My first proper holiday - in the sense that I’m not going somewhere new and possibly exciting, I’m just going to take it easy and relax - is about to begin! With a 20 hour flight ;_; Man, Australia really is a ridiculously long way away from the rest of the world/action. I’ll be in Melbourne from the morning of 3rd Sept to the evening of the 5th; all you people in Melbourne better have time for me some time in those 3 days because I’m coming a long way, dammit, and I don’t want to spend 3 days doing bugger all in Melbourne. I have better places to do bugger all. ...

Lord of War Nicholas Cage plays the good-bad-guy as an arms dealer. And, um, that seems to be about it. Ok, so maybe that’s underplaying it a little, but this is fundamentally a bio-pic of a guy that doesn’t really exist (except for the fact that he’s a little like this guy). Cage is working with a story that’s been cobbled together, and bits of this film certainly feel like that. ...

I have a theory as to why it was the English, and the Europeans more generally, who came to dominate the world, instead of say some racial group from the tropics, say. Something set these guys apart - something made them go out to other places and take over, something made them the inventive people who worked so hard. The reason? Cold. Miserable, wet, windy, cold weather you wouldn’t want to hang around in too long. Unfortunately enough for these people, that’s where they were destined to spend their whole lives if they didn’t go about changing things. So I say to you, an accident of geography and meteorology is more responsible for the European domination than anything else. ...

Garden State: Totally do not get what the fuss was about. I think I fell asleep halfway through. ★★☆ The Last King of Scotland: somewhat like Blood Daimond, a struggle to get through purely because of the visceral depth of human drama on display - Africa really is a place that gets to you. Excellently acted, but surprisingly left me with little emotional impact. ★★★☆ Domino: Slick and well-paced, if a tad predictable, and the cinematography is so over the top you just want the juttering camera work to slow down and be normal for a bit. Keira kicks ass but has her default expression set to “angst”.★★★ ...

A quick lesson in elementary economic theory, as it relates to the recent market instability: Gittins succinctly clears up what the central banks have been doing recently, which sounded an awful lot like they were throwing good money after bad.