If you were going to launch a rocket into space, which direction would you do it? East or west?
November 17th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
Most countries launch space rockets eastwards because the Earth spins west to east and launching eastwards gives rockets a boost from the Earth’s rotational speed.
But Israel, with its Shavit space launch vehicle, launches due west against the planet’s spin. This ensures that the rockets fly over the Mediterranean Sea and not over Israel and then neighbouring Arab countries, some of which remain hostile to it.
This is done for the protection of populations and because Israel does not want its Arab neighbours mistaking a space launch for a missile attack.
This is one of many facts which I discovered while reading “The Future Of Geography” by Tim Marshall.
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A review of the new film “Past Lives”
November 11th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
At a time when so many films are sequels, prequels or remakes, it’s so refreshing to welcome an original story told in an original way.I’m reminded of “The Farewell” (2019) which was written and directed by a Chinese-American, set largely in China, with most of the dialogue in Mandarin. “Past Lives” (2023) is written and directed by a Korean-Canadian (a wonderfully-assured Celine Song in her debut feature film), alternates between Seoul and New York, with use of Korean most of the time. Both works are semi-autobiographical and explore cultural differences between Asia and America.
A key theme in this movie is the Korean concept of inyeon which is the notion that fate determines how relationships form over many lifetimes. In the case of this story, the two intersecting lives are those of Na Young aka Nora (a captivating Greta Lee) and her childhood friend Hae Sung (Teo Yoo). A complication is Nora’s New York Jewish husband Arthur (John Magaro).
There is not so much dialogue, so the city scenes and the haunting score (from composers Danial Rossen and Christopher Bear) can be enjoyed as the characters gently interact. Told in three segments 12 years apart, this is an achingly tender tale of love and loss that is highly commended.
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A review of the new film “Pain Hustlers”
November 8th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
A Netflix film starring Emily Blunt (“A Quiet Place”), Chris Evens (“Captain America”) and Andy Garcia (“Book Club”) has to be worth seeing, right? Well …The story is interesting enough: based on real events, it explains the role of key personnel at one of the pharmaceutical companies behind the opioid epidemic that has ravaged the United States in the last two decades (what is called Zanna in the movie was actually Insys Therapeutics and the fentanyl drug was marketed as Subsys). So why is it so disappointing?
Perhaps because there is too little focus on the victims rather than the perpetrators. Perhaps because the massive fraud is represented in too comical a style. Perhaps because the director David Yates is clearly better suited to his four “Harry Potter” and three “Fantastic Beasts” fantasy films than such a serious issue as opioids.
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The next General Election …
November 7th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
will be held on Thursday, 7 November 2024 – a year today.
Remember where you heard it first.
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Why we should spend more time talking to strangers
November 7th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
When I took my granddaughters for lunch in a restaurant and I asked the waitress where she was from, my eldest granddaughter said: “Granddad, you talk to everyone.” I guess she’s right.
When my son was speaking at my 75th birthday event and the launch of my memoir, he joked that I wanted to know the story of everyone there. And I guess he was right.
Each week, I volunteer at the Older Persons’ Unit of St Thomas’ Hospital in London. Often I find myself just listening to the patient’s story.
Currently, I’m working on a project to interview staff and residents in my block of flats in central London and I’m going to (self) publish their stories in a book for each of them
This is just what I do. I’ve never really given it much thought.
But a recent article in the “Guardian” newspaper said:“While we tend to focus on our close relationships, psychologists have noticed that even what they call “minimal social interactions” can make us feel happier and more connected. One study found that people who had a brief chat with their barista, or simply made eye contact and smiled, felt happier and experienced a greater sense of belonging than those who treated the human being in front of them as an extension of the coffee machine.”
When I think about it, I really enjoy ‘recognising’ people and checking in on them. It’s good for them – but it’s also good for me.
You can learn more about talking to strangers from this piece in the “Guardian”.
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A review of the new David Fincher film “Killer”
November 6th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
Director David Fincher is the master of the thriller movie – think “Seven” or “Fight Club” or “Gone “Girl”. Here the tension begins with the jarring opening credits and never caeses for the next two taut hours.In his first screen role for four years, Michael Fassbender plays a superbly professional assassin – never named – who suddenly finds that the hunter has become the hunted. Fassbender – who is rarely off the screen – is brilliant as he methodically travels from one location to another to find and eliminate his adversaries in echoes of “Kill Bill”. Based on a French graphic novel, it is not simply that the point of view is that of the killer but we inhabit his mind as we hear him mentally repeat his mantra and listen to a series of music tracks from The Smiths.
The entire film is wonderfully stylish, but there are two stand-out scenes: a brutal fight sequence with a character simply titled The Brute (Sala Baker) and an ice-cold encounter with The Expert (a brilliant Tilda Swinton). This could have been a classic but it is let down by an anti-climactic ending. However, if you like the John Wick movies, this is for you.
It will be on Netflix in a week’s time.
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Is there intelligent life out there or are we alone in the universe?
November 5th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
If it is suggested that humankind is probably the only intelligent life in the universe, some people condemn this as an arrogant thought. But this is not a matter of attitude or emotion; it is a matter of science and probability.On the one hand, it seems impossible that humans can be alone in the universe. A typical galaxy can contain around a billion stars and there are thought to be approaching 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe. On average each star has two or three planets revolving round it, so there must be millions in the ‘goldilocks zone’ where it is not too cold or too hot for liquid water to exist (which is the basis of any life that we can understand).
On the other hand, the existence of humankind on planet Earth revolving round the Sun is the result of a whole series of highly improbable variables. One of these is the ‘jump’ from single cell organisms to multi-cell organisms, something which is sometimes known as ‘the fateful encounter’ that has happened only once in more than 3 billion years of the existence of bacteria. Such an encounter does not guarantee the evolution of intelligent life forms; after all, Earth has experienced five great extinctions when substantial proportions of life on the planet were wiped out. So us being here is quite improbable.
There is actually something called the Drake Equation that attempts to give some sort of guidance as to the probability of intelligent life. It consists of seven key variables. The last of these is the length of time for which intelligent civilisations release detectable signals into space. Humans have only existed for a tiny fraction of the past life of the universe and may not continue to exist for long in the future life of the universe. So, even if other intelligent life has existed, maybe it did not coincide with our existence as a species.
I find the detectable signals variable of the Drake equation the most compelling in terms of deciding whether there is any other intelligent life out there. Any intelligent life must use parts of the electromagnetic spectrum to communicate – as we do with telecommunications, radio, television and the like – and, even if they had no wish to communicate with other intelligent life in the universe, these signals would travel through the universe for ever. Forget flying saucers and the like – how is it that we have never detected any such signals? Even ET phoned home.
On the balance of current evidence, I think that our working assumption has to be that we are alone. If we are the only intelligent life form that exists or has ever existed, we have a tremendous responsibility to preserve humankind and make it as civilised as possible.
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A review of the new blockbuster movie “Killers Of The Flower Moon”
October 31st, 2023 by Roger Darlington
Such is my admiration for them that I would see any film directed by Martin Scorsese or starring Robert De Niro or Leonardo DiCaprio, so I am never going to miss a work like this that combines the talent of all three.A few statistics: this is Scorsese’s 26th feature, it is the ninth film that Scorsese has made with De Niro and the seventh that he has made with DiCaprio, and it is the fourth time that De Niro and DiCaprio have been in a movie together. Both Scorsese and De Niro are now 80, so we may not see too much more of this sort of magnificent collaboration.
For all the talent here – and I have still to acknowledge other fine actors such as Lily Gladstone, Jesse Piemons, John Lithgow and Brendan Fraser, the wonderful cinematography of Mexican Rodrigo Prieto (“Barbie”) and the haunting soundtrack of Robbie Robertson (who has since died) – this is a film that is going to win over the critics more than the generality of cinema goers.
It is just too long (almost three and a half hours), too slow and too downbeat to pull in the punters and it is most unlikely to recoup its massive $200 million costs.
Set in Oklahoma in the 1920s, the film tells a story – based on the non-fiction novel by David Grann – that I did not know: how Native Americans of the Osage tribe, on whose land floods of oil were found, were swindled out of their landrights and often simply murdered by the white man.
The movie is a truly powerful work but, by focusing on the crimes of one white family, we do not see the full magnitude of this huge crime that was eventually investigated by the newly-formed FBI and, by ending with the recreation of a radio programme (featuring a brief cameo from Scorsese himself), we do not feel the full horror of this outrageous betrayal and bloodshed.
In short, this is a film for serious lovers of cinema who may find it a flawed masterpiece.
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How long can you stand on one leg? How often should you try?
October 31st, 2023 by Roger Darlington
In the last few weeks, three different friends have advocated to me the health benefits of standing on one leg, especially if one is a senior citizen. So I’ve decided to give it a go.
A couple of my friends do it while brushing their teeth. I don’t know how they manage this. I do it as the first thing of the day and I do it each day
I try to achieve 60 seconds for each leg but, so far, I can only achieve this by – several times in that minute – touching the ground with my other leg or touching the wall with a hand. I’m sure I’ll get better as my muscles develop.
If you’d like to read a short piece on the health benefits of this routine, you’ll find one here.
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A review of the 1973 classic film “Mean Streets”
October 28th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
Somehow, in spite of my lifelong love of the movies, I managed to miss this classic film for half a century, but then I saw a 50th anniversary showing at the British Film Institute. It was only the third feature from director Martin Scorsese – who, in this case originated the story and co-wrote the screen play – and it proved to be his breakthrough film.Set in the streets of New York’s Little Italy during the religious festival of San Gennaro, it is all about the fractious relationship between two low-level gangsters, Charlie (Harvey Keitel) and his cousin Johnny Boy (then newcomer Robert De Niro).
The film is visually and aurally arresting, with clever camerawork and lots of period music, but narratively it is an odd, even nihilistic, work. More so than any subsequent movie from Scorsese, it forefronts character over plot and there is more than a hint of screen play autobiography in the Charlie persona.
The main theme – the Catholic notion of penance – is declared by Charlie at the very beginning: “You pay for your sins in the street not in church.”
Speaking about “Mean Streets” in 2004, Scorsese admitted: “In my mind, it’s not really a film, but a declaration or a statement of who I am and how I was living, and those thoughts and dilemmas and conflicts that were very much part of my life at that time.”
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