Lord of War

I went to see a late showing of Lord of War last night and as it's the first new movie I've seen at the cinema in a while I thought I'd review it quickly.
The basic idea is Nicholas Cage plays Uri, an arms merchant/smuggler who makes his fortune selling arms to warring African and eastern European warzones in the 80's and 90's. He's damned good at it and manages to keep his entire family in the dark about the illegality of his business.
For a change, this is a Hollywood movie about guns/tanks/gunships that actually doesn't go too far. Sure there are a few scenes that are just artistic license, but for the most part the action is very believable and in some parts horrifying as the end credits claim that it is based on real events, though it does not go so far as to tell you how much has been changed from the truth.
Something I did like was, that while it was a serious theme, there was a bit of humour in it as well. No, not all out slap-stick, but character traits that got the odd chuckle from the scarcely populated cinema. One scene for this was when Uri leaves his cargo plain in the middle of nowhere in Africa. The motion is speeded up as the locals pick the plane apart for every nut, bolt and metal sheet. Resembling something from the Discovery Channel where insects pick apart a carcass. In 24 hours Uri is left with the skeleton of a large cargo plane with some local men rolling the last of the giant wheels down the road.
The message from the film is overwhelmingly about how the big nations are just as to blame for the death of a child in Africa from an AK47 than the small-to-big-time arms runners.

I do recommend this film as a decent watch and well worth the time and money spent going to a cinema.

Right, I'm off to get lunch. I really need to post more often, I'll try harder in future.

Remembrance Sunday

"They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old;

Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn,

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them."

WE WILL REMEMBER THEM.

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Be There

So after 6-7 weeks after we ordered it, our BeBox arrived allowing us to connect to the internet at up to 24meg. Well almost. We are all getting different speeds. I'm getting a good connection of a few megabytes per second, Charlie downstairs is getting barely above dial-up. So our network will need tweeking and maybe the service is just too new to get the full 24meg yet. However we do have the internet now and I can finally download the 160 emails that have been clogging up my college email server, not to mention updating OSX and other apps.
The ultimate winner has to be that we don't have to go into college to use the internet for free, which is a big bonus. I'm not a fan of a 30 minute walk just to check my email.