The RMF

I really enjoyed JCVD. It's a low budget movie and the director seems to be have a thing for using the 'rose tinted' lens at every opportunity, but it's the best thing the old karate chopper's done in a while. I don't understand why Van Damme didn't accept a role in The Expendables but hopefully JCVD will set him up for some decent roles in the future. Here is the famous monologue, where JCVD speaks from the heart.

On my walking tour, I started to appreciate that London isn't a world apart from Paris. We share similar metro/underground systems and we both have a river cutting through our cities in a similar fashion. London even has a semi-decent cafe culture these days and there are many public parks where people can lounge about in the sun. I do think the average level of civility seems a bit lower in London than Paris, but then I was surprised to see pianos left outside in the open air for public use, both at The British Library and Leicester Square. As I mentioned earlier, London appears to be more diverse when it comes to both people and prices. The large slice of pizza pictured above cost a mere £1.90 in Leicester Square, for example. However, Paris is far more aesthetically pleasing with a much higher ratio of boutique stores versus big name chain stores. Contrast that with this image I took in a street in London. It isn't very clear but in a row we have: KFC, Starbucks, Costa, McDonalds, Pret A Manger, Flights Express, WHSmith, and Tesco. Pretty bland but I guess it's what customers want, and if it means lower prices you can count me in as well.

That's some good eating right there:

Mitchell & Webb are back with a third series of their sketch show. They can be a bit crude at times but the good easily outweighs the bad:

A few good memories: - The first album I ever bought was Michael Jackson's 'Bad'. I still remember peeling the cling-film plastic wrapping off the cassette cover and playing it at every opportunity, even around the dinner table! These were the times when if an album didn't come with the lyrics in the sleeve, you would try to write them down using the 'play', 'pause' and 'rewind' buttons. - After 'Bad', I discovered Jackson's back catalogue. I borrowed 'Off the Wall' and 'Thriller' off a friend from school and copied them onto blank tapes (possibly my first act of piracy!). Both were great albums but 'Bad' was the album of my generation and it remained my favourite. - The first book I remember buying is 'Moonwalk'. - I enjoy dancing in public about as much as Stephen Fry - in other words, not a bit. However, I did get up at a good friend's wedding when MJ hit the play list. I still have the 'Bad' tape in my car, my only non-digital music album. One thing I was recently surprised to learn is that the dance sequence in Smooth Criminal that involves leaning at an extreme angle was not a camera trick as I presumed. It used a special shoe design with a recessed heel and was even employed in Jackson's live shows (see video below): Scroll forward to 3:50 to see the magical 'lean'. Thanks for the good memories. Shamone.

The life of a businessman.

I'm loving the vibe of this track by La Roux. Their official video on Youtube is here, the one below is a live performance: It's good gym music. Now "Pump the guns, blast your ass, and feel the burn damn it!" Here is my favourite clip from The Wire (only four episodes in so far): This 'Extreme Sheep LED Art' video looks like a corporate hoax, but it's still pretty cool:

I've just watched the 'Margaritaville' episode of South Park on Youtube and it is absolutely fantastic. I highly recommend that you take 20 minutes out of your life to watch this. It explains the financial crisis with great clarity and it doesn't skip a beat. Here are the Youtube links to the version I watched (parts 1,2,3). If it is taken off-line, which it will be soon, just run a search for more. This clip explains how the government consults the charts when deciding how to deal with a bankrupt insurance company:

GOLD !

You know you are getting old when you keep rejecting the pop-up invitation to upgrade your internet browser. Well, after six months of hitting the 'Later' button, I accidentally accepted the option to upgrade my Firefox from version 2 to version 3. Thankfully, the upgrade was completely painless and the many personalisations that I had made to the browser were automatically ported across to the new version. Importantly, all the core add-ons continue to function perfectly fine and the one that didn't (Super DragandGo) was easily replaced. The latest Firefox looks kind of snazzy and is definitely faster than the older version, but it'll be a while before I take a look under the hood to see what's new. In a fit of optimism, I decided to download the Google Chrome browser, which was a very quick process although everything hung when importing the settings from Firefox (just skip this stage if it happens to you). Chrome looks like a nifty, lightweight browser that could be worthy of a play around. Judging by the slow pace of development of other Google Projects, many of which are in eternal 'beta', I reckon it will remain light years behind Firefox. However, it may be worth keeping in the background as it was lightning fast when accessing Gmail. After these relative successes, I figured it was time to upgrade my Internet Explorer v7 to the latest v8, which has just been launched. In typical Microsoft fashion, the IE installation process took absolutely ages and it was the only browser update that required a full system restart at the end. Also, once installed, it told me to download a Microsoft Update patch that is over 200MB in size. Um, no thank you. I think I'll stall that one for as long as possible! One day, I'll get around to playing with all these browsers and all the new functions they offer. These include such amazing things as 'web slicing', 'accelerators', 'incognito modes' and 'omniboxes'. I used to brim with enthusiasm at such things. Right now, I kind o

What did we learn from the Soviet Army? (hat-tip to kottke) Answer: How to break-dance!

'The Good, the Bad, the Weird' is a spectacular Korean western. It is based on the Sergio Leone classic 'The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly', but this is no boring rip-off. What we have here is something very special, a splendidly original work that fizzes with a fresh vibrancy, with super bright colours abound and wonderful action scenes throughout. When I started watching it, I kept on expecting the movie to burst out into 'Kung-Fu Hustle' levels of absurdity; however, to it's credit the fantastical element is kept relatively contained, helped by believable acting from the three main actors with especially good turns from the Bad and the Weird. Despite a slight let down by the finale, this is a near damn perfect action adventure movie. **** 1/2 PS - After watching The Good, the Bad, the Weird, I felt the same feeling of joy I experienced as a kid watching the Indiana Jones movies. I hadn't experienced this feeling in such a long time that I thought I had simply grown out of it, but now I'm thinking it's more of a case of Hollywood not making them like it used to.

Ong Bak was a landmark event in martial art movie-making. There was no CGI, no 'wire-fu', just spectacular, bone breaking fighting with realistic sound effects and unparalleled levels of athleticism. Since it's release however, I believe Hollywood has learned almost nothing from Ong Bak, and Tinseltown's efforts are increasingly amounting to little more than glorified versions of Steven Seagal's rapid hand-slapping victories over an endless string of truly useless baddies (remember these fights?). While wire-fu magic was put to great use in earlier Chinese kung-fu movies (e.g Jet Li in 'Once Upon A Time in China), it has been used in excess ever since The Matrix, and is now looking extremely tiring. I realise that it is too much to expect normal actors to learn a martial art, and that Hollywood actors probably couldn't get the insurance to take the crazy risks taken on the set of Ong Bak, but surely some of the new breed of action stars (e.g. Statham ... umm, and some others) can do something along these lines? I just hope the miraculous Tony Jaa doesn't got snapped up in a potentially ruinous Hollywood deal (just look at some of the god awful efforts of Jackie Chan and Jet Li when they came to the West). For more background on Tony Jaa, read the wikipedia entry: 'Jaa grew up in a rural area and watched films by Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Jet Li at temple fairs. He was inspired by them and whilst doing chores or playing with friends, he would imitate the martial arts moves he had seen in the films. He would practice in his father's rice paddy or, when bathing the family's elephants, he would somersault off their backs into the river.' For now, we can continue to revel in the joys of Tony Jaa in the Ong Bak series. Here is the trailer for Ong Bak 2: And if are wondering about potential cheeky use of CGI and wire-fu, check out this clip of the making of the film. From about 1 min 20 in, it really hots up: And scroll forward to the 2 min, 30 sec mark in this

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18 pictures The bulk of Dubai's populations comprises of South Asian migrant labourers, many of whom are employed in the rapidly contracting construction sector. I don't think I would last more than a couple of days in their shoes. During the holiday, I described these hard working folk as Oompah-Loompahs, but they were more like the Doozers from Fraggle Rock.

I enjoyed watching Slumdog Millionaire last week. Overall, I'd give it about 3.5 out of 5 - it is definitely worth watching watching, has great acting throughout, and it wonderfully captures the dark, manic beating pulse of Mumbai. However, I do think the film has been over hyped, and that the unrealistic premise that holds the story together conflicts with a film that is otherwise very realistic, gritty and un-Bollywood like. Is this the beginning of a wave of mainstream films from India? Perhaps. The provider's of entertaining film reviews at 'Ain't it Cool' have this to say about the upcoming 'Chandni Chowk to China' (backed by Warner Bros): '... imagine KUNG FU HUSTLE mixed with a Bruce Lee movie mixed with the 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN mixed with SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, with a dash of MOULIN ROUGE, James Bond and an Adam Sandler movie. I know that last ingredient smells bad, but trust me… when you mix it all together it makes a delicious dish.' Not sure about this one.

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