short week

They're good short weeks like this. No sooner have you got into the swing than it's already the weekend and time for you to relax again.

Last night I finished watching the Welcome the NHK anime.

I have to say I liked it a lot more than the manga, but not enough to say I genuinely liked it.

I think part of the problem was that I was expecting it to be an out and out comedy and it isn't really. I mean in the last third it switches into straight drama so there's deliberately nothing funny in there.

Anyway, I'll do a full review at some point later.

I think I'm going to start watching Baccano next. I'm slightly afraid that mentally I've hyped this series up to much, but I remeber really loving the fansubs I sampled.

busman's holiday

As mentioned yesterday, the weekend was something of a Busman's holiday.

Quite a few years ago, I built my sister a PC. The details of how aren't really relevant, but it essentially found itself in my Dad's possession as his machine.

Well a few weeks back he mentioned that it had essentially 'gone wrong'. One of the things he mentioned essentially sounded like the dreaded Blue Screen of Death, but it's incredibly difficult to diagnose these sorts of things over the phone, so I agreed to have a look when I visited.

Well, when he showed me it in action it was kinda obvious things had gone distinctly pear-shaped as it was indeed giving the BSOD and then immediately re-booting, so it was locked in and endless loop.

One thing that instantly struck me was that it was giving 2 separate options for booting windows, which was very odd. But it also looked like it might be having trouble accessing something properly, as that's what the BSOD message implied.

So my first port of call was the BIOS set-up screen. The last time I encountered a similar problem the RAM was unseated and a quick look at the BIOS screen can instantly show you what's connected and active, etc.

But unfortunately there was a BIOS password, so I couldn't have a look around. Which in itself was weird, because I didn't set a BIOS password on the machine. However, I knew that my sister had had some problems before and so maybe whoever fixed those problems had put the BIOS password on.

So we tried a few things and failed. Then we tried calling my sister, but she didn't know.

Then something odd transpired. My dad recognised the BIOS screen.

This stunned me, and initially I didn't believe him because I couldn't see how he would have known how to get there. But he clearly did recognise it. This would later feed into what had apparently happened, but more on that later.

So anyway, I took the case apart and reset the BIOS. I had to set a few things up again of course, but it also showed me everything was properly connected.

Of course it didn't solve the problem, because the real problem was that he'd essentially tried to re-install windows.

Again, quite how he's managed to set it so that it'll boot from the CD I don't know, but he did. Now installing windows is of course a fairly straightforward thing, but of course you wouldn't normally try to install it onto a machine with it already on without either putting it over the top or deleting the old one.

He hadn't done that. Indeed, it looked like he'd stopped the installation part of the way through.

Of course I'm sure this is probably all reversible, but the easiest thing to do was just blank the machine and re-install windows, so that's what I did. I asked whether there was anything important on the machine or if my sister had left anything, but he seemed fairly sure it was all okay.

Really this isn't a bad thing anyway, because he's just started an 'introduction to computing' type course and a clean install with few distractions is therefore a good thing.

There was a slight complication though as it meant buying a new copy of office. We got a copy at PC-World for convenience's sake, but when I got back I couldn't install it. This was because the version of XP was so old it needed Service Pack 2 installing.

My dad is planning to get broadband, but luckily I happen to have SP2 on a CD, so I sent that down to him and he seems to have installed it okay.

The real plan, and why he's interested in doing this is he wants to get into digital photography. That's why we bought him a digital camera for his birthday and obviously, being more PC-savvy is part of the next step - he can hardly learn how to adjust photos if he doesn't know how to turn the machine on!

Now as we were going on throughout the day the truth actually emerged as to what happened. Basically, he wanted to adjust the user accounts.

As mentioned, the machine was my sisters and her friends also used it. Therefore, he was logging in under their accounts, so what he wanted to do was remove them and/or add himself.

Unfortunately, he had no idea how to do that.

But what he did stumble across was the BIOS. Whether he adjusted anything else I don't know, but I'm guessing he saw the "set password" and thought that was how you did it, so he set a BIOS password by accident.

Then, for some reason that I still can't quite figure out he's tried to use the Windows XP CD. This has lead to him part-installing a new copy of XP, which was not finished properly but also broke the existing XP install.

I've always said that doing is the best was of learning, but I guess sometimes a little knowledge is needed before attempting stuff.

gloomy

Back to work today.

:(

The weather was pretty miserable on the whole while I was on holiday, but then to be fair it is properly into Autumn now.

I didn't achieve half of the stuff I was hoping too. I mean, I did achieve some bits that were on my list, but I didn't get anywhere near doing some other stuff.

Mainly the 'sorty outy' stuff of packing away my aircon and tidying up my PCs was the type of things I ended up avoiding, but I also failed to do any scanning. I didn't even scan some DVD covers, which meant I also couldn't put together any more reviews for trismugistus.com.

I did watch some more Welcome to NHK, although I didn't finish the series.

I don't really have a proper excuse for failing to do these things - I even had a big chunk of spare time on the Tuesday when I could feasibly have done them. About as close as I can come to an excuse is that I was bloody knackered.

The reasons I was tired were multiple.

First off I've been finding work really tiring lately. I seem to be doing loads of extra hours without any benefit from it (I may blog about it later, but can't be arsed now). The upshot of this was that even though I wasn't driving down to Dad's until Friday afternoon I ended up doing very little in the morning as I was so tired.

This is also one of the big reasons I don't get much done at weekends generally - I feel really tired and so am a bit listless and un-enthusiastic. Indeed, for the last few weeks I've been going to bed really early at the weekends because I've been so tired I couldn't keep my eyes open.

I think this hasn't been helped by my general lack of holiday this year. Normally I try to take quite a few long-weekends, but with Monaco sucking up two full weeks of holiday so early in the year I've not managed to do that so much this year.

The other reason I was tired was that the drive to Devon and back was really knackering. The trip down was really busy, even though most of it was just ordinary Friday afternoon, not rush hour, although with it taking so long I did cop that too. The drive back on Sunday was better, although the traffic was surprisingly heavy again and I did get caught up at Stonehenge.

But the point is that, according to my trip computer thing, I spent nearly 8 hours driving to and from Devon - that's pretty tiring stuff by.

It also didn't help that I was basically having a bit of a "Busman's holiday". If you've not heard this expression before, it's when you go on holiday away from work somewhere and end up doing roughly what you would normally do at work.

In my case I had to fix Dad's PC (more on that tomorrow) which is something I have to do all the time. But the point here is that it's quite a tiring thing - certainly it's horribly long winded and involves having to concentrate a lot.

One of the sneakier parts though was that, with Friday, Saturday and Sunday all being written off by my visit to Devon, all the stuff I would usually do at the weekend wasn't done, so I had to do it Monday and Tuesday.

Now really, that was a big part of the reason I took Monday and Tuesday as well, but I always forget stuff like that, you see, so I add in more things and then end up getting annoyed with myself that I haven't done them all :/.

time off

Well, this will be the last blog post from me until Next Wednesday.

This weekend it's by Dad's Birthday. He's 65 and I'm going down to visit him.

Me and my sister actually both chipped in to buy him a digital camera earlier this year. That actually covers both his Birthday and Christmas, but it means I won't be giving him anything as such, but I though a visit would be a good idea.

I'm not actually going for all the time I'm on holiday, and I should be back on Monday. That then gives me two days to do... well, I'm not entirely sure what I'll do to be honest.

I'm hopping to get a lot of 'stuff' done. For example, when brought the cable for the broadband in they drilled a big whole and there's loads of debris left that I've still not got around to hoovering up (not least of all because it means unplugging all my PC gubbins.

It's also about time I put my aircon back into it's storage location, which is always a giant pain in the arse.

I should also do a load of archiving - fansubs need burning to DVD to make room for the upcoming season, for example.

So yeah, not exactly exciting, but very necessary.

I didn't manage to watch all of NHK, due mainly to some circumstances beyond my control, but I am about a third of the way through it.

I'd say that so far it's a lot better than the manga version, but not to the extent that it's brilliant. I'll talk more about it later, I guess.

quantum of solace

erm, whut?

The first outing for Daniel Craig's bond was something of a breath of fresh air.

Gone were the likes of Bond coolly dispatching the baddies without breaking a sweat and then delivering a witty one-liner. In came Bond getting nearly as beat up as the bad guy and not saying anything.

The Bond-girls remained, but they were sassy and feisty and Bond even fell in love with one of them. The flash car's also remained, but the weird gadgets were either gone altogether or massively toned down. Indeed, in an age where a phone can provide you with anything from e-mail to a GPS mapping tool, who really needs gadgets?

No, this was gritty, realistic (some may argue Jason Bourne inspired) Bond.

The second out for Craig as Bond is also something completely new - a direct sequel. This one follows on from the first film by perhaps as little as ten minutes.

It also keeps going with the other stuff - beat-up Bond, more realistic, no daft gadgets, feisty Bond girls.

Only that's where it kinda starts to crack. There are two Bond girls. The first is not really a new-mould Bond girl in that she doesn't really kick arse - she's a bit more ditsy and dainty. Bond also beds her in no seconds flat. But he doesn't care for her - she's bumped off and he hardly bats an eyelid.

So back to old-skool Bond then? Well, no. I mean, she doesn't have a double-entendre for a name for example. She also serves very little purpose - he doesn't bed her to get info like he used to bed Bond girls.

The second Bond girl is much more feisty. But she's also kinda incidental again. Plus he doesn't bed her and again, no silly name.

It's a very good example of what's wrong with the film - it's like they've tried to slip in a little flavour of old-skool Bond, but not got it right.

What makes this worse is that they've tried to also keep some of the new stuff that just doesn't mesh well with the old stuff. So, for example, you get new-style realistic fist-fights, but then there's a bit with a plane dog-fight that's right out of old Bond and is very unrealistic.

What compounds all of this is the film is very confusing. I'm still not 100% sure quite what was going on.

The only real plot seems to be that Bond is seeking revenge. The trouble is that he could have had revenge very quickly, but instead waits for no apparent reason. I guess it was because he was trying to uncover... I dunno, something about this big conspiratorial network of bad guys thing.

But they're so ephemeral and without substance it's impossible to get your teeth into. Even at the end you realise that the bad guy who Bond's been after clearly isn't the head of the organisation. So does that mean we're going to get another sequel?

In a way it just felt like an excuse to hang a bunch of cool action sequences off of.

That could have worked, but what made it less satisfying was how it was shot - the camera was all over the place and it tended to get really confusing really quickly.

I dunno - it was like they were tying to have their cake and eat it. Only the cake was half chocolate and half baked Alaska, so it gave a funny sort of texture in the mouth.

die hard 4.0

I have to say I wasn't expecting much from Die Hard 4.0.

The first Die Hard movie is an absolute classic. Indeed, it's certainly one of the best action films ever.

A big part of what makes it so good is that Willis takes a real pounding. Sure he wins, but he only just wins. He always has to react to situations and improvise solutions, rarely going in with a proper plan.

It also featured a great bad guy and a great supporting cast - most notably in the form of the beat cop on the other end of a walkie-talkie.

The second film was not so good. They ramped up the action, but they also failed to deliver a truly worthwhile villain. And they made a really big mistake, crashing a plane full of innocent victims with Willis unable to stop them.

The third film was a lot better. The villain was good and his plan was pretty clever. There was a also great sidekick again (weirdly, in the form of Samuel L Jackson, but it works). They also ramped the action up again - unfortunately to the extent that some of the stuff was a little odd. I seem to recall something like a huge slide down a metal wire that would have shredded Willis's hands, for example.

But the point is that somehow it still worked - the plot and characters were strong enough.

The same is pretty much true of the fourth one.

There are some things that don't quite hang true action-wise, but still, overall, it hangs together.

The worst offender on the action sequence front is when Bruce is attacked by an F35 Jet Fighter. He's driving a big rig truck and the really implausible bit is that the arsenal carried by the F35 would just obliterate the truck with no survivors. I mean, this is gear designed to take out hardened military targets - a big rig is like a small paper cup by comparison.

Still, if you suspend your disbelief a bit then it's still a fun sequence. I think actually what helps here is how it's been shot - there's a bit of tendency to go hand-held style nowadays and while it helps in certain things, in big action films it often feels more like a hindrance than a help to me.

If shit's blowing up I want to see it blowing up properly, not be confused and distracted by the camera jerking all over the place.

Anyway, the key things that work in Die Hard 4.0 are the characters. With the possible exception of the main bad guy, all the characters are enjoyable. A particular nod of appreciation has to go to Kevin Smith, who seems to be developing into something of a fine actor by all accounts. Certainly he pumped out what was a horrible quantity of expositional dialogue in a way that was both believable and convincing - no easy task.

The side-kick role of a hacker nerd is also well realised, even if they do tend to fall into some of the old nerds on film traps I've often bemoaned. McClane's feisty arse-kicking daughter was also a very nice touch.

The weak-point was the main bad guy. Which isn't to say it was badly acted or anything, it just seemed a bit arch to me. For one thing there was an implication of some sort of moral ambiguity to the character, but this wasn't backed up by how he was written/depicted.

I'm trying to avoid spoilers, so let's just say in the background to the film there's a suggestion he may be doing what he's doing to 'prove a point'. But then his actions, how he behaves, how he deals with his own minions - all that comes across more like he's a typical boo-hiss style bad guy.

Also, when the twist comes it's not actually all that big a twist. Indeed, it's exactly the same twist that they always have, in that it's really all about the money. The problem there is that part of what the bad guy is doing is totally trashing the US economy, so what he steals would surely become worthless wouldn't it?

goals are good

It's my goal this week to watch Welcome to the NHK through to completion.

For some reason I started it several weeks ago with the full intention of watching it, but then never actually sat down and watched anything past the first episode. Well, I re-watched ep 1 last night and hopefully I'll get a chance to keep going.

Certainly I hit my goal of watching everything telly-wise from last week over the weekend, and this week my scheduled viewing hours drop off quite dramatically since loads of stuff has now ended. I was tempted to fill this blog with some thoughts on what I've been watching, but decided against it in the end.

What I would say is it's weird how things have worked out in this weeks schedule. Basically there are about 12 things my PVR is set to record (I set everything to be recorded, even if I end up watching it live) across the whole week. But on Tuesday and Wednesday there's absolutely nothing and most other days it's one or two things.

The real culprit seems to be Monday - there's loads of stuff on Mondays for some reason, which, given what I was saying the other week about how Monday's are a bit of mare for me time-wise, is actually a bit inconvenient.

One thing that does look interesting is this new show Flash Forward that starts on 5 tonight. I've not heard much about it other than that it's by the same (or some of them?) people who did Lost. Since I'm a big fan of Lost I'm intrigued to check it out.

And mentioning Lost, it seems bloody ages since I last got to watch any - the box-set of the latest 7th season seems to be taking ages to come out. I mean surely the 8th season is about to start in the US?

Yup, new season time rapidly approaches. I'm not doing too badly with my big anime catch-up. It's not been accompanied by quite the same scanning catch-up I was hoping for

Ah well, hopefully I'll get some time this next weekend, as I've got a bit of a holiday, but for now I'm gonna focus on watching NHK. I was distinctly unimpressed with the manga, but even from the first episode it seems quite different to the manga, so maybe I'll like it more.

mr mop

God, I need a haircut.

My hair's got to the really annoying stage where it just looks shit however I wash or comb it. It's also acting as a massive heat blanket, making me hot and sweaty when it's not actually that warm.

I should have had it cut one the last few weekends, but I've mentioned before that I find having it cut really unpleasant. Plus it seems to cost more each time I go.

I've been doing some scanning through the week. I've actually been trying to stay on top of telly this week (loads of stuff I've been following ends this week so I'm kinda prepping for a spare-time boost to... well, I'm not sure - maybe I'll get on top of the scanning or watch some DVDs?), so it's perhaps not been as much as I could have done, but some is better than none.

I've also been watching anime independently as well as what I've watched while scanning, so here are the low-downs:

Tokyo Magnitude 8.0

Wow.

I'm not really sure how to expand on that.

Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 is about an earthquake. Well, no, actually it's about people being impacted by a really big earthquake.

How can I put this? Where you might have expected all the money and effort to have gone into getting the earthquake right and animating it well, it's quite clear that just as much effort has gone into developing the characters and plot. The characters feel real - now admittedly they're not things you won't have seen done before, but they're done so well and portrayed so vividly they feel totally real.

Indeed, the realness is such that I almost found myself blubbing at a few points. Indeed, I'm struggling not to compare it to the masterworks of Miyazaki - there's a real flavour of what he manages to capture in films like Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service.

This is probably one of the best anime I've seen in ages.


Bakemonogatori

For some while now I've been bemoaning the current fad in anime to adapt "Light Novels".

My main issue with these light novels is that they seem to almost completely lack originality. I've tended to assume this was because of the nature of the beast - light novels are, as the name suggests "easy readers" and tend to rely on heavily worn ideas. To say they're quite a clichéd bunch is to hit the nail on the head.

However, Bakemonogatari - which is another of the same ilk if you hadn't guessed already - seems to be offering something a bit different. But there's a bit of a catch - it's being made by SHAFT and a lot of what makes Bakemonogatari interesting is the visual style and presentation.

Since Light Novels are textual in nature, it's hard to see how this is coming from the book and not the company making it. But that said, the plot seems fairly interesting from what I sampled. Well, I say the plot - it's a little difficult to be sure quite what the plot is if I'm honest. I'm sure it'd become clearer later, but at the moment I'm not really sure what's going on.

So I guess really it's the characters that carried my interest in what I sampled.


Canaan

Y'know, something odd sometimes happens when I run through fansubs like this.

For some reason, I tend to get runs of good and bad shows. Why this happens I don't know - I'm selecting what to watch on about as random a basis as I can, yet I'll still end up watching several rubbish shows in a row and then several good ones in a row.

The upshot of which is that this is the third good show in a row.

I have to admit, though, that I found Canaan nearly as confusing as Bakemonogatari. I say nearly because there's clearly a plot kicking about in Canaan, it's just they're hiding it away to give some mystery. Bakemonogatari I just wasn't really sure where it was going.

But also like Bakemonogatari, there's enough other good stuff to keep my interest despite the confusingness of the plot. For example, Canaan also seems to be packed full of interesting characters and, most surprisingly, humour. I really wasn't expecting it to have anything funny in it from what I've seen magazine wise, but it was actually quite funny in places.


Kuruneko

Well this is a bit of an oddity. Apparently it's an anime based on a blog - you don't get that every day!

As the title suggests - neko means cat - the blog is about cats. The anime is a series of very short episodes - maybe about 2mins each - which you'd expect from a blog and they're pretty much random, humorous anecdotes about cat ownership.

The animation is relatively crude, in a Rhubarb and Custard sort of way, and like that cartoon it has a lot of charm for it.

Overall it's sort of Chii-esque, but where that has a narrative because it's a fictional story, this is a bit more random (and a bit more 'realistic') and therefore didn't quite peak my interest in the same way. I guess if it was freely streamed somewhere it'd be worth a watch, especially as it's so short.


Umi Monogatari ~Anata ga Ite Kureta Koto~

Wasn't 100% sure about this one.

The first episode was kinda okay. Certainly the blonde underwater chick (I'm hesitating to use the word mermaid as it wasn't entirely clear that's what she was supposed to be) was totally hot and the land-dwelling girl was an interesting character. It was also quite funny and the story seemed to be okay.

But then in episode two things went spectacularly downhill.

First off, it suddenly became a magical girl show. This seemed to be a bit left-field to me. But worse than that, the story became a bit dodgy - both in terms of what it was and how it was being told.

The main crime was that a talking turtle appeared and proceeded to talk full advantage of his ability to talk in order to cram tonnes of relatively uninteresting exposition into our lugholes. To make it worse, he didn't seem to explain some stuff that then got used later in the story.

So I dunno - I'd probably keep watching, but I've a strong feeling the scales would slowly tip towards it not being a very good show.


Souten Kouro

I actually quite enjoyed this.

It's loosely inspired by the Romance of the Three Kingdoms (they love a bit of Three Kingdoms in Japan) and it's probably fair to say that it's a bit on the melodramatic side.

It's also probably fair to say that the animation is of a fairly poor standard. If I was being kinda I'd go for highly stylised, but it's also fairly clear they were a bit strapped for cash.

Oh and it's all in the bloody dark again. Partly, I think to cover up the nasty and nudey bits for broadcast reasons, but also to hide the animation a bit. Plus of course, darkness = drama. I'm actually kinda surprised in didn't rain rose petals (or real rain even) during my sample, but then that is a bit girly and this is more melodrama for men in tone.

But setting those aside, I actually kinda liked it. Although I think I'd have to absorb it in small doses - I imagine watching this much melodrama in a short period of time might have a negative affect on your opinion of it.


AIKa ZERO

Let's do a short one: Basically if you've seen and liked the recent AIKa R16 then AIKa ZERO won't disappoint.

If you've not seen it you may like it if any of the following tickly your fancy: excessive fan-service, panty shots, hot young girls, panty shots, chick fights or panty shots. Plus, oddly for this sort of show, the story is okay too.

Oh, and there are quite a lot of panty-shots.

waking the dead

Waking the Dead has been running for quite a while now - something in the order of 10 years, maybe?

For those that are unaware, it's a mystery crime drama. The title comes from the fact that it's all about re-opening 'cold' cases - murders that were not solved at the time, mainly.

Generally speaking I enjoy it - the 'who done it?' aspect is usually quite strong and forms the main focus of the stories. Which isn't to say it's just about the cases - there's normally a fair bit of interpersonal stuff and character development kicking about.

Mainly the focus is on Boyd, the main in charge. Boyd is a bit of an odd character. He's very... loud I guess is the best word. He shouts at people a lot. It's also difficult to tell if he cares or not.

The reason he took the job was essentially because he was looking for his son, so there's a caring aspect there. But then he generally treats his work colleagues like shit. And he's not exactly kind to anyone he interviews - indeed, he's not above giving them a good slap now and again.

Which, for me, is where things start to go a bit wonky. How, in this day and age, has he kept his job? Some of the stuff he gets up to is way beyond legal, let alone acceptable, and yet he's never been fired.

The other week there was a storyline where he broke into someone's house to get evidence, for example. At the end the episode the internal investigation type people turned up and basically said "stop working on the case, we're investigating you."

Ah, I thought, next week will be about him being in trouble. But nope, it was apparently business as usual.

It's difficult to explain, but everything seems to be unravelling in a way. I mean, it's kinda supposed to be like that - the Boyd's son thing has actually been resolved, and I think he's meant to be spiralling out of control, and Spence, one of his team has left.

But the problem is they're not really being properly consistent and they're not really paying enough attention to the non-case story parts. For example, the girl on the team died in the first part.

Okay, fair enough, but it was done in such a random way - one minute she's okay, the next she's dead. And then there's basically no mention of her after that - Boyd treated her like shit, as per usual, but in these later episodes there's been no follow up to that. Grace, the psychologist, apparently hasn't even had a word with him or anything.

I dunno, it feels like while they're still doing interesting murders, the other aspects have gone a bit loose. Plus they're starting to interfere too much in the cases - it feels like none of the cases this year has been solved properly because of Boyd ballsing them up.

Which is fair enough, but where are the repercussions from that? He's not even gotten a bollocking from his boss.

It's difficult to explain, because it's always had that aspect of Boyd being a loose cannon, but this year it seems to have lost cohesion as an overall entity - the plot things running through the whole series seem to have gotten a bit mangled somewhere.

rambo

The name's Rambo. John Rambo.

I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about there. It makes no sense as a joke and offers absolutely no kind of commentary on the film itself.

So yeah, Rambo. Which, in complete disregard for the film's title is actually the fourth Rambo film.

But it's such a long distant sequel, it's kinda understandable why they didn't give it a more sequel arific name: Fourth Blood or something. But that isn't to say they've ignored the time gap.

Indeed, a key part of the film is how long Rambo has spent 'in the wilderness' as it were. If it had just been "here's more Rambo" it wouldn't have worked. But what they've done here means it does kinda work.

Which isn't to say the film entirely works, just that it's a good start. So what else about the film works?

A big success is the length. With credits it's only about 1hr25. This means that the pacing is really good - nothing drags here and also, nothing feels gratuitous. Well, okay, we'll get to the violence later, but I mean none of the scenes feel like they were unnecessary - it cuts right to the heart of the story.

Another success is Rambo himself - he feels real and understandable. It follows on logically from where he was in the previous films and makes sense.

And, perhaps surprisingly, one of the biggest successes is the depiction of a mercenary team in the film. Normally in this sort of film they would prove to be useless. Perhaps one of them would be good, but the rest would end up getting killed instantly and stupidly or need to be rescued by Rambo.

Well, even though one of those things does sort of happen, it happens in a way that you can believe and subsequently it shows the mercs doing a good job. These guys are just about as effectively as Rambo himself, which is really nice to see.

It's also pretty successful at portraying the absolute mess that is Burma. The story is fictional, but according to what the people they interview say and the research that was done it's not wholly unrealistic.

The last truly successful thing is the extras - a commentary from Sly himself and a veritable bucket load of extras make this a worthwhile disk from that standpoint.

A sort of successful thing is the way the violence is portrayed. It's... well, it works. On the commentary and interviews they keep talking about it being realistic. I'm not 100% sure on that myself.

For example, legs blown off by mortar rounds and grenades and people being shredded by 50 cal rounds I can believe. Similar levels of damage being inflicted by a handgun I'm not so sure about.

Also, it comes awfully close to being too much. The final sequence is quiet long and the violence and gore is at such a level it almost becomes too much. As pointed out in the extras, if it hadn't had a rousing, movie-style soundtrack behind it you'd have been vomiting in your popcorn. I mean, honestly it's worse than most horror movies.

But then there's the thing - that's sort of the point. War is horrible.

The main thing that didn't work so well for me was the bad guys. They were quite two dimensional bad guys - there was no suggestion of them being anything other than simply 'bad'. Also, the missionaries seemed a bit on the hyper-naive side to me. Especially since one of them claimed to have been into Burma 5 times before.

But overall those didn't really detract too much from the film itself, which I enjoyed. But I think you need a strong constitution to watch it!

erm

Y'know sometimes it's really difficult to think of anything to write in these blogs.

Sometimes on Monday I've got so much stuff to talk about that I actually rattle off three or four blog posts (writing them in word) that I then use until Wednesday, by which time I've got more to talk about.

But other times I can struggle to write the Monday and then don't have the time (or, sometimes, the inclination) to write any more.

It's one of the reasons I turned Wednesday into 'movie review' day. It gives me one day of guaranteed content, although sometimes I struggle there to if I'm unsure about a film or didn't watch one.

Anyway, the point is today I'm struggling quite a bit.

See, last night I did no more scanning and watched no more anime. I could talk about the manga I've been reading, but the majority of it has been continuing series, which I don't like to talk about as it's difficult to avoid spoilers. I have started several new series, but I've only read 1 volume and I like to give them more room for an opinion to form than that.

This is made worse by what happens on a Monday evening.

For some reason, Monday evenings always disappear in a flash. No sooner am I home than it's 8 or 9 'o'clock and I'm thinking about bed, not doing anything interesting.

There are several factors that contribute to this.

First off, I like to go shopping Monday lunch, so I have to put the shopping away. Also, all the prep I like to for the next day (I'm possibly the most anal person alive) is more complicated because it's all been 'paused' over the weekend. So that takes longer.

Also, over the weekend I don't dl any fansubs, so Sunday night I end up with an average of 20 fansubs to dl on Monday. So Monday evening, with these having dl'ed during the day, I've got to sort them out, putting them on external Hard Drives, etc.

Then there's telly.

Monday night is Gadget Show night, when it's on, and that's quite often - it seems to run almost continuously. That's no bad thing as I love the Gadget Show, but I like to watch it live.

Then, factor in things like making my dinner (being as Monday is shopping day I always have to make something proper - there's no possibility of just reheating yesterday's leftovers) and shaving (I shave at night) and you can see how before I know it, Monday evening is gone.

And that's why I've never anything interesting to talk about on Tuesdays.

a start

Well I think I can say I've officially "made a start" on the scanning backlog.

Over this last weekend I spent many hours scanning away. I have to admit I didn't seem to achieve as much as I'd hoped - I basically only scanning one animedia and one newtype. With the megami I scanned during the week that means I actually haven't quite finished the first month of the backlog.

To be frank, though, I think this is in part because the mags I was scanning were all quite heavy with scans. Sometimes each of the mags can go up and down in the number of things that can be scanned, and in the month I'm scanning I think they all hit a high.

Plus I'm a bit rusty, so that can't have helped.

Anyway, while I scanned, I also watched some anime:


Pandora Hearts

This was a bit of an odd one, as I wasn't entirely sure if I liked it or disliked it.

My problem was that for everything that seems interesting or intriguing there was something I found annoying or tedious.

In the end I had to come down on the side of not really liking it, though it'd be a show I would probably be willing to give a second go.


07-Ghost

It's a bishounen (pretty boy) show. Basically it's an action adventure type series, but with few to no women and all the men are pretty. So if that sort of thing sounds like your cup of tea your mileage may be better than mine.


Phantom ~ Requiem for the phantom ~

Well now, going into this I wasn't expecting much. It's by the same people that did El Cazador de la Bruga, Noir and Madlax. I've never seen Madlax, but I hated Noir. Cazador seemed like Noir but set in a pseudo-wild west and I understand the plot of Madlax is similar too, so I was expecting Phantom would be more of the same.

Well it is, but it also isn't. In those other series the formula is always one sassy chick and a girl whose lost her memories (and her personality with it). As the show goes on the bland one usually starts remembering stuff and coming out of her shell.

Well in this show they've got two main protagonists again, but one of them's a guy. Plus they're both without memory and slightly impassive, though the impassiveness appears to be closer to 'breaking' from the start.

What I'm basically saying was I quite enjoyed the start of this and I'd want to watch more, but my optimism is cautious and tempered by the knowledge of the previous shows.


Taisho Yakyuu Musume

Okay, first I should categorically state that baseball, like most sports, doesn't really hold any appeal for me. However, for the second time in this last few seasons (Cross Game being the first time) I've found myself really liking a baseball-based series.

Of course the fundamental point of all story telling is that it's all about characters, so I'm going to use that as my excuse as to how come I like 2 baseball shows.

To be fair, Taisho is a lot less 'about' Baseball than it is the girls in the show - and it is all girls. Indeed, if I had my cynical hat on I'd be banding around words like "Moe" and how it's all been done before.

Well this is true (although it's actually set during the inter-war period and you don't' get too many shows set then) but the point is it charmed the pants off me (get your mind out of the gutter). Indeed, so much so that I would actually put this towards the top of a 'recommended' list for this last couple of seasons.


Element Hunters

I found this to be quite tedious.

I think the idea is it's meant to be educational. It certainly has lots of science (chemistry mainly) related stuff in it. The problem on this front is it's got loads of ridiculous non-science and stupidness in it too.

But also it falls roughly into a sort of boy's (shounen) pokemon-eskue battle-based type genre that always leaves me cold.

I just found it very boring.

weird night

Last night was a bit weird.

During the day I was feeling quite good, but then when I got home I dunno - it was like my blood sugar crashed or something, but that wouldn't make sense as I had quite a large dinner (too large, really as I made a bit of an error).

It was weird. All I really ended up doing was reading a few comics :/.

Plans for the weekend are pretty low key.

Hopefully what I'll do is actually continue with the start I made at scanning my magazine backlog. Also I'd like to watch some proper anime on DVD, but recently there's been a bit of an increase in the number of shows that I've been watching on telly and I'd rather keep them in line.

Someone in the office has had swine flu!

My malaise is unrelated, as they have been working off site, although he's in today so I'm sure I'll be imagining symptoms throughout the weekend!

It's slightly weird when you actually know someone who's had this thing that the media has been banging on about for so long.

By the sound of things he's not been having much fun, though - quite a nasty little disease by the sounds of things!

almost unbelievable

I did some scanning!

Granted, not a lot of scanning, but "some" is, like, a million percent more than "none" isn't it?

I've also been continuing to watch anime fansubs. Some of this was while I scanned, but the majority was just randomly watched.

Guin Saga

Well I guess this show proves I haven't lost my disinterest in fantasy like I was afraid with Tear to Tiara. Guin Saga did very little for me.

It's a fantasy type story, in case you hadn't guessed, and, as far as I'm aware, it's another one based on an RPG and it again shows. But where Tiara had a bit of humour to lift it, this is played totally straight.

It's odd the parallels between the shows, actually - both involve royal siblings being saved/aided by people we're not quite sure about. In Tiara it was unclear if he was a good guy or bad guy, but in Guin it's more that it's unclear who and what he is.

Guin appears to have a leopard's head and has lost his memory. Unfortunately, the former makes him seem like some reject from a Mexican wresting match and the latter is a rather played out idea that isn't' given any real life here.

What I think I'm saying is that if fantasy is your bag then you might get more mileage, but it really wasn't for me. Oh, and whichever camp you're in, you need warning that the animation is pretty damn poor. It just about reached okay level during the fights, but otherwise it's really cheap stuff.


Shin Mazinger Shougeki! Z-Hen

Now there's a title and a half to get your gob around!

I've honestly not got a lot to say about this.

I mean, it's a Go Nagai series, and if you like Go Nagai's giant mecha stuff I see absolutely no reason you wouldn't like this.

My own personal take is somewhat of a cool distance. I have no problems with Giant Mecha (indeed, many of the shows I'd put up the top in my personal rankings would be Giant Mecha shows) but I'm not such a big fan of these "original" style shows.

It's difficult to explain - I like shows like Godannar or Gurren Lagann that pay affectionate homage to these types of shows, and I like shows like Eva that bugger about with them, but the shows themselves don't quite work for me. I think it's because there too earnest.

A knowing wink and a some sort of acknowledgement within the show itself that the whole thing is bizarre/silly goes a long way for me. I've no problem with the things they get up to, so long as there's a flavour of the creators themselves knowing that what they're doing is daft.

Plus, often-times the writing leaves a lot to be desired. And if I'm brutally honest, Go Nagai's character and mecha designs leave me a bit cold.

But if you're good with all that stuff, then this should be right up your alley.


Slap Up Party - Arad Senki

And here's another one with a bizarre name.

Also, rather bizarrely, it's yet another one where it opens in the dark. All of the series I've sampled just recently have either had all of their opening episodes set in the dark, or they've certainly opened in the dark.

Tears to Tiara the first two eps were at night, Guin Saga, the first ep was at night, Darker than Black had loads of night-time stuff, Mazinger, about 80% of what I watched was at night. And this opens in the dark too... weird. Although, to be fair, it does then proceed to being in bright daytime.

Plus, to cap things off, I believe it's another show adapted from a fantasy RPG game. I could be utterly wrong on that, as I've done no research at all, but it certainly feels like it is.

And it also feels like a show that just isn't my cup of tea.

I've never really thought much about it, but I think it's the fact that they're all really similar these fantasy RPG things. They involve a group going on a quest, often with the group acquiring allies and enemies as it goes.

They're all just Lord of the Rings with a variety of different characters.

So I guess if that sort of thing works for you, you might like it, but for me, this was a non-starter.


Princess Lover

Now this shows was a turn-up for the books.

Obviously I've seen the pictures that have been in the magazines and they rather stuck in my mind, shall we say? I mean, how could they not, given the melons quotient?

What I wasn't expecting was that the show was really rather good.

Well, the other thing I wasn't expecting was that all the fan-service would be heavily censored. And I mean all the fan-service. In the first couple of episodes the fan-service doesn't run to much more than a few panty shots and they're totally obscured by heavy black shadows.

It's a little odd - especially as in the second ep the hero actually refers to the colour of three of the girls knickers and we can't actually see them, because they're in black shadow.

Now I'm sort of used to this, in that I've seen quite a few fansubs that obviously had stuff censored out in this fashion and then later seen the DVD versions with stuff on show. But it's usually more reasonable - censoring out nipples on the broadcast TV version is understandable, knickers isn't, given how much anime has them in.

Maybe it's something to do with the time of day the show is broadcast? Or perhaps it gets more extreme later on? Certainly the show is apparently adapted from a hentai game.

But anyway, the point is that the stories actually not half bad. Or at least, it's being done in a not half bad way - I'm not sure there's anything here that I haven't seen before, but it looks like some care and attention has been put into making the plot a bit more substantial than the usual rom-com fair.


Gokujou!! Mecha Mote Iinchou

I only watched the one episode of this as it was obvious it was a show very much aimed at young girls. Plus I've only seen 2 eps subbed on the listing site I use.

I guess if you're a young girl this might work for you, but for me it was way too much into that whole genre. It's sort of wrong for me to say it was bad, as it's just not even something that's even vaguely aimed at me.

Although, and not wanting to get too deep here, I must admit, I do wonder whether this sort of thing would be produced outside of Japan. The focus the girls have on being 'pretty' seems a little disturbing to me.

I mean, on one level it rejects it, but at the same time sort of re-affirms it. It's a little odd.

Also, the animation was weird - it looked like some sort of bastard love-child of CG cell-shading and traditional hand-drawn animation. It was very odd looking.

shrek the third

If ever there was a series that accurately portrayed the law of diminishing returns it's Shrek.

The first one was brilliant - very funny, telling a heart-warming story and reaching a conclusion that managed to both have its cake and eat it.

The second one was okay. It had some funny high-points, a reasonable story that admittedly felt a bit like a re-tread of the first, but an okay conclusion. It was also a little hampered by a slightly too big scope and cast.

The third was distinctly average.

The jokes were rather thin on the ground, for starters. Not least of all because the central joke of having fantastical characters be real feels a little worn down now. I mean it's a good idea and all, but I do find myself picking holes in it.

I mean, why is the Arthur character depicted as an unpopular wimp? It doesn't really make a lot of sense, especially given he's quite handsome and reveals himself to be quite intelligent. Why would he be unpopular? It's never quite addressed.

Well, he's unpopular because it's high-school and it suits the theme of the Shrek films for self-discovery to be his arc.

And mentioning the high-school, man did it loose me during this section. First off - I'm not American, I never went to high-school, it's a frame of reference that means very little to me.

Plus the types of characters they had seemed like very old jokes. The nerds playing D&D, the popular girls speaking in valley girl speak. I mean it was hard to even tell they were jokes, to be honest.

And then you've got the idea about Prince Charming banding all the 'bad' fairytale characters together and taking over Never-never land. Okay, fair enough, but it was really badly executed.

I mean, they just seemed to sort of turn up, fly about on their brooms (where they heck they got them all from, I don't know) and then land and... they'd won. I don't recall seeing a single guard or military type, despite both of the previous films showing (and, to some extent, relying on) their respective cities having significant numbers of guards.

I dunno, it just didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense.

Also, the characters didn't really seem to grow or develop a great deal. I mean, Shrek kinda became a father, but then the idea that he was not keen on being a Dad got a bit lost somewhere along the line. I think part of the problem is because they were aware they were essentially retreading the same plot beats.

But also it's one thing for him to be screwing up his relationship with his girlfriend in 2, it's quite another for that same plot-thread to be properly played out with regards to un-born children. What could they do? Have him suggest abortion? Or doing a runner? In a family/kids film?

So yeah, I wouldn't recommend it.

I did actually watch another film this last weekend - Tropic Thunder. I'd probably recommend that one more, but it also wasn't the best. I won't talk about it here much, as I'll do a full review for trismugistus.com I think.

eBay doesn't want me

I knew there was something I forgot yesterday! I had another figurine come from Japan, and as per usual it got hit with customs. I paid the customs and set the delivery date and it never showed up. So, in other words that made it a triumvirate of non-delivery things, hence the post.

Both animage and the figurine turned up yesterday, so I guess that's a tick in a couple of boxes at least. So now back to the scheduled post:

eBay has recently introduced a new policy that, by the looks of things, manages to top all of their previous idiocy by quite some considerable margin.

Last time I ranted on I hit the epoch of all swearing, describing them as a bunch of cunts. While this adequately and succinctly summed up my feeling at the time, it unfortunately leaves me with the situation that I have no higher level of swearitude to go to in order to express my displeasure.

I think what I'm going to do is use cunts^2 (or cunts squared - cunts multiplied by cunts) as I think it sums up the drastic increase in their cuntitude.

So what have they done?

Well, they've introduced a system used "DSR" which stands for "Detailed Seller Ratings" and are basically ratings out of 5 given by users on 4 elements:

• Item as Described
• Communication
• Dispatch Time
• Postage and Packaging Charges

And the idea is that if you get an average DSR in any of these below a particular threshold (4.3!) across either 12 months or 3 months, then you get 'punished'. Alternatively, they seem to have set some hard limits too, so that if you get 4 "low" DSRs (1s or 2s) you also get punished.

The punishments are that your item gets lowered in the search returns (don't really know how this works if your item is the only one or one of five in a search. Also, you can get suspended from e-bay - that is, they won't let you sell anything until your DSRs normalise.

If you've more than about 4 brain cells I reckon you can already pick about a million holes in this whole system, but let's focus on some particularly juicy points:

The scorecard is weighted. That is, you may think, like a normal, sensible and rational human being, that, on a scale of 5, 'average' is 3, 'good' is 4 and 'excellent' is 5. Well look at the number you're required to get - 4.3. That means that if all your customers rate your service as 'good' you get punished.

How in the name of fuck is that a sensible way to set your system up?

Unless you're a cunt^2, of course.

Then there's the punishments - my ratings get lowered or I get banned from e-bay because one or two douche bags give me low ratings?

Yeah, that's fair. Especially when I have absolutely no way to retaliate. For example, did you know it's actually now impossible for a seller to rate a buyer negatively?

What else?

Well, according to some postings around the web and on the support forums, your buyers don't actually even have to rate you low to fuck you over - if they don't leave any DSRs (so they just give you the normal rating) then that counts as a "0"!

So their laziness rapes me in the arse.

Also, reading around, everyone is getting low DSRs on postage and packaging. I've ranted on this before that people don't seem to have any idea of how much postage costs - they don't even go and look at the god-damn Royal Mail website and check, they just seem to think you're ripping them off automatically.

Well guess what - even people who have buckled to the previous shit-sandwich e-Bay served us sellers and started doing free postage are getting low DSRs for postage. I mean seriously, if you offer free postage, some people still won't give you a 5! Not that you need to be a genius to work that out, just a cunt^2 not to take it into account.

There's tonnes of other stuff and I could go on for ages, but the last thing I'd mention is what seems to be behind this.

There's a distinct air that what's motivating it is that e-bay wants to get rid of small-time sellers like me. By the sound of things they basically want to become a wholesalers outfit.

So they want to abandon their whole business model and shed the core customer base.

Bunch of cunts^2.

missing

So on Friday I mentioned I'd gotten e-mails telling me newtype, animedia and animage had been sent.

Well, when I got home I was a bit surprised to find that only two of them were there - newtype and animedia. Animage was nowhere to be found :/.

Quite why this was I don't know - TNT are the couriers and one of the guys I happened to talk to specifically mentioned delivering 3 at once, so it's not like they're unaware of it.

I hope it turns up of its own accord. With it being sent from Japan and them not providing tracking numbers I don't really fancy trying to find out what's happened to it. Not least of all because they always have those "it could take 12 weeks to arrive" disclaimers on. If I try to contact them, I'm sure I'll get some sort of response like that.

I had a similar experience with the Royal Mail. A DVD I sent that someone bought off me on e-bay has not been delivered, so I've sent a claim form. However I couldn't send it straight away because they don't consider things lost "until 15 days after it was sent".

It didn't help matters that they wanted loads of evidence. It was a total pain in the arse.

And guess what the things worth? 10p. Yup, that's right, it was one of those DVDs that went for way below a sensible price (if you take off the final valuation fee and PayPal charges I'll have lost money) and now it looks like it'll be costing me even more money.

There didn't seem to be a way to reclaim the packaging cost for starters, and I wouldn't be surprised if the claim is rejected, so I'll end up refunding without the compensation :(.

Postally, I'm not having much luck lately.

scanning the future

I got an e-mail this Tuesday or Wednesday telling me the new issues of Newtype, Animage and Animedia were on their way.

I'm not sure if they'll be here for the weekend - there's a good chance, based on previous experience that they'll turn up on Monday - but when they do arrive that will mean I'll have three straight months worth of un-scanned Japanese mags.

Those anime I mentioned yesterday - normally I would have watched those while scanning. But I've gotten so far behind and I've still not summoned the energy to do any scanning, so I've just watched them like they were normal episodes.

To be fair, there have been a lot of contributing factors to why I've not done any scanning in ages. For example, I watched BSG over the summer - that was a lot of episodes and therefore sucked up a lot of time.

Also, I've been doing loads of e-baying, and that always eats away a lot more time than you think. And then there was Monaco. I know it was ages ago, but it took ages to get stuff sorted out afterwards, plus it used up two whole weeks of holiday, so I've not really had many spare days over the summer.

Then there's been work. This last few months I've been so busy it's been really sucking up both my time and energy. It's like I've lost count of how many days this year I've worked really late.

So yeah, there are reasons, but that doesn't get to the core of the issue.

This core problem is I no longer really have anything to do with my scans.

When I started scanning mags I was a waller and also I had AP to upload them too. Both of those things are now gone, so it's like, why bother? What difference does it really make whether I scan stuff or not?

And the thing is I really don't have any answer to that other than "none". So I really am wondering whether I shouldn't just give up scanning altogether. It would certainly ease this sense of pressure and guilt I feel.

But then another side of me like the idea of scanning the mags. I mean, I can't read the text, so it's kinda nice thing to do with them. Plus I may find a future outlet for them, so better not to stop.

cock

Nearly forgot to post on here today!

Think I'll just give a round-up of the animu I've been watching - not done that in a long while!

Darker Than Black

I'll give it a proper review later over at trismugistus.com, but overall I've really been enjoying this show.

To be brutally honest it's not the most original show. But it does represent something of a breath of fresh air. I mean there's not one character in the show that could be said to be remotely moe, for example. How many shows a year are there where you can say that with genuine accuracy?

Which isn't to say the show doesn't feature a bevy of beauties, but these are beautiful women, not pretty girls. They also feel like genuine, real, grown-up characters, rather than caricatures.

Which is saying a lot when you consider it's one of those shows where characters die in their droves. It makes for a real sense of poignancy - you could easily do entire series about half the characters that killed off in Darker than Black and it's that strength of writing that really helps to carry the show.

They could easily have made them two-dimensional bit players, but they're not. Instead, they're (mostly) fleshed out people who feel like they could exist. Well, apart from the whole super-powers thing, obviously.


DOGS OAV

I actually started buying the DOGS manga recently. I've not read it yet, but I really liked the artwork, so I thought I'd give it a go.

I've therefore no idea how close these OAVs are to the original, but if they're anything like each other I'm thinking I'll enjoy the manga. However, I must admit the anime wasn't quite what I was expecting.

The thing that took me by surprise was the humour. The first episode was fairly serious, but the second was really quite amusing and I wasn't expecting that at all. I was also expecting more of a solid plot.

I guess with it only being four episodes (And four 15 minute episodes at that) that's a bit unfair, but I thought they'd try and include some kind of overarching plot across the four. Well, I say that - with my usual approach of watching only a sample of the episodes, maybe it turns out that there is more of a plot, but I certainly couldn't see any longer plot strand sin what I watched. It was more like a series of shorter stories involving the same characters, rather than an overall story.

Still, I enjoyed it, so let's hope the manga is as good and they pick this up for a full anime series.


Tears to Tiara

I had absolutely no idea what to expect from this. I'm guessing I have seen some pics from the anime mags, but I've gotten so far behind with watching stuff that I have basically completely forgotten what they were.

When it started I have to admit I rolled my eyes a bit. Straight fantasy is generally not my thing and animes that are based on RPGs can get a bit tedious. They're also easy to spot a mile off - I could tell this was one before I even checked.

But then a while back I watched a show called Druaga that was really rather good, and that was a fantasy RPG game adaptation type anime too.

Tear to Tiara was also surprisingly good. Perhaps I've gone soft on fantasy? Or maybe it's more to do with the strength of the writing. One clever thing it's doing is to give you all the standard RPG tropes but to bugger about with them.

It's not quite subversion, but they're definitely tweaked enough to make them interesting. So in the first episode a "Demon King" god is resurrected, but he turns out to not really be evil/the bad guy (or at least not yet, from what I'd watched). So you've got a fairly standard fantasy element, but treated in a different-from-the-norm way.

It also has quite a bit of humour, and humour always goes a long way.

Oh, and it's interesting how bloody/violent it is as well - gore splatters all over the place. Not sure why, but it seems to add something to the show. They can be quite tepid these sorts of fantasies and it makes it a bit more... I dunno, weighty, for the violence to be more graphic.

the shock doctrine

This weeks film was...

Well, actually, this weeks film was going to be Domino, starring Keira Knightly, which I'd recorded off of Film4, but about half-way in it started breaking up and became unwatchable. Then I was going to watch Tales from Earthsea, which I'd also recorded off of Film4 (due to timings I've not had a rental DVD for the last two weekends), but that turned out to be a re-dub version and I didn't fancy it.

So I ended up deleting both of those and watching The Shock Doctrine (this actually meant that I yet again cleared my PVR down to empty, though I've a feeling that with the autumn and winter TV seasons approaching, this state of affairs won't last long).

I enjoyed The Shock Doctrine.

Though, to be fair , I'm both a bleeding heart liberal and socialist (maybe even communist) at heart.

If you're neither of those things then your mileage may vary.

However, I have to admit to some degree of confusion with the shock doctrine. The basic premise seems to be that some scientists did some work with electric shocks and/or sensory deprivation and this somehow lead to a bunch of economists deciding that the same thing would be a good idea for the economy.

Actually I don't think that's what it was saying at all, but that's kinda how one of its messages came across. What I actually think it was trying to do was draw a parallel - that a branch of economics called "shock economics" (Google it) can be seen to parallel this shock therapy.

The shock therapy was intended to use the electric shocks (not sure quite where the sensory deprivation came in, or, indeed, the CIA's torture bible came in) to blank out a person's personality, and in its place construct a new, better personality.

So it is with shock economics - some crisis allows a particular type of free market economics to be bullied through and forced upon a population while they're busy trying not to die in floods or be disappeared by a dodgy dictator or whatever.

Now here it made some good points and the evils that are totally free-market economies and unrestrained capitalism are things I too would whole-heartedly disagree with.

The problem was it got a bit confused. While it was making totally valid and good points, it also seemed to be joining the dots in a way that didn't quite make sense.

Which isn't to say I can see kinda what it was going for, it's just that I'm not sure that event a) could be quite so definitively proven to be the cause of event b). In other words, it seemed to be fining a big conspiracy where I'm not really sure there was one - not in the planned and organised way it was being suggested anyway.

What I think I'm going to do is buy the book it was based on and see if that makes more sense.

As for the film, I'd recommend it if you're already of a similar mind-frame as mentioned above, but if you're not, I don't think it would exactly convince you to change your mind.