Well should Mhairi be reading this from France - Bonjour! We watched The Apprentice Final without you and if you don't want to know who won stop reading .......now! It wasn't Susan 'Inventor of GPS' Ma, it wasn't Jedi Jim, it wasn't Helen 'Flawless Victor' Milligan, Tom 'Mainframe' Pellenreau took it for the nerdy good guys everywhere. Supposedly, had this been any previous season of The Apprentice, Helen would have been the winner, but the change in format meant that here near flawless record of 10 wins in 11 tasks just didn't cut it as her business plan wasn't up to scratch. In fact it got a lot of flack, but I can see it working.
Basically she wanted to act as personal assistant for the world and his wife. So, for a monthly fee, anyone would be able to have a service that organised their dental appointments, sorted their dry cleaning, could book their accommodation and table reservations for business trips. This would be a franchised affair, so as more branches popped up in cities the bank of local knowledge would grow and as you used the service their bank of data on your preferences and habits would grow. Kind of like Google's ever expanding database of every aspect of our lives. (I know Google's data-whoring is greatly vilified, but I've found it to be a boon - I may pick up on this on a later post.) If I had a job a few grades up from the one I hold now; one where I was sent on trips and had suits that needed frequent dry cleaning and a chic and suave social calendar to adhere to, I would totally use a service like this. Think about it: I can ring AMSistant (crappy attempt at Lord Sugar branding notwithstanding) and say that I need to be in New York for business two weeks this Thursday and, without ever being there before, would know that they could book me a hotel room, get me dinner reservations, sort my flights, and perhaps arrange for a night out on Broadway if I'll be there long enough and all based on the things I have done on previous trips so I'll be happy. A phone call of a couple of minutes sorts a whole business trip tailored to me. Pure genius.
This business was not invested in for two reasons:
1) Not playing to the creators strengths. Now, I seem to remember Helen having a shot fired at her in the Boardroom a few weeks previously saying that she'd only ever been an assistant to those running companies and had never run a business before. Now she, is essence, wants to run a personal assistant company and they want her making cakes and pies?
2) Inability to provide contacts. I doubt any personal assistant comes able to arrange a specific favourite table in any given restaurant, the list of contacts and the pull you have with them grows with time. But Helen would surely have contacts in the area(s) she's worked in before to start with and her 50% partner Lord Suger must surely have a little black encyclopaedia of contacts to bring to the table. If this were to be a true equal partnership than the business should have been about what the two parties could achieve together with completely pooled resources. If Sugar did just want to front cash and wait for the ££££ to roll in, I think that just makes him an investor. This is the difference between 'The Apprentice' and 'Dragons Den'.
Tom's business was a well thought out 'double-strike' system of running a service to help businesses assess their risk of losing money through sick days brought on by back pain and showing them how to limit that risk by altering practices whilst also selling a chair, of Tom's own design, that aims to promote posture and thus prevent the onset of back pain. I can see business using it just as, health and safety legislation being what it is, I'm sure they'd want to help stop any lawsuits from employees injuring themselves from sitting at their desk correctly. It sounds asinine, but it happens! However, Seeing Lord Sugar's reaction to it with his aides, I was a little surprised he went for it. Though it would seem he just wants to cash in on Tom's other inventions already in the market, which seems a little unfair to invest in one candidate in spite of their proposal when you're snubbing the superior candidate because of their own proposal.
However... in other news check this shizzle out:
This is all stuff they're actually working on now. Stuff that will feasibly be coming to market soon. I almost literally cannot wait. I want to say more about this but my brain is so excited about the possibilites that it refuses to form transcribable coherent thoughts on the topic. I may have to return to this later also.
Tuesday 19 July 2011
Tuesday 12 July 2011
A Contentious, Yet Trivial, Opinion
If you have not seen 'Transformers: Dark of the Moon' and actually care about spoilers DO NOT CONTINUE. I will not signpost when they are about to crop up in my stream-of-consciousness self-aggrandising rant-slash-review-slash-opinion.
Now I will not pretend that I expect to make any friends from this post but, even after having called it contentious, I don't expect to lose any either. That would be the trivial part. But it boils down to this: I liked 'Transformers: Dark of the Moon'. It is the best of the three live-action films released thus far. I specify live-action as these are the only ones I have seen and I am quite sure that many true Transformers fans would crucify me for blasphemy for, even accidentally, implying that any of the Michael Bay films are superior to the cartoons.
But yes, best of the live-action films and I won't even apologise for saying so. I announced this upon walking out of the movie and was greeted with incredulity on several fronts and, honestly, that surprises me. The most apparent reason that has lead me to this conclusion is that, unlike the previous films, the events within the film actually had impact upon the world in which they are set. There is an hour long siege and battle in Chicago in which large numbers of people (this is part of a later point) die and buildings razed. In the original Transformers all robotic action takes place in out of the way locations. I appreciate that narratively speaking this makes sense so as to not have humankind alerted en masse to the autobot presence on earth, however it means that all that action lacks any real repercussions to the movie-world as a whole. In 'Rise of the Fallen' everything happens in the middle of a desert where the worst that happens is an abandoned settlement and a few pyramids get damaged and no one's crying over those. But a massively populated city? Shit just got real, people! The cat is well and truly out of the bag, the world knows about the Transformers and is running scared from the ensuing death that knowledge has brought. That brings a certain sense of urgency and gravity to proceedings that just makes for a better experience. Also Optimus Prime was seemed happy to have Chicago as collateral damage just to be able to say 'I told you so'. That's dark and I respond to it.
Also, as mentioned before - people. This may mostly be down to the fact that I do not do cars and so, in any scene with a lot of sentient transformed cars duking it out, cannot really work out who I am seeing tearing whom a new exhaust, but having a lot more human characters in this movie just meant that, for a larger proportion of the film, I actually felt like I was following proceedings. I am not sure if this is a failing as equal on my part as the film's, but I know I can't be the only person who wants to watch these films who is rubbish when it comes to identifying one combustion engine powered vehicle from another. I have seen three of these films now, and even seen a few of the cartoons in my time, and I still cannot tell you what type of car Bumblebee is disguised as. I actually don't care. I watch films for the human interest, to watch a story unfold, to be moved or excited or feel some emotion. Identifying cars does not do that. That's why the cars are given characters. Bumblebee 'voice' is broken to humanise him so we, as a -human- audience, care about him. A broken alternator would be far more damaging to Bumblebee as a car, but doesn't carry the same emotive weight as the burden actually handed to him. We need human interest in films for them to get the job done, and what better way to do that, even more than humanising some robots, than to actually have already human characters. And, lets face it, this is a battle over the planet Earth, where humanity lives; not such a terrible plan to have them well represented in that battle and thus the film.
Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. A lot of people have expressed dissatisfaction (putting it mildly) it her acting ability or even just her presence in the film. I have seen some shockingly poor acting in my time to the point that, beyond being able to acknowledge that, no, she wasn't the best actor in the film, I don't think it really warrants comment. I didn't find myself suddenly unable to suspend my disbelief the moment she opened her mouth. In fact I believe she seemed to display a good knack for portraying a range of human emotion for someone on, I believe, her first acting job. As a comparison to someone coming from the same previous job she did worlds better than Lily Cole in her appearance in the latest series of Doctor Who. Ms Huntington-Whiteley made half the cast of Hollyoaks look like they belonged in a PG Tips advert when it comes to acting ability. Also, her character actually was actually integral to the plot, unlike Megan Fox. I cannot for one second imagine Mikaela being in a position to bring Sam into contact with the human contingent of the Decepticon foothold on Earth. Nor can I imagine her to have the intelligence necessary to use psychological warfare to trick Megatron into fighting alongside Optimus Prime and turning the tide of the battle. Sure the film still could have been made without these things happening, but would it have been as good? Simply put: no. I could even quite happily cope with Mikaela being retconned out of the first two films to be replaced with Casey and not lose any sleep over it.
I think that about covers why I'm right. Feel free to disagree, I don't mind. I was going to mention something else, but it isn't related and I think I have already made this post ranty, rambly and incoherent enough so it shall just wait for another day. Considering I normally worry I have nothing to blog about, planning for the future posts in wholly new ground.
Now I will not pretend that I expect to make any friends from this post but, even after having called it contentious, I don't expect to lose any either. That would be the trivial part. But it boils down to this: I liked 'Transformers: Dark of the Moon'. It is the best of the three live-action films released thus far. I specify live-action as these are the only ones I have seen and I am quite sure that many true Transformers fans would crucify me for blasphemy for, even accidentally, implying that any of the Michael Bay films are superior to the cartoons.
But yes, best of the live-action films and I won't even apologise for saying so. I announced this upon walking out of the movie and was greeted with incredulity on several fronts and, honestly, that surprises me. The most apparent reason that has lead me to this conclusion is that, unlike the previous films, the events within the film actually had impact upon the world in which they are set. There is an hour long siege and battle in Chicago in which large numbers of people (this is part of a later point) die and buildings razed. In the original Transformers all robotic action takes place in out of the way locations. I appreciate that narratively speaking this makes sense so as to not have humankind alerted en masse to the autobot presence on earth, however it means that all that action lacks any real repercussions to the movie-world as a whole. In 'Rise of the Fallen' everything happens in the middle of a desert where the worst that happens is an abandoned settlement and a few pyramids get damaged and no one's crying over those. But a massively populated city? Shit just got real, people! The cat is well and truly out of the bag, the world knows about the Transformers and is running scared from the ensuing death that knowledge has brought. That brings a certain sense of urgency and gravity to proceedings that just makes for a better experience. Also Optimus Prime was seemed happy to have Chicago as collateral damage just to be able to say 'I told you so'. That's dark and I respond to it.
Also, as mentioned before - people. This may mostly be down to the fact that I do not do cars and so, in any scene with a lot of sentient transformed cars duking it out, cannot really work out who I am seeing tearing whom a new exhaust, but having a lot more human characters in this movie just meant that, for a larger proportion of the film, I actually felt like I was following proceedings. I am not sure if this is a failing as equal on my part as the film's, but I know I can't be the only person who wants to watch these films who is rubbish when it comes to identifying one combustion engine powered vehicle from another. I have seen three of these films now, and even seen a few of the cartoons in my time, and I still cannot tell you what type of car Bumblebee is disguised as. I actually don't care. I watch films for the human interest, to watch a story unfold, to be moved or excited or feel some emotion. Identifying cars does not do that. That's why the cars are given characters. Bumblebee 'voice' is broken to humanise him so we, as a -human- audience, care about him. A broken alternator would be far more damaging to Bumblebee as a car, but doesn't carry the same emotive weight as the burden actually handed to him. We need human interest in films for them to get the job done, and what better way to do that, even more than humanising some robots, than to actually have already human characters. And, lets face it, this is a battle over the planet Earth, where humanity lives; not such a terrible plan to have them well represented in that battle and thus the film.
Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. A lot of people have expressed dissatisfaction (putting it mildly) it her acting ability or even just her presence in the film. I have seen some shockingly poor acting in my time to the point that, beyond being able to acknowledge that, no, she wasn't the best actor in the film, I don't think it really warrants comment. I didn't find myself suddenly unable to suspend my disbelief the moment she opened her mouth. In fact I believe she seemed to display a good knack for portraying a range of human emotion for someone on, I believe, her first acting job. As a comparison to someone coming from the same previous job she did worlds better than Lily Cole in her appearance in the latest series of Doctor Who. Ms Huntington-Whiteley made half the cast of Hollyoaks look like they belonged in a PG Tips advert when it comes to acting ability. Also, her character actually was actually integral to the plot, unlike Megan Fox. I cannot for one second imagine Mikaela being in a position to bring Sam into contact with the human contingent of the Decepticon foothold on Earth. Nor can I imagine her to have the intelligence necessary to use psychological warfare to trick Megatron into fighting alongside Optimus Prime and turning the tide of the battle. Sure the film still could have been made without these things happening, but would it have been as good? Simply put: no. I could even quite happily cope with Mikaela being retconned out of the first two films to be replaced with Casey and not lose any sleep over it.
I think that about covers why I'm right. Feel free to disagree, I don't mind. I was going to mention something else, but it isn't related and I think I have already made this post ranty, rambly and incoherent enough so it shall just wait for another day. Considering I normally worry I have nothing to blog about, planning for the future posts in wholly new ground.
Monday 4 July 2011
A largely belated film review
I have just given up watching the film 'Conspiracy Theory' (a film made 14 years ago but I am still going to give a 'review' of it now). I was watching on channel five, so I possibly shouldn't have held out too much hope of actually being decent, but they show NCIS so it can't all be horrific shite. Really I just sort of fell into watching it as I failed to find anything else in the TV guide that looked like it might hold my interest before it started. I was slightly dubious as it was scheduled to finish at 12.45am, but thinking I could stomach that if it were any good I gave it a try.
I know a number of people who would probably think that was madness enough being that how up front it is about being a Mel Gibson film. But I'm a modern guy, I'm open minded. I don't mind that he might be anti-semitic, as long as he does it in his own time and doesn't bring it to work, and thus my living room. I was more concerned about it being a Julia Roberts film; the woman is either incapable of walking like an actual human being or just determined to waddle about like a goose in a dress. Seeing her shoulders strut back and forth as she enters and leaves every scene leaves me often unable to suspend any disbelief. 'Conspiracy Theory' seems to have caught Julia Roberts at some goose-lite phase; that or she'd just not had enough screen time by the time I gave up to nark me off.
The film seemed opens with Mel Gibson driving a taxi and spewing every pulp conspiracy theory known to mankind at his fares whilst the credits play as reflections of neon lights in the windows. This is actually the best part of the film that I saw. The next 45 minutes were mostly made up of noise, flashing lights and incoherently babbling. I really wish I could explain it in closer to the amount of detail that I gave to making disparaging comments about the stars of the film and the channel I was watching, but I honestly don't think that anything happened that was intelligible enough to comment upon. Perhaps if I had stuck it out for another 2 hours it would have come together and I would now be writing a fawning blog post about a wonderful film that works on multiple levels, but I've seen the RottenTomatoes.com scores and reviews so I doubt it.
I think I was was disinclined to giving the film the benefit of the doubt and a fair shake as it just didn't seem to know what it wanted to be. It had all the hallmarks of being a half decent spy-fi-esque suspense thriller, with an unassuming protagonist who might know more than he should ready to go on the run evading "the man" and eventually discovering the truth and bringing the seedy underbelly in to the light and bang to rights. But then it kept undermining itself with unnecessary moments that bordered on slapstick comedy during Gibson's character's 'escape' from torture at the hands of Partick Stewart. This was then followed by one thing that really irks me in movies: characters demonstrating an seeming absolute lack of common sense. Gibson arrives at Roberts's place of work to be carted off to hospital whilst running his mouth with obvious incoherent and nonsensical retellings of what has happened to him. But Roberts swallows this as gospel to the point of trying to get Gibson to calm down as they needed his help to, and I quote, "find the man who stabbed [him] with the wheelchair".
I am fairly confident in my ability to truthfully and accurately say that no one has ever been stabbed with a wheelchair. If anyone were ever to declare to me otherwise and that, yes, they had indeed been stabbed with a wheelchair I think I my knee jerk reaction would be to make a colourful exclamation referencing the male groinal attachments. This was the straw that broke the camel's back; if straws were asinine comments and my mettle to endure more crap were a camel's back. This may make me fickle, or glib, or unfair but I just didn't feel the previous 45 minutes had offered me anything to justify giving the film the benefit of any doubt. But, please, if you have seen this film and I am wrong then let me know and we can discuss it. I promise I will listen unstubbornly to your learned opinion and possibly even be left with the desire to give this travesty another chance if provided with reason to doubt my standing opinion.
I know a number of people who would probably think that was madness enough being that how up front it is about being a Mel Gibson film. But I'm a modern guy, I'm open minded. I don't mind that he might be anti-semitic, as long as he does it in his own time and doesn't bring it to work, and thus my living room. I was more concerned about it being a Julia Roberts film; the woman is either incapable of walking like an actual human being or just determined to waddle about like a goose in a dress. Seeing her shoulders strut back and forth as she enters and leaves every scene leaves me often unable to suspend any disbelief. 'Conspiracy Theory' seems to have caught Julia Roberts at some goose-lite phase; that or she'd just not had enough screen time by the time I gave up to nark me off.
The film seemed opens with Mel Gibson driving a taxi and spewing every pulp conspiracy theory known to mankind at his fares whilst the credits play as reflections of neon lights in the windows. This is actually the best part of the film that I saw. The next 45 minutes were mostly made up of noise, flashing lights and incoherently babbling. I really wish I could explain it in closer to the amount of detail that I gave to making disparaging comments about the stars of the film and the channel I was watching, but I honestly don't think that anything happened that was intelligible enough to comment upon. Perhaps if I had stuck it out for another 2 hours it would have come together and I would now be writing a fawning blog post about a wonderful film that works on multiple levels, but I've seen the RottenTomatoes.com scores and reviews so I doubt it.
I think I was was disinclined to giving the film the benefit of the doubt and a fair shake as it just didn't seem to know what it wanted to be. It had all the hallmarks of being a half decent spy-fi-esque suspense thriller, with an unassuming protagonist who might know more than he should ready to go on the run evading "the man" and eventually discovering the truth and bringing the seedy underbelly in to the light and bang to rights. But then it kept undermining itself with unnecessary moments that bordered on slapstick comedy during Gibson's character's 'escape' from torture at the hands of Partick Stewart. This was then followed by one thing that really irks me in movies: characters demonstrating an seeming absolute lack of common sense. Gibson arrives at Roberts's place of work to be carted off to hospital whilst running his mouth with obvious incoherent and nonsensical retellings of what has happened to him. But Roberts swallows this as gospel to the point of trying to get Gibson to calm down as they needed his help to, and I quote, "find the man who stabbed [him] with the wheelchair".
I am fairly confident in my ability to truthfully and accurately say that no one has ever been stabbed with a wheelchair. If anyone were ever to declare to me otherwise and that, yes, they had indeed been stabbed with a wheelchair I think I my knee jerk reaction would be to make a colourful exclamation referencing the male groinal attachments. This was the straw that broke the camel's back; if straws were asinine comments and my mettle to endure more crap were a camel's back. This may make me fickle, or glib, or unfair but I just didn't feel the previous 45 minutes had offered me anything to justify giving the film the benefit of any doubt. But, please, if you have seen this film and I am wrong then let me know and we can discuss it. I promise I will listen unstubbornly to your learned opinion and possibly even be left with the desire to give this travesty another chance if provided with reason to doubt my standing opinion.
Saturday 18 June 2011
The all too familiar first post
It occurred to me this morning that I had a thought and would quite liked to have shared it in the all so self-serving and self-gratifying nature of this 'jacked in' fibre-optic worshipping 21st century. I am already on twitter and facebook (because... well I'm human and luddites are a dying breed, [I am actually now brewing a theory about facebook replacing passports]) but at the time it felt like I was having a big and long and probably rambly thought and felt like media designed for my more usual inane and more condensed brain dumps that can fit in under 140 characters might not suffice for my inspired analysis of the human condition as viewed through the context of the long-running 1hr American family drama.
I have had blogs before. Three of them to be precise. One of them is still semi functional and is the blog to which this one is abutted; the others I have killed. Well, one was MySpace and Facebook killed that, the other I killed, like so many houseplants, though a lack of nourishing. However, I had a plan. If I have two conjoined and semi-functional blogs through which I can offer my thoughts with slightly different tones, perhaps that would count almost as having one regular, though seemingly bipolar, blog. This is the first post of the hitherto ignored conjoined twin of the grotesque over-intellectualised chimerical partnership. Like so many first posts before it: crawling from the ethereal primordial ooze of the internet; coughing and spluttering it's self-centered exegesis; and attempting to justify it's own existence like some cerebral ouroboros.
It got slightly surreal at the end there. Part of me hopes it continues. Other parts of me realise that those parts are getting ahead of themselves - There need to be more posts burped into existence before any theme can continue through them. But a bit of playing with set up and going to house warming parties and hopefully I can be back with you to explain how the series finale of 'Brother & Sisters' perfectly encapsulated the true theme of the show and taught how to be fully functional human beings. And you thought it was all about the quintessential Californian family, drinking wine and discovering that Daddy liked to play away. Don't worry I also thought that until I got a bit existential over my morning coffee and the Sky+ recording.
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