Peter's Blog

Just commenting on things that interest me

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Oscar Pistorius

I mentioned in my old blog that Oscar Pistorius was sentenced to “only 5” years for the killing of Reeva Steenkamp.

In November of last year an appeal by the prosecution was heard by 5 Supreme Court judges. By a unanimous decision, the court overturned the “culpable homicide” conviction and found him guilty of murder in relation to her death.

I await with interest his new sentence which will be announced on 18 April.

A Very Murray Christmas

I am a big Bill Murray fan. Watching “Scrooged” is a highlight of my Christmas.

And I like Christmas specials. My favorite  Christmas song (“Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth”) only exists because David Bowie appeared on one of Bing Crosby’s Christmas specials. Bing’s Christmas specials were a little before my time, but I remember enjoying specials by Morecambe and Wise and Stanley Baxter back in the day.

So I was quite excited about watching Bill Murray’s Christmas Special on Netflix.

It was just awful. It has a score of 5.6 on IMDB at the moment, which is very low for a TV show, especially (I imagine) a seasonal one.

I’m not sure exactly what went wrong. Sofia Coppola directed and was involved in the writing. There were lots of (what should have been) good quests like George Clooney, Chris Rock, and Amy Poehler.

But, for me, nothing really worked.

What obviously wasn’t going to work (for me at least) was having Miley Cyrus. She is not someone (vocally or by personality) I would ever associate with Christmas.

If they ever decide to do it again (and I’m not sure that would be a good idea) then they should get Christina Perri instead. She had a beautiful voice and released a Christmas album called “a very merry perri christmas” back in 2012.

Much better choice.

I should have killed you when I had the chance

My favorite cartoon is Scooby Doo. Once of the parts of the cartoon which I looked forward to was when the villain would say: “And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids”. Genius!

A guy on YouTube, who goes by the name of “Jukka-Pekka Bohm”, obviously formed a fixation on the phrase “I should have killed you when I had the chance”.

I can’t imagine how much work was involved in doing this, but in the video below he has string together 88 clips of people in movies using this phrase! (or something very close to it).

My hat is off to you sir!

Unexplained Music

For some time now I have been experiencing a strange phenomenon on my laptop: at odd times it has suddenly started playing music. It would always be the same music – some kind of instrumental which I could not place. The strange thing was that it was playing more than one copy of the musics at the same time, generating a strange cacophony.

I worked out that it would only happen when Firefox was open – something which I was able to verify by using the Volume Mixer when it was happening.

I searched on the web thinking that it must have happened to someone else but no luck.

I finally worked out what was causing it and I thought I would share it.

I stalled a Firefox extension called “Distil Web Monitor” and I configured it to watch a particular web page for changes (I was waiting for their 2016 price-list to be released).

I was monitoring 3 versions of the page (in 3 different languages).

Each version of the page includes a video. This video is normally muted by default. Here is the HTML which is used to embed the video:

<video autoplay="autoplay" muted="muted" loop="loop" poster="videohome/COMMERCIAL_SHORT-G.jpg" style="width:100%" title="">
		<source src="videohome/COMMERCIAL_SHORT-G.m4v" type="video/mp4" />
		<source src="videohome/COMMERCIAL_SHORT-G.webm" type="video/webm" />
		<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="videohome/flashfox.swf" width="164" height="92" style="position:relative;">
		<param name="movie" value="videohome/flashfox.swf" />
		<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" />
		<param name="flashVars" value="autoplay=true&amp;controls=true&amp;fullScreenEnabled=true&amp;posterOnEnd=true&amp;loop=false&amp;poster=videohome/COMMERCIAL_SHORT-G.jpg&amp;src=COMMERCIAL_SHORT-G.m4v" />
		 <embed src="videohome/flashfox.swf" width="164" height="92" style="position:relative;"  flashVars="autoplay=true&amp;controls=true&amp;fullScreenEnabled=true&amp;posterOnEnd=true&amp;loop=false&amp;poster=videohome/COMMERCIAL_SHORT-G.jpg&amp;src=COMMERCIAL_SHORT-G.m4v"	allowFullScreen="true" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer_en" />
		<img alt="COMMERCIAL SHORT-G" src="videohome/COMMERCIAL_SHORT-G.jpg" style="position:absolute;left:0;" width="100%" title="Video playback is not supported by your browser" />
		</object>
		</video>

So what must have been happening was that, at regular (but seemingly mysterious) intervals, the extension was going out to fetch the 3 pages to look for changes and, when this happened, all three versions of the video started to play but they were not muted!

So I removed the 3 pages from my Distill extension (the new price-list is out now) and the problem has gone away.

#OscarsSoIrish

There has been much talk recently (justifiable without a doubt) about #OscarsSoWhite.

But for us here in Ireland the excitement is around #OscarsSoIrish!

Irish people and movies have achieved a record-breaking number of nominations:

  • Room and Brooklyn for best picture
  • Michael Fassbender and Saoirse Ronan for Best Actor and Best Actress respectively
  • Lenny Abrahamson for Best Director
  • Emma Donoghue for Best Adapted Screenplay
  • Stutterer, from Irish director Benjamin Cleary, for best live-action short.

And I think we should also claim the following:

  • American actress Brie Larson for Room
  • English writer Nick Hornby, who adapted Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn.

Can’t wait for the 28th. Fingers crossed!

Idris Elba

I mentioned the SAG awards in my last post. I notice that Idris Elba got two awards:

  • One for “Beasts of No Nation” for “Best Supporting Actor”
  • One for “Luther” for “Outstanding performance by a male actor in a television movie or miniseries”

I haven’t seen the former, but I have been intending to mention how good the latter is for some time.

I watched Luther on Netflix on a friend’s recommendation and I was not disappointed. It is very well made, and very gritty (the found some really dreadful filming locations around London!). And some of the evil he confronts in very evil indeed.

The thing that really made the show come alive for me was the relationship between Luther and Alice Morgan, played by Ruth Wilson. Her character is completely intriguing and I hope we see more of her.

I say “see more” because there is a fourth season which is not yet available on Netflix. And there was talk of a possible movie and of a spin-off show focusing on Morgan. So we’ll have to wait and see.

And there are some Irish connections in the show: Dermot Crowley was born in Cork, and Michael Smiley in Belfast.

The photo above is a show of Luther and Morgan

Room, by Lenny Abrahamson and Emma Donoghue

I went to see Room last night. I had some reservations when my wife suggested it but:

  1. It has an Irish director, writer, and is partially backed by the Irish Film Board
  2. My wife had been told by friends that it was “uplifting”.

Let me start by saying that it is not uplifting. It is what I was expecting – hard to watch.

It is very well made. Lenny and Emma did a great job, and Brie Larson (who won the SAG award last night, beating the lovely Saoirse Ronan) and Jacob Tremblay are excellent.

But even though I can see how well executed the movie was, I could not really recommend it as a good night out.

Anyone who knows the story, knows why “Room” is a good title for the movie (and the book). But it’s not really a good title for the Internet if you want people to be able to find information about the book/movie!

The photo above shows a happy Brie and Jacob together.

Another Possible Trevanian Movie

In a recent post, I listed a few upcoming movies which I am tracking/looking forward to.

One of these is the movie version of the novel Satori, which was written by Don Winslow, based on the novel Shibumi by Trevanian.

I just spotted in the Trevanian Facebook page, that there was an announcement on 3rd June 2013 that:

incident at 20-mile movie deal signed. Small independent. We shall see what we shall see.

So there is another possible movie to add to the watch list.

BTW: I notice that Alexandra Whitaker’s website is not available at the moment. I hope that will be rectified soon.

Donnie Yen in “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”

I have spoken about Donnie Yen and Star Wars in recent posts.

And I mentioned how surprised I was to see martial artists Iko Uwais  and Yayan Ruhian in “The Force Awakens”.

Well I am delighted to see that Donnie Yen will play a Jedi in the upcoming “Rogue One” movie.

Good for you Donnie!

This article refers to him as a “Chinese Jedi” in the movie. But I’m not sure that he would necessarily be considered Chinese in “a galaxy far, far away!”

Shown above is a promotional photo for the movie (with Donnie seated on the right).

Ip Man 3

In a recent blog post, I mentioned three movies to which I have been looking forward.

Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I discovered that Ip Man 3 was in cinemas – and I had heard nothing about it!

I went to see it with my brother. In common with other third installments in a movie series, it was available in 3D so we went to see that version.

The movie is once again a collaboration between (the great) Donnie Yen and Wilson Yip. This time the action director is (the great) Yuen Woo-Ping, taking over from Sammo Hung.

It was showing in the Cineworld in Dublin so:

  • I think that was my first time in that cinema since (the great) Ong Bak
  • We decided to get some food in Capel Street and ended up in the Hilan Chinese and Korean restaurant.  The vast majority of the customers in the restaurant were Asian, which we always take as a good sign. The food was very good; there was lots of it; and it was very inexpensive. I had a dish with the word “chili” in the name and it was (unsurprisingly) very hot.

Interestingly, there were little handouts for the movie beside the checkout (see below).

The movie itself is very good. Because it focuses a lot more on the relationship between Ip Man and his wife, quite a lot of it is quite slow-moving. And this is a strange plot about Mike Tyson trying to close a school and Ip Man spending lots of time guarding the school.

But there are lots of great fight sequences. There is the (inevitable) showdown between our hero and Tyson. But the good news is that is just one of the warm-up fights, rather than the climax of the movie.

There is (for example) a good fight between Ip Man and a Thai fighter, which starts in a lift (elevator).

And there is the final fight between Donnie and Zhang Jin (Max Zhang). There are echoes of the outstanding fight between Michelle Yeoh and Ziyi Zhang in Crouching Tiger here, although (on first viewing) I don’t think the fight is nearly as good.

And, of course, there is the appearance of the Bruce Lee character in the movie. I can’t help wondering if Bruce ever rubbed his nose as much as that in real life!

The 3D is also quite good by the way.

Donnie Yen says that this may be his last Ip Man movie and his last martial arts movie. I hope not!

I am looking forward to seeing it again.

ipman3

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