My Favourite Movies: District 13

We tried to see District 13 – not to be confused with the recent superb movie District 9 – at the cinema when it came out in 2004. It was not to be. Only on screen for a single week we failed to get our collective acts together to organise the trip. Some months later, however, I managed to pick it up cheaply on DVD so made the impulsive purchase.

District 13 is an odd film for several reasons, firstly it’s supposed to be (at least on speaking terms with) Sci-Fi without a single SF element. In many ways it’s broadly similar to Escape from New York in that a district – you guessed it, Number 13 – is walled off from the rest of the city (Paris in this case) and left to its own devices. The plot, such as it is, is paper thin. Leito (played by David Belle – pictured above on the left) is the good guy living in bad circumstances. He’s annoyed the local drug lord by flushing or ruining a million Euro’s worth of heroine. When Leito’s sister is captured as a bargaining chip he rescues her and for good measure takes the drug lord to the local police station. Unfortunately they’re just packing up to go – echoes of Assault on Precinct 13 here – so let the drug lord go and give him Leito’s sister into the bargain. Understandably annoyed by this Leito kills the police officer in charge and ends up serving a life sentence. Enter Captain Damien Tamaso (played by Cyril Raffaelli) from the elite Paris anti-drug squad. After breaking up an inner city drug den single handed he is given a mission to enter District 13 and recover a stolen Neutron type bomb. Needing inside information he teams up with Leito to infiltrate the criminal gang and return the weapon before it detonate in less that 24 hours.

What makes this film one of my favourites – joined now by its sharper sequel District 13 Ultimatum (which is basically the same film with a bigger budget) – are three things. Firstly I do enjoy the quirky Gallic sense of humour: D-13 is actually quite a funny film. Second the fight scenes are outstanding if heavily choreographed and obviously staged to show off the characters very athletic abilities. But what sells the whole thing to me are the chase sequences where Free Running gets, well, free reign. Some of the stunts are literally jaw droppingly good – and there are people out there who do that sort of thing for fun! It’s truly amazing how they run, jump and literally bounce off walls. Oh, I almost forgot another thing I loved about this film (and even more about the sequel) – the soundtrack! It’s an amazing mix of urban gangster rap – in French of course – with an Arabic riff that’s something else again. Hopefully at some point I’ll pick both of them up (neither is available on Amazon). So if you want to see something off the mainstream which is pretty much non-stop action this is definitely the movie for you – but, as with all such things – it must be watching in its original language and definitely not dubbed.

Beauty: 1936 Style.

Cartoon Time.

Pope Benedict attacks government over Equality Bill

From the BBC

Tuesday, 2 February 2010

The Pope has urged Catholic bishops in England and Wales to fight the UK's Equality Bill with "missionary zeal". Pope Benedict XVI said the legislation "violates natural law" and could end the right of the Catholic Church to ban gay people from senior positions. The Pope has confirmed he will visit the UK this year, the first since Pope John Paul II in 1982. The government said the bill, which is currently going through Parliament, would make the UK a fairer place. And gay rights campaigners have condemned the Pope's comments.

The Pope told the Catholic bishops of England and Wales gathered in Rome: "Your country is well-known for its firm commitment to equality of opportunity for all members of society. Yet, as you have rightly pointed out, the effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs. In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed." Religious leaders have voiced concern that the Equality Bill may force churches to employ sexually active gay people and transsexuals when hiring staff other than priests or ministers. No official itinerary has yet been drawn up for the Pope's visit but officials at the Vatican and in the UK told the BBC it was likely to take place in September. A spokesman for the Catholic Communications Network said further details were expected in early March. The Pontiff is expected to visit Birmingham - as part of the planned beatification of Cardinal John Newman - and Scotland.

The National Secular Society said it would mount a protest campaign made up of gay groups, victims of clerical abuse, feminists, family planning organisations and pro-abortion groups among others. President Terry Sanderson said: "The taxpayer in this country is going to be faced with a bill of some £20m for the visit of the Pope. A visit in which he has already indicated, he will attack equal rights and promote discrimination." Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said the Pope's comments were a "coded attack on the legal rights granted to women and gay people. His ill-informed claim that our equality laws undermine religious freedom suggests that he supports the right of churches to discriminate in accordance with their religious ethos," he said. "He seems to be defending discrimination by religious institutions and demanding that they should be above the law." But Robert Mickens, Rome correspondent at the Catholic newspaper The Tablet, said the Pope's position was "nothing really new - this is part of the classic Catholic teaching on human sexuality. What the Pope is doing is trying to encourage the bishops to keep their resolve in very fluctuating morals in cultures and societies today." He added: "It's not that the Pope is wading so much into the particulars of British society or British law - I think this is very much a piece of his longstanding teaching." A spokesman for the Government Equalities Office said: "The Pope acknowledges our country's firm commitment to equality for all members of society. We believe everyone should have a fair chance in life and not be discriminated against. The Equality Bill will make Britain a fairer and more equal place."

[Is anyone in the least bit surprised that the Catholic Church, in particular, is so set against the idea of sexual equality? What I did find rather amusing is the idea of an Equality Law being against ‘natural’ law which is based on the idea of the equality of all human beings – apparently just as long as they’re not practicing homosexuals or women. With such an attitude it seems that we hardly need any Equality legislation at all, do we!]

Poster Time.

Just Finished Reading: The Invisible Hand by Adam Smith

This is my latest foray into the Penguin Great Ideas series. Yet again it’s an extract from a larger work – in this case the classic The Wealth of Nations written in 1776. Smith is, of course, the father of modern free market Capitalism and the first half of this short book outlines his ideas against any kind of protectionism or tariffs. So far so good – indeed his arguments seemed so obvious to me that I found the whole thing a bit boring.

The second part was, at least to my non-economic trained mind, completely inexplicable. What Smith appeared to be saying – and I never could quite decide if I’d picked up the wrong end of the stick – was that the only true industry that adds value to any product was agriculture and that manufacturing cannot, because of its very nature, add any value. Now I know this book was written at the very beginnings of the Industrial Revolution but that idea is truly bizarre. You can see why I thought I had simply misunderstood the author! Anyway, general speaking this short extract of a volume either seemed to be stating what we now consider to be obvious or was either dead, but understandably, wrong. Not exactly the best book in this series but at least I managed to finish it.

Pulp Fiction.

Cartoon Time.