RETIRED FRENCH PTERODACTYLS FOR SCHMUCKS

I’ve been to the cinemas, yo. And I've been on airplanes.

Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adele Blanc-Sec (The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec)

I’m off and on with Luc Besson as a writer/director. He gave us La Femme Nikita, Leon, The Fifth Element and (yes) The Transporter, but he also gave us The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc and Arthur And The Invisibles. Still, I was looking forward to his new film, an adaptation of the Fraco-Belgian comic book Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adele Blanc-Sec.

Set in 1910, the story involves novelist turned journalist Adele hoping to cure her incapacitated sister by “borrowing” the ancient mummy of Ramses II’s personal doctor and bringing him to life with the help of a scientist who can ressurect the dead with his mind – only he is arrested for reviving a pterodactyl in a nearby musuem for practice.

It’s even weirder than it sounds, and it’s the sort of good, weird fun you’d expect from a decent Besson film, filled with oddball characters and sly satire both on govt bureaucrats and the Indiana Jones-style adventure genre from which it borrows somewhat. It’s also a little clunky at times, and the main character Adele is a little underbaked, but Louise Bourgoin gives her a charmingly plucky, determined edge.

Anyway, it’s probably not for everyone, but even if all you know of Besson’s work is The Fifth Element and Leon, I’d recommend this. And since the ending is essentially begging for a sequel, there may be more to come.

Red

As in the film loosely based on the Wildstorm comic-book mini-series by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner (which I have read, yes). And the first thing to get out of the way is that it’s not really anything like the comic book, but Ellis is okay with that, so we’ll set that aside.

Regardless of its pedigree, Red is basically a CIA action comedy that gets by mainly on the strength of its cast – namely Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren as four retired CIA agents dragged back into action in self-defense. All of them are great fun to watch, and it’s worth it just to see an action film where the youngest main character is over 55. (And yes, there’s Helen Mirren with a sniper rifle.)

On the downside, the film suffers from the usual illogical OTT action-overload that looks great but is completely non-sensical (i.e. surely if the CIA wants to kill people, they can do it in more subtle ways than fully-automatic weapons and RPG launchers in broad daylight). That said, the film never takes itself that seriously anyway. Not great, but fun for what it is.

Dinner For Schmucks

I will watch the damnedest things on 15-hour UA flights when I’m bored to tears – to include this screwball comedy (based on the French film Le Dîner de cons) about yuppie Tim whose ticket to impressing his boss is attending a “Dinner For Idiots” – in which attendees have to bring an idiot as a guest (who doesn’t know they’re there to be laughed at). Whoever brings the biggest idiot wins a trophy. Only in this case, “idiot” seems to mean “strange people with odd hobbies”.

Paul Rudd is Tim, whose fiancee doesn’t want him to attend the dinner, and Steve Carrell is the “idiot”, an IRS employee who makes elaborate dioramas with taxidermied mice. It’s actually funnier than I thought it would be, thanks to Carrell’s game performance and a script that opts for the kind of zany oddball humor that appeals to me. The chief downside is that both the dinner and the romance angles are 100% predictable from start to finish.

So, all up, a collection of decent jokes, but not much else to recommend unless you like Carrell. (Or perhaps Jemaine Clement, one half of Flight Of The Conchords, who is great as pretentious artist Kieran Vollard.)

Don’t be a penguin,

This is dF

DITA VON TEESE HATES YR ENVIRONMENT AND SHE’LL MAKE YOU LOVE HER FOR IT

Previously on Senseless Acts Of Bloggery:

2. Dita Von Teese on a Perrier can

Business Class was also where I discovered that Dita Von Teese is now appearing on cans and bottles of Perrier. Turns out that’s been going on for awhile now. Either way, I’m amazed that a burlesque revivalist and fetish model has become the spokesperson for a major corporate brand (albeit a French one).

An additional thing I learned is that environmentalists are very annoyed with Dita Von Teese for fronting Perrier – not because it’s sexist (though they’re not pleased about that either) but because bottled water is bad for the environment.

Also, it’s an evil corporate conspiracy to privatize drinking water.

Apparently.

All of which is news to me (and, I presume, news to Dita). But we’re all about fairness here at Team Def, so I looked into the claims about the dangers of bottled water, a good summary of which you can read here.

My conclusion: it all seems overblown to me.

At least the part about privatizing water (which, oddly, is opposed by The United Church of Christ, United Church of Canada, National Council of Churches, National Coalition of American Nuns and Presbyterians for Restoring Creation). I seriously doubt the fact that Perrier, Evian and Crystal Geyser make billions selling drinkable water to people is going to lead to them taking over the local water dept. People do use water for other things besides drinking it (showers, flushing toilets, washing cars, lawn sprinklers, water slides), none of which I imagine you can accomplish with a case of Aquafina.

If we're talking about something where private companies are contracted to run the water utility, that seems like a separate issue to me, since where privatization of water facilities has happened, no bottled water/beverage company has been involved (as far as I know), and I really don't see how having bottled water available leads to a shortage of municipal water or lack of infrastructure buildout in developing markets where running water isn't available in many places. (If any of you have connected the dots in that regard, please let me know.)

Given that most water privatization plans haven't been especially profitable [PDF], I'm not sure where the corporate incentive is to get into that kind of business (although of course some do anyway). Also, it should be pointed out that while multinational companies may not be great at running water utilities, in many of the countries where it's happening, the alternative is corrupt govts who are even worse at it. 

Also, I can assure you that – at least outside the US – drinking from the tap isn’t always an option. It’s certainly not one in HK without a heavy-duty filter, or without boiling it first. Consequently, we drink a lot of bottled water here.

Furthermore, tap water doesn’t come in “sparkling” flavor.

As for the environmental impact, well, sure, lots of plastic bottles are a bad thing, but how that makes the bottled water companies any more evil than any other beverage company, I’m not sure. Also, in the relevant case here, Perrier uses glass bottles, not plastic ones (as far as I know), as well as aluminum cans. And it’s possible to mitigate that impact with recycling programs (which we also have here in HK).

FULL DISCLOSURE: I don’t drink much Perrier (mainly because it’s above my usual price range). I do drink a lot of bottled water, though (see above). And I am a big fan of Dita Von Teese.

So as far as I’m concerned, she can pour all the Perrier she wants on herself.

Hose me down,

This is dF

EXPERIENCE MATTERS

The old jokes really are the best.



[Via Coke & Sympathy]

Yr hired,

This is dF