Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Hello, sugar. Goodbye apple of my eye.

Scientists never fail to give me the giggles. What vast amounts of time, funding and intellectual energy they apply to the most superfluous of things. From day to day, they request sea changes in people's lives and diets. You can be guaranteed that what was good for you yesterday is poison tomorrow. Look at margarine versus butter.
Look at meat and soy. Then there's chicken soup. In their wisdom, scientists expended their expertise on confirming that chicken soup really is curative when you have a cold. Well, thanks, scientists. Jewish penicillin is just that!
This week they have outdone themselves. Firstly they have discovered that sugar is good for the memory. Contrary to earlier beliefs, high sugar drinks, the ones that make people so fat, also make them smarter and help them to remember. Sugar may help in treating dementia!

However....sugar is good for you but also it is unhealthy. Well, maybe it is good for you in sugar drinks, but certainly not in fruit. Fruit is unhealthy! Especially apples and pears. They contain too much sugar.
Fruit must not be advertised as healthfood! Especially fruit with pips.

Now are we coming or going on the sugar issue?
Whatever you do, don't ask a scientist!

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Hollywood on the bottom line

The cinema boxoffice downturn has been blamed on poor films.
Well, well, well.
At last someone has clued up.
The movie industry has been churning out lowbrow, gross, dire, moron movies for some time now. The lowest common denominator has ruled its selection process. But the lowest common denominator is also the poorest - since low achievers are low earners. So the box office has slumped.
I often lament the power of the dollar, but this time I celebrate it. For it is only when hit in the pocket that moguls and corporations will sit up and take notice. Now they must recognise that they have been targeting losers.
And cinemas are empty because the rest of us are staying away - forlorn that there are so few movies with appeal.
I blessed George Clooney for being perhaps the only one in 2005 to send me out of a cinema both enlightened and filled with admiration - "Goodnight and good luck".
And that, of course, is an arthouse movie.
The general public would not put up with such a thoughtful, historic production. It has to have car chases. Or just chases. "Lord of the Rings" is just one great big chase. Yawn.

But the good thing is that Hollywood has clued up. It has stopped blaming half a dozen "pirates" trying to flog dreadful films of new films (taken with cams in the cinema, complete with audience coughing). It has stopped blaming videos and DVDs - for they are the big part of their market. It has realised that it, wonderful Hollywood itself, has lost the plot - and are the world experts in crap.

Meanwhile, is it not an odd thing that, when looking at how the make the idea of going out to the cinema more appealing, they are coming up with a concept of fewer screens and more comfortable theatres. Back to the future, methinks.