Buddy Cop Double Dose

Flashpoint is a 1980's thriller that reeks of it's era with dodgy music, full fat machismo and acting of spurious quality. Two disgruntled border patrolmen uncover a crashed plane, sniper rifle and a big bag of cash in the desert and soon find their good fortune has a price when their tentative investigations provoke the attention of the NSA. The two leads Kris Kristofferson and Treat Williams lazily chew their way through the hamfisted scripted and although the plot has potential it's doused by the shouty posturing, dull witted characterisations and unnecessary subplots. Wouldn't bother unless your fond of the alt-theories surrounding Dallas '63 or shit films.

A few years later and Off Limits sees Gregory Hines and Willem Dafoe offer a better expression of the buddy cop formula by playing a pair of jaded, wisecracking detectives struggling with crime in Saigon during the Vietnam war. When a prostitute turns up dead the duo find themselves hunting a serial killer amidst the chaos of the city, bumping into a sexy nun, psychotic colonel and a camp counterpoint along the way. There's plenty of action stuffed in beside the fairly formulaic thriller plot but it's the commendable performances of Hines and Dafoe which rescue the film from mediocrity and they've strong support from Fred Ward and Scott Glenn. It's not amazing, just a solid, fairly entertaining retro cop drama with a decent soundtrack.

Tin Foil Millinery

Is Barbara Bush the daughter of Aleister Crowley?

The Virginia quake might have caused by the covert nuking of secret underground bases, or not?

Former NASA staffer Ken Johnston says there are alien cities on the Moon.

The hidden story of the Fukushima disaster?

Is Nicolas Cage immortal? Some dude is selling the photographic evidence on Ebay. Moviefone.
Aum cult boffin was a Tesla nut and claimed the Kobe earthquake was artificial. Reddit. Disinfo have the anime they made as a recruiting tool.

Some Frenchie scientist found an alien implant in Napoleon's skull.

The increase in UFO sightings is the build up to a staged, faux alien invasion, apparently.

Got handed another flyer bout this Scottish paedo ring the other day. And while we're on the subject here's a UK doc that was apparently never aired.

Oddballs encircled by Murdoch's excretions

Lord Blackheath repeats his bumblings about the generous Foundation X on Sky. Mmm feel the quality of Newscorp journalism.

Jesse Ventura, former wrestler, Governor, actor, has his own conspiracy TV show. Here's his latest episode on Wall Street. It's only a matter of time before Chuck gets a quiz show.

Questions about Hasib Hussein and Tavistock Square.

Someone fired a missile off the California coast but noone's fessing up.

Batshit lady prattles on about Obama, Nibiru and all sorts of crazy.

Icke is banging on about some Scottish Peedo ring, makes a change from Royal Lizards.

According to Murdoch's Sun, Scarborough is the new hangout for UFO's.

JFK & the Oil Biz

I had to really dig around to find Executive Action - a solid political thriller in a docu-drama stylee that's nicely acted by Burt Lancaster and Robert Ryan - hard to find I guess 'cause it's about the rather obvious conspiracy to assassinate JFK. Presumably Ellroy's seen this at some point because the film's cabal of big money, shady spooks and disgruntled ex-Cubans seems awfully familiar nonetheless it's the straight forwardness of this film, the simple stating of the facts that makes this a much more effective film than Stone's over long effort 18 years later.



Collapse is an alarming documentary about our peek oil problem & geopolitics. Apparently the film makers had contacted Michael Ruppert regarding his investigative work on CIA drug running in mainland USA but both thought this was the more compelling subject. It is decent film and Ruppert is quite the interesting chap but sadly it feels a little tin foil hatty to me at times. Maybe if they'd bolstered Ruppert's pieces with some other talking heads or something it would have felt less a rant and more of a theory.

Gashole on the other hand takes a much broader view of the oil problem with a focus on the duplicitous industries that lie behind our addiction. It maybe doesn't have the polish or the intensity of Collapse but there's some interesting titbits strewn along the way like the fact that Rudolf Diesel's original engine ran on peanut oil and Ogle's '77 patent for a 100mpg engine. I'm not personally convinced by the bio-diesel solution trumpeted here as it requires stretching our already exhausted agriculture even more but it's still the more effective film of the two.

Tin foil hattery

Gawker have an interesting article about this ongoing Pentagon-Wikileaks stramash - seems like Wired.com could've protected the now arrested Manning but decided against it (which isn't very nice) and now they're being all coy about releasing the log of their chat.

BoingBoing steps up to the plate though and releases a less edited version & my fav quote is ~ asked about the content of the cables, Manning replies....

"crazy, almost criminal political backdealings... the non-PR-versions of world events and crises... uhm... all kinds of stuff like everything from the buildup to the Iraq War during Powell, to what the actual content of "aid packages" is..."

So is all this talk of cables all a smokescreen so the Pentagon can trample on Wikileaks? or is there really a bumper crop of shit about to hit the fan ? I hope the latter.