Review: David Cronenburg's Eastern Promises

I watched Eastern promises last weekend because I found the last collaboration between Cronenburg and Viggo Mortensen, A History Of Violence, to be be completely enthralling.
This film is not quite as good as A History Of Violence but very watchable nonetheless.
A teenage Russian girl dies during childbirth in London. The attending midwife uncovers some dark secrets in the girl's diary which results in the midwife lifting the lid on the Russian underworld in the streets of London.

Like A History Of Violence, the violence is suitably visceral and brutal.
Naomi Watts doesn't really have a lot to do.
Some might say the film borders on racial stereotype - but I think it does a half-decent job of exploring the post-Soviet Russian emigre psyche. I say this with a slightly dubious level of qualification because I have dealt with a number of Russians in my work and I recognise some of the characteristics and nuances portrayed in the film.

It is, however, unfortunate that none of the main Russian characters are actually played by Russians - this detracts from the authenticity of the film's subject matter.
This is not the only issue I have with the film.

The first problem with the film is that it's full of caricatures rather than characters.
This is particularly the case with the core triumvirate of Russian protagonists Semyon, Kirill and Nicolai. None of them are very real, they are very cliched and glaringly so.
You would recognise them in any gangster/mafia film - all you would need to do is change the accent to American, Irish, Cockney or whatever.
Cronenburg makes no effort to flesh out these identikit characters with any kind of more individual background story, unusual relationship or motivation.

The second problem is that I am not sure what the film is really about.
Is it about the world of trafficking human beings? If so, there's been much better material out there already.
Is it about the seamier side of life in the Big City? The distasteful activities happening just under the surface that we probably all inadvertently touch in some way but never really see.
Is it about the normal set of emotions and relationship issues that even sociopaths in our midst will experience?
It's difficult to tell what Cronenburg is trying to get at because he doesn't explore any of these issues with enough depth.

In the end, you end up wishing the film was either slightly longer or told the story of fewer characters but in more detail.
It's still a very watchable film and Viggo Mortensen, in particular, commands attention in every scene he's in. Mark Commode, on the BBC, called Mortensen the new DeNiro - an analogy that is not without merit.

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Review: Spooks series 6, Episode 3

The new series seems to have adopted a '24' style thread in that each episode is no longer a self-contained adventure but rather a continuation of the previous episode. This is a good idea because the self-contained episodes were becoming rather dreary.

A cargo plane crashes and unleashes deadly substances near a US airbase but all is not what it seems.
Indeed it seems to be covering up the presence of a secret spy plane 'Aurora' (which apparently does exist in real life) the Americans are running illegally from the airbase in the UK. The MOD are in on the act treacherously selling out their own spooks in order to maintain a seat at the top table politically and militarily.

But MI5 cannot penetrate the upper layers of the MOD to find out what's going on.
So Jo is called upon to blackmail an ex-boyfriend in the MOD hierarchy.
She only recently became a spook from being some kind of aspiring journo or writer or something.
She's obviously been busy dropping her knickers left, right and centre in her couple of years in spook-land amassing valuable contacts in the industry. You go girl

Malcolm thinks he's infected by the cargo plane crash substances - which don't exist - and joins the ever-earnest Adam in breaking into a airbase to find out what's going on. They seem to wander round with impunity because everyone else seems to busy doing their 'secret stuff'. Malcolm thinks he's dying and this makes him more courageous than usual so Adam continues to let him think this until they escape from the base.

It seems that Copenhagen - who ordered the Iranian double agent to move the noxious substance around - is actually controlled by the Americans.
They let the British bomb the train knowing the spillage would embarrass and expose the Iranian biological weapons programme.

Not quite sure why they want to hang on to Zaff or why the spy plane was shadowing/hiding behind Zaff's plane back to the UK.

Also, Ros is abducted by a bunch of independent spooks representing a shadowy group of politicos, technocrats and business people who want to oversee the welfare of the world. They seem something like the Bilderberg Group. They want to prevent a neo-con driven American foreign policy from turning the world into a zone of cultural conflict.
Ros passes their rather mild torture test (some water is dripped on her forehead and her makeup is confiscated) and polygraph test and she is invited to join them.
She is not sure but in the last reel you see her making contact with them.

Adam continues to seduce the Iranian ambassador's wife.
She accuses him of sleeping with his 'assets' routinely.
Adam places his mitts firmly on her 'assets' and murmurs something about 'don't you know me by now' before kissing her in a manly manner.
The camera goes soft focus suggesting that Iranian Ambassador's wife is about to break religious etiquette and munch a 'sausage roll'.

I find the whole ethos of BBC Spooks rather strange.
It's written to portray the MI5guys as slightly left-of-centre when in reality many memoirs and insider stories seem to suggest they are a mostly a bunch of right-wing 'fascists'.
I use the term 'fascist' in a loose sense here, more as an insult than an accurate description of someone's political stance. Other 'fascists', in my book, include Tony Blair, Jack Straw and John Reid.

Motorola's UIQ stake

It was announced today that Motorola will acquire a 50% stake in UIQ from SEMC.
This has been planned for a while but one factor holding things back was internal politics in Motorola.
The Symbian UIQ platform occupies a cost/performance segment too similar to Motorola’s much-vaunted but little-seen Linux Java platform aka MOTOMAGX
Those in the Motorola hierarchy who championed LJ tried to kill off the funding for Symbian UIQ. The truth is these people lost the argument and either got fired or were made to resign. Motorola has spent millions of dollars over the last few years trying to get its Linux Java platform off the ground. The platform should have given them the cool user-experience that most of their devices lack at the moment.

In summary, LJ is a failure.
The results of all those millions of dollars have given us the user-experience of the Z6, V8, U9 and soon-to-be-announced E8.
Note, these are all 2G phones with some eye-candy over and above the terrible old P2K/Synergy platform used in the likes of the V3, K1, Z3 etc.
Major network operators, especially in Europe, want 3G phones
They want software platforms that can easily be adapted to accommodate local services and new applications.

Much of this can be offered by the Symbian/UIQ platform.
Symbian is already well-established as a mobile device OS and the roadmap is well-advanced in terms of accommodating new technologies and services,
UIQ still has some way to go to get the level of S60 but investment from both SEMC and Motorola will accelerate its progress.

As a result of today’s announcement, I would expect to see most, if not all, Motorola 3G consumer devices become Symbian/UIQ phones in the short to mid term.
At least two of these devices, codenamed Skarven and Texel, have already been leaked on the internet.

As technology progresses rapidly, manufacturers are able to fit smaller 3G boards with more multimedia power and camera modules with a higher megapixel count into svelte designs.

Wouldn’t it be great to have the functionality of Symbian multimedia phone in the clothing of a RAZR, SLVR or PEBL?
Additionally, it would be great to borrow some of the touch-screen aspects of the iPhone UI and merge them with what we’ve already seen on the RAZR2 or E8.

Have I seen the future? I certainly hope so.

Zander's Non-Vision

Nokia recently announced the $8.1 billion acquisition of the mapping firm Navteq. They see this acquisition as a logical extension of their transformation from a hardware company to a software company. Nokia has experienced many transformations such going from timber and rubber to cabling to communications, etc. They have recognised that device manufacturers may eventually go the way of PC manufacturers and bet the house on differentiating through applications and services.

Zander called the $8,1 billion price tag 'stunning' and commented 'We looked at it and went on our way...We didn't even think about it...That's not our strategy...We are not in the applications business'.

This put down of Nokia, (a company going from strength to strength in terms of market share, profits and portfolio diversity), is ironic from an executive whose company has seen market share fall, profits disappear and its number one product catch a dose of the Emporer's New Clothes. If I was being generous, I would say that Zander has to say this to mollify investors that he is not going on an acquisition spree that will dilute an already battered share price.

However, knowing a bit about the internal workings of Motorola, I would also add that it somewhat typifies the corporate culture within certain parts of this company.

If we witness the eventual 'PC-fication' of the mobile device industry, then we will see that eventually features such as thinness, megapixels, GPS, etc will plateau and it will become difficult for a manufacturer to differentiate on these hardware-related aspects.

Therefore the important differentiator will become the software, applications and services.
So as Nokia re-invents itself yet again to try and take advantage of a new chapter in its history, the CEO Motorola continues to bellow Jurassic platitudes.

The Election That Wasn’t

So Gordon Brown has pulled back from calling an election this November and indicated that a poll next year is also ‘unlikely’.
The last poll readings delivered to Brown made scary reading in marginal seats and he pulled back from the brink.

One of the phrases frequently bandied about concerning Gordon Brown recently is that he is a ‘conviction politician’ after he compared himself to Margaret Thatcher.
To me, the phrase ‘conviction politician’ means someone with:

• A vision based on some strongly held beliefs and principles.
• A plan to implement that vision.
• Steadfastness against compromising that vision for the sake of short-term popularity or personal, political and commercial interests.

But, as yet, Gordon Brown has not had time enough in the Top Job to demonstrate these kinds of qualities.
He was actively considering calling a snap election to take advantage of a ‘Brown Bounce’ as well as the disarray amongst the Tories around issues such as grammar schools.
This is not the hallmark of a ‘conviction politician’ but rather an opportunist obsessed with retaining the lofty office he has schemed and machinated so hard to wrest from his predecessor over the last 10 years.
I am glad that British voters have not been forced into an opportunist election at a time when neither of the main parties is particularly well organised with respect to policies, achievements and the like.
Forcing British voters to make a snap judgement on a new Prime Minister who has been invisible on issues like Iraq, the NHS and Education over the last 10 years is pointless.
I hope Brown sticks to his indication and waits until 2009 before calling an election.
Time enough for us to see what ‘convictions’ Gordon brown and David Cameron really have.

Test Post

This a test post.
Hopefully i will be adding some mobile phone / tech news and views over the next few days.
I will also be commenting on the state of the world as I see it.