigmund Freud

Freud claimed that the mind was constantly at war with itself because it was divided into three parts:

The Id - This was the part of the brain which contained instincts, desires, sex, aggression and it was the one which dominated. A "cauldron of seething excitations" bubbling away and demanding fulfilment.
The Ego - This was the rational self, it contained moderation and common sense. Freud said it was the least powerful voice and "constantly besieged" by the Id.
Superego - This part of the brain wasn't naturally occuring but developed after birth because of socialisation. It was the internalised rules of parents and society and punished breaking of these rules with guilt.

This internal war between the three caused neuroses, depression and other mental problems.
Unlike Marx who discovered a problem with society (see my economics post) and provided a solution which was unsatisfactory Freud actually came up with what he said was the solution to man's problems. Freud accepted that there were a few ways to cope with the sufferings of society though, without having to solve it properly:

Chemical Distractions - Drugs and Alcohol temporarily help us ignore our own suffering.
Isolation - He said that because a significant cause of suffering was other people that being alone would help.
Sublimation - Socially acceptable releases for aggression like sports and hard work could help a person be satisfied. But this was never as good as actually killing our enemies...
Religion as Sublimation - This was in essence mass delusion to Freud. But it worked as another Superego to help suppress the Id using the fear of eternal damnation as punishment instead of guilt as the internal superego did.

But these were all either temporary solutions or not strong enough, his solution was meant to work properly. He called it pyschoanalysis. Pyschoanalysis was meant to make a person's ego stronger and help bridle the Id.

Pyschoanalysis was intended to solve the problem of mental issues by helping a patient (called an analysand) to speak freely about everything in a process called free association (the idea that if you kept talking and talking eventually the suppressed Id will reveal itself) and also in the study of dreams (Freud said that the Ego rested at night because it had resisted the Id all day, which left the Id to run rampant). By studying these unconscious thoughts, it was thought that a person could be helped to find solutions.

Marx said change the system, Freud said change ourselves.

Reich, a contemporary of Freud, had thoughts along the same lines as Freud but he concluded that rather than finding solutions to the problems caused by the Id and Ego's war he said to just let the Id run riot sometimes. He suggested a therapy now called Reichian Therapy which involves patients screaming and running about and moving wildly like in interpretive dance. This idea was supposed to let the Id's energies all out so that it wouldn't become suppressed and cause neuroses and the like. This idea was very influential in the 1960s when the hippy movement took shape, it helped cause "free love" and expression and all those disastrously uncool tie-die shirts.

The Hobbit - Peter Jackson's Unexpected Journey

2012-12-10T09:53:00.000-08:00

By Natasha Baucas,
via Wikimedia Commons

It started just over ten years ago when I sat in a cinema in the early January chill to watch a new blockbuster film based on a book that in my youthful ignorance I had never heard of. The experience was, to say the least, transformative. From then on I was an avid fan of The Lord of the Rings, I bought all the DVDs (the extended ones too) I played "Helms Deep" in the garden with a toy sword, invested in the computer games,read the companion guides,got the calendars; everything. Slowly as the years made me somewhat wiser I realised that there was a genius film maker responsible for these films. Yes, Tolkien had written the book (which I find a little laborious if I'm honest) but a man called Peter Jackson had created three extraordinary films out of it. For this I devoted my time to reading every piece of literature on the man, I watched his back catalogue of films including some excellent splatter films, a brilliant mockumentary and Heavenly Creatures; an extraordinarily well made film about a hugely intriguing subject (please check it out if you haven't seen it!).

Despite being an enormous fan of Jackson and The Lord of the Rings I have to admit that despite my massive anticipation of the forthcoming Hobbit film (and its sequels) a sense of impending doom has been slowly working its way into my head. Over the years there has been news of numerous problems with the production of Jackson's latest film series. I can't help but think that we're facing a disaster on the scale of the Star Wars Prequels' scale.

Back when the new film was announced, Jackson never intended to direct The Hobbit, that task was to go to Guillemo Del Toro (maker of Pan's Labrinth and the Hellboy series). He had said something along the lines of "I don't want to spend the next ten years of my life trying to top my previous work." An understandable line to take considering the phenomenal box office and critical success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Yet because of movie company MGM's financial woes Jackson had to retake the helm (Del Toro had to step down because of other commitments) an announcement welcomed by many fans (including me) but was it the right one? Making someone make a film trilogy they've already said they don't want to doesn't usually end up with a great product...

Another indicator that The Hobbit may not be up to standard is that the source material is nowhere near as good. Don't get me wrong, Tolkien's first book is a fun one and full of great ideas, characters and moments but it's certainly no literary masterpiece like its younger (and significantly fatter) brother is considered; The Hobbit is a children's fairy tale, not an epic about the nature of good, evil and the power of friendship. Can Jackson really create something as cinematically powerful from the jolly adventures of Bilbo and a company of dwarves? The stylistic differences between the two books is quite striking really, for example three trolls squabble about how to cook Bilbo and the dwarves and Smaug the Dragon is equally talkative. Is it possible to pull this off without it ending up cheesy?

Let's forget about the differences between the styles of the two books for a moment and consider one enormous factor; their lengths. The Lord of the Rings is about a thousand pages long, The Hobbit is pushing three hundred. Yet, their counterpart trilogies are going to be pretty much the same length. Jackson - along with writers Fran Walsh and Phillippa Boyens - has said they wanted to make it a trilogy in the first place (so it's definitely not a money thing...as if!), they have included lots of extra scenes never included in the book dragged from elsewhere in Tolkien's writings (The Lord of the Ring's Appendices alone has hundreds of pages of extra material he couldn't fit in). This may well work though, a lot of scenes in The Lord of the Rings weren't in the book and many tended to be improvements. But on the scale they are suggesting for The Hobbit, the potential for a patchwork story with no real focus is becoming ever more likely.

By Tara Hunt, via Wikimedia Commons

One more worry for me was the announcement that The Hobbit is to be released in 3D, I don't want to pre-judge too much but the format still fills me with woe when I go into the cinema. If I had a choice i'd see the new release in 2D but unfortunately we will have the headache, squinty darkness and itchy nose which comes with those glasses forced on us in pretty much every cinema in the country.

In short, I'm worried that The Hobbit may see an end to the Peter Jackson I have loved for so many years and whose work has been largely untouched by the taint of Hollywood's big studios. The Lord of the Rings was so excellent because the studio gave them room to breathe, to work, to let their artistic talents reach the end product. It seems like once again, the Hollywood machine is crushing these talented people into churning out a product which will make them the most money it possibly can, regardless of artistic merit.

I hope that Peter Jackson and the rest of the team have retained that all important control and kept the money grabbing executives from forcing their vision to change but,unfortunately, it already seems like Bilbo's quest is doomed to failure.