Thursday, July 31, 2008

Braveheart and a crazy news day

Following on from this historian's review of Braveheart I read yesterday I was inspired to watch Bravehart again. Yes I know it's a really daft movie, even before I read the article I was very aware that's it's not remotely historically accurate but it's really good fun!
I had forgotten how bloody it is though - it revels in it's violence. Yet somehow it still looks like a Monty Python movie! I kept expecting cries of Ni! to go up. Good stuff.
And I guess as, y'know, this is me, I should point out the WiR scene - William's wife getting killed purely to give him motivation for the rest if the film. That might have happened. But it didn't need to be framed so.

Aside from that, today and the last few days have been crazy for news.

Jill Dando trial The first article up described him in the sub header as a local nutter. Methinks The Guardian suspects he's guilty.
Water on Mars! And earlier in the week lake found on Saturn moon.
Man gets beheaded on bus trip. What. the. fuck.
Britain's prehistoric rock art Cool stuff
Haitian's making and selling mud cakes to feed starving populace Fuck, that's incredibly wrong.

Did people see the new Black Canary as Barbie controversy recently seen on the internets? The story was run by The Sun newspaper, which, if you live in the UK and know this paper you will know to take what they say with a large pinch of salt. They are a tabloid. They lie. They will fabricate and exaggerate to produce an overly simplistic sensational story. They certainly won't do considered research into the character or present an unbiased viewpoint.
But if you don't know the newspaper (actually I am loath to call it a newspaper), you may not realise this.
Anyway what struck me about this was how it was picked it up by many American blogs and how people seemed to think that this reaction, both from The Sun and the religious group quoted, was representative of attitudes generally in Britain. Because we are a pretty diverse nation and we don't all think the same way. I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this, I don't think I have a further point. So. We're all individuals (I'm not) and we're not a hive mind. Glad we got that sorted out.

Oh yeah. People compared Black Canary Barbie to Catwoman Barbie. I really like Catwoman Barbie. I'm obviously wrong in the head. I won't buy it though. I'm holding out for the Amazonia Wonder Woman. Isn't she good?!

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