Tabula Rasa lj

A senior Australian Federal Police officer has been suspended for consulting a clairvoyant over a threat to assassinate Prime Minister John Howard.

Although bound by the AFP's strict code of conduct regarding confidentiality and national security, the officer turned to a small-town psychic he knew socially and disclosed classified information about Mr Howard and the death threats.

"I am aware that the United States engaged psychics during the Cold War to spy on the Soviet Union but abandoned the program," he said. "This sort of thing is really at the fringes of credibility."

What is the world's number one single cause of death by a drug? What drug is responsible for the most deaths in the world? Cigarettes! Who is the world's largest producer of cigarettes and tobacco? The United States!

What part of our country grows all our tobacco? Anyone know what states in particular? Mostly what's called North Carolina. Alright. That's where all the cigarette capitals are. That's where a lot of them are located from. Now if we have the right to fly to Bolivia or Peru and drop chemical weapons on top of farmers' fields because we're afraid they might be growing coca and that could be turned into cocaine and sold to us, well then don't the Peruvians and the Iranians and the Chinese have the right to invade America and drop chemical weapons over North Carolina to destroy the tobacco plants that are killing millions and millions of people in their countries every year and causing them billions of dollars in health care costs?
—Jay Bennish

The impact of the new terror laws on writers, journalists, publishers

Without Hussein, the country disintegrates in months. In a year, adjoining countries follow, and the entire region by year four. By year six, a nuclear incident takes place in the Middle East. By year eight, three more detonations occur throughout the world, killing two million people directly, 20 million indirectly.
--La Femme Nikita: End Game.

A list of the worst-ever movie sex scenes shows half have been released in the past decade. Today's filmmakers, struggling to tempt jaded audiences away from Grand Theft Auto and back into cinemas, clearly can't even get the basics right. There is an opportunity here for Australia's languishing industry. Our recent films have been criticised for poor plots and inept characterisation. How much plot do you need in a sex scene? As for characterisation - a well-written scene requires a) a male character and b) a female character. Can that be so difficult to write? Clearly our cineastes already have the skills required to meet this urgent worldwide need. The opportunity is just waiting to be grasped.

A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe, an investigation has discovered.

Agents for the company have told would-be customers it is developing collagen for lip and wrinkle treatments from skin taken from prisoners after they have been shot. The agents say some of the company's products have been exported to Britain, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts is "traditional" and nothing to "make such a big fuss about".

—Beauty takes a deadly turn

In the meanwhile, isn't Requiem for a Dream a cheerful romp? (Fight Club might be more on-subject for this post, but such is the messiness of reality.) I'm not sure I can say anything particularly startling about it that can't be gleaned from the production notes or trivia, though I always note Samia Shoaib when she turns up, being also from π and La Femme Nikita (apparently The Sixth Sense too, although I can't remember that).

It could perhaps be noted that there are probably untold millions who would regard the four protagonists who disintegrate over the course of the movie as being not all that badly off, comparatively speaking — and likewise many who would undoubtedly regard it as alarmist propaganda. But if this could be regarded as a problem at all, then any story anywhere is in big trouble.

Edit: OK, two other points, both which may be related to actors. I was getting a bit of a Dark City vibe from the film this time round, which I don't think was just Jennifer Connelly on their pier (there's Sara's apartment as well, and the general mood of disintegrating personalities). Likewise, I got some flashes of Regan McNeil in the make-up of Sara at the end, which wasn't simply because the actress played Regan's mother. Maybe. It should be noted I definately didn't get a D&D movie vibe, shared actor or not.