Vettel

Red Bull Racing seem to have given Sebastian Vettel the car he has been waiting for. Tomorrow is gonna be extremely interesting. It down to this:

• Who can conserve their tyres best
• Who is fast directly in a heavy car with cold tyres
• Who built the best compromise between low-fuel and high-fuel speed

Mercedes and McLaren (feels funny to separate these two) will be chasing the Ferraris and RBR:s in the end, I reckon. But my money is on Vettel holding it together.

The RB6 Racer

Movie Review - The Hurt Locker

We (me and my superpartner) watched The Hurt Locker, partly because I was really interested in it. I thought I'd like it cause of the way it was filmed and that it felt like a documentary so you didn't have to sit and wait for the storyline to be played out before you. And partly because it won so surprisingly many Oscars.

We both felt it really delivered. It lacked the tedious clichés, it had A-list actors in small roles, it had brilliant actors in lead roles. It had the documentary feel with the hand held cameras without the seasickness of overly-shaky presence-hunting shots (hello Bourne 3). It also didn't bother with a film-school beginning-middle-end structure that "every story needs" according to all film school teachers I've ever met.
It sort of just continued, like you got to hang with the men for a while and then they went on trying to turn Iraq from a dictatorship to a democracy, and you continued with your life.
If you pull it off, it's awesome. And they did. With the direction, cinematography and acting being top notch, they certainly pulled it off.

People I've talked to say that it was a good movie but that it wasn't worth all the Oscars, I say; fuck the Oscars. It's all politics for retarded idiots and inbred ass-holes that only need to pat each other on the back to feel good about making millions of dollars every year to pretend to do stuff. It's the same with Live Aid, Live8, Hope for Haiti or whatever name of the event the Popstars/Actors/models/whatevers lend their names to and take their private jets to this week to feel good about themselves. Enough ranting :)

The problem I have with the Oscars are these:
In 1974 Al Pacino was Michael Corleone in The Godfather II. If you have talked film and roles with friends you have probably ended up talking Al Pacino, and probably The Godfather. So he must have won the Oscar, right? Wrong. So he must have had brilliant opposition then? Yes.
That same year Jack Nicholson did the role of his life as JJ Gittes in Chinatown. So he won then? No, he didn't. Cause the jury in all it's wisdom found that Art Carney was the logical choice for his role in Harry and Tonto (he sits on a train with his cat). I bet you and your mates haven't spent hours taking about that film! The key here is that he was due. He should have had it before so his time was up.

In 1992 Al Pacino was due, because the role he really was worth and Oscar for, went to somebody else who was worth it before, so he got it for Scent of a Woman (where he is blind, charming, drives a Ferrari and shouts everything and that is incidentally way he still shouts every line).

I also loathe the "Oscar" movies. You know those movies that you just know will be nominated even though they weren't especially good or popular. Like Chariots of Fire (students running on the beach to the music of Vangelis) who won the same year Raiders of the Lost Ark was released. May I be so bold as to say that Raiders pretty much changed cinema?
So the Academy can't recognize a truly great movie right before them, and they also lack the skill to recognize a future classic. So pretty much as useless as the UN.

In 1990 Goodfellas was released. That is the movie every director speaks about. It's at place 14 over the best movies ever on IMDB. It's so good that you actually remember it winning the Oscar. But it didn't, cause in 1990 the epic (and when I say "epic" I mean "personal insult to my backside forced to sit here and growing carbuncles to watch this putrid adolescense slush") Dances with Wolves *vomit sounds* won.

At least Pulp Fiction won, that one rewrote the book on how you make movies (and made John Travolta able to buy some new jumbojets he can fly around alone in telling people not to fly).
No wait, it didn't. Which isn't strange because it came out the same year as The Shawshank Redemption which is forever nr1 on IMDB (yeah I think the Dark Knight pushed it down for a couple of days but that's a parenthesis inside a parenthesis). So it lost to a really good opposition, at least. No, it lost to Forrest Gump ("life is like a box of chocolates" smilies and fake ping-pong).

And I must end where my hate started, when Saving Private Ryan lost to Shakespeare in Love.
When Saving Private Ryan was released in 1998 the art of war movies made a giant leap. It got the old veterans cry like school-girls. When Shakespeare in Love won the Oscar I cried like a school-girl because that was the night that I understood that even in fantasy-land, politics is just around the corner.

Stay tuned, tomorrow it's gonna be less angry and more Formula One.
Cheers

Links
http://www.cracked.com/article_18460_5-reasons-oscars-matter-even-less-than-you-thought.html
http://www.imdb.com/

Film Review - Sherlock Holmes

Last night I finally got myself to go and see the new Sherlock Holmes movie by Guy Ritchie. Being a huge Sherlock nerd it was with anticipation and dread I seated myself and I must be honest, I didn't expect to like it.
But I did! It was awesome. Okay, it wasn't the slow costume-drama the Granada series with Jeremy Brett gave us, but let's be honest. Who would have wanted to see a 2 hour version of those episodes, no matter how much you absolutely love it.
I still feel Jeremy Brett did the best portrayal of Holmes ever, and that will never change.

I've read all of the stories, and to be honest they are not Nobel-prize material, and they are pretty short and empty of details. So that leaves lot's of room for interpretation, and this film; Sherlock Holmes,  is Guy Ritchies interpretation of the classic old English superhero.

First of all the set direction and production design was fantastic. You became instantly transported into 19th century London, with it's dirty smelly back alleys and mix of beggars in scruffy clothes and the upperclass with beautiful dresses and suits. We even have a half-built Tower bridge, and the brilliant thing is that I was not once sucked out of the environment due to a bad CGI (hello Alice in Wonderland). I've later read that there was some small mistakes in the background but there was nothing obvious that really bothered you.

Sherlock is played by Robert Downey Jr here and it's a bit of a shocker, isn't it? An American playing the most quintessential of Brits?  Well, it sort of works and it all comes down to this new take on the Holmes character they have chosen. Where Jeremy Brett almost always had every hair in the right place and was clean shaven, Downey Jr is a mess. His place is not even a creative mess, more a mess. But for me, it works!

       Jeremy Brett - A clean cut SH                                     Robert Downey Jr. - A scruffy Holmes

The movie also kept its momentum all the way through, I never once looked at my clock or let my mind wander. And I also thought it kept itself on the right side of silliness, and the homo-erotic tendencies some people found speaks more for themselves. It actually IS possible to make a modern film without making it gay, and gay doesn't make movies automatically good (hello Brokeback Mountain).

I also liked Jude Law as Watson, though the Watson-Holmes relationship was strange and different from what I've used to but totally believable. And the man looks good in a stache, what's up with that? Only Stalin, Kaiser Wilhelm and Magnum ever looked good in a moustache.

There are some plot holes and some mistakes but all in all a pretty sweet movie, and I wouldn't mind a second if there was ever a good script.

Lahar

I was thinking on starting at least one reoccurring theme. And I thought that at Wednesdays I would write about stuff I fear. The plan is to also have one day a week to someone awesome. We'll see...

So we start this Scary Wednesday theme with a the Lahar. You may have heard of it, and you may think it's pretty scary. But the worst kinds of Lahars are nothing short of avalanches from hell!

A Lahar is like a mudflow, and that's not something you wanna find yourself in the path of. I mean even a normal flood can be pretty horrific when it come crashing down on you, and that is just water.
A mudflow packs a considerably harder punch due to what it consists of, like mud (duh), trees, unlucky bystanders, cars or whatever it swallows down the road. Mudslides crashes bridges my tearing their foundations apart by pure pressure, destroys houses and generally screw up everyone's day.

 The bus will probably not arrive today

So a mudflow isn't a picnic, so what if that mudflow consists of pyroclastic material? Yes, pyroclastic, as in volcano! You see, lahars are volcanic mudflows.
They can move up to a 100 kph and it can be more than 1000 degrees C hot and flow more than 300 km. It's made up of molten rock, water, trees, hot ash, boulders 10 meters across and bombs. It actually grows about ten times as it speeds down the mountian and towards your house just with all the debris it picks up.
It's basically incredibly hot cement with the single purpose of killing everything. 

 This is the time of reckoning

  As it hits a river the hot ash heats the water to a steam, which makes the pyroclastic flow move even faster on the superheated steam surface.

So this is one crazy-train from the twilight zone that will incinerate everybone in its path, asphyxiate everybody that dodged it with deadly gasses, crush all the buildings it will ever meet and eventually stop and cover entire cities all with a sort of hard cement that will never be home to life again.
So it's no surprise that Lahars are the most dangerous volcanic hazard there is, more people die of Lahars and Pyroclastic Flows than anything else the volcanoes can throw at you.

Links

YouTube movie of Lahar

Geology.sdsu.edu

Mars Trek

So what are the problems of going to Mars? Well, first of all is distance. When Mars is at it's very closest to Earth, it's still 56 million km away, which is a pretty long trek by any-ones standards. But when it is at it's farthest from earth, it's 400 million km in the distance. So we need to build a pretty good spacecraft, which is what we are doing.

The Orion, built by Lockheed Martin. Designed by Nasa 

to put people back on the moon and onwards to Mars

(Project Constellation) 

The second problem is landing. Mars having twice the gravity of the moon, the spacecraft will be travelling at Mach 27 when it approaches Mars puny atmosphere. Heat Shields will slow it down to somewhere around Mach 2 and then we need some way to slow it down considerably more for a "safe" landing. And even when we solve that problem we're going to land pretty blind anyway, and probably in a big boulder-field with big mean stones just waiting to break a fuselage. So maybe elevators are the solution?

Sticks and stones may break my bones. Photo by Nasa Mars Pathfinder

 

So if we land, what then? Well we need pretty good spacesuits, the UV light passes right through the little remains of atmosphere that Mars still holds and would burn us to crisps if not properly protected, as does some sorts of ionizing radioation. Temperatures as low as -140C has been observed. Still the spacesuits would have to be a lot less cumbersome than those of today are, if the astronauts are to do some work there. 

 

There are of course many other obstacles to over win, so why go? There are some reasons to choose Mars over other planets.

It is relatively close to Earth, it's the most like Earth, it has water ice, it's day (sol) is almost exactly as long as on Earth, it's almost exactly as big as Earth if you remove all oceans and lakes. 

It's also pretty spectacular with the highest mountains and awesome canyons, it's sky is red during the day and turns blue before sunset. So colonization isn't totally impossible, if improbable at the near future. 

Another more important reason is to find the second genesis, if we find life there in any form, it's one of the most important findings mankind has ever done. 

It could also be that it is the first genesis. We may all be martians who long ago, through a meteorite or by some other means, life on earth may come from Mars!

 May be Martian.

 

And on that bombshell, I wish you goodnight. Tomorrow is Wednesday and that is Scary Day here on SaintMagnus.

Sick, tired and hopeless

to paraphrase The Cardigans.
The bitter clutches of the common cold have finally caught me, so I have time to ponder things. Which is probably the most worthwhile thing you can ever do.

This mornings pondering is about Mars, the neighbouring planet. It is said that we are now closer to a manned landing on Mars than we where a manned landing on the Moon in 1961. And we all know that only eight years later Neil Armstrong put his hind-leg on the grey surface.

Mars

This afternoon I will write about some of the problems with going to Mars. It's too early and I'm to sneezy to be negative.

Picture: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Mars Rover Spirit (Jan 16 2010)

And the winner is...

It seems like the Oscars became a little more interesting than first believed, would have been pretty boring if Avatar got all of 'em, right?
So here are the winners:

• Best Picture - The Hurt Locker
• Best Director - Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)
• Best Actor - Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)
• Best Actress - Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side)
• Best Supporting Actor - Chrsitoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)
• Best Supporting Actress - Mo'Nique (Precious)
• Best Original Screenplay - The Hurt Locker
• Best Adapted Screenplay - Precious
• Best Animated Feature - Up
• Best Foreign Language - El Secreto de sus Ojos

So I didn't get the movie right, but I'm happy for Hurt Locker. I did get what I wanted for Director, Actor, Animated and Foreign Language. And I guessed right on Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay and Adapted Screenplay.