Caboose

No Man’s Land was the other film I rented from Heffers yesterday.

It’s set during the war in Bosnia, starting with a group of Bosnian soldiers trying to find their way to their lines at night in thick fog. When morning comes they find themselves between the lines and are quickly massacred, apart from one soldier who is blown into an abandoned trench in the middle of no man’s land.

Two Serb soldiers are sent to investigate the trench, one is killed shortly after placing a mine under the body of another of the Bosnians and the other is held captive. During the course of the film the two enemies keep trying to get posession of the weapons but they know they have to wait until nightfall to escape.

Things get worse when the Bosnian lying on the mine turns out to be alive after all. The two others have succeeded in attracting the attention of their forces, who call in the UN. The vaguely farcical actions of the UN lead to a French sergeant ignoring orders and trying to help.

The film shows well the bitter enmity between the two sides, the hopeless position of the UN troops and the shallowness of the media, although the English reporter played by Katrin Cartlidge is a very sympathetic character.

I missed Lost in La Mancha when it was on at the cinema but when I saw the DVD sat on the shelf at Heffers I just had to rent it.

In case you’ve not heard about it: it’s a documentary about failing to make a film. It was originally meant to be the ‘making of’ documentary for Terry Gilliam’s “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” but the production of the film fell apart and the documentary was released as a feature film instead.

It’s fascinating to watch as preproduction starts off shakily and then filming is begun with high hopes. However the proximity of a NATO bombing range and a stunning storm combined with the failing health of the star, Jean Rochefort, combine to cause filming to be abandoned.

The extras on the DVD were pretty worthwhile too, especially the interview with Terry Gilliam. The interview with Johnny Depp was pretty painful though, he doesn’t seem to be the worlds best interview subject.

Avon and Somerset Police have published some excellent examples of people misusing emergency services here [via MeFi].

This suggests that a standard number for non-emergency calls to your local police would be a good idea (888 has been suggested).

I rather liked the MeFi comment that seemed to suggest this was all due to the British police being “disarmed”. I’m not sure when that happened, I obviously missed the bit where they were “armed”.

Is it just me (and I have had a few beers tonight) or does the BBC’s “technology analyst” look very much like Father Jack, see for yourself:

If you don’t know who Father Jack is, here’s an introduction to the characters of Father Ted.