It's Not Easy Being Green

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Friday night, with vodka and orange juice, a big plate of pasta, and The Best Bits of Mister Bean. And I lost the ability to type again. Followed by more vodka and orange juice, eggs on toast and the second Stargate movie (The Pretentiously Named Ark of Truth). Hey, alcohol makes me hungry.

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I know why people like to read fiction. It's easier to understand than reality.

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Your nerd rating is calculated by counting how many digits of Pi you know. I have this on reliable authority - someone with a degree told me. After he bought me lunch as a thank-you for helping him get his degree. Mine is 9.

So I hereby suggest that your gullibility rating is how many seconds it take you to realise what's wrong with this online business.

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Today was International Earth Day - the day when we all show our commitment to saving the planet by switching the lights off. I'm typing this with the lights off. But I'm typing this with the lights back on so I can see what I'm doing.

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But what I really want to know is...are you gonna go my way?

No, what I want to know is: who thought it would be a good idea to give me permanent board markers? I mean, without mentioning their permanency? Possibly someone who thinks teachers wind down after a lesson by spending half an hour scrubbing bleach into their whiteboards.

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Once, on a course that was supposedly about computing, me and eighteen others got a lesson on ethics. Just the one, and it wasn't on the ethics of writing software for the military.

So we spent an hour pondering whether a sixty three year old professor's life is more valuable than a twenty year old mother. Perhaps some well-meaning committee had decided computer programmers would be better at debugging C++ if we argued about ageism. Or they got confused between "being a well rounded individual" and "having a skill".

Some say being faced with an unresolvable ethical dilemma is a test of character. Though exactly what it's supposed to test is unclear. Whether you can live with being unable to decide, perhaps. Though most unresolvable dilemmas are immediately resolvable by "going with your gut" - ie prejudice. So I imagine it's just a roundabout way of discovering a persons prejudices.

Here's a real life dilemma. If you can resolve it in less time than it takes to read the article, you haven't read the article. That's not to say I have a solution.

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The Saturday Night Movie: The Jackal. A remake of Day of the Jackal, but according to the credits not based on the book, but on the earlier screenplay. Which goes some way to explaining it's departures and deficiencies.

Now, I don't have a problem with remakes in general, or with the film being very different second time around - creatively reimagining an old idea is good. Or as artist Tom Phillips said in a different context, "A good old text always is a blank for new ideas". But there are two things to bear in mind. First, almost all remakes are rubbish. No one's entirely sure why, but they just are. Second, if you're going to reinterpret a great book or a classic film, you've got a lot to live up to - are you sure you can?

In the 1973 original, the assassin was played by Edward Fox, an actor who could at least portray the stone cold sociopathy of the methodical killer. In the remake, we've got Bruce Willis playing a thug with a gun fetish. Yes, it's the role Bruce Willis always plays. Though there's a fair supporting cast, including Sidney Poitier who puts in a typically scene-stealing performance as the FBI agent who bends the rules to do the right thing.

In the original, the target was General DeGaulle, who was just that - the target. He was barely seen, never spoke, and had no personality. In the remake, the target was the director of the FBI, and then the first lady. Now, DeGaulle is folk hero, loved and reviled by millions. The FBI director is a bureaucrat no one's heard of. And this target does have a personality - he's an arsehole. The first lady, like DeGaulle, is a cypher, but still a little lacking in mythological status, a poor choice compared to...the president, perhaps?

In the original, the Jackal is hired by Algerian separatists, fanatics with the delusion that killing DeGaulle will progress their cause, but they are believable. In the remake, we have a cardboard cutout Russian mafia boss in two quick scenes holding a personal grudge.

The original has a dedicated but fallible, rumpled and shy detective hero - somewhere between George Smiley and Colombo. In the remake, the FBI are effectively led by an IRA killer - another terrorist but of the good kind.

In the original, the leak from the investigator's office comes from a significant subplot, the good guys win essentially by sheer good luck, and there's a romantic subplot that adds colour to the characters. In the remake, the leak has no explanation and is dealt with in a one minute scene that makes no sense, the good guys win because the assassin gives them a clue for no reason, and there's a different romantic subplot whose only function is to have the assassin kill the girl, giving the hero a "this time it's personal" revenge motive.

Oh and it's just a small detail, but in the remake the Jackal is caught because he is at the shooting scene - which he didn't need to be, because he operated the gun by remote control. I thought the whole point of remote control was you didn't have to be there.

I could go on about why I think the original is better in lots of ways, but what it boils down to is this. In the remade version, the good guys are good (even when they do bad things), the bad guys are bad, and the victims are innocent. It's Hollywood, and the fact that it's an action movie doesn't excuse it being dumb. In the original film - and the book - both sides (French and Algerians) are misguided and immoral, but the twin heroes - assassin and detective - are equal and opposite players in a game of wits.

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