Robert Redford has called the retarded monkey boy ignorant on the environment and urged other nations to keep pressure on the United States at a global climate conference next week
Lene Vestergaard Hau, the scientist who managed to slow light right down to a stop in a cloud of super-cooled atoms, explains how she did it and its implications for new optical communications technology, tabletop black holes and quantum computers.
Finding such equal-opportunity critiques on the Net comes as a blessed relief. Too many women-centric sites — often decked out in feisty grrly graphics — are quagmires of enforced bonding for those who either think Sex in the City is the epitome of liberation or, conversely, celebrate excess body hair as an unassailable emblem of emancipation.
The two red wolf pups transplanted from Brevard Zoo to Beardsley Zoo are doing fine with their new little brother. And their wild cousins in North Carolina can breathe a little easier thanks to the Supreme Court’s refusal to overturn a lower court ruling protecting red wolves that wander onto private property. Not so lucky are the newly classified Red Wolves in Algonquin who, thanks to the short-sightedness of the Canadian Government’s refusal of a year round ban on wolf-killing, may well disappear forever
Hollywood studio Warner Bros has had a spell cast on it for showing apprentice wizard Harry Potter riding his broomstick with the brush part at the back
Microsoft is launching an offensive against what it sees as its chief competition on the Internet: open-source code. A stance that IBM see as futile and counterproductive
Falun Gong proponents continue to elude China’s security forces by using mobile phones and obscure Internet services to keep followers connected
Sandline is the one of the world’s leading private military corporations — corporate mercenaries. In that capacity they will do just just about anything for a client government or genuine, internationally recognised and supported liberation movement
. Helicopter gunships, special forces units, marines, bodyguards, intelligence training — presumably including torture techniques and interrogation — the whole works. If you’ve seen it in a science fiction novel, Sandline will probably do it for you
The European Union has blocked General Electric’s planned $41 billion purchase of Honeywell International. This is the first time a merger between two US companies has been blocked solely by European regulators, so I would expect some retaliation the next time a European company tries a foray into the US. The Europeans feared the deal would create an unfair dominant position in markets for jetliner engines and aircraft electronics
The Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, home of the America’s Cup, has bought back its website address after a Canadian poached it for pornography. Squadron commodore Peter Taylor would not say how much was paid to retrieve the address which slipped into the wrong hands when the squadron accidentally failed to keep up payments
A team of Australian and Indonesian scientists may have witnessed the birth of a gold deposit on the flanks of a submerged volcano bubbling away in waters off northeastern Sulawesi
Microsoft has abandoned the controversial Smart Tags feature it was packaging in its new Windows XP operating system following criticism that the function was a cloaked attempt by the software maker to forcibly lure new subscribers to its Web-based services
Pluto has suffered another demotion with scientists discovering a very bright, icy body possibly even larger than the tiny ice-planet’s moon Charon and orbiting the Sun in the same celestial neighbourhood
A down-and-out businessman established one of history’s fastest frauds, conning tens of thousands of small investors
Do you want to go see Tomb Raider? It all sounded so innocent, but I really should learn to say no to queries like that. Or at least suggest another movie.
Lady Lara Croft [Angelina Jolie] is a bored rich girl who dabbles in archaeology to feel closer to her dead father, Lord Richard Croft [Jon Voight]. Her archaeological methods are dubious enough to make tomb raider a more appropriate job description. She inherits a quest and a clock from her father, the quest is to find two pieces of a mystical ancient object and destroy them to prevent the Illuminati from gaining the power over the time stream and the clock is the key to their whereabouts.
Fighting the good fight along side her, is loyal butler, Hillary [Chris Barrie] and her gadget wizard, Bryce [Noah Taylor]. Hillary is the quintessential British manservant, the type of man who doesn’t bat an eye at any of the eccentricities of his mistress. Bryce on the other hand is a geek, happier playing with his electronic toys rather than dealing with people.
Manfred Powell [Iain Glen] is a lawyer whose real passion is clocks, and it is a clock that initiates his meeting with Lara Croft. He has his own interests in the clock, ones that coincides with his duties to the Illuminati. Employed as a tomb raider for the other team is Alex Cross [Daniel Craig], ex-lover and current rival of Lara Croft.
It’s impossible to review this film without giving the plot away — good guys and bad guys on a race to find a shiny thing — because there’s so little of it. It’s an Indiana Jones film, minus the story and the humour. Attempts to insert back history via Lord Croft and the Illuminati are stilted and clumsy. And the chemistry between Lara and Alex is non-existent, nothing resembling an emotion passes between the characters.
Angelina Jolie is a passable Lara Croft. She fits the costume, has all the required bits that jiggle at the appropriate moments and no acting is necessary for the part. My choice would have been Xenia Seeberg, Xev from The Lexx, who makes Angelina Jolie look like a pale imitation, but then Miss Jolie is an infinitely better choice than Sandra Bullock, who was considered for the role at one time. Jon Voight, Angelina Jolie’s father, seemed a package deal — he read his lines and didn’t move about a lot.
Iain Glen was forgettable as a bad guy, the part was so two dimensional it could have been played by a cardboard cut-out. Alex Cross was equally nondescript as a wavering hired gun.
Noah Taylor had an almost interesting part as a tech geek, but barely made an effort with his lame attempt at a cockney accent — even Angelina Jolie did a better job with her accent. The only really enjoyable character was Chris Barrie’s Hillary, he had great presence and managed to score the few humorous lines in the movie, but then as a Red Dwarf fan, I’m probably a tad biased.
The small children used to prod Lara in the right direction were annoying. Children in American movies are a bad thing, mostly falling into the ‘look at me’ category through either poor acting skills or clueless direction, and these kids are no exception. They are a hindrance to the flow of the movie and should have been cut.
Loud does not equal quality. The music was poorly selected and did not suit anywhere it was used, and the sound effects often edged into the realms of distraction.
The special effects were well done, but some concepts are way over the top. Lara’s training robot is ludicrous and smacks of something crammed in after the fact. The ‘X-Men’s Danger Room’ may have been cool in the 70s, but it looks dated now, so ripping the idea off is strange to say the least.
The sole saving grace of the film is its scenery, the locations selected are beautiful. Angkor Wat in Cambodia is stunning and the many English locations including; Battersea Power Station, Elveden Hall, Hatfield House and Leadenhall Market, are perfection. Both the interior and exterior scenes are wonderfully ornate, but beg the question of why even a fraction of the attention to set design wasn’t directed towards the script.
Overall this is a pretty ordinary movie. If you’re out for some mindless entertainment, are a fan of the bullet-fest or are just partial to a well built lass in a padded bra and a tight white t-shirt, you’ll probably love this film. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for something a little deeper, I’d like to know what drugs you were taking when you thought this film was a candidate.
But when compared with the trailers before the film — Evolution, Final Fantasy and Jurassic Park 3 — Tomb Raider starts to look a whole lot better.
Published Epinions — 03.07.2001
Published WrittenByMe — 03.07.2001
DVD available from Amazon US, Sendit UK and DevotedDVD AU.
A retired British woman has decided to sail round the world permanently on a luxury cruise ship because it costs no more than staying in an old people’s home, a newspaper reported on Sunday.
Beatrice Muller, 82, only pays 55 per cent of the official brochure price for making her home on the QE2 due to loyalty bonuses from five previous world cruises.
Muller chose to make the liner her full-time home after the death of her husband two years ago. She pays ?3,424 ($4,818) a month to reside in Cabin 4068.
The very basic, minimum cost of living in an old people’s home in London is about ?2,000, she told the Sunday Express
A Melbourne man has patented the wheel. Freelance patent lawyer John Keogh was issued with an Innovation Patent for a ‘circular transportation facilitation device’ within days of the new patent system being invoked in May
Your password can reveal a lot about yourself, according to research for CentralNic. It’s found four different categories — Family (47%) who use names of partners, kids or pets for their login, Fans (32%) who pick names of sports stars or movie stars, Fantasists (11%) described as self-obsessed who love passwords like sexy
and superstud
and the Cryptists (9%) who create intricate cryptic
passwords
You may not be aware of it, but the government is monitoring your e-mail, looking for information about potential terrorist attacks. Besides the obvious free speech issue, the problem with this strategy is that real terrorists hide their messages within other messages
Graduates of a prestigious New York City high school were presented with diplomas this month that contained an embarrassing typographical error. Diplomas for the 700 members of the Stuyvesant High School class of 2001 boasted that the school specialises in science and mathemetics
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