A Return To Normalty

Except Not Really
Because that would be boring*!  
     However, after yesterday's bagpipe-centred excesses, I think it's perhaps time to rein it in and be sensible, because only then can we SPOONS!! - the battle cry of freedom!
     Ah, who am I kidding.  Your humble scribe finds reality and logic to be unpleasantly restrictive bedfellows.
     For example, take that song of pop by Donovan that ends "You might as well try and catch the wind."
     EXCUSE ME!   Oh, here's another songster going on about wind, except this Robert Zimmer seems a little better informed - "The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind."  Your man Donovan may be able to craft a song of pop, but he's got absolutely NO idea about kinetic energy, meteorology or hydrodynamics.
     Observe, if you will, the windmill.  Art?

A mill of the wind

     Designed - and you're probably streets ahead of me here - designed to CATCH THE WIND!!**  This is how the canny and patient Dutch pumped away the North Sea.  Oh, and here's Blue Oyster Cult coming to jump on the wagon of band with their "Divine Wind", typically brash South Canadians, I think we can counter that with some SPOONS!
     Ambrose Bierce is 174***.

Well, that was an exciting little interlude.  The internet died.  Then my PC died.  I return to typing a good 27 minutes later, or perhaps that should be "bad".  GRRRRRR!

"Guadalcanal Diary"
The film, that is, not the book.  Looking at the Internet Movie Firearms Database, not to mention the IMDB "Goofs" page for this film, one has to say some harsh criticism is levelled.  Principally at the inaccurate depiction of Japanese weapons.

Shocking!  An M1928 Thompson - on a pedestal mount!!**

     Now, Conrad has the moral stability of a weathercock in a waterspout, and only recently was banging on about historical inaccuracy in "Battle of the Bulge", so why is he about to offer special pleading for GC?
     Well, dates for one thing.  The battle for Guadalcanal ended in late 1942 and here is GC being made in 1943.  In other words, right in the middle of the war against Japan.  In other words, the film makers do not have access to stocks of captured Japanese weapons and have to make do with American stand-ins.  Which are only on-screen briefly and which probably didn't bother anyone until the Eighties and video players with a "Pause" function.
     So, cut GC some slack!

Appalling!  A Lewis gun in masquerade!!**

"Hardcore Henry"
I ain't going to apologise for banging on about films with a whole lot of bang in them, because you know me - a big fan of BANG!  
     HH is an absolutely bonkers Point Of View action film, which I have been watching with the commentary track, Sharlto Copley and Ilya Nashuller being the commentators.  Sharlto rightly points out "This isn't a film you would rush to show your parents!" except if Darling Daughter had shown me this I'd have been highly appreciative.  I wonder - would she be worried if I'd shown it to her?  Note to Social Services: she is 21.
     Anyway, watching it 3rd time round gave me time to pay attention to the soundtrack and I heard a few tracks I liked.  However, could I read them in the end credits?  NO!  No, I could not, because that would have required a scanning electron microscope, so small was the print.
     So, I am going to either have to buy the soundtrack - the expenditure of golden guineas always a source of sorrow to your modest artisan - OR go through the tracks one by one on IMDB and tap these into Youtube -
     - which, come to think of it, is a really fun way to pass the afternoon.

Not easy to lift vertically to a DVD player screen

Give That Man A Medal
Mark Kermode, as a fan of The Comsat Angels, your humble scribe's most favouritest band in the world ever even above Pink Floyd and Sigur Ros which is saying a lot, already has a Get Out Of Mind-Control Camp Card for that reason.  He can now have a minor portfolio as Protected Film Critic for this reason:

FORBIDDEN PLANET!!**

     One of your talented typists most favourite films evah, in the history of the world.  Ha!  Take that, Tom!

And we have just hit count, thankfully - an hour ago I thought I'd only end up posting this a few seconds before midnight.  Tot siens!



*  And yes I did deliberately mis-spell "Normality"
**  Two exclamation marks is going it a bit, but I have a point to make
*** I bet you're pining for bagpipes NOW, eh?