Film: Death Proof

A Quentin Tarantino film is one of the few things that gets me banging on the fleapit door, fingernails gauging the woodwork, peeling the rust off the hinges. This one came a bit out of the blue as I was expecting the release of Grindhouse, QT’s old-style double feature with Robert Rodriguez. I knew that Grindhouse had bombed in the US but assumed that it would still come out in Europe in the same format as us Europeans can be relied on to sit in one place for three hours without pissing ourselves. Apparently that is not going to happen. Fingers crossed all the same.

I didn’t know much about the film up front, apart from Kurt Russell getting a kick out of crashing cars, which was a surprise when I came to watch it as he didn’t seem to get that much of a kick out of it and there were only a couple of crashes. We get a lot of QT talk, although it’s not the best his written, and a bad cameo from the man himself. And a couple of shit-hot car chases, a girl just about clinging on to the bonnet and a whole bunch of foul-mouthed foxes.

Reviews in the film press rate this higher than I do. This is Tarantino at his most indulgent, with his most niche film yet.

Oh, and no word yet on a release date for Planet Terror, the Rodriguez part of Grindhouse. It might just have to be one for DVD.

Podcast: Interviews with Innovators

I’ve been listening to this podcast for a while now and even though the subjects and people that come up are not necessarily what I would search out, they are normally interesting (I’m becoming more choosy in what I listen to podcast-wise and I’ve turned off more that a few half way through – hasn’t happened to this one though…)

The latest edition is talking with a guy setting up an airline offering “peer-to-peer” air travel – more like an air taxi service – rather than scheduled flights to larger airports. It’s worth commenting on because of the detail he goes into about what was necessary to figure out before they could launch the service (some heavy duty maths…) This is a brave move considering this has not been done before, even if the idea has been around for a while, as they have to wait and see if there really is a market out there for the service.

It reminds me of a recent National Geographic article on swarm theory, which is kind of linked, which is worth a read too…

• Jon Udell’s Interviews with Innovators: Edward Iacobucci, co-founder of DayJet
• National Geographic: Swarm Theory

Update: Here’s another article about algorithms in business:

• The Economist: Business by numbers

Happiness is egg shaped

I heard a story a little while back that the slogan “go to work on an egg” can no longer be used in adverts and thought how ridiculous can you get? Turns out that they wanted to re-show a series of old ads starring Tony Hancock and its been deemed that they don’t show eggs as part of a balanced diet [so the plans have been scrambled]. Hmm… Now, dear old Anthony is my favourite curmudgeon and I found the ads. Brilliant stuff.

• The original ads
• All you need to know about eggs