30-XII-2009.

Yesterday Lena took the camera to school to make a couple of photos of her matricular experiment, extracting thymol from thyme.

On the way back, when I was driving her home, I asked her to shoot this grumfed-up* pole. It's been like that for weeks. Not all cables are made equal, some get high.

Lena's sort-of-boyfriend Gary has gone off back to MIT, probably won't see him during the spring break (them the are sort of rich but in debt up to their eyeballs, like the most of their kind). He bid us farewell as if it's for good. We were one foot here, now we are one foot there.

Watched a lot on Netflix tonight - one Sherlock, then Park's "Oldboy" (heavy stuff, and despite all the fighting and gore, deeply philosophical), and rewatched "Sky captain", then read the critics. One of the critics said that Conran could do everything about the stories of the 30s, except tell them. Now thinking about what's missing, from a POV of an american film critic, is that it's probably too british. The main character is all RAF, his accent (and of his mate) is almost scottish, they act british all the way. Stiff upper lip, deadpan humor, all that. What's missing is the exaggerated emotion, more swashbuckling in the duels, more of a barroom fight. So a bit of a british tinge over the directing makes characters wooden... yet the critic doesn't find anything wrong with a RAF outpost smack near Nepal. Colonies are forever, that's OK.

Generally, all these brainwashing movies never let a situation anywhere in the world be handled by locals, unless it's to paint them incompetent. Well, not exactly never, but the general picture is that mexican police never solved anything, not on its own.

Which can be turned into advantage. If I was a mexican cop, I'd pretend to be every bit the image they have. Then catch them unawares. So they deserve, for believing their own propaganda. Which would also make a good plot... sending a Poirot or some such to solve a case in one of the so-called "backward" countries, then have him turn out a complete idiot for assuming the world elsewhere ticks the way it's wound in the anglosaxon clock shop, and outclassed by a local detective. The piece would probably fail in the richest markets, but who cares - it would be fun to write.

(amazingly, I wrote this the next day... keeping abreast with my own time, am I not?)

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* v. Alan Ford

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Mentions: 27-I-2022., Alan Ford, Gary Dalton, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), the Daltons, in serbian

31-XII-2009 - 23-XII-2025