1588

A bit of an indulgence here... I found this on YouTube.

As our red-haired lass clings onto power but may not keep it... this is the second of two films about another famous red-headed ruler. As a ship nut I love the Spanish Armada scenes. The music is Arirang, which is a Korean folk tune. Strangely, the music and these scenes go perfectly together.



A famous Sci-Fi novel called Pavane decribes an alternate 20th century in a world where Spain had actually conquered England in 1588. It's not a pleasant world.
On the other hand, some of what is bad in ours is not present.

Good Trek Vibrations

This is an edit of the most recent Star Trek film, with a song by Australian musician Ben Lee. Zoe Saldana's in it a lot, and that's got to be a good thing...

Just a comment on Melanie Phillips

Melanie Phillips is the author of 'The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle Over God, Truth and Power', yet another book that seeks to say there is something fundamentally wrong with the world and - you guessed it - it's all the fault of Obama, gay people (about whose rights she has used the word "toxic"), Muslims, the theory of evolution, and people concerned about climate change.

Yawning already?

Oh and all centres around the eternal plot to destroy Israel, naturally...

Political commentator Matthew Norman writes:

" On her Spectator-hosted blog, Melanie Phillips disabuses readers of the suspicion that she can be vulnerable to the lure of hysteria. Responding to Joe Biden’s criticism of Israel for building more homes in east Jerusalem, she disputes his assertion that the Palestinians deserve a state of their own.

“To put it another way,” she writes, nimbly twisting the VP’s point in vintage Mad Mel style, “why does Joe Biden think that Israel “deserves” to surrender? And why, once again, is a final solution being imposed by America on democratic and besieged Israel ? ?” Is it me being fanciful here, or might MM be using that “final solution” subtly to compare Barack Obama with Hitler ? a tactic previously reserved for the more ostentatiously in-bred extremity of the Tea Party spectrum? "

guffaw snort..

Now let's be clear... you cannot reasonably use the phrase "final solution" when talking about Israel and mean anything other than a direct comparison to Nazi evil.

Phillips is deliberately inferring Obama is a Nazi just as she explicitly says he's a revolutionary Marxist and secretly a Muslim.

Phillips... One more bigmouth who has decided HER heritage and HER faith are the gold standard by which everything can be measured for virtue and justice, and anything outside of that experience is to be despised or devalued. All the world must fight HER fight. All the world is topsy turvy and only SHE can explain it.

piss off Melanie

Logan's Run

Perhaps I have post-Farrah 1970's nostalgia, but I was talking about this film (and novel) with my mate from Texas, JBW, esquire, of Brain Rage recently...

I saw the film when I was way too young, and had to be taken out of the cinema. But it still so impressed this fledgling maggie that I read the novel in about a day.... no mean feat considering I was about 10 and had no idea what some of it meant.

Famously, the legal age limit in the film version was 30. After that you turn yourself in or are hunted down by "sandmen", guys with nasty guns and wearing really bad knitwear.

In the novel it was actually 21, and the word "sandman" had it's full grotesque context of being in a kind of computerised dark nursery where maturity doesn't exist.
The way the book is written is amazing. It is bullet-fast with a hard-boiled spartan narrative that throws concepts so quick it leaves you reeling. It's like having the statue of liberty scene from Planet of the Apes shock you again and again with how alien the future society has become. Recreational drug usage is encouraged, but tobacco banned. Social sex that would make Hefner blush. Insanely violent youth gangs and empty lethargic entertainments on tap. The novel is like a deadly but beautiful flower, opening up one twisted futuristic vista after another.

If you get it, keep it. It's out of print. And tell me what you think of it.

A remake of the film has been a long time coming but whether it'll be any good... we have to wait and see.