Unfortuantely, Luc Besson's third (and final?) installment of "Taxi" is a letdown for the fans of the first two pictures. The storyline starts off in a familiar manner, packed with action but soon enough the plot dies down to be dominated by imbescile dialog and a general lack of direction. The James Bond-like intro would have us believe "Taxi 3" is special, well it's not. Little can be done to cover for a very thin plot (somehow it seems the writer ran out of ideas after 30 minutes) and the general standard of actors is by no means impressive. In the forementioned earlier releases, the storyline would eradicate those unpleasant moments to some extent, but this time nothing can save the picture from falling into obscurity, by part thanks to its lousy cast.

Incidentally, one would think this release would be, as it has been no less than 3 years since the sequel hit the movies. A solid Samy Naceri works alone to keep up the tempo put the picture resembles a work in progress rather than a release. Shame, I think more people than just me looked forward to this one.

4/10

There is something so captivating about Rob Dougan's "Furious angels". The album is packed with quality tracks. I don't quite know how to account for the phenomenon, his vocals are questionable and if it wasn't for the magnifique tunes I wouldn't like it at all. But the clean, melodic tunes make it a big hit. I was first stunned by his blockbuster track from "Matrix reloaded", entitled "Chateau" and I still think it's his finest to date. But "Furious angels" carries more of the same, I see a strong influence of classical music (if I was more of a classical buff I would be able to recall the actual pieces) used to good effect. "Furious angels" - the title track carries that well known theme from "Matrix reloaded", coupled with Rob's vocals. It opens with a slow crescendo to include a slightly more spectacular vocal bit than Rob's own and finally builds up to disintegrate into a bunch of chaos.

"One and the same" opens quietly, and very pleasantly. Rob takes on a U2-like style as regards the vocals and I dare say his resemblance to Bono is noticeable.. Both a choir and an orchestra in the background fuels the track throughout.

Track list:

1. Prelude

2. Furious Angels

3. Will You Follow Me?

4. Left Me For Dead

5. I'm Not Driving Any More

6. Clubbed To Death

7. There's Only Me

8. Instrumental

9. Nothing At All

10. Born Yesterday

11. Speed Me Towards Death

12. Drinking Song

13. Pause

14. One And The Same (Coda)

15. Clubbed To Death 2

Fortunately, the entire album is available online for listening pleasure @ www.rob-dougan.com.

8/10

Finally got around to seeing "Minority Report", I've had it on tape for a couple of months but never was in the mood to have a look at it. And I have to say I wasn't missing out on much. The vision of the future was somewhat interesting, the cars, the computer equipment, not to mention the advertising. Pretty much based on ideas scientists play around with these days I imagine.

I have a fundamental problem with the predicton of the future, it goes back to Greek mythology and the Oracle which made prophesies. It's been far too long since I read up on the subject, but there was a God to whom a son was born. The God went to the Oracle to hear about his son's future and learnt that his child would eventually kill him. He ordered for the son to be killed but he wasn't, he was adopted by a family. Then the son grew up to kill his father, the dictator, without knowing his relation to him. And that's a very superficial summary but the irony here is that hadn't the father gone to the Oracle and learnt the future, it wouldn't have been what it was. That's the core issue here, hearing the prophesy will alter the future from what it would be if you hadn't heard it. And "Minority Report" reiterates that concept in John's case, but not fully. John sees the future and learns he will kill a man whom he doesn't know. In the quest of learning what is supposed to happen and how, he fulfils the prophecy. Had he not known the prophecy, he would never made it happen. The man he doesn't know turns out to be the same who killed his son, and that almost drives him to kill, so far so good. But then he alters the future from what it's supposed to be. So here the author needs to make a choice, either the prophets do see the future or they don't. You cannot foretell the future and change its outcome both at the same time. The same goes for Lamar, but remember the case is not identical. Lamar hasn't been told he will kill John, but his mind is set on it. Meanwhile, the prophecy has been made and the future has been seen. And again, the prophecy is false, Lamar commits suicide. So what's it gonna be, do the cognitives actually see the future or don't they?

One way or another, I think there is a weak link between the whole futuristic aspect of this and the actual psychic proposition. What is so high tech about precrime? Not a thing. The whole concept is based on the fact that the cognitives have a gift of seeing the future, as in a God given talent, not science, they might as well live in the stoneage, there's nothing special about this day and age. And another thing, if this is 2050, we got retinal scanners in the subway, why are these men running around shooting 50-year-old guns? Doesn't it stand to reason that in 50 years we'll have far more sophisticated weapons, given the otherwise high technical advancement in the story? And what's with the crime scene around Danny's death? He's killed by Lamar in John's apartment and everyone just assumes John is guilty? If you got CSI and DNA evidence swingin' in 2003, how trivial must it then be to trace back the murder to Lamar 50 years down the road? And why doesn't John go blind? The eye doctor tells him about 100 times not to remove the bandaid prematurely, yet he does. Why doesn't he at least go blind on his left eye?

I guess the story is the weakest link and I'm a little surprised this picture got as much noise as it did. Well not by looking at the movie poster surely, Spielberg and Cruise. I certainly think Cruise was a little weak in this part, as regards Spielberg, I think the camera angles were poor on most occasions. Clearly one I could afford to miss.

I should mention the score is very poor, despite it being John Williams.

6/10

I stumbled upon a fascinating article in the June 2003 issue of Scientific American. I believe the vision set forth represents a much needed critical case study of today's situation, that being frequent breakdown of systems and poor reliability. Downtime is a much less significant problem to me than the actual restoration process which at times is a killer. "Self critical" systems should be the next step in the grand scheme of computing.

The project is labeled ROC for Recovery-Oriented Computing. The research team looks favorably to new concepts such as benchmarking the recovery time of a system, micro rebooting (that is restarting only subcomponents of a system rather than the whole system) and undo functions to trace the steps a system administrator would take.

I finally got around to something I've been putting off for weeks, that being getting the Rome pics online finally. Most of them are raw copies of the originals, not even touched, the worst cases I hacked a bit with Photoshop.