Tonight’s excuse for not posting is having been to the cinema to see Once Upon a Time in Mexico. I’m afraid it was a bit of a disappointment all round. I know the plotting isn’t really the point of this sort of film, but if you’re not going to have a coherent plot then you can at least compensate by staging your action scenes well. There were plenty of individual moments which looked tremendously cool here, but they weren’t strung together in a way that made sense. Also, the movie’s physics engine needs some debugging: in real life someone who has been shot will very rarely fly through the air for some thirty feet, but it happens pretty much every time the good guys are the ones doing the shooting here.

There were a few good points. First of all Danny Trejo and Rubén Blades gave terrific supporting performances, and Antonio Banderas may not have been terribly convincing but he did look fantastic. As did Salma Hayek, but as she’s only in the film for about five minutes in a few flashback scenes it’s a bit of a cheat for the producers to feature her so prominently in the film’s posters and trailers. It’s especially unfair given that Hayek looks so good in those few scenes she’s in. Eva Mendes, who plays the main female role in the other ninety minutes of the film, should count herself fortunate that she didn’t have to share any scenes with Salma Hayek, because The Goddess Salma would have made even the curvaceous Ms Mendes look plain, not to say downright frumpy.

As for Johnny Depp, his eccentric performance as a manipulative CIA agent was certainly entertaining at times, but only in an I-don’t-know-what-the-hell-he’s-going-to-do-next-and-I-doubt-he-does-either way. It’s a wildly eccentric performance, but it’s distracting and annoying in a way that his similarly idiosyncratic turn in Pirates of the Caribbean wasn’t.

Perhaps in the end this just wasn’t a film for me. If you really enjoyed the first two stories Rodriguez told about El Mariachi then you should certainly see this final(?) instalment, but be prepared to come away disappointed. I’m not sure the first two films demanded a sequel, and certainly not so long after the last instalment.

Incidentally, one of tonight’s trailers was the one for The Return of the King which I posted about yesterday. Having seen it on a big screen with really good sound, I’m even more excited about this year’s Xmas treat from that nice Mr Jackson.

Talking of Tolkien, the trailer for The Return of the King is online now. It’s supposed to be available from the official site any hour now, but in the meantime links to several mirror sites can be found in this Slashdot thread. For what it’s worth, you should download the 19MB version if you’ve got the time: it’s much clearer and smoother than the 9MB version. I gather that this is the same trailer which is available on the DVD of The Two Towers, but as I’m waiting for the release of the extended edition in November I can’t confirm that.

What I can say for sure is that the trailer confirms that we’re in for a spectacular conclusion to the story. I just can’t see Peter Jackson blowing it at the last hurdle. (I’m sorry that he’s decided to push the Scouring of the Shire into the background, but I’m willing to cut him some slack on this given his track record to date.)

To put it simply, I’m going to be in geek heaven for the last six weeks or so of this year, what with the Third Annual Tolkien Fest and the conclusion of the Matrix trilogy.

You’ve heard of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, now meet the newest crimefighting superteam: The League of Extraordinary Authors:

“Heaven’s War” focuses on the Inklings, the scholarly cabal that was centered around … C.S. Lewis … J.R.R. Tolkien and … Charles Williams. …

[…] the book will be set in 1938, with the world hovering on the brink of World War II when “a secret angelic battle is waged in the heavenly realms to determine mankind’s fate.”

The Inklings are pitted against the infamous occultist author Aleister Crowley, who “plans to manipulate those angelic struggles and thus shape the world according to his will.” In order to stop him, the Inklings “must decipher a landscape of sacred geometry to intercept Crowley at the threshold of heaven.”

Words fail me…

RSVP is a fun little Flash-based game where the aim is to seat a bunch of dinner party guests so that everyone is happy with their neighbours. Which is much harder than it looks.

[Via grayblog]

Cory Doctorow has posted a rough transcript of Robert X Cringely’s speech to the ToorCon 2003 Information Security Conference. Cringely goes from funny…

I built, by hand, the first 25 Apple ][s, worked on the Lisa’s GUI. I invented the Trashcan Icon.

[…]

When I went to work on the Lisa, I was determined that deleting a file would be a two-step process. On some systems, the trashcan bulges (defies physics); on others, the lid goes off (defies my mother). In my version, a fly circled the trashcan. The focus groups thought it was fuckin’ awesome. But by turning off the fly, the computer could be made to run twice as fast. They fired me.

[…]

…to pretty damn depressing…

I don’t know as much as you know, so I have to look at the big pic from a 30-year perspective.

We once had a dream of ubiquitous infosec: perfect secrecy, anonymity, untraceable e-cash — protect ourselves from censorship, etc. It hasn’t worked. I don’t know that it can ever work. I was the only reporter at the first DefCon — and that’s what people were talking about then.

By contrast, today’s news is a cypherpunk nightmare. Information turns out not to be power, after all: Power is power. Joe user doesn’t want to encrypt email. Anonymity is overwritten by court-order. The Great Firewall of China keeps a billion people from communicating, from knowing what’s going on. In 1997, in Hong Kong, I spoke to the China-Internet people and said, “How do you proxy an entire Internet?” They said, “Well, it might not work, but we’ll just throw all our resources at it until it does.”

[…]

The closest thing to strong security that we are likely to have as a society is Palladium.

That’s horrible.

He’s got that last bit right.

[Via Boing Boing]

The Onion hits the spot yet again:

I Assume My Reputation For Arrogant Presumption Precedes Me

Okay, everyone, I’d like to begin. We’re running rather late because I just showed up. Although I’m aware that you’ve all been standing around waiting for me for at least an hour, now that I’m here, it’s me being inconvenienced. So, if you’ll all please take your seats immediately - pronto, people!

Finally, we can get started.

I assume my reputation for arrogant presumption precedes me, so I’ll be anything but brief. Surely, you’re all familiar with much of what I’m about to say, but I’ll say it anyway, because, as I’m sure you’re all aware, I’m in love with the sound of my own voice.

We’ll be working together - and by “working together,” I mean that you’ll be working for me - for the next six to eight weeks. Now, I know how much you’ve been looking forward to meeting me, so it’s only fitting that I make a few remarks that will allow you to get to know me better than you could while breathlessly observing my career from afar.

[…]

Wonderful stuff…

Look at the ears on that dog. I dread to think what’ll happen to him in a strong wind.

Channel 4 have done it again. That is, dumping an imported programme in the wee small hours and not telling anyone it’s back.

This time the victim is Australian ensemble comedy-drama The Secret Life of Us, the first season of which got a prime time slot last year. I really enjoyed the first season, and was looking forward to picking up the story on Channel 4 when they’d finished showing season 2 on sister channel E4.

So you can imagine how delighted I was when I discovered a few minutes ago that that Channel 4 are showing the second season at half past midnight on Wednesday mornings. What’s worse, they’re already up to episode 5 of the second season! As far as I can tell, they haven’t even bothered to actually run any trailers to let us know it’s back.

I can but resort to the ancient lament of the denizens of uk.media.tv.sf.babylon5:

“Channel 4? Bunch of arsecandles!”

A new trailer for The Matrix Revolutions is up on the official site. There’s lots of footage I haven’t seen in any of the earlier trailers, including one really intriguing shot right at the end: how the hell did Earth suddenly get a blue sky back? (Or, more to the point, did the sky ever really get blacked out?)

[Via MacMinute]

Good luck trying to overtake this guy.

[Via Boing Boing]

This collection of optical illusions by Japanese academic Akiyoshi Kitaoka is just about guaranteed to give you a severe migraine. Highly recommended.

[Via Jannism]

Zombie Pinups. How can you resist?

THE SCHOOLGIRL

Caught without a hall pass and late for class, the Zombie Schoolgirl is the deadliest girl at Sacred Heart High.

Bio class will never be the same when she starts dissecting her lab partner’s brain! Frogs will be spared to the teacher’s dismay, as her delicate classmates are flayed.

With graduation around the corner, she anxiously awaits enrolling at the University. People with the biggest egos tend to have the juiciest brains — and that always wins her affection. In college, she will have her pick of MBAs, Phds and future Silicon Valley Techies. Frat boys beware, because there are certain times when a girl wants a tasty but less-filling treat, too!

Let the Zombie Schoolgirl drape her oozing, malodorous flesh all over your implements and instruments, budgets and business plans… She just loves picking a future scientist’s or budding inventor’s brain!!!

Don’t be deceived by her innocence and enthusiastic school spirit. One glance at her infectious smile and we’re sure you’ll want to pass her a love note in class.

[Via I Love Everything]

The Bubble Buddy dog toy is a bubble blower, designed to help dog owners exercise their pets. What makes it worthy of note is that the bubbles come scented in three different flavours: Peanut Butter, BBQ Chicken and Bacon.

Ain’t modern science wonderful.

[Via Looka!]

Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver is out today in the States, and is reviewed by Paul Boutin in Slate and Andrew Leonard in Salon. (NB/- non-subscribers will be required to view a short ad before seeing the article itself.) It sounds as if Stephenson is taking another opportunity to demonstrate that when he’s on his game he can make just about any subject interesting, even if he can’t graft a satisfying ending onto his work.

I’m a little behind with my Stephenson reading: I’ve read all his novels up to and including The Diamond Age, but I still haven’t attempted to scale Mount Cryptonomicon. I’ve tended to stick with shorter novels recently: it’s gratifying to be able to rattle through a complete story in a few reading sessions. It doesn’t help that my leisure reading time nowadays is mostly limited to my bus trips to and from work, so it takes me a while to get through even a shortish novel.

For all that, there’s no denying that Neal Stephenson is a very entertaining writer. Perhaps it’s about time I dived into Cryptonomicon: I might just finish it in time for the UK paperback release of Quicksilver in October 2004.