It was inevitable really that a movie made by Mel Gibson about the last hours of Jesus’ life would stir up much controversy but I’m not sure that anyone expected it to be so good. This is one of those films that gets so hyped up that you just can’t miss it.
Having watched it last night at my local cinema I am still scratching my head as to how a man notorious for such films as ‘Mad Max’ etc could have been driven to make such a powerful piece. I guess fundamental Catholicism might have a lot to do with it but it doesn’t come across as a fundamentalist piece in any way and those who have complained about it being anti-semitic are just plain wrong. I don’t think you could deny that around the time of Jesus the ruling Jews were not a very nice lot but that is no reflection on them today.
Considering the complete lack of well known actors in this piece its amazing just how well they’ve pulled it off, although I imagine that that was the only way it could be, as my sister noted you could hardly have Keanu Reeves playing Jesus! There is not a single bad performance in the film and the fact they are all speaking in Aramaic just adds to the authenticity and does not detract from it in any way.
As you have already no doubt noticed from the pictures the film spares little detail to the imagination. Watching the torture is grueling enough in itself let alone seeing him nailed to the cross and by the end of it little of his body remains unscathed by the brutality of the Roman soldiers. Although this may horrify some people I do not believe that you could make this film properly without it.
This is certainly not a film to be missed but I do not recommend it for the weak of heart! Maybe Mel Gibson is trying to appease himself in some bizzare way but at the end of the day why should we care?
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This week has been pretty dull and nothing of note has really happened unless you count getting a hair cut and ordering a new pair of glasses perhaps!
Last night I watched another rather strange Japanese film - ‘Tokyo Eyes’. It revolves around a man who shoots at people (without killing them) who the police are trying to track, but the young sister of a detective finds that he’s not the mad vigilante portrayed in the newspapers. Nevertheless he still seemed pretty psychotic to me!
The plot transcends the fact that he kills people and is more a look into “Techno-culture” and how he wants to change. Somehow the film makers have managed to make the concrete jungle of the urban jungle strangely beautiful. Perhaps it is more a commentary about being lost in that chaotic world, emotionless and gray as concrete, drifting through our life. Sometimes we may see the beauty if only in a subtle way.
Some of the acting is a little off but it avoids being pretentious and the cameo by Tekeshi Kitano was pretty cool. Someone on IMDB summed it up pretty well - “This is not a thriller, it’s a Tokyo life slices showing… with French eyes. It’s amazing, sensual and incredibly modern.”
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Saw this picture on the web today and thought it was probably a perfect example of the American ethos - where else could you find donuts, a gun shop and a day care center all under one roof!?
A bit of site news - I’m going home for the easter holidays pretty soon and will be taking the server with me so there’ll be a short period of downtime while its dragged from one end of the country to the other!
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Today was the infamous SEG (Software Engineering Groups) Trade Fair where the 17 different groups tout the fruits of their labors, often with a little (or sometimes a lot) of bribery! All visitors to the fair were give three voting tokens which they could give to the group(s) which they liked the most, whatever the motivation for that may be. Out group (SEG 13) ended up with 98 votes which although wasn’t enough to win the prize for the most number of votes we still walked off with the “Professional Photographers Prize” which was judged by a professional photographer (bet you never guessed that!). Hopefully a good indicator of things to come as there’s still the IBM and BT prizes to be awarded next term. I you want to have a look at the system we developed click here.
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This week has not been particularly good for RandomWire - on Tuesday Apache mysteriously died at around 5pm and no amount of fiddling around could get it to work properly again, even after multiple reinstalls. On closer inspection I noticed some suspicious activity in the ftp access logs and it appears someone may have exploited the ProFTP daemon and had a little *fun* with my system - that will teach me for not checking the security advisories more often! Luckily little damage was done and I was able to get the server back up to a running state in just under two hours - thank goodness for backups! Currently all non-critical services are blocked remotely and will be so until I’ve had time to check everything is properly secured.
On a more pleasant note, the implementation phase of SEG is just about over. After some hassle with RGB > CMYK conversion I’ve printed off the poster for the trade fair next week which should be fun. Take a look at the finished poster here. I’m about ready to collapse with tiredness now so I think some sleep is in order!
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