nofear.org

Another search engine has come on line (online?) in the last week or two. It goes by the name of cuil - the name derives from the phonetic spelling of a trendy way of pronouncing the word "cool". I had a go with it, and it is definitely a bit different to the big old Google search engine experience. Looking at their privacy information cuil doesn't appear to be storing anything to do with who is searching for what, given Google's stance on privacy some might consider this new alternative.

I thought I'd give cuil a good chance by using them and thought that I might promote this search engine by writing a simple search plug-in for Firefox as there didn't appear to be one on the official Mozilla plug-in download page. If anyone knows how to submit search plug-ins to Mozilla then I'd be interested to know - I don't have the time in between all my charity work to find out this myself!

To install the plug-in just save the following text as cuil.xml in the "searchplugins" directory under the installation directory of Mozilla Firefox.

<SearchPlugin 
    xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/">
<ShortName>Cuil</ShortName>
<Description>Cuil Search</Description>
<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
<Image width="16" height="16">data:image/x-icon;base64,R0lGODlhE
AAQAKUzAAAAAAABAQEBAQEDBQMDAwIJEgsLCwsLDAINHQwMDAwMDQQSJxARERQVFR8gISA
hIQskSAwmSiYmJwkvZhEzZDk6Ozo8PTs9Pj4/QEdISVhaXBdx8xdy9Rl1+X6BhYeKjoyQk
5CUl5CUmJKWmpOXm5SYnJabn5eboJicoJicoZmdoZqeopqeo5ugpJygpJyhpZ2hpZ2ipp+
jp////////////////////////////////////////////////////yH5BAEKAD8ALAAAA
AAQABAAAAZmQIBwSCwaj8ikcqlEAD6e5YSzWIWIAkBWm6UArEIQLNZAPQCyV6Tzva5UlhO
A5PiiIJs2wKQRBOZ1K3d5YC0gAAYAJRkALIN6GCUqIxIuJSkkjysiQxUMQhcECgkDBQAKB
0yqq0lBADs=</Image>
<Url type="text/html" method="GET" 
    template="http://www.cuil.com/search">
  <Param name="q" value="{searchTerms}"/>
  <!-- Dynamic parameters -->
  <Param name="rls" 
    value="{moz:distributionID}:{moz:locale}:{moz:official}"/>
  <MozParam name="client" condition="defaultEngine" 
    trueValue="firefox-a" falseValue="firefox"/>
</Url>
</SearchPlugin>

Happy browsing from the nofear.org technology team!

This poem, written over ten years ago, contains some imagery (the plant growing in an old shoe) that has recently been echoed in the new Pixar film, Wall-E (see Hamgray's review below). I'm not saying that the idea was pinched from me - just that the Zeitgeist keeps manifesting itself!

Settling in was like saving the planet,
all that anxiety
over space, colour and temperature,
knowing when to destroy and when to nurture.
Our first flat a miniature Terra.

Once I came back to discover
that a bird had flown in through the window.
A foreign body,
unwanted as the outrageous cuckoo
in another's nest,
it perched on the angle-poise lamp.

Quick eyes appraised the living-space
as I myself had done
on a first visit,
nervous but intrepid like the bird
whose accidental presence in our flat
might yet make news:

'How a flying visitor became my lodger,
Woman tells of life with feathered friend'.
For although a parrot would be better,
I appreciate the timely symbolism
of this rare cohabitation,
a truce between man and nature.

But enough of millennium doom.
We could use the humour that recycles
shoes as flower-pots
on a neighbour's windowsill,
where daffodills sprout from worn soles
with spring in their step.

Pixar are very well known for their computer-rendered animated features and as is typical for a film for all the family WALL.E was released in the UK in time for the school holidays.

Andrew Stanton is an old-hand at Pixar and writes and directs this particular Pixar project. He previously directed 'Finding Nemo', and was the writer of 'Toy Story'.

To summarise the plot, without giving too much away, WALL.E is the title and main character of the film. WALL.E is a droid working on the tidying up of an over-polluted and deserted planet Earth. He seems to be well past his original service life, as he works alone scuttling around the remnants of civilisation compressing rubbish and salvaging interesting artefacts including an array of extra service items for himself. Mankind has left for space and the droid seems to have developed a personality of his own - the usual anthropomorphism present in most of Pixar's stories.

One day WALL.E witnesses a spectacular visitation from an other-worldly droid who is apparently scanning the planet. Having spent so much time without excitement WALL.E attempts, with the help of a friendly cockroach, to befriend this new arrival.

To put it simply this film was really excellent. At first the scenes are gritty and realistic as WALL.E trundles around doing the sorts of things that Wombles are known for doing. The graphics were so realistic you can recognise rusting cans of WD-40 and bashed-up iPods that WALL.E has found. As the film moves forward it shifts towards a more aesthetic experience altogether, and some of the scenes were just pure art as well as entertainment. There is a blatant ecological message here too, but it's not so heavy handed as to make you feel too guilty about being human.

Considering this film is for all the family, and especially the younger members of them, I found (despite being a jaded adult) that it was quite easy to get engrossed in the visuals and the simple story. A few nods and winks to other Sci-Fi films make for even more fun; Sigourney Weaver even has a cameo voice-over role.

Special note also goes to the end credits which feature the plot of the film backwards in a style from early human wall painting through to primitive computer animation. Sadly I managed to miss the Pixar mini-movie at the beginning of the film, which means I will have to get this one on DVD - or maybe even Blue-Ray - when it is released!

***** (out of 5)

Having seen, and very much enjoyed, The Station Agent, I made a point of catching this latest one by writer-director Thomas McCarthy. It almost lived up to my expectations, but not quite. Like The Station Agent, the film is about the loneliness of modern society, and celebrates the joy of unexpected and improbable friendships. However, there is less zany humour in The Visitor, a film which tries to be serious yet shies away from uncomfortable areas, handling the issue of illegal immigration with extreme caution, almost coyness.

The film's warm humanity comes largely from its caste of likeable characters. Walter, an ageing professor teaching third world and development studies, is kind and gentle and cannot resist helping a young couple when he finds them unexpectedly living in the New York flat he rarely uses. Incidentally, I wasn't sure exactly how they managed to infiltrate it and felt that that area of the plot could have been better clarified. Anyway, Walter turns up one day to find Zainab, a young African woman, in the bath, upon which her boyfriend Tarek runs up to find out why she is screaming. After initially asking them to leave, Walter decides to invite them back as they clearly have nowhere else to go. It probably helps that they are an attractive and charismatic couple: he a talented musician and she a stylish jewellery designer. One wonders whether Walter's reaction would have been the same if they had been a little more unsavoury or just stupid. Anyway, Walter is won over when Tarek offers to teach him drumming (Walter's a would-be musician whose attempts to learn the piano after the death of his piano-teacher wife have ended miserably). With his new friend, Walter visits cool night-clubs and open-air jamming sessions and feels generally rejuvenated.

The sunny mood clouds when Tarek is arrested in the subway and kept in detention. In his efforts to help Tarek, widower Walter strikes up a relationship (of a very decorous kind) with Tarek's elegant Palestinian mother, who wants to visit Tarek in prison. Meanwhile Zainab remains in the vicinity, watching and waiting, and apparently safe from suspicion although she too is not a legal resident. The question of why Tarek was picked on for arrest rather than other, equally marginal figures, was not explained, although the lawyer whom Walter hires explains that the government is tightening up a lot in the wake of 9/11. I felt that McCarthy could have gone further - without becoming too heavy or boring - to show the range of treatment meted out to people in these circumstances. I was left wondering what was special about Tarek's case. The treatment given to the issue just seemed a little thin, and whilst I appreciate that McCarthy was trying to make a character-driven film rather than an issue-driven one, the result was a little frustrating.

The best scenes in the film were the ones of group drumming, in which the performances of the musicians were exhilarating. These high points were equivalent to the visual poetry (shots of disused and little-used railway lines winding into the distance) that made The Station Agent so beautiful and moving. The Visitor was an enjoyably bitter-sweet study of human vulnerability. Almost like E. M. Forster's novel Howards End - with its motto 'only connect' - the film showed the very human need for friendship and understanding, but it could have afforded to be a little more hard-edged without losing its appeal. Or simply be more zany: one or the other. This film ended up being neither one thing nor the other.

This poem is written as a villanelle. There is a pun in the title, as the origin of the word 'villanelle' is 'villa', since it was usually a kind of verse composed on a pastoral theme, and written in the countryside away from the stresses and strains of city life. I have just been told by a fellow-poet (no names) that mine is not a classic villanelle, in which line 4 should rhyme with line 3 and so on, but the basic pattern is nevertheless clearly correct, with the use of the refrain. Perhaps there needs to be debate about the use of verse forms, and the degree of variation permissible!

What to bring? A torch, a pack of cards.
Less is more. Seek balance. Love perfection.
From our retreat, we send the world regards.

Thick walls offer us enough protection.
No need to hire shady bodyguards.
What to bring? A torch, a pack of cards.

Late-night poker we'll play, perhaps charades,
cast shadows - sheer carnival confection.
From our retreat, we send the world regards.

Don't ask who's won the latest election.
We're here to daydream like lazy lizards.
What to bring? A torch, a pack of cards.

Form matters. Thus Palladian facades
survive, as if by natural selection.
From our retreat, we send the world regards.

Figs ripen. Autumn evades detection.
Unhurried preparation reaps rewards.
What to bring? A torch, a pack of cards.
From our retreat we send the world regards.

Listen very carefully, I will say this only wuurnce ... Women have been making important contributions to national life (at least in European countries like France and England) for a long time, not merely since the advent of 'feminism' thirty years ago. It doesn't need a film like this to present that fact - the involvement of women - as if it were a surprising discovery! One of the aims of Female Agents is to pay tribute to a group of women who helped the D-Day Landings to go ahead, but whose contribution was not, perhaps, recognised as much as it should have been. That is a good aim, but I felt that the film over-played the feminism angle in a way that seemed, at times, patronising. Apart from that flaw, however, it was a gripping, fast-paced piece of cinema that told a fascinating story very well.

Jean-Paul Salome, the director, combines convincing character-development with good cinematic technique (such as interesting cutting between different scenes) to hold the viewer's attention from the start. The women in the team (whose mission is initially to save a man wounded whilst reconnoitring the Normandy beaches, then to eliminate the Nazi colonel who suspects the plans) are portrayed as very different in their personalities. Gaelle, the explosives expert, is religious, Suzy is a sensualist, Jeanne is earthy and tough, and Louise, who holds them together, is coolly rational. The male characters in the film (even the ones on the Allied side) come off rather badly in comparison. Louise's brother Pierre, for example, seems cold, and fails to win our sympathy even when he is the victim of torture by the Nazi colonel, Heindrich. Perhaps if there had been some more sympathetic male characters the film wouldn't have felt quite so dogmatic in its feminism. Colonel Heindrich's romantic involvement with Suzy adds complexity and psychological interest to his character, and his one act of mercy redeems him somewhat, but ultimately (and inevitably) he is a villain. The fact that he alone of the higher-ranking Nazis seemed close to suspecting the Allied plans before D-Day is intriguing, and a testimony to his intelligence.

There were some very skilfully-shot sequences in this film. For example, the bombing of the hospital near the beginning. Before the bomb has exploded, Louise (disguised as a nurse) stalks Heindrich with a gun whilst the rest of the men are distracted by a Folies Bergeres-style striptease routine that some of her fellow agents put on. Louise tracks Heindrich to the men's lavatory and he, still in his cubicle, sees her approaching by means of the reflection in the chrome plumbing in front of him, The camera angles here added magnificently to the suspense, in a way reminiscent of the chase scenes in that movie classic, The Third Man. The fast pace continues throughout Female Agents, with twists and turns enough (no spoilers here) to intrigue the viewer right up to the end. It is a very moving film as well, and makes you wonder how many other heroic lives from that era remain untold.

This poem was inspired by a visit Cambridge's Scott Polar Research Institute, which is a museum/library open to the general public as well as scholars. Recently a family day on the theme of polar bears was held.

Though the Cold War is over, paranoia
lives on, past the point of self-parody.
That polar bear, stuffed to within an inch
of its life, is a spy - its glacial stare
follows us everywhere. On the walls, photos
in frames show others of its kind - trophies
left to atrophy in cluttered stately homes,
yellowing like chain-smoking émigrés.

Though transport poses challenges,
we'll think laterally. This young explorer
(my son) favours hands and knees, and - who knows? -
maybe he'll be the first to swim to the poles!

Though we're the only visitors,
a colony of souls convenes to hush
these halls, to hover round the strong room
where brave mens' letters gather dust.
Like bubbles that burst at a touch, the future
melts as we learn new ways to move on.

Though we are free, this morning, to idle,
this is the tip of time's iceberg.

This tickled my fancy when gazing up at the train departure board at King's Cross in London. Very telling that the test for their system was to have a delayed train...

I don't quite know how this guy did it, but last time I tried to take my bicycle into a shopping centre - or rather the grand foyer of the library in Norwich - I was asked to leave.

Thus astounded I had to take a photo of this chap who not only seemed to have managed to get his bike into the Apple Store of Cambridge's Grand Arcade, but seemed to be allowed to use it as a comfy seat when test driving the laptop.

I applaud the Grand Arcade for allowing bikes in, or if it turns out not to be the case then I applaud the chap for successfully smuggling his two wheels into the shop. The Apple Store was one of the busiest outlets on the opening of the arcade and does seem to retain a certain degree of footfall, in other areas of the city shops are closing apace!

One other thought occurs to me, I wonder if the chap in the photo could be using this as a sort of hot-desking technique? Office space is pretty expensive (even though there is lots empty in Cambridge at the moment) so coupled with decent use of coffee shops and bars you could have a cheap mechanism for mobile working. ("Of course Genome" you cry, "you are out of date." people have been working like this for years, but give me my out-door working environment in the graveyard anytime...)

(Where else do you think all that DNA arrives from for the scientists to use?)

Le Grand Voyage is a road movie with a difference. Not only does it show the gradual growth of trust and liking between father and son in the course of a long journey, it also shows the meeting of different cultures, namely western secularism and traditional Islam. The kind of Islam that the father practises is strict but not fundamentalist, and the positive aspects of his faith are represented with impressive impartiality. This is no mean feat in today's climate of paranoia and intolerance. One small example will help here: the father scrupulously shows charity to strangers, and gives alms. Although the son protests when he sees their dwindling supply of money being given away, he has clearly learnt something because at the end of the film we see him giving money to a beggar on the street. This small detail, showing his change of heart, is typical of the way the director, Ismael Ferroukhi, works: through subtle touches. It is a very thoughtful film, but certainly not a humourless one. There were many points where I found myself laughing out loud, and reflecting that it was the best film I had seen in a long time (and I've seen quite a few recently).

A little plot summary here will be useful. Reda has been saddled with the unenviable task of driving his somewhat taciturn old father on an overland pilgrimage to Mecca, starting from the south of France where they live. This is a very short-notice arrangement, as it was to have been his elder brother who would do the driving, but the brother is arrested for drunk driving. Reda is not best pleased as he has important exams coming up, and also he is seeing a girl from his class and does not want to leave her for a long stretch of time. However, he puts family duty first and accepts the challenge. For the first part of the journey, our sympathies are definitely with Reda rather than with the father, who seems grumpy, unreasonable and generally awkward. For example, he puts his son's mobile phone in a litter bin while his son is sleeping because he thinks it is distracting him from the pilgrimage. He also prefers to trust to his own sense of direction rather than maps, causing them to get lost in a particularly bleak part of eastern Europe. However, it becomes apparent in the course of the film that he does actually care a lot for his son, and that there are always strong principles behind his actions. It is the way he usually refuses to justify or explain his actions with words that causes problems initially. Language is an interesting area in the film. The son speaks almost entirely in French, whereas the father prefers Arabic, so that their conversations are strangely polyglot. It only becomes apparent later on that the father can actually speak French but stubbornly chooses not to: his surprising fluency in French is demonstrated at the French embassy in a Turkish town when the two of them are trying to claim reimbursement after they've been robbed by a confidence trickster. Reda is to blame for this disaster, as he had been too willing to trust the wily man who offers himself as their guide; Reda allowed himself to get drunk one night, providing the thief with his opportunity. The father's suspicions turned out to have been right all along.

To return to the question of language: the fact that different varieties of Arabic are spoken in different parts of the world was reflected. As the two men are nearing their destination, they share a picnic with some other pilgrims in a wayside stopping place in the desert. The father explains that his son only speaks Morroccan Arabic, not classical Arabic, so he would be unable to join in the conversation. The other pilgrims are amazed at the distance the men have covered (nearly three thousand miles) and are full of praise. Reda, humbled by his experience with the trickster, has started to see his father's point of view by this point, and has stopped complaining about the laboriousness of the journey. When he asked his father why he didn't just take the plane to Mecca, the father explained that it is not simply arriving at the destination that counts, but the means taken to achieve that end, and a more difficult journey will yield greater spiritual benefit. When the men actually arrive in Mecca, the overwhelming number of pilgrims converging on the spot is very graphically conveyed: the crowds pushing forward towards the mosque create a feeling of claustrophobia, yet there is also an atmosphere of elation. The cinematography at this point becomes a bit dream-like, as if Reda is having a kind of waking vision. It is not clear, by the end of the film, whether he has actually been 'converted' from secularism to religious faith, but he has certainly had a life-changing experience. Without wishing to spoil the surprise for anyone intending to see the film, I'd say that the journey back will be very different from the journey out.

The one thing that slightly spoilt the film for me was the cheesy music! At moments of good will and relaxation, some very artificial 'feel good' music blasted out, annoying me a lot. Why not use proper arabic music, either classical, or one of the many popped-up variants that are popular among immigrants in France? That would surely be more authentic and interesting? Apart from that, though, the film was very impressive. The use of humour was very well-judged. One particularly funny moment was the sheep scene. Reda is complaining about the fact that their diet lacks meat, so the father buys a live sheep at the next village they stop at, and puts it on the back seat of the car. Reda only realises this after they've set off again and he hears a funny noise coming from behind him. When they try to kill the poor creature though, the father brandishing his knife, Reda fails to hold it down and it runs off into the desert, bleating. There were many quirky scenes like this, and some lovely landscape shots too. As I've already indicated, this was the best film I've seen this year.