A Worrying Development

Today's blog is going to have a more sombre tone than many of my posts.

I have written previously about Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari, the half Syrian, half American blogger, i list her as one of the people whose writing inspires me towards wanting to become a journalist.

Since the unrest began in Syria on the 26th January 2011 she has been blogging regularly, honestly and bravely about the experiences that she and her countrymen and women have been going through as they pursue democracy and try and avoid or survive the brutal repression by President Assad and his security forces.

She has repeatedly wrote about the risk of arrest, torture or worse; never fishing for sympathy, merely making sure her readers are aware of the stakes involved in the Arab Spring.

Worryingly in the past two days Amina has been taken by members of the security services. Her cousin has posted two messages since she was taken informing her readers that they don't know where she is or how to contact which ever element of the security forces may have taken her.

I don't know what the future will hold for Amina, her family or the people of Syria but all i can do is hope that she is released soon and that she is unharmed. It may be a naive hope but it's one i'm determined to stick with for as long as possible. If you're reading this and religious, if you want to pray for her i'm sure her family would appreciate it.

If you want to read Amina's work or follow any news of her current status i'd advise you read her blog - http://damascusgaygirl.blogspot.com/

That's all i want to write about today, but i will, as ever, finish with a song for you all.

My Favourite Films (6/15) - Science Fiction

Favourite Science Fiction Film - Monsters (Edwards, 2010)

Sci-fi for me falls into two different categories really; cowboys and Indians in space and what, for lack of a better definition, I’ll call thinking sci-fi. What I mean by that is that some sci-fi aims merely to entertain and as I’ve said before and will say again, there is nothing wrong with that, while others look to combine entertainment with subtler, bigger considerations.

The first decision I had to make was whether my favourite sci-fi film was going to come from the former or the latter and in the end, despite some very strong contenders from the purely entertainment group (‘Star Wars’, the most recent ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Aliens’ all sprang to mind) I had to go for the slightly more challenging end.

That was only half the decision though because following that I had to try and decide between an even stronger selection of films. It was tempting to go for Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic ‘Alien’, Christopher Nolan’s complex epic ‘Inception’ or very temptingly the Duncan Jones directed ‘Moon’. All three are examples of what great sci-fi can be like, but in the end I decided to go for one of my favourite films of the past year, a film I’ve written about in this blog a number of times, the low budget, Gareth Edwards aliens and romance flick ‘Monsters’.

‘Monsters’ is undoubtedly a sci-fi film, it’s set in a world where Aliens have been living in a quarantined area of Northern Mexico for 6 years, The U.S and Mexican armies are attempting to control the spread but are unable to get rid of them. There are questions about whether the aliens are aggressors or innocent herd creatures, whether the military action is making matters better or worse and whether there will be a chance for things to go back to the way they were.

What makes ‘Monsters’ a great film though is the elements that have absolutely nothing to do with science fiction. At its core ‘Monsters’ is a story of romance born out of hardship, filmed like a nature documentary and including surprisingly few glances of the aliens themselves. It’s that which makes it such an entertaining film, it’s a sci-fi where the aliens are more a narrative device than a central issue.

The best science fiction looks to question how humanity reacts to extraordinary, unnatural or futuristic scenarios, asks questions about humans as we are now by looking at how we could be in some far distant future or dramatically different present.

That’s what ‘Monsters’ does to great effect; it is in effect a testament to the idea that no matter how bad life could get, no matter how screwed up a situation might be, humans will keep falling in love with each other and keep finding the inherent good in each other regardless.

Considering how small the budget was reported to be, $800,000, the aliens are well realised; giant creatures that seem to combine the biology of elephants and octopus’, making a nice change from the grey or green humanoid options and they came to earth as spores on an asteroid not in battle ships hell bent on humanity’s destruction. Scary, animalistic and in their own bizarre way hauntingly beautiful, the aliens are dramatically different to the creatures that make up the majority of aliens in cinematic history.

It’s a film that shows just how good intelligent, subtle science fiction can be when directors are given the chance to create something more lasting and complex than sci-fi is often given credit for.

The song today is off the new Frank Turner album to celebrate it's release today.

My Favourite Films (5/15) - Fantasy

Favourite Fantasy Film - The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Jackson, 2002)

My dad read ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy to me during my childhood and along with the books of CS Lewis they became one of my favourite fantasy tales. The world of Middle Earth became the fantasy world of choice for my day dreams. It was because of that that when Peter Jackson and New Line Cinemas announced that they were making film adaptations of the books I felt a intense mixture of anticipation and trepidation.

The chance to see a story I loved so much brought to the big screen was always going to be exciting, but with any project like this there’s always that nagging fear that they may fail to produce something that lives up to your expectations and imagination.

However the films presence in this list of genre favourites should suggest that I believe Jackson not only succeeded in doing justice to the books but I actually believed they may have improved on the source material.

As much as I love the books, the films managed to cut out some of the waffling descriptive elements which slow down the pace of the narrative and the long winded explanations of family histories while managing to fully imagine the world of the books that so fascinated me as a child.

It’s one of the most technically impressive film feats I have ever seen, from the camera tricks that made the hobbits convincingly and endearingly small compared to the other characters, to the CG moments which gave the battle scenes such incredible scale; the battles of Helms Deep and Minis Tirith are two of the most spectacular bits of cinema I’ve ever seen.

They’re three films which truly manage to capture the sheer, majestic scale that films are capable of. With each film coming in at around 3 hours Jackson was able to keep the majority of the best moments from the books, with only the scouring of the Shire at the end of the third book as an omission that disappointed me. It was only towards the end of the third film that I also began to feel it dragged at all; up to that point the films had been entertaining enough to justify their fairly epic running times.

It feels like cheating to choose a trilogy as my favourite film in the fantasy genre, so if pushed to select just one I’d probably go for ‘The Twin Towers’ as I still remember being blown away by the ‘Battle of Helms Deep’ when I saw it at the cinema 8 years ago (I actually can’t believe it was 8 years ago). The twelve year old version of me was simply amazed by the spectacle on show and the drama involved; the 20 year old version of me is more self conscious but just as entertained despite it.

However the films are best when considered together and it’s hard to think of many series’ of films that are of as consistently high standard as the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy which is why it’s my choice in the fantasy genre.

A Deep Dark Secret

I have a secret i feel i need to tell you. It's one i'm not particularly proud of. It's one that at times during my life i've lived in denial of, or at least tried to pretend to other people it wasn't so. It can lead to some pretty awkward moments in social situations. The taboo around it is still pretty strong and i do worry that revealing this may change how some people see me. However i think it is time.

I am, when the mood takes me, a complete, raving, extravagant geek.

I love education and learning new things, I find sudokus fun and relaxing, I am an enthusiastic if unintelligent fan of computers and fancy technology, I read classic literature because it intrigues me and most of all, i bloody love sci-fi films and TV shows.

I will, continuing my series of 'favourite film' blogs, be writing about my favourite film from the sci-fi genre at some point so i won't spoil that insignificant surprise by mentioning any names here. Instead i want to talk about my two favourite current science fiction shows.

First up is 'Doctor Who'. Now this has been a favourite show of mine for quite a while and the latest season is definitely living up to previous standards. It is a show which has definitely benefited from and justified it's resurrection and i've found that it's become one of only a very few programmes that, as soon as a new episode is shown, i feel compelled to watch it as soon as i practically can. I'm going to avoid going into too much detail about the plot because i'm tired and because, partly due to the first reason, i reckon i'd end up straying too far into the realm of, to quote one current character, spoilers.

However i will say that the last and the current executive producers, Russell T Davies and Stephen Moffat, have shown an impressive awareness for the fact that whether you're a child or an adult, a psychological scare is so much more powerful than an obvious visual one; many of the villains that the two of them have dreamt up have decided to play on the illogical, mental fears that everyone has, for example a threat that can only move when you aren't looking directly at it, or a villain that you forget the existence of the moment you look away.

These are so much more terrifying than any Dalek or Cyberman (nothing against those two, but at least personally their fright-level is much lower than the Weeping Angels or The Silence). I guess that taps into my overall attitude to horror, what is left up to your imagination is infinitely more powerful than that which is thrust in your face. Like it or loathe it, it's what made Paranormal Activity such a success; everyone has thought they saw something in the corner of their eye only to turn and see empty space, believed they heard a noise without explanation or been convinced that there's something very dangerous and important that they just can't quite remember.

They tap into primal, intense fears that a race of genocidal alien race simply can't. It's exactly what good sci-fi should do, take current, human, earthbound hopes, problems and fears and transfer them to a fantastical setting.

It is this combination of debating the big issues and fears while entertaining the audience with futuristic adventures that makes the other show i want to write about, Battlestar Galactica, so good. Now i never caught more than a couple of episodes of the original series' but it looked pretty poor; the budget was such that it made the Star Trek episodes of the time look positively modern and the plot (though i concede i never gave it a proper chance) seemed thread bare and simplistic.

The noughties reincarnation of the show is brilliant however; it manages to combine thrilling space battles between human and robot fighters with theological and sociological debates in a manner which never seems patronising or divisively overly high-brow. It's a delicate balance, one which i'm sure it fails to manage for many viewers, but for me it's towed the line supremely well between asking some extremely big questions about humanity and avoiding getting bogged down in their own intelligence. The story centres on the small remaining element of humanity fleeing a robotic menace they created.

Debating what makes us human or at what point creating sentient life forms to make our lives easier will become a danger are old reliable staples of the sci-fi precisely because they are two of the founding reasons for the entire genre being invented. How better to evaluate and discuss the values and worthiness of humanity than in comparison to alien races, or even better, creatures we ourselves have created.

Each episode features action, political manoeuvring and anthropological arguments and it is that cocktail of elements which makes it so fascinating. Create a show heavy on that conjecture but lacking the action to drive the plot and you leave your audience feeling tired and lectured. Make a show though where it's just "Cowboys and Indians" in space, all action and simplistic takes on good and bad, and you'll find the majority of your audience lose interest after a couple of episodes, preferring to watch films which can do the big battle scenes better. However, somehow find the balance between the two and you may have a hit show on your hands that will get the respects of critics and the average viewer alike; this is what Battlestar Galactica has done. I'm now well and truly addicted to the show, making almost worrying levels of progress through the series and so far there have been few, if any, episodes that have strayed too far towards either end of the sci-fi spectrum.

So i'm a geek and i need to learn to accept that, as i hope you will too.

Today's song is a Bloc Party song for the simple reason that i haven't posted one in a while and i can never get enough of them.

A Futile War

So a leading body of drugs experts and no longer politically active politicians have stated the absolutely damn obvious by arguing that the ‘War on Drugs’ isn’t working, never was and almost certainly never will. The attitude of criminalising drug use to the extent nearly every government in the world currently does is not a productive way of dealing with the consequences of both the usage and the business.

There are excellent articles in several newspapers on the report, especially the lead article in ‘The Independent’, but it was an article in a paper I only ever tend to read in an effort to understand what the ‘other side’ are saying in the media that has inspired me to write this blog.

The article in ‘The Telegraph’ referred to a TV show that would make any list of my favourite TV shows, ‘The Wire’, claiming that the report only stated what 'The Wire's' creators had shown already. The show from David Simon focussed on the realities and futilities of ‘The War on Drugs’ in Baltimore over a harrowing 5 series, showing the people behind the statistics, the political manoeuvring and the moral conjecturing that make up the US government’s attempts to deal with the illegal drugs trade.

It’s fascinating TV, the scripting is nigh on pitch perfect throughout, never afraid to show that both the users and dealers are at heart infinitely human and for the most part nowhere near the pantomime villains that politicians and the media like to portray. One of the central messages of ‘The Wire’, a theme you can’t escape from is that the majority of the characters, especially those on the “wrong” side of the law, are trapped; trapped by poverty, poor education and peer pressure, trapped between making a living in areas ruled by the drugs trade and avoiding being arrested.

It’s a lesson repeatedly taught throughout the show, that the Baltimore Police’s best efforts are never going to be enough, that the drugs market is bigger than any one organisation or individual, that arrests, prohibition and millions of dollars of tax payer’s money will never really make a dent.

In season 3 there is a particularly relevant arc in relatio

n to this latest report. After becoming frustrated with the fact that traditional methods were yielding little or no progress in reducing drugs related crime, members of the Police Department’s Western District decide to create a ‘free zone’ where there is in effect legalised drug trade and prostitution so long as it remains within a small, couple of block area that had stood abandoned and unused in the inner city. Over a number of episodes they convince the initially suspicious dealers to move their business to this ‘free zone’, which becomes known as ‘Hamsterdam’ after a failed attempt to describe the Dutch City’s liberal drugs laws to a group of dealers. They do it by keeping their promise of not arresting people for buying and selling drugs or prostitution within the area but stepping up efforts to arrest anyone operating outside the zone.

It’s a scheme which appears to be working with reduced violent crime both inside and outside the free zone, happier local residents and a more focussed aid effort from local charities as the majority of the victims of the drugs trade are now in one area, making outreach programs much more effective and efficient. They took the crime away from people’s front door steps, making it safer for people to go to work and more importantly children to go to school, freed from the fear of violence, the pressure of the gangs and the constant presence of drug culture.

Eventually senior police figures and politicians get wind of the scheme and force it’s closure but while it lasts it is a fascinating experiment into the realities of ‘the war on drugs’. The fact that eventually the scheme is shut down highlights the bizarre contradictions and hypocrisy involved in this particular social conflict; ‘Hamsterdam’ was showing signs of being a success, providing what everyone claimed they wanted in safer streets and better organised, more productive crime fighting, but it flew in the face of traditional political and police thinking and so had to be stopped. It’s bizarre how, in real life, so many former police officers and politicians come out and admit after they have finished working in that field, that they were fighting a war which would never be won, that their approach caused as many problems as it solved, yet while they are in office they parrot the accepted line that they are fighting the good fight and that they are making progress that is beneficial for all.

Baltimore is arguably an extreme example but the truth is that in most major cities, anywhere in the world, there are large areas where buying and selling drugs is rife, despite year after year of supposed crackdowns and tough police attitudes to drug related crime.

Look at Mexico now where the ‘War on Drugs’ is causing a literal war with an ever rising body count. For every cartel leader the Mexican authorities kill or arrest, two more will attempt to claim the former dealer’s market and they will do so with gunfights, murders and extortion, all of which affects the innocent citizens as much as the drugs trade itself.

Pitched battles between cartels and the police or simply between different cartels seem only to cause more civilian deaths without appearing to bring the country any closer to winning the ‘war’ with violence perpetuating violence. I’m not saying that it is wrong to attempt to stop the illegal drugs trade or the variety of crimes associated with it; instead I am arguing that the current methods are pig-headed, naive and simply impractical. The demand is always going to be there, and while it is so will production and distribution, so the seemingly logical thing for governments to do is to look into what elements of the drugs trade can be given some sort of legality, bringing them back under government control rather than criminalising everyone involved, leading to increases in gang violence and other such issues.

One of the ways politicians justify their crusade against illegal drugs is through emphasising the damage the drugs themselves cause, though I’ve always believed that should mean that users should be treated as victims at least to the same degree that they are treated as criminals. It’s also a flawed argument when considering drugs like ecstasy and marijuana which, according to a lot of studies, are at worst comparable in danger to alcohol and cigarettes and there are a lot of scientists and doctors who would claim statistically they are less so. It also strays into questions of liberty and self-regarding acts but that is another essay for another day.

Take the criminalisation of marijuana in the UK; the damage smoking marijuana does to people is not particularly more severe than alcohol or smoking cigarettes, any of them in excess have the potential to have serious long term health risks, yet only one of the three is illegal. Huge amounts is spent on trying to stop marijuana dealing in the UK, they recently raised the classification of the drug so as to try and convince more people it ‘really is a bad thing’ yet I’ve seen little evidence, either statistical or anecdotal to make me believe that it is much harder to get marijuana now than before or that the degree of criminalisation is going to stop people dealing it or smoking it.

The distribution and use will continue, but while it is criminalised I believe it at best merely perpetuates the current situation and at worst it leads to more crimes as anything illegal is left open to be exploited by criminals. If the government were to legalise it and put a tax on it I’m not convinced you’d see a huge rise in people smoking it, least not beyond the levels that regularly take advantage of cheap drinks offers or buy cigarettes on a weekly basis, but suddenly they’d render anyone attempting to sell it on a street corner utterly irrelevant and bring in money to be spent on public services.

The argument that it would lead to increased spending t

reating users is also flawed in my opinion as I suspect any increased healthcare costs would be more than balanced out by the decrease in police spending and the potential tax gains. Once in the government’s hands they can regulate the trade and treatment, taking the power away from the dealers and criminals and creating an opportunity to make some real progress in dealing with the problems drugs pose to our society. By creating a scenario where the government could spend less on policing the drugs trade and more on drugs education and treatments to help addicts break the cycles of use an entirely different and more productive attitude to the illegal drugs trade could prevail.

One final example I’d like to use is to point out that currently in Afghanistan, as has been the case for the past 10 or so years, there has been a huge push to end the opium farming and through that it’s illegal uses around the world. However there is little progress being made and the growth and sale is just controlled by the Taliban, warlords and criminal gangs rather than the government or, arguably more appropriate for a nation like Afghanistan, local communities. Stop this ill-thought out war on the opium farmers, put a tax on it and boost the Afghan economy while also increasing the population’s satisfaction with their government and the Western forces; few things drive men to pick up arms and fight their rulers more effectively than taking away their families livelihood without presenting legitimate alternatives. These people are farmers and in many cases their parents before them were too, it’s symptomatic of the whole ‘war on drugs’ that it is those people who suffer most from the conflict. It would also offer a solution to the global shortage of morphine and other opium based medicines; another example of where the ‘war on drugs’ really tends to hit home.

So I’m sure it’s clear I’m in agreement with a lot of the report, criminalisation isn’t working and a policy of legalising, regulating and taxation is an awful lot more practical. However I can’t see many major Western governments following in the footsteps of Holland and Portugal by at least taking steps to reduce the criminalisation of possession and personal use, interestingly with reduced drug related crime in both countries as I understand it.

'The War on Drugs', like much social policy, get's far too focussed attempting to treat the symptoms and thus ends up seemingly oblivious to the fact that the cause is going nowhere.

Today's song is a light hearted counterpoint to the preceding rant and a tribute to the incredibly nice weather that i enjoyed today.

My Favourite Films (4/15) - Animation

Favourite Animated Film - Toy Story (Lesner, 1995)

Deciding on my favourite animated film at times felt like I was simply trying to decide on my favourite Disney/Pixar film; there are notable exceptions, primarily ‘Shrek’ and ‘Despicable Me’, but it’s a genre that is dominated by their efforts.

In the end I went with the film that sparked the Pixar domination, ‘Toy Story’ as my favourite film but it could very easily have been either of the ‘Toy Story’ sequels, ‘Monsters Inc’, ‘Wall-E’ or ‘Up’. I chose it both because it sums up what Pixar are all about and because even more than a decade and a dozen or so films, it stands up to their current work.

Woody, Buzz, Mr Potato Head, Slinky and all the other toys are iconic figures from my childhood, as distinctive as anyone and inspiring just as much affection. Woody and Buzz especially are perfect characters, carrying a degree of human emotion and depth that belies the fact that they’re merely a collection of pixels.

What made all three ‘Toy Story’ films so powerful, and to a large extent any of the Pixar movies, is that the problems they face carry a lot of emotional resonance for their audience; abandonment, fear of outsiders, belonging, friendship, love, hope, growing up and moving on, they’re emotions everyone in the audience will have felt and ‘Toy Story 1’ set the tone for what was to come by encapsulating the majority of those emotions in a hugely entertaining adventure story.

‘Toy Story’ deserves respect for being the perfect example of how to make a film aimed primarily at children. Entertain them but don’t patronise them, give them real, relatable characters in extravagant circumstances and offer them the opportunity to see grown up problems in child friendly settings. The beauty of that approach is that it also guarantees your adult audience; parents won’t just enjoy taking their children to the films, they’ll buy them on DVD with the intention of watching them regardless of the child’s interest.

I grew up watching the old Disney films on video tapes, I reckon I had most of them main ones and my favourites were ‘The Lion King’ and ‘Jungle Book’ but with the vast improvements in CGI and the ridiculous production budgets available for a high profile children’s film I think hand-drawn animation had run its course. When Pixar emerged onto the scene they brought a fresh way of making films combined with the traditional Disney storytelling values, so it made sense beyond purely business reasons for Disney to buy Pixar and bring together the two greatest schools of animated film production.

I love the film because it is quite simply a great film, regardless of its genre or target audience. However the reason I chose it over such incredible other efforts as mentioned above, is that it heralded the arrival of a new generation of excellent children’s films, the animation was massively ahead of anything else out there at the time and most of all because it made me laugh when I was 10 and still does a decade later.

Honourable Mentions: 'Up', 'Wall-E', 'Monsters Inc', 'Toy Story 2 & 3', 'Despicable Me', 'Lion King', 'Jungle Book' and 'Aristocats'. The list could go on and they'd almost all be either Disney or Pixar.

Today's song could only really be one thing.

My Favourite Films (3/15) - War

I decided to refine the genre for today's post from action to war as i felt action films covered too many of the other genres i've picked. I've also decided on a 15th genre to cover, rather than the 14 i'd thought of previously. So, on with today's offering:

Favourite War Film - Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg, 1998)

It was a two horse race really in this particular genre for me; there are hundreds of action movies I like, quite a lot I really like, but only two which immediately occurred to me as real contenders. They’re the film efforts of two of Hollywood’s biggest directors, dealing with real historical battles and presenting gripping tales of individual soldiers in larger conflicts. The two films were Ridley Scott’s ‘Black Hawk Down’ and Stephen Spielberg’s ‘Saving Private Ryan’.

In the end I decided on the World War Two epic for a number of reasons, which will form the body of this post.

The only place to start any essay on ‘Saving Private Ryan’ is that opening scene, the D-Day beach landing. ‘Ryan’ is on my list of films I’d love the chance to see in a cinema rather than on DVD and that scene is the main reason. Opening in a landing craft speeding towards the beach the audience is immediately put in amongst a group of U.S soldiers waiting for the door to drop with a combination of fear and anticipation. Already the sounds and sights of war are intense but it is the moment the door falls and the beach is unveiled that the film comes into its own; instantly several of the troops drop dead from bullets and then pure, visceral chaos breaks loose as the troops try to make it onto the beach and up to something resembling cover.

Only a few minutes into the film and Spielberg confronts the audience with the reality that an entire boatful of young men can be wiped out in seconds and it’s that unflinching approach that makes the opening 30 or so minutes utterly riveting but heartbreaking watching.

The audience are left to witness the senseless and random nature of who lives and dies, stripping away ideas of heroism or individual decisions to a sheer fight to stay alive and questions of luck. The genius of the scene is that by doing that, it allows the moments of bravery that follow throughout the film to seem both more real and more respectable in the face of such a brutal reality.

Also by showing such horrific levels of bloodshed and death in the opening half an hour, once it is established who the main protagonists are, we have developed an intense attachment to them; having survived the beach landing with them we fear the tragedy of those efforts being in vain.

Tom Hanks is excellent as Captain John H. Miller, the leader of a squad of men sent to rescue the eponymous Private Ryan (Matt Damon). Battling across Northern France to try and find Ryan, the last of 4 brothers, the other three having died in the past few days, the men repeatedly question the sense in risking so many lives for one soldier and it is Hanks’ performance that makes it believable they would keep fighting. Subtle, authoritative and carrying the human touch Hanks’ is known for, Miller is a true leader and an engaging protagonist.

The final third of the film details a last stand to rival ‘The Alamo’ as Miller and his men, along with Ryan and the troops he was serving with attempt to protect a crucial bridge from an advancing German mechanized unit. It continues the combination of brutality and bravery that runs throughout the entire film and makes for a suitably rousing climax to what is in my opinion the greatest war film ever made.

As a side note, a black mark against Scott’s film is the fact that the Somali angle isn’t even considered and the portrayal of them and their motives is so simplistic a cynic could argue there were racist elements. Now I don’t believe that was his intention but the overly-simplistic take on a complex political issue means I don’t enjoy it quite as unequivocally as ‘Saving Private Ryan’ where the focus is just on a small group of men in an altogether more noble cause, where there at least brief moments of characterization for the Nazi soldiers.

‘Saving Private Ryan’ is incredible entertainment from start to finish but Spielberg never let’s the audience forget just how high the price of war is and it’s that combination that makes this film stand out above its competitors.

Honourable Mentions: Obviously 'Black Hawk Down', but also 'Downfall' for a rare WW2 film focussing on the Germans, 'The Battle of Britain' and 'Dambusters' for their classic status and the music, 'Enemy at the Gates' for focussing on Stalingrad and being incredibly enjoyable if a little shallow, 'Jarhead' & 'The Hurt Locker' for their takes on more modern conflicts and finally 'Days of Glory' for focussing on the relatively untold heroics of the African legions fighting for France in WW2.

Today's song is off of an album i've had for a while, an album which sound tracked the writing of this blog today.