Every Day is Election Day

In a past online life I used to regularly(ish) review albums for the Irish music webzine, Cluas.com, before working for the University Observer took the emphasis.

Well, I’m back in the game - here’s my review of Rubies’ Explode From The Center, as published on Cluas this afternoon. Click here to read it on Cluas, or find it after the jump. (more…)

On our Saturday night in Slovakia we decided to take a spin into the next town and see whatever films we could find in English.

We ended up plumping for 21: a film that would be difficult to classify into a single particular genre. Starring Jim Sturgess and Kevin Spacey, it’s about geeky student Ben Campbell (Sturgess) who makes it to MIT and catches the eye of one of his lecturers, Professor Mickey Rose (Spacey), as being someone with a superhuman knack for probability and number-crunching. Rosa invites him onto his team of protegé blackjack players who perfect a system for counting cards and making a mint, which Sturgess initially pledges to put entirely towards his education in Harvard Medical School but obviously derails while off.

I must say that I enjoyed the film, although probably for all of the wrong reasons. In a previous incarnation, this blogger was an international mathlete, and so has a penchant for statistics and probability, similar to
Campbell’s in the movie - indeed, the scene of Campbell’s first lecture under Prof Rose included a reference to a particularly favourite problem of mine, the Monty Hall problem, and his first with the Blackjack team mentions an opening due to Jimmy having “got a job at Google” (where I got an internship two summers ago).

Some of the imagery is stunning - the idea of the gang at a rooftop rave is a sweet one - but ultimately, once the team falls apart and Campbell’s double life collapses, it’s unsatisfying to think that Campbell can tell his mother of his earlier lies and be able to claim “but she forgave me, because she loves me” - and still to get away with the group’s resident totty (Kate Bosworth) on his arm too. Kevin Spacey thankfully steals the show - in every scene he effortlessly attracts the attention and deflects it from the more inane stumblings of his co-stars.

So all in all, a film to tickle the geek and materialist in you, but not one to keep you all that gripped.