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Live Whacking Permalink Archive
click "Live Whacking" button for the latest entries

12 November 2003

Lawrence of Arabia

Last night I finally saw the 1962 epic, on a 6-ft screen in widescreen DVD format. I'd seen maybe 30 mins of snippets of this film over the years in crappy pan-n-scan on TV, so it was an experience to witness the real deal.

I'm not a huge fan of "classic" movies, especially "epics". Cecil B. DeMille's films are an excellent cure for insomnia, and Gone With The Wind makes root canal surgery seem like fun, so I wasn't really sure what to expect from Lawrence.

All in all, I was very impressed. Firstly, it's a stunning looking movie, ranking alongside Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line for achingly beautiful photography. Second, a spare yet clever screenplay without the wooden spoon-fed dialogue of so many movies from that era, and which balanced the geopolitical circumstances with the central narrative. Third, the wonderful cast: Alec Guiness, Anothy Quinn, Omar Sharif, Jack Hawkins, Jose Ferrer and the towering central performance of Peter O'Toole.

The film could have used a better editor (it's around 3h45m in length), but has too many great qualities for any fan of cinema too ignore.

Oh, and the musical score is to die for.
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Samizdata praises Holly Valance

Hehehe. God bless Western culture.
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The Dinner Party

John "testicles of steel" Hawkins polled a bunch of right-of-centre bloggers, asking who they would invite to a dinner party. These were my picks:

Friedrich Nietzsche
Jesus
Winston Churchill
Muhammad Ali
Hunter S. Thompson
Hannibal
Mozart
Machiavelli
Umberto Eco
Robert Menzies
PJ O'Rourke
Karl Marx
Fred Dalton Thompson
Gough Whitlam
Daniel Pipes
Carl Sagan
Baruch Spinoza
Sun Tzu
link

Another completely meaningless space-filling poll

This is floating around the Livejournal community at the moment.

Name: Tex
Owner of: Two motorcycles, a big-screen projector & surround-sound system, lots of books, tons of magazines, a lot of black clothing, 2 sets of spectacles and a collection of shotglasses.
Love and relationships: Attached.
Religion: None. But I like to tell people I'm Jewish just to upset the commie scum around the place.
Politics: Libertarian.
M.O.: Eat, ride, drink and be merry.
Computer: Web junkie. Don't play games much.
Camera: Good old $189 Pentax film camera I grabbed in the duty free store minutes before my flight to Japan in '99 was about to leave.
Music: Lotsa things, but don't buy many CDs anymore. 99% of the stuff out there now is garbage.
Star sign: Who pays any attention to that retarded crap?.
Chinese astrological year: Ox, according to the google search I just did.
Undergraduate: Arts (Honours in Sociology)
Master's: N/A
Doctorate: N/A
Flower: Dunno nothing about flowers, but they is pretty.
Instrument: None.
Fruit: Orange.
Dance: Can't.
Knit: No.
Sew: No.
Swear: Lots.
Bake: Never.
Cook: When I cook, it's usually spaghetti, chili con carne, tacos or corn chip casserole.
Family: 2 brothers, 2 sisters, father
Friends: Some good un's.
Childhood pet name: Tropicus.
Books: Lots. Since finding full-time work in '98 I don't read anywhere near as much.
Ambition: Travel, achieve financial security, play a role in the destruction of leftist thought and islamoscum. Own lots of guns.
Sell-out price: Depends on context, but I find money eases a lot of shame.
Flavor: Depends on context.
Tattoos: Bleeurggh.
Piercings: Bleeurggh.
Hair: Not much of it, what remains is kept to a length of a few millimetres.
Eyes: I can never remember (I don't gaze into my own eyes a lot)
Allergies: Have a weird, minor allergy to milk chocolate - can sometimes find breathing difficult after eating it.
Quality of life: Comfortable.
Sense of humor: Odd. The Simpsons and Futurama are funny. Friends is not.
Spice: I dunno.
Other languages: None. Once had a smattering of Indonesian.
Sleep: Don't get enough of it.
Drug: No, I'll take the vodka thanks.
Cleanliness level: I'm a slob, but a clean slob.
Bury me: Whatever is cheapest. I mean, what is it with elaborate tombstones and all that crap?
Lifetime achievements: made a lot of commie scum angry.
Game: Chess
Magazine: Mostly motorbike mags. Finally cancelled my sub to Rolling Stone after realising I couldn't stand it's whiny leftism anymore (the last issue had a feature praising the fearless satire of Ted Rall).
Motto: Shut the fuck up and mind your own business you cunt.
How I feel: awake
What I hear: Christina Aguilera's Fighter. Hey, I like it. Fuck you.
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