Global E-Commerce fail

Aug 28, 2008 by John    9 Comments    Posted under: rant, web, web design

Rant, rave, fume, spit. I am so sick of web sites who say they deliver to Ireland, then don’t let you proceed without a valid UK postcode. This is 2008. Sort it out! Don’t make me fill out a big bloody form if it is not possible for me to proceed!

While I’m feeling ranty, I’m also sick of the number of things you just can’t seem to buy in this country. I seem to spend so much time looking for things that you can buy in any other country. If you have a valid postal code!

Screw you uk.insight.com you’re first on the list. Yes I just might make a list.

Somers Town

Aug 26, 2008 by John    4 Comments    Posted under: movies

Got home last night with no keys, and her indoors wasn’t indoors. So that’s me off on a me-date, woohoo! Straight down to the cinema for something that ‘looks good and starts soon’. Shane Meadow’s latest, Somers town is just about to start, score!

Movie over. Ring Ring. Missus still out. Oh no, I’ll have to continue the me-date. Straight in to one of those little Chinese places on Parnel street for Pork and Chinese beer. Poor me. Ring Ring. She’s back. Doh! So I don’t get to end the me-date with a pint and a Crossaire.

Somers town is nice enough. It’s about a teenage runaway down from the midlands who befriends a lonely Polish boy. And they both want to get into the knickers of a gorgeous French waitress. It’s low-key, low-budget, low-script. It’s exactly how you would expect it to be. Doesn’t pull the same punches as This is England or Dead Man’s Shoes. But it’s not trying to. It’s a lot quieter and quite funny in places.

Uncanny valley

Aug 23, 2008 by John    4 Comments    Posted under: art, movies, waffle

There’s this theory in robotics called the Uncanny Valley. It’s now well acknowledged in computer graphics too. It’s when a human character looks and moves almost realistically lifelike yet not quite perfect. And this somethings-not-quite-right can be a bit jarring to watch. So in 3D animation, unless you can depict a human in flawless reality, you shouldn’t even bother. Take a step back.

Pixar know this. They can do perfectly realistic landscapes, seascapes, objects, hair etc – but they keep their distance from lifelike humans and instead have fun with caricatures. Many feature length movies have completely flopped because they dared to walk the valley, like Final Fantasy.

Now meet Emily.

The first question is has she climbed out of the valley. And the second one is, what’s the point? Why not use real actors? Unless you’re talking about actual in-game playing. That could be pretty amazing but I reckon it’d be fad you’d tire of quickly. Of course this technology will most likely be used for some weird-assed porn.

It’s a bit like photorealistic paintings? What’s the point? I still wow at the technical ability of photorealistic paintings but they’re a bit pointless really.

I do enjoy a good dose of twisted hypereality though. Like that Spanish guy who does it all in biros. Juan Franciscoasas, and of course Ron Mueck’s sculptures fucking rock. And there’s a huge photorealistic painting of an old woman in some gallery in Washington DC that I love – it’s made from nothing but thumbprints (and can *not* be found after twenty frigging minutes with Inspector Google).

But when it comes to straight up painting, give me Kandinsky’s bubbles, De Chirico’s dummies, a fractured nude descending a staircase, or Bacon’s twisted torsos any day of the week. Hell even hit me with some Rothko. And what do you mean you could paint that!? Well you didn’t! And more to the point, you couldn’t. Unless he picked out the colours and mixed them for you but you never even considered that monumental part of the process, did you dipwad!?

Way to go on a tangent AND state the obvious.

Ooh Mavis!

Aug 17, 2008 by John    2 Comments    Posted under: waffle

Overheard at the tail end of a 70th birthday party after much champagne and baileys on ice, a thirty something year old girl attempted a conspiratorial whisper in an effort to impart some new found advice to a new found friend. The resulting shout-whisper cut through an unexpected lull in the party banter:

“Get him to try it up the arse – it’s GREAT!”

To which, several elderly ladies nodded sagely. “It is indeed” they reminisced “It is indeed” while the rest of us cascaded into a fit of uncontrollable laughter.

Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewind!

Aug 8, 2008 by John    7 Comments    Posted under: videos

This is the best thing on youtube. I’ve given it 5 rewinds in a row.

Big up my selectah!

Eastern Promise. (DVD)

Aug 8, 2008 by John    7 Comments    Posted under: films

Eastern promises is a Big bucket of steaming pish from David Kronenburg. I thought Naomi Watts would have known better – but then she doesn’t come off looking too bad working her way around a terrible script as a midwife who pockets the diary of a young Russian girl that dies giving birth. However, Vincent Cassel ( Vinz from La Haine) and Viggo Mortensen (Beardy guy from lord of the rings) are both cast as a couple of Russian Mafia clowns. They’re not supposed to be clowns but their characters are so clichéd and forced that’s it’s utter cringe. Why couldn’t they have just got some decent but unknown Russian actors?

The relationship between themselves and the old mafia boss is exactly like Pops from the League of Gentlemen (clip below). It was only some of the gorier scenes where Kronenburg shows that he still knows his craft – there was lots of peeking through fingers and listening for the sound of the splurting blood to stop – but he made a balls of the rest. An utter waste of a Friday night where both kids were miraculously fast asleep before dark. Avoid.