The Nameless Horror

We’re talking about an industry dedicated to selling devices for maiming and killing people. Our government (whoever they fuck they are this week) actively promotes this industry with public money. An industry built around selling ever increasing amounts of techno-masturbatory metallic death to anyone who’ll buy (and lets face it, the expanding markets for “devices designed to tear people apart” don’t tend to be peaceful, affluent regions). They’re dedicated to making more sales and making more money, as if they were peddling soup, sex-toys or sherbet fucking dib-dabs. This, for me, is the reason why sentences like “Why bother?” and “Do you really think you can stop the arms trade?” don’t even qualify as meaningful questions. The sane, human response to those who knowingly profit from peddling this misery and suffering should not be “considered”, “reasonable” or “balanced”. Fuck that. If you don’t feel it in your gut then you badly need to recalibrate your “giving a shit” module.
spEak You’re bRanes in a rare bout of seriousness.

The Levels is kinetic, hypnotic stuff, an ultra modern and timely crime novel set in an unforgettable kind of postmodern hell. Sean Cregan has the style and the descriptive force to make this book work as both an adrenaline soaked thriller and a metaphor for a modernity gone horribly wrong.
(The Mercury, Hobart, Aus. Saved here ahead of posting to the official site because this is rather quicker and I’m in editing time.)

Steve Jobs Offers World ‘Freedom From Porn’
Gawker headline (he really does say “Freedom from porn” in his email exchange). Strange - I’d have thought the iPad’s wipe-clean screen would make it the perfect vehicle for watching porn, but hey, what do I know?

Robin Hood

Saw this at the weekend and it’s good. Much more BRAVEHEART than PRINCE OF THIEVES, and don’t go if you want to see rollicking good swashbuckling and Alan Rickman, because it has neither. Ridley Scott doesn’t do anything less than gritty with extra mud, and this is no exception. And yes, it’s an origin story rather than a “what I did after being made an outlaw” one, but to be honest, it’s not like we haven’t seen the latter a dozen times already, so why not do the “before”? Crowe’s accent wanders a little and (the very good) King John’s switch back to villain after going from villain to “I could be a hero!” is a mite quick - I get why it happens, and I rather suspect there was a ten-minute scene somewhere there that got cut; it’s not a movie-breaker, but worth noting - but overall it’s good. Decent script, action’s violent without being bloody (hello, 12A rating), there’s character arcs and people acting and stuff, and the Robin-Marian relationship works, and changes over time, nicely. The villains (led, as every movie bad guy group is at the moment, by Mark Strong) are suitably villainous, the heroes are suitably rugged, and Friar Tuck is suitably drunk. Also, nice to see the Magna Carta getting a look in on a Robin Hood tale, since that’s what King John is best known for in real life.

Also, Max Von Sydow gets to use the phrase “tumescent growth”.