Like most fleshbags, I enjoy moving pictures. Like most people that have at least one Y chromozome, I enjoy war movies. Like most commie pinko pacifist iconoclyastic nazis, I seem to have a place in my heart for anti-war movies.

Before the neo-cons staple a Crescent Moon on my sleeve, I should mention I did enjoy Green Berets starring John Wayne. The Green Berets is the one (1) exception to the parade of anti-war Vietnam films. It was filmed in 1968, and cements a timestamp in cinima that echoed our national patriotic consciousness. Maybe thats why AMC plays this movie every frickin day.

Almost any movie of the WW2 genre is good in my book except for the horribly inaccurate "Battle of the Bulge"; They used circa 1960 spanish heavy tanks for Shermans for Marduk's sake - and there was no John Wayne.

Gallipoli was the boiling point of the failed Dardinelles campaign. The Australlians were sent amphibiously to distract the Turks, allowing the British army to land. Success would pave a shortcut to Istanbul.

The film is centered around two Australlian track stars, one Archy Hamilton (Mark Lee), and two, Frank Dunne (played by Mel Gibson). It follows them from thier walkabout across western australlia, thier parallel track careers, thier enlistment in the Australlian army, to the last quarter of the movie: Gallipoli.

The majority of the film is spent on character development. That focuses on the friendship of the two all-star track runners. The one wrench in the gear of thier comradere is the juxiposition of Frank, a pacifist, and Archy, a patriot. Mel grudgingly trades his plowsheers for a sword because his friend is resolute in his enlistment.

If you want a well written review, I suggest turning to the Internet Movie Database. If you're looking for a poorly-spelt spoiler, read on.

In Gallipoli, Frank becomes a messenger when the phonelines between the frontline and command post are shelled by the turks. Typical of WW1 British tactics, they shell the Turkish position, then they send infantry to capture thier trenches. Due to a miscalculation, the shelling stops two minutes early, allowing the turks to reposition thier machineguns. The British commander refuses to continue the shelling, forcing the infantry to drive headfirst into the Turkish machineguns. Wave after wave of Aussies are cut down. The last wave contains Mel's best friend. They find it rediculous to continue, so Mel steps over the commander, and runs to the command post to inform the General it's ludicris. He agrees. But by the time he makes it back to the front lines, the last wave of Australlian light horses are thrown into no-mans land. It ends with dude sprinting like a leapord into the machine guns. This is one-if not the only film that challanges my masucline ability to stifle tears.

The director Peter Weir, was a genius. He wanted to make a movie about the Australlian involvement in WW1, but most movies in this motif have a tendancy to depersonalize the characters. The suspect is probably the WW1 causualty rates; [The Battle of the Somme -> one million causalties]. He based the movie on two famous Australlian track runners, and spent close to the entirety of the film on character development. It was a very poetic and resounding approach, to examine that thousands of Australlians with rich, complex lives were snuffed out in seconds is almost unbearable. I also am suspicious that his intention was to fool the viewer into believing the ending would be heroic and glorious. He couldn't fool me, because this was a war where the only heroism was face-down in no-man's land and the only glory was nervously shaking in artillery batteries.

This movie has great signifigance to me. As a former track runner, I can identify with the traits that define the characters. My father was an Australlian citizen for three years. He carried his Aussie influence back home where I'm sure I've inherited trace amounts.

(1 commmmment) ( hide comment ) add a commmment nevermind

Its never too late to turn this blog into a music review site, and its also never too late to review an album released two years ago. It takes me back to the short lived period when I managed Japan Four. I wrote Industrial Record Reviews, all Three, KMFDM - WW3; Rammstein - Reise Reise, Skinny Puppy - The Greateer Wrong of the Right. I really wish i saved them. I wrote the KMDFM review at 5:00 AM, drunk on Shmirnoff Vodka in an attempt to cure jetlag-induced insomnia and breakup-induced depression when I got back from LA to ruin another relationship with a girl. It was a damn good review.

One album i've been repeatedly listening to for six months is the latest And One album, Agressor. And One's sound is an incredibly unique form of synth-pop sensibility within a dark EBM shroud. They have a very quirky, kraftwerk-esque approach to thier synthesizer voices that is just a hairs-length from corniness of 80's synthpop. They manage to avoid that with dramatic chorus harmonics, and a vocalist whose voice is best described as metallic. For those who have heard thier most well known tracks Panzermensch and Deustchmaschine (IST), this album, Agressor, avoids their previously amelodic, meticulous and surgical approach, best described as a manifestation of German engineering, and goes for a poppier and more dynamic range of sound without sacrificing thier ideosyncrinous signature.

I have chosen three tracks from this album to review, Spriecherbar, Krieger and Schwarz.

Schwarz starts unassuming enough. Punchy baseline, a disconnected melody that will convince the listener, that he threw in some Kraftwerk. After the initial vocals, the melody and baseline begin to harmonize, and then its busts into its first chorus, and the song changes dramatically. Once the chorus ends, and the song bridges back to its body, the song picks up the Egyptian Pentatonic mode. Upon listening, my buddy, dav, asked me "Is this what field marshall Rommel would jam out to?" All the while, it maintains a vintage electronic sound.

Kreiger starts with an uptempo arpeggio. It still fascinates me that it is possible to layer vocals over such a static beat. As the song builds, it takes on a theme analougus to James Bond.

Spriecherbar is one of the few downtempo songs in the tracklist. Perhaps this is best described as a ballad.

Anyway, this is a crummy review. I will revise it tommorrow, but its late. God night

( hide comments ) add a commmment nevermind

The official 1.0 build for Webkit was scheduled for Friday night, until Saturday morning when I realized I still had a whole slough of tasks.

The first of two of the most arduous endevours were optimizing the User Privilages for each Page to allow Administrators to manage each and every group's privilages. Originally, it used a UNIX approach, User - User's Group - Public. External groups previously belong to Public. Now external groups have thier own set of permissions. I had to restructure the User Permissions Class, which sure was fun.

Second, I had to modify our WYSIWYG to manage files remotely.

Our clients administrate thier site remotely at our Breadstream Admin. Of course, I soon realized it had some shortfalls. One of the main reasons was that our WYSIWYG was never intended to work remotely. I got to spend the latter part of this evening optimizing it. I was actually quite pleased with the structure of the developer's code. I'll send him a nice christmas present.

Anyway, I finally took care of some critical tasks. The former is for complex user groups, we're talking 5-20 admin's on one site here! (Which just happens to be one of our first clients, heh) The latter was imperative, if it was not successful, we might as well throw away our system.

Now some lovely footage of panzerfausts

In other news, i've come to discover that my mom's digital camera sucks ass. I was totally bent on taking some shots of my model Wespe and Sd. Kfz. 222 armored car, but the pictures came out so terrible that I cannot. Oh well.

( hide comments ) add a commmment nevermind

To celebrate new years, I uploaded the new build of Weblab to breadstream.com, however there have been ongoing issues with the server. Currently file transferring in FTP is, to put it bluntly, all messed up. However, It is a step up from the last issue. That issue was not being able to create a new account.

Of course, creating an account came with a cost. In an attempt to reset the IP address of trilutheran.org, (read: deleting the account, and making a new one from scratch) I accidentally deleted the account for Breadstream.com.

So now I created an account, but because I cant FTP to upload all of the files and the Weblab administration engine, I'm in a pretty bad mood.

Good news though: Weblab is otherwise rock solid and our first series of clients will appreciate the time and effort we applied in making it.

( hide comments ) add a commmment nevermind