Excessive Opinions

Why does everything from the 40’s and 60’s look awesome? It just has a much cooler feel, the clothes (hats especially,) the transportation, food, the Americana of the advertising, even stuff like the older guns or the quality of the music. It all just has a much cooler feel to it. Even smoking was cooler then, currently when I think of a cigarette my mind goes almost instantly to a group of 16 year old chavs standing outside that one off-licence that doesn’t check IDs. 

Even the jobs, it all felt like you were doing something worthwhile. Nowadays it all seems futile. 

Either that or it’s just the depiction of it. I mean obviously everything I see is from the media but even in terms of that; they are definitely a couple of the more iconic decades.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, I’m well into my course at university and from that questions about future career choices start to arise. All the things I would love to do all seem to be for dead or dying industries or have suffered from structural change. The advancement of technology, specifically the internet and the age of information, has left us with a lack of mystery or intregue.

I am 100% behind projects like Wikileaks, Wikipedia; even Google or IMDb. They provide us with more information than we would ever need but it’s somehow removed the appeal of certain jobs. To be an investigatory journalist, a P.I. or even a copper; they were somewhat romanticised as career paths. Now we just have the very un-sexy image of the borderline agoraphobic blogger, a perv with a high tech camera and legally dodgy social network data mining habits and some lazy yet overworked pastry dependant divorced alcoholic who spends more time behind a desk filling out paperwork than walking a beat.

We have L.A.Noir, Philip Marlowe novels, Mad Men and recently even this new show Alcatraz has a couple scenes set in 1963. It just makes me think, there is definitely a trend within humanity not to let go of the past. Television, film, literature and now even video games; there’s many ways to try and experience what our great grandparents may have experienced for real. To live in a different time. 

Really what I’m getting at is I would like to live in a world where the fedora or the trilby (even a panama trilby) are widely accepted as commonplace. Rather than baseball caps or beanies which seem to be the only legitimately non-hipster hats in the 2000’s and 2010’s. We’re only two years into this decade, surely we can make the switch over to a more vintage look; get everyone wearing suits again and ban the wearing of sweat pants outside of a gym. 

For everyone at university or college, get Dropbox!

Always have your coursework/notes etc. when you need it with Dropbox. 2GB account is free! http://db.tt/BoQBQpJ

With that link you get a little over 2GIG and you can have a folder that syncs with all your computers, also get access to your work through a browser. With this cloud storage you don’t need to have all your stuff on USB sticks, when your computer breaks you still have access too your work online AND Dropbox even keeps older versions of your work so if you fuck everything up you can go back a version.

It’s a brilliant service, I use it constantly. I have access to my files on my Desktop PC, Laptop, Phone, iPod and ANY computer that has internet access. Just a heads up for everyone whose looking into USB sticks for their studies. OH. AND IT’S FREE. 

I remember one specific case at university last year when I wanted to study in the library but had forgotten my student ID. Luckily I had my ID number in a note document in my dropbox folder, I was able to access that file on my phone and get into the library; saved me a 40min walk to my flat and back to get my card. 

Rise of the planet of the apes was a lot better than I assumed it would be, I have to admit. I went in with low expectation and came out having enjoyed it. This is my bullet-point review:

Apart from one or two close up chimpanzee shots, the apes all looked amazing throughout.

The writers did a great job at making me back the apes from the get-go; I was completely on their side and that surprised me. Usually I absolutely hate CGI characters and the fact we’re often supposed to be on their side (Jar Jar Binks, Avatar, Garfield, iRobot, Transformers; hell even Shrek) annoys me a lot. 

There are a few badly written characters, a lot of overly evil humans that are used to help us justify hating humanity but I liked the main human protagonist and didn’t hate the acting too much. 

There really was one really powerful scene that made the film for me. A quotation from the original film left the theatre chuckling slightly and muttering to the person next to them. This was followed by a completely brilliant line which literally shocked the audience into silence. A guy behind me actually went “oh boy.” Considering that everybody knew this was going to be a Planet of the Apes film, I was really impressed. The creators managed to show the apes improve at such a great pace that their “evolution” continued to shock an audience who already knew the final result.

And finally, there were a couple corny lines (most of which you’ve heard in the trailer) that turned some of the human characters into stereotypes. The greedy businessman with a lack of morals, the desperate scientist that’ll break the rules for his research, the gun happy American police, the jerk neighbour… I can sorta forgive that though, there was a lot of stuff that needed to happen and it saved time for the ape storyline, which is what I really wanted to see. 

All in all, it was a good film. Worth watching but nothing amazing, I’d say if you have Orange Wednesday, Student Tuesdays or some other way to watch films cheaply at the cinema then totally go see it. If not then rent the DVD. I couldn’t see myself watching this multiple times though. 

Just a quick Merry Christmas to everyone out there: hope people had fun, ate a lot and got fairly drunk.

I’m still alive but probably won’t be updating this site for a while longer. I’m officially on “hiatus” I guess, in that I’m acknowledging that the site won’t be updated regularly from here on until some future point when I’ll start to do so again. Don’t worry, the site won’t go down or die out. Things are just a bit too hectic and I’ve not really much I want to write about.