Brussels
April 26, 2011

Good movie: Route Irish

He just heard about Donald Trump's candidacy.

Back to work! Almost a relief after the hectic three days I had as a tourist. Tourism, at least the way I do it, is very tiring. But, as David Letterman says, it’s a good kind of tired.

Today started a battery of classes. It was fun to get back into the classroom after doing mostly support for many weeks.

Took care of the Attend a Movie requirement for Brussels tonight. I was running out of hope – everything in Brussels was either not in English, or I’d already seen it, or I’d rather drive upholstery tacks into my gums than see it. Then I spied a new Ken Loach film with the curious name Route Irish playing at a multiplex in the center of town. Score.

I recommend the film. I have no idea if it’s even opened in the states, or if it will open. Ken Loach has never done big business there. He’s an angry, frankly political filmmaker. Compared to Ken Loach’s films, Mike Leigh’s movies are Spielberg.

General Rommel ate at this Subway in 1942. Legend has it he ordered a foot long Spicy Italian on wheat.

The market in central Brussels. It's got a titanic history, but is probably most famous for being the place where we made First Contact with aliens from outer space.

This one treads similar ground to the much less successful Green Zone with Matt Damon from a year or two. In fact, the color in the title relates to the title of the Loach film. “Route Irish, ” according to the movie, is a nickname Americans give to the stretch of road in Baghdad which connects The Green Zone to the airport. It’s considered the most dangerous stretch of road in the world.

Mark Womack stars as a Liverpudlian ex-military, ex-mercenary who hears of his best friend’s death on Route Irish. At the funeral, .listening to the fulsome speeches and condolences from the suits of the Blackwater-like organization that his friend worked for, Womack begins to get suspicious. He begins tugging at threads and soon the cover story about his friend’s death begins to unravel.

I really liked the movie because I like anything that deals with complex moral ambiguity. By the end of the film, there’s no one who’s really innocent. I also must say that, while I’m generally a complete wuss when it comes to depictions of torture on screen (or in fiction, for that matter), it’s used in an extremely smart and nuanced way in this movie. I don’t want to say more, but let’s just say it made the stakes in the movie even more morally messy. Which is a good thing.

Seek Route Irish out if you are up for a gritty, sad, beautifully acted drama about the moral complexities of modern war.

Got home just in time to download the huge new Patch 4.1 for World of Warcraft. OMG tons of new stuff to do!

This is the only actual bodybuilder I've seen on the trip so far, damnit.

Some Good Movies About the Slippery Morals of War

Under Fire
Salvador
Route Irish
Three Days of the Condor
Syriana
Gallipoli
Breaker Morant
Paths of Glory
Black Book

Average Rating: 4.7 out of 5 based on 181 user reviews.

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New York
April 13, 2011

At Cross Purposes!

If you look like this and you are an attorney at a client where I'm working, it really isn't fair to me.

I wear several hats. I’m a contract software trainer. I’m a game reviewer. I am a newspaper columnist. And I’m a photographer.

Almost always, there’s no problem or conflict with these various roles. They’re nice, separate boxes, without any spillover.

Except that sometimes there is. And it’s frustrating. The issue arises in the dynamic between the software trainer hat and the photographer hat.

Every now and then, there is someone at a client site, usually a law firm, that I am interested in photographing. The trouble is, there is simply no way to pursue it. I’ve thought about it from every angle I can come up with, and there just seems to be no solution. There’s just no appropriate way to segue “… and that’s how you can minimize the ribbon in the new Word 2010 interface, ” with, “and by the way, would you like to be a model for a day?” It just wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t be professionally appropriate.

Which is annoying. But there it is. Damnit.

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I’ve been having fun with my preliminary research on my dual signature quests in each foreign city that I visit: Find Tex-Mex food and go see a movie (in English if possible). It’s sometimes a challenge, but always fun, to try to achieve these goals.

Foreign Cities Where I Can Take You For Tex-Mex Food

Munich (not very good)
Budapest (dynamite!)
Tokyo (bleh)
Beijing (the Tex – great, the Mex – not so much)

For some reason I'm glad there's still a store like this.

Foreign Cities Where I’ve Seen Films in English

London (duh)
Edinburg (duh)
Paris
Prague
Munich
Budapest
Frankfurt
Tokyo
Beijing
Rome

Can you imagine trying to sell units in this building if it was in California?

Third Avenue Canyon — Park Avenue Canyon

Average Rating: 4.4 out of 5 based on 158 user reviews.