jeff leopard

Waltz with Bashir 'Once you've been in combat, once you've seen it, you never want to go again unless you absolutely f*cking have to. It's like France.' So said Lt Gen Miller in In the Loop and it’s the same deal with Waltz with Bashir, quite possibly the greatest anti-war film ever made, and probably the best film you'll never want to watch again. From the off you know there's not going to be a happy ending, as Israeli veterans from their 80's war with Lebanon try to piece together what happened, specifically, the massacre in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, when the Israeli Defence Force sealed off the area and allowed Christian Militias to systematically slaughter thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. The film dares to peak inside the psyche of Israel and courageously makes direct links between this act of genocide and the Jewish people's own experiences during the Holocaust, suggesting that like an abused child, the state of Israel has developed into an abusive and vendictive adult. The fact that this behaviour continues today won't be lost on anyone. Politics aside, this is a technically flawless piece of film-making which mixes interviews, recollections and fantasy sequences to put across the horror and insanity of war. In many ways it’s a film about distance. Only 30 years on can the veterans begin to pick their way through their mental barricades and begin to come to terms with what they did and what happened to them. It reminded me of Slaughterhouse 5, where Kurt Vonnegut could only dare to recollect his time as a POW in Dresden by placing it within a web of absurdist comedy, aliens and time travel. Waltz with Bashir's incredible computer animation and use of dream sequences distances the audience from the reality of what happened up until its final seconds. It’s a devestating conclusion to an incredible film, just make sure you've got a warm happy place to retreat to afterwards. 10/10

Like others on here, I've not listened to much new stuff this year. Instead, I've been ploughing through Kraftwerk's back catalogue and loving every second, and compared to that, pretty much everything else pales into $hit. The early front runners for best of 2009 were Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear, but since the initial excitement, neither have made a particularly deep impression on me (recently I've spent more time listening to AC's Strawberry Jam). Thanks to Spotify I've had a listen to some of the albums nominated so far - quite like the Artic Monkeys album in a mozzer/QOTSA kind of way, but wasn't grabbed by either Little Boots or Florence + the Machine. I'm going to have to spend some cash on the new Tortoise and Lightning Bolt albums, but so far, it feels like I'm yet to hear the best of 2009.

Yes indeed! He always lays the boot into Portsmouth when he gets a chance. That's what you get from a salt of the earth Winchester lad (ie a bit of a snob). I think he's got the chairman gig on a perminant basis now.

There's a theory that the real reason for the start of WW1 was Germany's attempt to seize the oil fiels in what we now call Iraq. At the start of the 20th Century the Royal Navy went from coal powered ship to oil. Germany didn't have any oil producing colonies and so built a train line through europe as a means to transporting middle eastern oil back home. The first land battle in WW1 was in Basra of all places.

It could be argued that Britain has only been a major player for the last 60 years in the minds of the British. A wonderful example is the faked H Bomb test in the 50s, when we realised that the US and Russia had left the UK standing. We didn't have the know how or money to copy the Russian style bomb. The first two tests failed to go off, and so for the third, patriotic scientists strapped a million tonnes of TNT together and created the worlds biggest ever A bomb, and told the world 'look, there's our hydrogen bomb, can we join the elite club now?' This was kept secret up until the mid-90s when a load of documents got declassified. Who needs alternate history when the real thing still manages to throw up so many surprises? And for a far more worrying example of 'alternate history', just look at the Russians and their relation to Stalin, his image is being given a white-wash in Putin's programme of 'positive history'. Books which mention the millions of people he killed are being banned, and new history books are being sent to schools which claim the US and the UK tried to make peace with Hitler until 1941 when the Russians declared war and saved the world. We can laugh, but this is the version of events hundreds of millions of people will believe for the next generation at least.

Well, for starters, the FA would have ensured we started the next season on -25 points. There by dooming us to relegation, on top of the radiation and burning and screaming (Prof. Frink noise).

Congratulations! My top of the table clashes occurred at the mid-season point which seems a very long time ago. My previous three games have been against bots and my last two games of the season are against very poor human teams. Despite closing in on my first title, this season's conclusion has been a bit of an anti-climax. I've dropped too many points and conceeded too many goals to get automatic promotion, and my team haven't developed enough to seriously challenge a league 5 side in the play-offs. It will be all change next season though, Hattrick have announced that all the league 6 bot-teams are being relegated and replaced with human teams, so that should lead to a more challanging and interesting season for us, and for the first season at least, we'll be the big fish in the pond. I've spent most of my money this season on developing the ground, capacity is around 29,000 now, and have decided to save all my remaining money, and all the cash I make next sesaon, to get a coach with solid skills and leadership, that'll be a cool £1.7 million please, 'oh well, I better just have the one then'. Anyone else got any long term plans (apart from populating the surface of mars)?

District 9 Aliens land in St Joburg and are quickly rejected by the rest of society and forced to live in the abject poverty of a township, hardly a subtle metaphor and for the first twenty minutes, the film repeatedly clobbers us around the head to make sure we get the point. But then District 9 develops into something much more subtle and genuinely poignant. The way the evil multinational attempts to rehouse the aliens in concentration camps (and makes a hopeless mess of it) says as much about the failings of the war on terror as it does apartheid. The film is a striking mish-mash of styles and borrows from Kafka's Metamorphosis (via Chronenburg's The Fly), the social realism of Battlestar Galactica, the reality tv format of Series 7: Contender as well as Peter Jackson's first film Bad Taste (he was the producer and big-name on the poster), and it just about manages to hang all these elements together. Extra points for its fairly ambiguous and surprisingly moving ending. 7.5/10

I trust the audience made their feelings clear on this, was it booing or hysterical laughter? hopefully this enquiry will put an end to this redicolous denial from the Blair camp. He stood up in palimant and said that the intelligance was categorical and provided a sound basis for invasion (the threat of imminant attack). Looking back, the reaction from Blair/Campbell to Andrew Gilligan's infamous 'sexed-up' claim (basically 'this is the most shocking allegation ever made') was clearly the result of guilt, or as Shaky would put it 'they doth protest too much'. The media failed to support Gilligan who was thrown to the wolves, I hope they've learnt something from this whole sorry mess.

Mesrine: Public Enemy #1 Part two of this absolutely stonking tale of France's most notorious and popular gangster, Jacque Mesrine. After his genuinely shocking rise to power in part one, Mesrine, now the most wanted man in France, becomes obsessed with his media image, and goes to huge lengths to portray himself as a man of honour and a hero of the people (part-robin hood, part marxist revelutionary). He spends his time languishing in prison, escaping in spectacular style, robbing banks and rubbing out journalists that dare to question this version of himself and expose his very grubby past. If you like a classy, intelligent crime thriller then you could do much worse than giving four hours of your life (in two break-neck paced two hour chunks) to Mesrine. You might find him a hero of the people, you may feel no sympathy when he gets his inevitable blood splattered comeuppance, but there's no doubting what a fascinating character he was as you marvel at the career-defining performance given by Vincent Cassel (La Haine/Irreversible/Eastern Promises). Killer Instinct 8/10 Public Enemy #1 9/10

This enquiry has (rightly or wrongly) been taking a lot of cynical flak. Personally I think that, going by the first few days, lots of really interesting stuff is going to come out into the open as civil servants and lower ranking officials will attempt to clear their own names by pointing the finger at the major players. But the enquiry has missed a real trick though. Imagine a live Blair webcam for the whole of the enquiry, linked up to his pulse rate, so that every time a tit-bit of information comes out, you can see him squirm and feel each of the thousands of tiny deaths he'll suffer. 'Day 23 in Tony's personal hell, once again his fevered, broken sleep was plagued by the faces of dead Iraqi children…' I'll buy that for a dollar.

For sure, somewhere between 1 and 2 million people marched through the streets of London in Feb 2003 (a month before the invasion) in a bid to prevent the war, whatever the exact figure was it was the biggest political demonstration in this country's history. Around that time there were huge marches going on across the globe. The anti-war movement wasn't just a bunch of drippy lib-dems reading the guardian.

After day one of the enquiry, its been confirmed that govt officials knew back in 2001 that an invasion based on the notion of regime change would be rejected by the UN as illegal. This eats away at one of Blair's main claims, that at no point did the the govt discuss whether would be illegal (because it was so obvious that it was so absolutely legal and above board). The enquiry won't go as far as everybody wants it to, but it may well confirm categorically what we've known all along but the govt has consistently denied. We might just be feed crumbs and scraps, but it will be give us a much clearer idea of what happened. Just out of interest (and this has absolutely nothing to do with your political beliefs - so don't start bickering again), is there anyone here who doesn't want to see Blair stand trial for war crimes in the Hague?

Its a beautiful beast no doubt, but the fact that you can't use it to make things die would very quickly become an irritant. but still, think of the 'chopper' based chat-up lines you could come out with, and still be telling the truth.

thats a good point, Bloody Sunday took place over the course of several hours and the enquiry has taken 11 years and £200 million and has been put back till 2010 at the earliest. The Iraq War, even the initial invasion phase, covers a time frame of months and thousands of deaths... But by all accounts the Bloody Sunday enquiry tried to be all things to all people. Everyone involved was questioned and cross-examined until all the lawyers involved had made millions of pounds The Iraq War enquiry will be a very different beast entirely, no cross-examination, no one under oath, no judges. call me a naive guardian-reading black lesbian feminist but I think its much too early to write the enquiry of just yet. :confused::confused::confused::confused::confused::confused:

I despised Thatcher but one thing she could do is bring Reagan into line when he was itching for a pointless but highly profitable war. Blair is going to be a political archetype, the man that had it all, but then sp*nked his legacy away by bending over forward for Bush. From what I can gather, no one will be deemed guilty or innocent in this enquiry, but it may well bring to light information which will make convicting those with blood/oil on their hands much easier. Blair/Campbell seem to be the worst offenders in regards to Britain taking an active role in the war, but Brown's government are still trying to cover the trails that lead to them i.e. the infamous meeting where they discussed the legality of the war, something Blair/Brown always strongly denied. I think its highly unlikely Blair will be convicted for war crimes in regard to the hundreds of thousands of civilians who were killed as a result of the family feud/illegal invasion, but the military have started making noises about charging him with sending troops into battle ill-prepared and risking the lives of soldiers unnecessarily. One thing I want to hear is confirmation that Campbell and Blair sexed-up the dossier and added the ridiculous claim that Sadam could launch missiles at Cyprus in 45 mins (backed up by The Sun 'Brits 45 minutes from doom'). I hope that Andrew Gilligan is camped outside of the court when Blair and Campbell give evidence and screams 'IN YOUR FACES YOU LYING C**TS!!!' or something along those lines.

Usually i'd agree, but the thought of all the skates looking at the manager, the scorers and league position of spurs and thinking 'that should be us' is just too delicious

I had the same realisation the other day, had a look at some of the league V sides in the play-off places and they're all players with 7 or 8 star ratings. It will be nice to win the league title but the only way up is winning all your league games and conceeding as few goals as physically possible. I reckon i should be able to do that next season, if it goes roughly to plan. I thought I'd manage it this season but one of the few human teams in the league suddenly went from being average to really good (seemingly over-night) and i got caught with my pants down. Hold that image...hold it...hold it.... I've decided that having another season to prepare for league V wouldn't be a bad thing either, i've had to change keepers and centre backs this season and my young 'un needs more blooding.

Tortoise/Cluster @ The Royal Festival Hall Absolutely utterly incredible. I could never claim to big the most devout Tortoise fan ever but they just blew my tiny mind. Cluster were great too and as it was part of the Radio 3 Jazz Festival, and clearly Tortoise are huge Cluster fans, their sets over-lapped and fused with the power of jazz. Tortoise joined Cluster for the end of their set, and after the interval Cluster helped kick start the Tortoise set. One of the best gigs I've ever been to, ever!

i recommend sticking with it. after watching all 5 series of the wire in about 3 weeks, me and my girlfriend then took twice as long to watch the 7 or 8 episodes of generation kill as it is quite hard going, and extremely full on, and you've got that thing where its really hard to tell who's who when they're in full combat gear. but it really builds up nicely, and its got some amazing action scenes (particularly in episode 5 or 6 when they get ambushed on a bridge).

that's such a south wonston thing to say

I think its to our credit that we can empathise with the home nations, but… and this isn't a leading question, and its probably impossible to answer, but... how much sympathy did we get from the home nations when maradonna 'knocked/punched' us out of the world cup? my guess is very little, but perhaps the Irish are re-evaluating that now.

How do you mean? There's not really enough detail to draw any conclusion (unless I've missed some key piece of info). It doesn't say how the guy was self-harming (nail clippers?machete?) or whether the guy turned this instrument on the policeman, or if he just got very upset, lunged at the officers who over-reacted and shot him. It doesn't suggest he was trying to kill himself, and then got stopped by the law, who then killed him. That would have been ironic. How do you read it?

sure thing. I'll be here if you need me, like a coiled spring.

i'm ready to go!