Last night we watched (after 40 minutes of advertising) ‘American Gangster’ at the Odeon cinema here in Edinburgh. I think Odeon’s marketing people have what Larry David would no doubt refer to as Fantical/Fruadulent confusion (see: Shy/Asshole confusion). Look- if hollywood blockbusters and Odeon cinemas are not making any money it doesn’t mean they are allowed to compensate with the revenues from more than half an hour of ads targeted at an audience who will shoosh each other for talking loudly (Over Ads!!!!!). If Hollywood want to save a buck, they should do their bit and stop wasting money on tat like ‘American Gangster’ a well shot and well dressed movie uncontaminated by any acting, worthy storyline or anything else for that matter. My absolute lack of interest in the plot made me as irritable as a damp two year old. I’ve never rearranged myself so many times in a theatre.
If Odeon shut down a few of their cinemaplexes they could cut down on the number of ads they show- perhaps even hire some people to choose a broad range of films you won’t see anywhere else, they could give me £5000 or £50,000 and I’ll let them stick their logo on the front of my script, on the intro, on the dvd, i’ll tattoo “fanatical about film” on my forehead –and they’ll be no confusion this time. Odeon are frauds, they tell us about the “cinema experience” (read: half an hour of ads and a soundtrack that dips every 10 minutes) and warn us of the poor quality downloads some evil-dooer will try and sell us on the street corner. They act as if they are an institution, the truth being Odeon cinemas are the Wallmart supermarket chain of freezedried entertainment.
Ironically I had downloaded American Gangster already- If I had taken the time to skip through the video I could have saved myself the time and effort. Well, it wasn’t my choice last night.
A real apology now. I’m sorry, I really am… about the complete lack of ‘Meta Comment’ in the last few months. This ‘blog’ has foundered on the shores of aesthetics, parody and nothing else… I understand the ‘content’ has suffered.
This site should be a personal account of things going on around me, an archive of funny little nuggets of daily life and the odd and occasionally splendid people I encounter. If this page had any mantra it would be something along the lines of ‘you should have been there’.
From an early-days defender of Web 2.0 I do believe everyone should be free to publish as much self-obsessed rubbish as they like; I also love criticism and I do wish (in line with Web 2.0’s ‘community’ spirit) there was a little more debate in the comments here.
What more is there to say: must try better. I’m not going to pander- just sayin’! Maybe I keep my best side in the notebook. Perhaps the keyboard created this deft shrine to frivolous comment.
We only saw one lake in reality… not counting the beauties I spotted from the plane. Lake Como is an hour’s train journey North of Milan, where me and Bill spent a few days earlier this month taking it easy wandering around and pointing at nothing in particular, jumping off the train at Como the first impression is of a gorgeous built-apon, fairly ancient gem of an Italian hillside town. Yet the town is sprawling– from what we saw it does extend a great deal- wraps its cobbled streets and meandering paths around a lake, zig-zagedly up a hillside and across the other side (I’m talking of Brunate and the other villages that share Lake Como). Its colours are Gold and Amber and on a warm Autumn day it was like an Italian Tourist Board dream. Stepping off the train from Milan at 12 noon the bells of all the nearby churche bells began to rang, a grand Duomo poked out from behind a large pillared hall, around another corner an ancient and decrepit church tower, there’s a Funicular railway up into the hills and a ferry service over to the outlying parts of town- Como is a dream. Read On »
Surreal: hearing through the wall your neighbour singing billy joel’s ‘where’s the orchestra’…quite lovely very loud.
Where’s the orchestra?
Wasn’t this supposed to be a musical?
Here I am in the balcony
How the hell could I have missed the overture?
I like the scenery
Even though I have absolutely no
Idea at all
What is being said
Despite the dialogue
There’s the leading man
The movie star who never faced an audience…
– Billy Joel
If you have a brand-spanking new iPhone in the UK (purchased from O2 or Apple) it will run on Firmware version: 1.1.2. You can’t unlock this right now, although a ‘jailbreaking’ application exists for 3rd Party Apps. But that’s not a problem; there is a way you can downgrade your phone to an older firmware- version 1.1.1, and then you can unlock it.
First follow this guide: Downgrade 1.1.2 firmware. To remove 1.1.2 from your iPhone- the downgrade takes you to 1.1.1 Firmware which is super hackable, I’ve written a post about it: here.
If you’re in need of some help, gimmie a buzz (leave a comment). If you live in Edinburgh, for a fee, I’ll do it for you ;-)
Personally, I’d leave it. The unlocking and downgrading of 1.1.2 is days away from being perfected and safe… today, as it stands, the whole thing is a bit hit-or-miss… for me that’s part of the thrill, its a wee bit like old school hacking.
Update: This is the most popular post on the site, in reality the most useful thing I can say is follow this link. Its not an easy process- but there ya go. ModMyiFone.com is the best resource for all things iPhone.
