I’m not a huge fan of horror films but sometimes I like a mindless scare (just to make sure that the adrenalin still kicks in when required!) now and again. Last year saw a couple of 1970s classics remade in what you might call a more modern style, namely ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre‘ and ‘Dawn of the Dead‘. Both original films have cult followings but as would be expected neither of the new incarnations are quite as good as their forebears but are still very watchable (if you like that sort of thing!). I watched them last week and below I’ve given them a quick review:
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
“Driving through the backwoods of Texas, five youths pick up a traumatized hitchhiker, who shoots herself in their van. Shaken by the suicide, the group seeks help from the locals, but their situation becomes even more surreal when they knock on the door of a remote homestead. It’s quickly apparent the residents are a family of inbred psychopaths, and the unlucky youths suddenly find themselves running for their lives. In hot pursuit is a disfigured, chainsaw-wielding cannibal known as Leatherface…
I found the 1974 original almost too much to watch but this one isn’t so bad yet still pretty scary. The story has been altered and changed in a few minor ways, mostly to try and give more of a plot, but in it’s haste to try and be vaguely intelligent it fails. The original was chilling, this is just a slasher. (5/10)
Dawn of the Dead
“A nurse, named Anna, is caught in the middle of a world-wide chaos as flesh-eating zombies begin rising up and taking over the world and attacking the living. She escapes into the streets and is rescued by a police officer, named Kenneth. Together they find shelter in a mall along with a group of other survivors. For a while everything is ok, but pretty soon, they start running out of food, the power goes out, and the dead keep finding ways to break through their defenses. Realizing they’re sitting ducks, they make a plan to head for an island by using two armored mall shuttle buses to get across the sea of zombies…”
This one does a lot better that the previous. Unfortunately character development is poor and the story predictable but if you can get passed that it’s actually quite a good zombie film. The zombies themselves are strikingly similar to those in ‘Shaun of the Dead‘ and ‘28 Days Later‘, so much so that you wonder if there’s a rent-a-zombie extras company out there somewhere! (7/10)
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Saw a link to this article on kottke.org and just had to forward it on:
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea’s Dear Leader Kim Jong-il never forgets a phone number, a cadre’s career or a line of computer code.
According to an article posted on Tuesday on a Web site run by North Korea, Kim wakes up early every day for intensive memory training where he sits down and commits to his keen mind items such as the phone numbers of workers in his Stalinist state.
“I remember all computer codes and telephones that workers are using now,” Kim was quoted as saying on the Web site “Uri-Min-jok-kiri“, or “Among our People.” …
North Korean propaganda is ripe with the amazing achievements of its Dear Leader. The highly controlled state also closely monitors its citizens to make sure they do not speak out against Kim or challenge his rule.
Kim pilots jet fighters, pens operas, produces movies and accomplished a feat unmatched in the annals of professional golf by shooting 11 holes-in-one on the first round he ever played. …
It’s good to know that the aging dictator of one of the last and most secretive dictatorial states in world is spending his time wisely by memorising the phone numbers of his comrades! The people who come up with the sort of stuff must either be amazingly dedicated to the ’cause’ or are having a huge laugh at the expense of the population who have to take all this in whilst living in a state of perpetual starvation.
In this crazy world wonders never cease to amaze me!
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You may remember a few months ago I highlighted some cool information visualisations, many of which tapped into the Flickr API to do some cool things with photos etc. Since then a fair few more have appeared so I thought I might post a few screenshots and links here of the best:
Tagged Colors
“This application represents the relationship between words and colors using all the images from the Color Fields group in Flickr. Key factors are the homogeneity between the colors of all the images registered to the tag, the attributes of the average of these colors and of course the popularity of the tag.”
Flickr Colr Pickr
“Using images from the Color Fields group on Flickr, Jim has created a beautiful and efficient Experimental Color Picker. Just click on a color, use the slider to adjust lightness and darkness, and it will show you photos with that color.”
Flickr Postcard Browser
“This application lets you browse Flickr’s huge image database, by searching for tags (keywords). Flickr Postcard Browser uses the real world metaphor of a set of postcards shuffled onto a surface.”
It really is fascinating (to me anyway!) to see all the creative and ingenious ways in which people are utilising the data contained within such databases. Check out the previous post for more and, as ever, if you know of any other cools ones - let me know!
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(c) Keith Meyers/The New York Times
Whilst observers held their breath as the space shuttle Discovery blasted into space last week hundreds of scientists at NASA monitored every conceivable aspect of the take off after the Columbia accident which took the lives of all seven crew members.
To assist in this analysis NASA has assembled a database containing information about more than 15,000 recorded debris hits from shuttle flights since 1983 (see graphic below). Unfortunately there are no clear-cut answers to the problem and indeed the fragility of the craft is still a matter of speculation.
(c) Columbia Accident Investigation Report, NASA
As to most people space, and what we may find out there, fascinates me but it seems such a shame that exploring the final frontier may be put on hold for a significant amount of time because the aging shuttle craft are no longer up to the job. Right now the idea of humans landing on the Moon, let along Mars, any time soon seems pretty laughable.
Update: (02/08) The BBC are reporting that Discovery needs emergency repairs - ceramic strips have been spotted sticking out of the heastshield tiles of the shuttle, and NASA are worried they could cause overheating on re-entry. A spacewalk will be carried out to remove the offending material.
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