Monte Carlo

All hail the spaghetti monster!

This is always a good one after a few beers. Re-make your favourite classic movie - you can change the setting if you like, you need to name which modern actor takes which role and anything else you like. You can also name and shame the worst re-makes... for example Sly Stallone's Get Carter is horrible and everybody involved should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves (you too, Sir Michael Caine). So is Nic Cage's The Wicker Man (winder what his re-make of Bad Lieutenant will be like?). We were talking about the Dirty Dozen and I got stuck. How many cool-as-a-cucumber, macho movie actors like Lee Marvin are there knocking about nowadays? Who would you get to reprise that role? I would take Russell Crowe personally, he has the right physicality and quiet arrogance. Anyhow, I open the floor to the rabble.

Which is a perfectly reasonable argument to make, as long as students are allowed to make the counter-argument too. The Un-American Activities Committee might have been unpleasant and left a nasty taste in the mouth, some of it's adherents might also have been pocket Torquemadas... but. But. Stalin's USSR was the evil empire incarnate, the dictatorship of convenience in WW2. America in the 1950's was wise to fear Soviet activities in the USA. And guess what? Nobody was put in prison camps. There was no American gulag. Some liberals had their glittering media careers screwed for a couple of years. Diddums.

Ha ha ha I love Stumbleupon. Some dude made a nuka-cola machine... linkie.

Thanks for all the replies which, as usual, have been very helpful to my decision-making. If I wanted a single-player action shooter, then, what would you guys suggest. I liked Crysis and Farcry... any others than would suit. I like MP / online but can't afford the time investment.

Ross, thanks for answering the question nobody asked

Guys, I'm a bit jealous of all this shooter-action. My question is this: On the PC what are your views on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and BF2: Bad Company? Will primarily play the single-player game but might try some online / co-op. Which one do you think is better, and why? Many thanks in advance, MC

No it isn't. Honestly.

Hopefully England will be knocked out early and the overpaid cretins can go home to count their Bentleys and mansions. Then I'll be able to go down the pub without being bothered by drunk, tattooed halfwits watching it on the telly.

I've never bought into the idea that an ex-military man is a better defence secretary than an able politician and administrator. The aforementioned John Reid, for example, was very popular at the MoD and clearly grasped the brief. That he couldn't squeeze an extra penny from Broon is another matter. Ashdown was a middle-ranking special forces officer in the 1960's. I have a great deal of respect for his service, but fail to see how this immediately makes him a better candidate than a solid, experienced centre-right professional like Liam Fox. Fox will fight the armed services' corner, maybe more than Ashdown. Ashdown has become too self-important and terribly establishment. I don't rate him as highly as others, and his historic animus to the tories isn't consistent with a role in a coalition imo.

Stuff I'm listening to this week: It's Not Me its You - As a grumpy middle-aged man I'm not meant to like Lily Allen but this little collection of bitchy, polished, catchy pop is quite good. This is War - Thirty Seconds to Mars. This is slightly emo power-rock for twentysomethings wearing eyeliner, right? It's also great driving music. I'm sure the band will be crestfallen that someone like me loves it as I motor around the M25 in the MonteWagen. Back to Black - Amy Winehouse. Forget the media tramp bullsh*t, this album is a classic and folks will be digging it in fifty years. Best track: Tears Dry on Their Own.

BTW the last book I read on Cassino was a bit revisionist on Clarke. It acknowledged his vanity and paranoia but insisted that he was a much better battlefield commander than previous military historians have given him credit for. Although I'm more of an armchair general than a professional military historian, I beg to differ. Sacrificing the Texan division for more column inches? Lastly, my post about Cassino being a Commonwealth affair ommitted the valiant and decisive Polish brigade, effusive apologies. My bad. Cheers MC

As a proud Texan I suspect Wrath of Dagon would agree too.

Ashdown is a left-winger who was against the coalition --- he was the attempted architect of the deal with Bliar (intentional spelling) to 'condemn the tories forever' in 1997. Why on earth should he be rewarded with a cabinet post?

Korea... yes I agree under-reported but for many it's a cold-war hiccup. I don't think that, it's just a perception that exists. Hollywood fast-forwarded to Vietnam, I think because it was more relevant to lefty, anti-war baby-boomer directors (I exempt Ollie Stone, he might be a lefty anti-war baby-boomer, but he had the cojones to become a combat infantryman and he makes interesting if not slightly deluded movies). I can't help but think that the "US fighting man in WW2" cycle that Hanks and Spielberg have started isn't finished. A trilogy seems right, and N.Africa and Italy is the one major US theatre of war they've not covered. I suppose their problem would be portraying egomanical General Mark Clarke in a positive light, or indeed plastering over the fact that the CiC Italy was British. Indeed, the most iconic battle, Cassino, was largely (although not exclusively) Commonwealth affair.

We are up to episode 7 here in the UK, and it's ok as far as it goes but I agree that is remains disjointed and with poor character development. I hope if they do another (US forces from the Torch landings in N. Africa to the Gothic Line would be good, a la the Big Red One) then I hope they return to the BoB tighter narrative.

Just saw Dr John Reid on the telly, the man is a hoary old Scots Marxist with whom I would probably disagree on the precise date of Christmas. But. He was deeply impressive and non-partisan about this, thinks that this stitch-up will rebound on Labour big-time. He showed himself to be a true parliamentarian, and to their credit there are voices in Labour who are saying similar things. Labour need a couple of years in opposition (for me five hundred wouldn't be enough but that's not the point).

Incredible. Here at the Schloss Monte I am pouring myself a very stiff drink and settling down the watch this awful melodrama play out. Then I'm off for tinned food and hunting rifles.

Law-Abiding Citizen For a while I thought the protagonist in this entertaining piece of nonsense (Gerard Butler) was going to morph into a sort of Tyler Durden, an anti-hero you could not only root for, but who also prevailed albeit in a freaky meta-physical way. Sadly, Jamie Foxx (why the extra 'X', I know he's not an adult film star) also seemed determined to be the protagonist and hero, playing a brutally ambitious and thoroughly unpleasant assistant D.A. So the film ended in a silly, focus-group influenced blancmange of disappointment. It also underuses the great Colm Meaney. Nonetheless, worth it for a grim homage to Se7en, The awful remake of The Jackal (the .50 cal remote control robot trick), and a parody of every US cop / courtroom drama you've ever seen with a world-weary, feisty female judge (the scene with the mobile telephone is worth the price of admission alone). David Fincher should have been brought in on this project and turned it into what it should have been, a great pitch ruined by mainstream hollywood values.

Look at the UK election map. England is this big blue blob with a bit of red in London and a couple of red scars across the northeast and northwest (i.e. Labour susbsidy-junkie heartlands). By the beloved AV or PR systems, the Tories would be the single biggest party in England. The Nu-Lab devolution project is now reaping it's bitter harvest with no English parliament. The 'progressive' (guffaw) Coalition of Losers will need the Labour and Libdems (still not enough seats) augmented by the Celtic nationalist fringe. The price? Even more pork-barreling in Scotland, Wales and NI (like they don't get enough already) and more economic pain for the powerhouse (London and the SE). Who should, by rights, be Tory-led. Let the Libdems get into bed with Zanu NuLabour and watch the English electorate punish them brutally at the ballot box at the next, inevitable, General Election (in 12-18 months time). Sadly, the cost of this will be our economy as the left continue to strangle business, raise tax and protect their special interest groups in the north and the celtic fringe. Am seriously considering emigration, this is the 1970's all over again but worse.

It's a luxury of living in a peaceful state.

No. Health: The budget needs a massive restructuring programme, invloving the brutal carving out of many tiers of superfluous management. This isn't a job for the feint-hearted, especially a lib Dem. Ironically, their manifesto pledge is interesting on this one, but it matters not because they wrote their manifesto never expecting to win. The NHS needs some very tough love to make it match-fit and forward-looking. Education: Both tories and LDs have some interesting policies. Gove's Swedish plan is better. In fact it was one of the best tory policies. To dump it so that some pro-teaching union lib dem moonbat can ruin everything? I wouldn't let any of them run a whelk stall yet here's call-me-Dave offering them the Home Office? Bleh.

If Children of Men isn't Sci-Fi, what is it? It's a great movie, genuinely disturbing.

^ Education is too important to leave it to the astro-turfers. Ditto health. Give them... municipal parks management.

and it will get worse before it gets better.