My sleep patterns have been all kinds of messed up lately. All this fooling around on other people’s schedules isn’t good for a body. Three cheers for holidays then, because things have been getting back to normal. For instance: last Tuesday evening I grabbed a bus after work, met up with a friend I don’t see half enough, watched a bunch of stupid videos1, watched Syriana, read the Wikipedia article about Syriana, read the back of the Syriana DVD box, gave up on Syriana, went home, played Mario Galaxy til five in the morning, went to bed, woke up sometime in the middle of Christmas Eve. That’s a good night by anyone’s standards.
Since then I’ve gotten nicely into a groove of bed at 0700, up at 1500. That’s a sensible use of time. Who needs more than an hour’s daylight?
- I say stupid, that last one’s brilliantly done. Australian comedy: underrated. [↩]
I was a cook, then a bar man and I well remember how good the first week of office hours felt. The downside is you’re in perpetual rush hour.
The film is a bit dull and drawn out but the guy it’s based on Robert Baer is more interesting. Life, as they say, often stranger than fiction.
There are only two groups of people in this world: those who didn’t understand Syriana, and those who pretended to understand Syriana.
There’s very lttle cryptic about Syriana. Read Baer’s book ‘See no evil’ or even John Perkin’s excellent book ‘Confessions of an Economic Hitman’ and you see that it’s the type of subtle (or not so) manipulation of countries who possess natural resources we in the west want, that has been used since Mossadegh in Iran in the fifties.
Interestingly the CIA agent charged with ousting Mossadegh from power and installing the Shah was called Kermit Roosevelt, and was the grandson of Teddy Rooosevelt.
I want to be able to watch a film from start to finish and then feel, at the end of it, that I’ve learnt something about the world. It doesn’t matter if that soemthing that I’ve learnt is about love and sex, or Middle Eastern politics, or a gold watch and a cheeseburger and a gimp.
It wasn’t the subject of Syriana that made it an unwatchable pile of shite, it was the shoddy screenwriting — if you’re going to adapt a book then it has to work for the screen. Novels and film are completely different vehicles for story-telling.
You know, I am so over multiple-plot screenwriting when it’s not done clearly. Some people said that with Syriana the director wanted to create confusion in the audience to mirror the confusion of the characters. Um, well excuse me while I shoot myself in the head.
Dead right Annie.
Perhaps I’ve fallen out of the loop by avoiding comicbook trilogy rehashs but it feels like they don’t make those type of movies anymore(back in my day…). Movies like the Sahwwhank Redemption or the Usual Supects that force you to think, or feel, or that blindside you with something so unexpected but that on reflection was so obvious from the start, so simple, how could I have missed it..
Even here in France, were the tendancy has traditionaly been the opposite extreme of over intellectualised ,3 hour philosophic commentaries on the meaning life, (with all the excitement that entails) film makers seem to have fallen foul of the Luc Besson cult of bullshit americana.
Annie, write a screenplay.
Syriana reminded me of those films by that guy. You know the ones. 21 Grams, which I have seen, and Babel, which I haven’t. So I’m not sure how it reminded me of Babel but whatever.
I’m disappointed that everyone’s fixating on that one aspect of the post. Come on, that bell ringer looked like he was having a wank! On television!
Humble apologies Colm.
Yes certainly looks like he’s knocking one out there. There’s the makings of a ‘bell end’ joke there but I’m too tired.
Pish Possh to daylight.
This is the life. Lounging around in jammies and drinking from the carton while watching copious amounts of Fraser re-runs and not answering the phone.
Baa Humbug 5th January!
The graveyard shift is a lot more fun alright. Except if you’re a taxi driver, so I’m told.
Mind the jet lag though, when schooldays start up again. That’s a bitch.