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For a film entitled ‘The Lovely Bones’, you never actually see any bones. Instead you get some philosophical metaphor about bones growing around relationships, or something, from a girl trapped in a fantastical limbo before ascending to heaven.

‘The Lovely Bones’ is actually a rather good film, though. Peter Jackson, of course, manages to piss off the book lovers by apparently butchering Alice Sebold’s image of a midway holding pen for the dead by once again whoring out New Zealand and adding lots of massive CGI boats in glass bottles, and weird coexisting night and day optical illusions, but at least the entire film isn’t a huge show off.

Instead, it is in fact an incredibly tense and moving experience. It begins with a very rosy, yet not too sickening portrayal of the perfect 70’s family, as Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) dubs a voice over explaining that she is about to be horribly murdered. Then, when she gets horribly murdered, she is seamlessly transported to almost-heaven, as if she didn’t even notice being horribly murdered at all, and over looks her father falling to pieces, her family trying to cope with her death, and the boy she never got to kiss also feeling pretty damn sad.

The key to this film though, no matter how much the writers would like to have you think, is not it’s sentiment of love or it’s acceptance of death and so on, it is the amazing tension that builds in your every nerve.

Susie has just been killed, returns to to her home in the ghosty in-between world, walks through her door to her room, and comes across a massive white nothingness with only a bath tub present. Towards the bath are foot prints of blood and mud, and we notice that there is someone in there, their face covered by a flannel. A sink appears, the man takes the flannel off his face, and the killer wipes down his neck. Susie screams as he does so, and then she dissolves into thin air and it gone. This scene is about as creepy as you can get in a 12a, and the discomfort shakes you something primitive to your core.

Stanley Tucci as the murderer goes somewhat Godfather with puffed out cheeks, and throws on the most pedophile looking mustache that you initially wonder how he’s not prime suspect, but he’s so meticulous in his portrayal of a person pretending to be normal that you understand, while being completely petrified and disgusted. Mark Whalberg also doesn’t suck, which is a huge leap forward for him, and Saoirse is good at being dead. Her faint and wispy voice over could get annoying if you tried to have a conversation, but she also manages to be promisingly emotional and rather genuine.

Really though, the film is all about Peter Jackson. Although his direction is not solid throughout, and the aforementioned CGI scenes are somewhat masturbatory, the glimmers of what he can actually do are present in some of the simple shots.

For all his hobbits and giant monkeys, he’s gained the status of being a big picture director, creating overwhelming sequences designed to make your eyes crap amazement from their retinas. However, ‘The Lovely Bones’ exceeds when it’s still, when Harvey is creeping about the house, or when Marky Mark is staring at a candle. Ever so often you just get a sense that Peter’s getting slightly sick of being the New Zealand guy, and instead wants to be a proper, artsy director. One of those ones that Sundance likes. And why not, everyone should get to be a little pretentious now and then.

PnL.x

I don’t understand money. I don’t understand really what it is, where it comes from, where it goes to, how it’s made, what it’s made of, what to do with it, how to keep it, or what to do to get it. All I know about money is that it’s got the queen on it, it’s represented by squiggly lines, and if I give some to a man, he gives me beer. So now that it’s come to organising myself financially, I’m a bit stuck.

For the past year and a bit, after Sixth Form, I’ve been working, because I understood that was the normal thing to do. So, I devised an idiot proof system that took all of the money mysteriously given to me by the people I went to do work for, and put it in one place, and I also took money from this place to give to people for stuff. Then I got another place that was for keeping money I wasn’t going to spend on beer or music. Every now and then I would move left over cash from the place the work people paid me, to the place I wasn’t allowed to take money from. Apparently that’s called ’savings’?

There were all sorts of percentages attached with this, and the place I kept my money tried to explain what the percentages mean, and why it was great, but it was pretty futile. From what I understand, they gave me money for using them as a place to keep my money…

So anyway, in September I’m going to go off to university, which means I need to sort out accommodation finance and student fees and maintenance and, uh, stuff. So I go onto the direct.gov website because apparently thats the place where you get money for the … okay I am actually being serious, I have no idea what I am typing or how to explain. I literally don’t have a clue. They are going to give me money, I think that’s the idea, and that money gets split into different parts for different things it needs to be paid for. And … the, the money needs to be paid back, I think. Or some does.

Now, I’m not trying to shirk responsibility for my complete lack of understanding, but I whole heartedly blame my high school.

From years 7-11  we had this class called PSHE, which stood for ‘Personal Social Health Economic’, which was a once a week affair with our form tutor. In about year 9, it changed it’s title to ‘Life’, which was an equally shit name. It didn’t have any  exams, or any homework – if there was we simply wouldn’t do it and no one seemed to care – and the teachers treated it with very little sincerity. PSHE, as the name suggests, taught us about personal issues, social issues, health issues, and economic issues to help us with the difficult task of growing up. ‘Life’ continued with this mission statement, so you would assume money management would be the topic of at least one lesson. However, the lessons basically consisted of one sex ed lesson in year 8, when an old lady came in and we laughed at her putting a condom on a wooden rod, and then the rest of the lessons consisted of teachers reading out print outs outlining each of the many and various drugs that are available and how they will indefinitely fuck up every aspect of our lives if we so much as mention their names. Then, in year 11, we were lucky enough to be visited 5 times by a fat woman with hair dyed purple who had come in from some charity with sealed clear plastic boxes of these drugs to show us what they looked like, and again told us all how dangerous they were (which, from the look of her, seemed to come as first hand experience, though she never admitted it, despite the amount of bullying she received from the back row students) while the entire class passed around the boxes and searched for a way to break into them. Not once did they ever explain what the hell money was!

Surprisingly, the school produced several pregnant teenagers and many druggies. So, really, a massive waste of time. And I still have no idea how to financially survive as an adult.

PnL.x

There’s been a lot of bad air between Google and Apple, the two future dictators of the world, particularly since Google brought out details of their new phone, which got Steve Jobs all scared. “Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone.” He said as his mouth foamed and he stroked his knuckles while rocking in a darkened corner. Probably not, but paranoia swelled through what resembled a modern day Harfleur speech, promising that he would not allow Google space in the market, forgetting that competition is what makes capitalism worthwhile. He’s a spoilt child under the assumption that he owns that particular corner of Currys, asserting that, “We did not enter the search business,” implying that Google have broken some sort of unspoken war treaty, and now must be punished and crushed by the wrath of Apple. And his latest war machine prepared to be launched: … a big iPhone. That you can’t call people on. He’s a techno-racist to the point that he’s called Adobe lazy, and blamed Flash for the reason Mac’s sometimes crash. He hates them so much that his iPeriod doesn’t support them, like a ‘whites only’ inn.

Meanwhile, Google has been engaging a war of their own on Internet Explorer, which they want to see pretty much dead. It’s created the revolutionary and eagerly anticipated emailing system Google Wave that will destroy Outlook and MSN, and it’s made so brilliantly that Internet Explorer doesn’t have the capability to cope with it. But, this isn’t a new war. For a few months Google has been attacking IE, particularly with its Google Chrome Frame download which pretty much takes IE and kicks it until it’s a competent web browser.

To this, Bill Gates got scared and insisted that the Frame made everything dangerous and more susceptible to hackings or whatever, probably also while rocking in a corner and stroking his hands, which would not be surprising given how Gates started out in the business, credited for being the first arsehole to charge people for code and programs. Just remember, in the early days, it took a bunch of lawyers to stop Gates from becoming a market dictator.

Really, both Gates and Jobs are simply military politicians, Heads of State’s with armies, up against the agile guerrilla militia of Google. Here’s a test to show you what I mean; Microsoft has Bill Gates, Apple has Steve Jobs, what is Google’s equivalent? I would bet a lot of money that a lot of people wouldn’t have a clue.

And now, Google has just launched the Google Extensions; brilliant little add-ons, carefully named Extensions instead of, hmm, Apps, that allow you to customise your browsing experience. One brilliant one is a twitter API called Chrome Bird that adds a simple little blue bird to your perfectly simple Chrome Browser toolbar, and turns red when you have a new unread tweet, and instantly shows you that tweet if it’s @ addressed to you. You can also have translating extensions, Google Map extensions, even extensions that will wipe each internet page you visit clean of all ads. Some of them hideaway and some of them sit quietly on the tool bar, but none of them really intrude on Google’s minimalistic and calming environment.

My main problem with IE has always been that it’s too busy with too many toolbars and too many boxes that you don’t need. The Google extensions allow you to download what you need, and only clutter your screen as much as you allow them to. Some of them aren’t even completely necessary. I have an extension called ‘Lights Out’ which, when I watch a video, at a press of a button, allows me to dim the rest of the page, except for the playing video, which is nothing more than a nice touch. Chrome Bird isn’t even ‘necessary’. Google was and is so efficient that I could type ‘t’ in the search/address bar, hit enter, and I’m at my twitter feed. Chrome Bird just makes it more … distracting, in a nice way. It gives you a reason to procrastinate a little, and really that’s what we want, we don’t care about being efficient. Given the choice, people will pick a muffin over a calculator, and happily munch away while trying balance their cheque book on sticky chocolaty fingers.

Of course, I haven’t used the Google phone, and the Google OS sounds intriguing, but I haven’t much of a clue of what it’ll involve. However, everything Google does always sounds so much more interesting and honest than Apple’s new things for the anally fixated that must stroke everything, or Grandpa Microsoft’s further attempts to be one of the cool kids. Plus, Google change their logo on holidays. Awesome, huh?

PnL.x