bucketFountain

Fog of War is a fascinating insight into the life and times of Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defence in the Kennedy/Johnson era. I believe that it won best doco at the Oscars. Rob’s an interesting chap – charismatic, cogent, and yet he seems to carry the weight of a considerable guilt. He sounds important warnings for the US government of today, and his insight should be urgently heeded.

McNamara recited a quote from TS Elliot that struck me:
“We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time” – and that is where he feels he is now. If there were more people in positions of power that had learnt from their mistakes (and what they’d done right) would the world be a better place? I think that the answer is obvious.

Quite a strange website – the Southpark Robert McNamara figure at the start is completely out of sync with the film – it is disrespectful. But, the teachers guide looks superb.

Recent Movies:

City of God – fantastic film – extremely vibrant, shocking, watchable.

The Barbarian Invasions – The first Denys Arcand film I’ve seen. It’s a thoughtful take on globalisation, death and change – moving and perceptive but it didn’t really ring my bell. It has prompted me to look out for Jesus of Montreal.

Lost in La Mancha – great doco about Terry Gillaim’s (Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Fisher King, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas among others) attempt to make a film about Don Quixote. Everything goes wrong, a great insight into certain facets of how a picture is made.

Belleville Rendezvous – a creepy animated feature in French. Beautifully drawn, but, well, kinda creepy.

Can’t believe that I forgot to write about Gus Van Sant’s amazing film Elephant . Controversial and shocking – get thee to a movie theatre and see it!

Oh, and web geeks check out the web site source – ooh lovely CSS all the way – a product of Dreamweaver MX 2004 I suspect.

It’s true – Skype works . I spoke to my brother in Aus and the line was crystal clear – no issues at all. I recommend it for free calls to other skype users. No hassle to install, and after running a scan with Ad-aware I found no nasties related to skype, although I have picked up the welchia worm. AVG is removing that now…. no it’s not – Ad-aware will have to do it.

Skype – free internet calls that work? With no spyware? You’re kidding me right? My bro Luke gave me the tip off about this software so I’m gonna get a headset and find out if it really works. Presently it’s in beta and is for Windows only.

I also discovered an online store that I liked called eBuyer

On Thursday Tash saw an ad in the Guardian’s entertainment guide that a documentary course was being held that weekend. We signed up because we saw that the remarkable Sorious Samura was one of the guest speakers. The course was hosted by Ron McCullagh of Insight News . It covered the basics of the technical side of doco making – the camera, filming techniques, sound, lighting, setting up an interview and the like.

A camera ‘move’, for instance following a moving object or tilting the camera the length of a stationary object are much harder than you would think.

The course was well worth it. I’m even thinking about getting a cheap camera or locating an outfit that hires them out.

who’re the wiseguys that found this site by searching for:

line drawings of jesus
life of david gale sucked
jamie oliver fat tongued
what exactly happened in david lynch s mulholland drive
notes buddy spyware
elephant man lisboa (yep – other people have seen him)
underpopulated country new zealand
british nanny pictures (okaaaaay….)

As we all know, when you download freeware it usually comes with added nasties. I have installed Ad-aware 6.1 from Lavasoft – recommended by yours truly for removing unpleasant spyware from your treasured ‘puter. Best of all, it’s free (and doesn’t come with spyware)!

Thought I had a googlewhack but it turns out that it only counts if you use two words.