Vice

It’s taken a couple of days to calm down after a trip to the cinema to see Vice. This film is from the same director who gave us The Big Short which again made me angry for a long time. Also, I watched The Big Short quite close to seeing “Spotlight”, that’s not a combination to be taken lightly.

I went to the cinema at Rochester on the west bank of the river Medway. In this area the Medway is still tidal and so possibly brackish although I would need to look that up. I’m slightly fascinated by the idea of where along the river does the salinity change to make it more sea water? It has to be between Sheerness and Allington lock but where? Also, I imagine it depends on what the tide is doing and how much rain we’ve had. There must be a mathematical model somewhere.

The tide was pretty high when I went to the cinema. I remember looking to make sure I could report it on these pages. Although it was dark I could see a shimmering reflection of lights across the valley in the lapping water close to the wharf.

I went to see Vice and as is customary I gave the film a score on the IMDB site. I use the iPhone app to score these films and then the application then tweets the result. It’s interesting how the language around computing had changed over the years. I would still call these things programs along with calling folders directories. I do come from the generation that understands most about computers and such. Younger generations, on the whole, don’t have to worry about the mechanics of these things as they tend to work straight out of the box. Who in the future will know the delights of messing around with config files? The nerds and geeks.

To understand the rating system used you should read this particular communication as it explains how a 1-10 system doesn’t work. Here’s the tweet:

Angry. that is what this film does to me. It makes me angry and raging inside at a political system that doesn’t care about people. It shows how people claim to be doing the right thing even though the evidence is clearly not there to prove that is what happens. I’m still angry and I watched this film about three days ago. It highlights the motivations of people in power and how much they are happy to screw over the little people.

This film is great. The acting is brilliant and the make-up is amazing. I really enjoyed it and the few moments of humour within. What I don’t like is the republicanism [USA type] that it shows. These right wing religious zealots have controlled the government for so many years trying to transform their own society into one that they think is the best. This is largely about making themselves richer and maintaining power to keep themselves rich. They don’t give a shit about the poor or the fact the people exist.

Things to be angry about and keep moaning about:

• George W Bush STEALING the election in 2000.
• Antonin Scalia being a religious zealot who did his best to remove rights from all people.
• The complete fucking lack of evidence for the justification of the Iraq way.
• How the UK bent over backwards to follow the USA into the Iraq war.
• How military intervention in Gulf War I wasn’t enough and caused the next 50 years of stability.
• The complete power vacuum in Iraq.
• The EMAILS for fucks sake. [Republican emails from 2000s]
• The religiosity of the leaders which means they already think they are supreme [Blair – catholic, George W – religious, Cheney – right wing religious]
• Why the right-wing appeals to the poorest when that is who they mess up.

The Iraq war WAS illegal and no evidence existed for it. What a sham. I’m angry. I’m coming around to the idea of a revolution to remove the existing power hierarchies. I’m not completely stupid to understand that another thirty years or so after we smash the institutions we’d have to do it again but maybe that is how you make society as fair as possible.