Amstel

My plane arrived slightly early tonight, so I was feeling smug as I negotiated the double revolving doors to the outside of the airport.

Then whoosh! A sudden barrage of tiny hailstones that lasted about ten minutes. I was waiting for Guus to show up in his big black Chrysler and had arranged to meet him by the vast television screen near the airport taxi rank.

There were about fifteen other people with similar plans huddled into the little glass shelter, and I was just getting ready to make a dash to the other distant empty shelter, when I spied the distinctive car and the reassuring flashing of headlights. An effortless drive into rainy Amsterdam and now I'm sitting with a local beer in a bar around the corner from this street.

Tomorrow and Thursday I will have my nose to the grindstone, so I guess I won't have much time for wandering although I expect a group of us will pitch up for a dinner tomorrow evening. Still. Amsterdam's distinct character with canals, narrow streets, merchant houses, bicycles, cafes and bars, sweet smelling cigarettes (!), liberalism, tourists and bustle permeates even a short visit.

once

Late finish from work but then another movie evening, this time with the musical called Once, which was filmed in Dublin for about €130k. There's a busker played by Glen Hansard and Czech Republic immigrant pianist played by Marketa Irglova. Simple plotline building towards making a music recording against a backdrop of his torn breakup and hers with a child and husband in home country. Not a musical in the Hollywood sense, but a good "Ahhh" ending.

Endearingly played and filmed with often handheld digital video. It mixes in natural lighting, grabbed street scenes and I believe a number of the actors who were relatives of people in the production. It seems to capture Dublin well and the love of the music shines through. I really enjoyed it and can see why it played well at the indie box-office. Interesting that quite a few movie watchers thought it was based on a real situation. Enthusiastic guerrilla film making done really well.

pillow

American Gangster

I cracked open the DVD of American Gangster, which I missed at the cinema. First dilemma was that there were two versions of the film, apparently with different endings. Conservatively, I decided to go for the original movie theatre version, which is also some 18 minutes shorter than the re-cut version.

It's Ridley Scott directing Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe in a pseudo true story about the rise of black gangster Frank Lucas. As a Harlem based gangster, he buys heroin direct from Bangkok creating a New York street price that upsets the Mafia. The police are on the take except messily honourable New Jersey cop Crowe, whose job is to reel in these bad folk.

Washington plays Lucas as a princely, if cold blooded hoodlum; I suspect the real version was somewhat rougher around the edges. Strangely, the 'chasing Lucas plotline' only comes out quite late in the film, so the usual 'cat and mouse' aspects are missing.

There's some rise to fame scenes, Thailand jungle moments, bribed US military drug shipments, a lower order criminal who gives the game away and then an intercepted military transport plane which is dismantled a la French Connection. The drugs turn out to be in the base of the coffins being carried back from Vietnam and then there's a heavy duty raid on the drug manufacturing plant in the Projects of Harlem.

Its shot in a sort of seventies brown, no doubt for atmosphere, but if I'm honest I found it to be okay rather than great. I think there have been other films across this territory, both mafioso based and rootin-tootin cop thrillers. Consequently I found this well acted but sort of tame and formulaic. Probably a bit long, too. Even the section leading up to the discovery of the two tons of heroin packed into the presumably somewhat heavy coffins I found laboured.

I suppose a lot of this story has been done in other films so many of the scenes had a slight 'paint by numbers' feel. I know that Bourne, Godfathers, Goodfellas, LA Confidential and similar have genre components, but they all seemed to have some extra grip or zing that I found missing from this one.

I've still got the other version to watch, but I think it could be some time before I come back to this Hollywood Blockbuster. Meantime, I see ex members of NYC DEA have raised a class action lawsuit against Universal for the film's allegations of corruption in New York.

anything?

There's quite a difference in the coverage of some events between the USA and UK. The current big US scandal story gets around page seven coverage over here. Its about about New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and "Kristen"/Ashley Alexandra Dupre the expensive lady who takes the train from New York to Washington to consort consult with him in hotel rooms.

And rashbre central's hastily assembled webcam of Kristen is not part of a negotiation, in case anyone is mistaken. She seems friendly enough over at her myspace website and even has a pop song as Nina Venetta called "What we Want" to promote.

Like Kristen, family man Foxy Spitzer seemed to need a different name whilst in room 871 of the Mayflower Hotel, but allegedly used his 5th Avenue, NY address, which perhaps could help the billing for these diamond rated services. The redacted transcript of the wiretap (P27 onwards) explains this and shows that Client 9 had to have Kristen described.

Apparently, the payment is normally by wire at an hourly rate back to QAT Consulting of New Jersey which is outside of Eliot Spitzer's jurisdiction, unlike Staten Island where he closed down a similar operation. However, Client 9 had some credit and seemed to pay cash. Client 4 seemed to have asked whether QAT could be classed as a legitimate business and therefore properly expensed.

So I can't help wondering if the US taxpayer has been paying for any of the "comprehensive and hands on" services provided by QAT Consulting and who else in power is a member of the Emperor's Club VIP from whence these ladies are supplied?

Here in the UK its much simpler; we have a television family show to select the next stars to appear in the West End production of Charles Dicken's story of a child exploiter and his lady of the night accomplice, Nancy. In fairness, when the phone votes open we can select the ragamuffin street lady, but the principal exploited boy will be chosen by the judges. And this preview of the next production of Oliver Twist is something I don't mind paying my licence to enjoy.

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The Diamond Age

I can't say I've ever really enjoyed the Star Wars films although I like the ideas of future/science fiction and so forth. One of the good things about the very first film was that it portrayed space related artifacts as slightly beaten up. Much like cars in Winter, the elements had a chance to spatter grit around.

Its the same around at rashbre central, when a piece of theoretically gleaming technology has to be taken into the repair shop.

It has just happened to my little work PC, which suddenly had a collection of meltdowns. First the keyboard fatigue that somehow makes rashbre central a source of google hits for people emulating my technique to reapply loose keys. Then the buzzy fan which sounds like a hovercraft preparing for Channel crossing. Then the clicks from the special shock absorbing disk and finally the one that clinched it - the blank screen. Not Blue screen. No screen. Oh dear.

Resourcefully I just plugged in a spare monitor into the erstwhile laptop until I could find a time to drop it in for repair. It was a day I was travelling abroad and I could afford to operate from Blackberry. But then I got the phone call. It said - "when we switched your machine on, the disk failed - so we have to make you a new fresh image of your disk".

Some would go weak at the knees from such news, but I'd already backed up the entire disk, so I could laugh it off. And sure enough, they've given me a replacement machine with a new disk. Same model, same age and I've noticed the 'new image' seems to mean that a few popular office products seem to now close with mystery errors involving serious looking hexadecimal codes.

So perhaps Star Wars is right and we are closer to scruffy cyberpunk rather than gleaming sci-fi.

treasured?

Perhaps this week's budget speech by Darling was a clever ploy to camouflage whatever parlous state we are in fiscally. Everyone expected his delivery to be boring and by popular accounts it was more of an incantation, perhaps suited to a wizard from Harry Potter.

Most of the budget information had been leaked in advance, which used to be a sackable offence. Presumably nowadays its to give all the management accountants a chance to get their at-a-glance briefings prepared. It certainly meant that much of what he said was recited like so many lines from a dull spreadsheet.

And no 'special something' to brighten up the fagsgasnbooze increases.

Nada.

Yet a first budget, which would have been the ideal time for Darling to make his mark on something. Maybe he's already done that with his dithered assistance to Northern Rock's flailing deficit or the way he presided over the Department which lost 25 million citizen records.

Its likely that Pa Broon asked Alistair to keep a low profile as he's not already been fired for any of the above points. A hint now that the next election won't be until 2010, but maybe a separate bet whether Darling makes it that far. Unless, his near neighbour in Scotland, JK Rowling, gives him some new spells.

car cam revisited

A dirty pretty remix of Wednesday's meander across West London featuring M3, M25, M4, A4, Hogarth's, Hammersmith, Knightsbridge, Beauchamp Place, Sloane Street, Sloane Square, Chelsea Bridge. Finishing at the Snack Bar.

copy cats say cheez

Those new London posters from the Met about how to report terrorists have been getting a fairly rapid set of copy cats. I particularly like this one by the mainly anonymous lex10. I suppose we'd all better be mindful now about taking photos of surveillance cameras in London, carrying multiple phones or swapping SIMs.

2 cool for catz.

Srsly.

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Wordless Wednesday?

carcam around west London yesterday evening

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blowin' in the wind

I woke on Monday to the sound of wheely bins careering around the pavement.

The rather strong Ides of March had playfully decided to beat the bin men to the recycling contents and to playfully scatter papers all over the road aided and abetted by the rain.

I don't think it would make a very enchanting picture, so instead, as I sit here this evening in the full aroma of daffodils and tulips scenting the room, I thought an appropriate picture would instead be the unusual view of the London Eye that I awoke to a few days ago.

Mad Men

I've just watched the second episode of this show by some of the Sopranos team, with a slew of new actors. I really want to like it but I'm struggling at the moment. Its certainly well filmed and luscious but I'm not sure about the pacing which may be a little slow for modern viewing. As a quick 'for instance' Tin Men was on television yesterday - the one set in a similar era about the scams of selling aluminum house cladding with Danny de Vito, and I must say that had a more driven plotline, sharper cuts and still funny observations of the time.

I guess the challenge with Mad Men is that in between the clever evocative Madison Avenue 1960 colour schemes there's an acting style that seems to owe too much to old TV re-runs from the era. The press releases all say how wonderful this show is and historically accurate and so forth but I wonder then if it sways towards unnecessary reverence in some of the portrayals.

For my eyes there's still to much sign-posting around the what would be judged in 2008 as political and social incorrectness of the 1950s turning into the 1960s. Tonight when the girl walks in playing spacemen with a clothing plastic bag over her head, the comments about 'I hope you haven't left my dry cleaning on the floor' seemed just a little too forced. And when our secretary heroine is being eyed by the 'red blooded office men' it gets a lengthy montage in case anyone is missing the point.

The equivalent 1970s incorrectness of the British 'Life on Mars', for me, usually in a split second gesture gives a more robust counter to some of the social change between the decades.

So back on Madison Avenue, there's the new girl in the office, who presumably will fall inappropriately for one of the other office workers by the end of the first series. There's the main man with a pretty but ailing wife and bohemian mistress (who probably lives on Bleeker St., but I suspect another couple of episodes before that unfolds). I'm concerned that we have another psychiatrist supporting a main character though in Sopranos it was Tony, this time it's the wife. And there's the sort of barber's shop quartet of main man's office buddies, all of whom smoke copiously and drink manhattans, old fashioneds and similar cocktails from about 11am.

At the moment I'm struggling to find characters to like. Perhaps they will do more with the advertising campaigns that get passing mention. Cigarettes, Nixon and new aerosol Right Guard all have potential, but somehow are being underplayed. Maybe I'm looking for plot when the series main ticket is a form of sixties evocation that I don't properly comprehend.

Perhaps I need a blast of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" to set me more in the era. Bring on 169 East 71 Street. And maybe some cultural drift from the real 1960s into what is presumably still a late 1950s workplace. Don't think twice, its alright.