Time is of the essence

Film, I think about at least a dozen times a day, from new films, to classics to my favourites and technical stuff, lets just say I think about everything film related very often. One thing that is a common thought concerns runtime. As a regular goer, I want to be entertained for a sufficiently decent length of time, so when a film finishes after 80 odd minutes I can’t help but fell a little cheated. If I’m honest it’s mostly kids films that have these low runtimes and as we know kids don’t have fantastic concentration, something to do with either Sunny Delight or a 20 Silk Cut a day habit just makes them a bit hyper. But I can’t help but feel that regular films keep scaling back towards the sub 100 minute mark and beyond. The value of a cinema ticket is actually going to skyrocket in terms of £/min.

Now I realise that pacing is an important factor in editing a feature film and that an audience should never be left to get bored but film as an art form allows you to tell stories at whatever pace they need to be told, by the film maker not by an impatient audience.

There is a solution, sort of, which is to split a film into two separate parts. On one hand this is great as the story can be told in all it’s detail, on the other hand I’ve got to pay for two separate tickets as well as wait for the second part to come out.

But what do you think about the length of films these days? What was the last film you saw that went on for too long? What was the last film you saw that finished very quickly? Should a cinema ticket entitle you to a set amount of time of entertainment?

The riots in England

The rioters and looters are criminals, true.
The problem is they are our criminals, the same as the police are our police, the homes on fire are our homes, or we fear they will be, and the government is our government.
At least we get the opportunity every now and then to vote for a different government. The ruling elite seem to have decided that they don't like a section of our young people and would like to replace them in much the same way as we elect a new government. There's been talk of sending them to prison as if that works (the prison population rose by 66% between 1995 and 2009, it stands at 85,000), the UK already sends a bigger proportion of its citizens to jail than any other European country. There's the suggestion that we evict criminal young people along with their families. Perhaps we should make them stateless and designate them Martians.

My Wedding

Just to let the world know i am getting married next June to my partner Paddi

Rupert Murdoch - My Part in His Downfall - Part 2

In case you were wondering how to change the world by signing petitions, you can try http://www.avaaz.org/en/ for international campaigns
or
http://38degrees.org.uk/ for independent UK based petitions.
The British Government has recently set up
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/
where more than 100,000 signatures results in a debate in parliament which, of course, is guaranteed to change the world
You can create your own petition on
http://www.ipetitions.com/start-petition?q=GoogleEurope&campaign=8&gclid=CLGi2-3isqoCFcFP4Qod8Vzi8g or
http://www.petitiononline.co.uk/create-petition-ads
and
http://www.petitiononline.ie/


The http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/cyclehelmetbill petition must have had some effect in preventing the introduction of a law in Northern Ireland making the wearing of cycle helmets compulsory.

The result of all this petitioning might be to reinvigorate the political process or it may just end up with a lazy, perfidious and fashionable delusion of activism.
Maybe there should be a petition to make petitions matter.

Rupert Murdoch - My Part in His Downfall

All I did was sign a few online petitions - about the need for the government to restrict cross-ownership in the media, for the culture secretary to think twice about waving through News Corp’s takeover of BskyB – and put up a few posters calling for a boycott of News International newspapers. I didn’t expect the collapse of civilisation as we know it. I feel like the sorcerer’s apprentice.