An Experiment . . .

How about a blog with no text?

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A Summer Montage.
Look Paul, creams teas.
Ah, and there is Captain Jack Sparrow!

Roasting!

Just wanted to get this on the blog for future reference ;)

Back in the High Life!

It's summer! The sun is shining, the sky is bright blue, the temperature is soaring, the forecast is awesome, friends are coming to visit . . . Perfect time to bask the glorious melodic sunshine of Steve Winwood's 1986 masterpiece 'Back in The High Life'. So many wonderful memories attached to these songs . . . :)

The BPI will not stand for this!

How did Pirates go from being the scourge of the ocean to the romanticised figures as portrayed in the modern media? Weird . . .

This Blog Needs More People . . .

Here's a classic from last year. Phil can you remember what we were queueing for here? If it's any help, entrance was €9.

Google Earth!

Wow! Google Earth, the world's finest 3D earth mapping app was put out for beta last week, and all I can really say is wow! Honestly if you have a PC (Mac version on the way) and have any interest in anything beyond the realms of the four walls of your house, you just have to take a look. It's nothing short of amazing and demonstrates just how powerful Google have become in such a short time.

School kids and travel agents are going love this!

Everything is better under a blue sky!

"Draw what you see, not what you think you know"

Very few words of wisdom remain from my schools days, but the above sentence is one that drifts into my field of conscious thought every few months. My art teacher, whose name escapes me, used to practically ram this idea into our ears at every lesson. I didn't like him very much, he always seemed so condescending. Looking back I think he was probably just bored to tears - he wanted to open our minds and all we wanted to do was chuck clay poos around!

Draw what you see, not what you think you know. Good advice! Thank you Mr. Teacher man, sorry I forgot your name! :)

On The Map!

Time to start thinking about composing an Olympic theme for Weymouth :0)

Hello Brazil!

I've been thinking about Brazil all day today. Happy memories indeed! The colours, the sounds, the smells, the tastes and the friends - I miss you all! :(

Music

If you check out the iTunes music store right now you'll notice that Pink Floyd have 5 tracks in the top 100, The Who have 3, The Killers have 4, Paul McCartney has 2, James Blunt has 5 and Coldplay have an unreleased CD track at number 12! I wonder if this will be reflected in the top 40 on Sunday?

War of The Worlds. Review.

What can I say . . . I was so looking forward to this movie.

I feel horrible saying this but it was kind of cheap. There are just too many aspects of 9/11 being portray here. From the dust filled panic ridden carnage on the streets to the airliner crash, its seems as if Spielberg was working to a checklist of sorts. The first 45 minutes are very impressive gripping even, but from there on I felt very detached from the characters and I had to force myself to become involved in the story again. Having had a couple of days to think about it, I think I may have figured out why . . .

Spielberg's War of The Worlds cannot be comsummed in isolation, millions of people have read the book and listen to the LP/CD. If there was no book or Jeff Wayne interpretation I'd be declaring the film's success along with the rest of them, but you simply cannot ignore that this film has a heritage.

Both the book and Jeff's LP have a sense of engagement that the film only achieves during one 25 minutes sequence. The 'birth' of the first Tripod and ensuing panic is successfully portrayed, with Cruise putting in a real winner of a performance. The rest of the film failed to connect with me in a way that the book and LP did in the 1980's. Am I the only one that felt the whole basement martian sequence to be dull? In the book the Martians take their time, they spend the whole night getting their fighting machines battle ready, during that part of the book there is a real sense of dread. People carry on with their daily lives even as the Martians build in number and fighting strength. There is nothing to compare to this in the film, the Martians arrive and 20 minutes later they pretty much 'own' the earth! In the book the artillery man's experiences help to convey the might of the Martian fighting machines, in the film this is attempted by the reporter at the 747 crash site, it simply does not work. In Well's story the Thunderchild sequence marks the finally transition of power, there is nothing in the film that really compares to this, and the film is smaller because of it.

Truth is when H.G. Wells created War of The Worlds, a fighting machine that could tower over Big Ben was impressive indeed but in 2005 this just doesn't work too well. Imagine a Tripod marching through the financial district of Manhattan Island, it would be dwarfed by the huge buildings that dominate the skyline. This story belongs to the time in which it was written.

Any film is more than just the story and the acting, the look and the sound are equally important. The film achieves a very high level of realism, perhaps surpassing anything that has come before it. The sound effects are also astonishing, you feel this film in the centre of your chest! As for the music, well John Williams just didn't deliver this time, sadly.

**UPDATE** After reading a few reviews, something that I didn't do before I saw the movie, it would seem that there is a growing chasm between what the average man on the street thinks and what the paid reviewers think. People think it's average, reviewers say it's the best thing ever!

Donkey Kong!

Ah, Donkey Kong, what a classic! It really was the start of so much.

Many would argue that Pong or even Space Invaders was the beginning of Video Gaming but my vote goes with the Donkey! It's weird to think that is the 80's and early 90's the Arcade was the place to witness the very finest in video gaming advancement, these days the opposite is true, arcades are filled with gambling machines. I can remember using my half hour launch break to ride to the SEGA Centre just to play SEGA Rally 2, I would have just about enough time to have 1 or 2 goes.

To me the thrill wasn't so much about the game itself but rather the promise of games to come. Looking back that was both right and wrong. Games do now look amazing, but the advancement in the games themselves doesn't seem to be too great. The last truly gob-smacking game I played was probably Metroid Prime on the Gamecube. The most truly gob-smacking game is still Legend of Zelda - The Ocarina of Time. It's this one game that still gives hope regarding the whole games industry. Incidentally I tried playing Ocarina of Time on the Gamecube and also via Mac emulation but it's not the same, it really needs the N64 controller to shine.