Posts

Posted on

30 Rock: “Succession”

OMG – is 30 Rock the funniest show on TV or what? This is one show that I have to watch on the DVR, because the laughs come so quickly that I have to pause the TV, else I’ll miss a later joke because I’m still laughing about something that was said 30 seconds ago. I swear, this show might actually be harmful to your health. I do believe that I will one day literally bust a gut laughing at this show. Any why not? This episode had everything.

If you’ve never seen the show (and if so, why the hell not?), the plot is simple: Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) is the head writer\producer of a sketch comedy television show called The Girly Show , which features her friend Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski). Early in the series, Lemon gets a new boss, Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), who decides to “spice up the show” by bringing “outrageous” black comedian Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan)  onto the show, which is then known simply as TGS. The show is mainly about Liz Lemon and how she deals with her boss (since NBC is owned by GE, Jack’s official job title is “Vice President of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming”), her prima donna best friend (Maroney), a prima donna new member of the cast (Jordan), her staff of nutty writers, a sweet but naive NBC page (Kenneth Parcell, played by Jack McBrayer)… and oh yes, she’s trying to live her life and get a man in the middle of all this too.

Fey is, of course, the star of the show. Liz Lemon is desperate, nerdy, and aloof. Although I know full well that “Liz Lemon” is a fictional character, I think there’s a lot of Tina Fey in ol’ Liz. But Fey’s stardom is occasionally eclipsed by Baldwin, who has some of the best timing I’ve ever seen.

30 Rock - Tina Slap

The most recent episode of 30 Rock – “Succession” – was one of the funniest things I’ve even seen on TV. Not only did the show have a running spoof of the film Amadeus (featuring the return of “Dr. Spaceman”, pronounced Spah-CHE-men), there was a lot of slapping, talk about diabetes, and even a discussion about Uncanny Valley:

30 Rock - Uncanny Valley

And that’s just the plot! Here’s a  list of just some of the jokes from this episode:

“You look like Gene Simmons had sex with a basset hound!” – Liz, to Frank (pictures above)

“Hugging is soooo… ethnic.” – Jack

“Don Geiss has stacked the board with the most reliable collection of cronies and ‘yes men’ this side of an Al Franken book signing.” – Jack

“I’d have my assistant sit on his naughty stool if he didn’t like it so much.” – Jack, after his assistant didn’t tell him his boss was in the office.

“Everyone knows the only thing we should be ashamed of is our bodies.” – Kenneth

“Eureka! … We should call Eureka, she always has great ideas.” – Tracy

“I’ll give you Kenneth!” – Liz, to Devon after giving away sensitive information about Jack.

“Devon … once they cast Clay Aiken in Spamalot, I knew it was just a matter of time before you showed up.” – Jack

“You’ve got the charm and spark of a young Leona Helmsley.” Geiss, to Liz.

“To get through it, I pretended he was a sandwich.” – Liz, about how she got through kissing Banks.

“My genius has come alive, like toys when you turn your back!.” – Tracy

“Suck it monkeys! I’m going corporate!” – Liz

“Well, it’s business drunk. It’s like rich drunk, either way it’s legal to drive.” – Jack

“Is it 411 or 911? I can never remember… [dials 411 on the phone] New York… Uhhhhh… ‘diabetes repair’, I guess?” – Dr. Spaceman

There are tons of visual throwaway jokes, too. When Tracy wistfully talks about leaving a legacy for his children, he reaches behind a giant picture of himself to pick up a picture of his kids. Then there’s the fact that Frank had a chart visually describing “Uncanny Valley” when Tracy asked him about it. And then there’s the Amadeus spoof:

30 Rock Amadeus

Really, folks… 30 Rock is the funniest show on TV right now!  You can watch it on Thursdays at 9:30 on NBC… or you can watch it (for free) at Hulu.com right now!

Posted on

Fun With: Airport Codes

If you’ve spent any time at all traveling, you’re probably familiar with three-letter “airport codes”. If you’ve ever been on a frequent-flyer message board, you know that airport codes are tossed around like so much jargon by road warriors. And if you’ve thought about it, you might have wondered why some airport codes are obvious – like CLT for Charlotte, NC or ATL for Atlanta, GA – while others don’t seem to make any sense at all. MCO for Orlando, FL? MSY for New Orleans? Why are some codes simple and others mysterious?

Well, it all has to do with history. These “oddball codes” generally fit into four categories:

Laziness: Before there were commercial airports, the National Weather Service (NWS) used a two-letter code for most US cities. By the 1930s, commercial aviation began to take off, and some bureaucrat noticed the need for airport codes in cities that didn’t already have an NWS weather station. So a three-letter airport code system was adopted, and many cities simply took their existing NWS code and put an X at the end… thus, Los Angeles is LAX, Portland, Oregon is PDX, and Phoenix, Arizona is PHX, and so on.

Changing names: Most of the “oddball” airport codes fall into this category. The airport at New Orleans, Louisiana, now known as “Louis Armstrong International Airport”, was called the “Moisant Stock Yards” for years, hence the MSY code. Another Louisiana example is Alexandra, where the airport is known as ESF, for Esler Field. Orlando International Airport stands on what used to be McCoy Air Force Base, hence MCO. The airport in Columbus, Ohio was known as Columbus Municipal Hangar, so CMH. And Chicago’s O’Hare airport changed names from Orchard Field (hence ORD) to O’Hare to commemorate a Chicago-born WWII flying ace.

Other codes got in the way: As a general rule, most TV and radio stations east of the Mississippi River begin their call signs with the letter W, while most cities west of the Mississippi use the letter K. What you might not know is that the U.S. Navy claimed all the “N” codes, Canada uses all the “Y” codes, “Q” was once used exclusively for international communication, and the FAA itself reserved “Z” for “special uses”. This means that W, K, N, Q, and Z were off limits as first letters for airport codes, and airports that wanted to use those letters had to think of something else. Norfolk, Virginia, for example, couldn’t begin their code with “N”, so the folks there dropped the “N” entirely to get ORF. Newark, New Jersey had to make do with EWR, while Wilmington, North Carolina came up with ILM. Newport News, Virginia skated around the issue by using a code named after the airport – Patrick Henry Field (PHF).

A combination of the above: Because Washington, DC couldn’t begin any airport codes with a “W”, they chose to use DCA for Washington National Airport. However, when Dulles Airport came along, it was initially given the code DIA (Dulles International Airport). But this was a nightmare for baggage handlers, since DCA and DIA are so similar, especially since luggage tags were handwritten at the time. So DIA became IAD, which is almost impossible to confuse with DCA.

Airport names come and go, but their codes are rarely changed. This is because travel industry folks become used to using a code, and because reprogramming every computer with a new airport code would be a giant pain. New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport is one of the few to have changed both names and codes. It was originally known as Idlewild Airport (IDL), but when the airport was renamed for the slain president, the airport code became JFK. The three-letter code system is so pressed for codes that IDL was retired and eventually reused: IDL is now the airport at Indianola, Mississippi.

Posted on

The “Life On Ashes” Universe

WARNING: This article contains open spoilers about the British TV shows Life On Mars and Ashes to Ashes.

So… a couple of weeks have passed since the Ashes to Ashes finale, and, as promised, I’m writing a couple of in-depth articles about that show, as well as its predecessor, Life On Mars. In the first article, I’ll discuss the main storylines of the shows, as well as the “real world consequences” of the storylines. And in the second article, I will discuss specific issues about both series, including the most obvious question: Is Gene Hunt God?

Life On Mars is the story of Sam Tyler, a Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) in the Manchester (England) Police in the year 2006. Sam has been chasing a thug named Colin Raimes for years, a man Sam knows to be a killer. Sadly, proof slips between his fingers on legal technicalities time and again. It seems that Raimes is coated in teflon.

One day, shortly after the suspect is released yet again, Sam’s girlfriend, Maya Roy (who is also a cop), gets a tip about the killer and leaves the station in a hurry. Soon, she calls Sam back to say that the tip might have been a trap, and it appears that she is being kidnapped. Sam leaves the office in a panic and begins driving wildly around Manchester looking for her. When it becomes obvious to Sam that he has no idea where Maya might be, his adrenaline glands calm down, and he pulls to the side of the road to think. But he doesn’t have much time to think: mere seconds after getting out of his car, he’s hit by another and left unconscious in the middle of the road.

Sam wakes up after what appears to be a few seconds. He’s still in Manchester. He’s still a cop. Only it’s now 1973. He’s dressed in the fashion of the time. His car has transformed from a Jeep Cherokee to a 1970-something Ford. The freeway he had parked near in 2006 doesn’t exist yet, so he’s in the middle of an abandoned lot. And the David Bowie song “Life On Mars” is still playing on his car stereo (although in 2006 the song was playing on an iPod and in 1973 it’s coming off an 8-track tape).

Continue reading “The “Life On Ashes” Universe”

Posted on

Time Warner: Navigator sucks!

Check out my updated review of Navigator here!

Recently, my Time Warner cable DVR was “upgraded” from Passport to “Navigator”, Time Warner’s in-house DVR application. Can I just say one thing? It sucks.

Unlike many others, I actually like the newer, high-res menus, although I can see where the “blue on blue” might be off-putting for some:

Time Warner Cable\'s \

Sadly, “better graphics” is about the only nice thing I can say about the Navigator software. Oh, there are a few nice touches here and there – you can now sort your recorded programs by name as well as date, and if you initiate playback of a program that had been stopped previously (if I, for example, watched the first 10 minutes of The Office, then clicked “play” to watch it in full a few days later), you can now press SEL + Restart to begin playback from the beginning (on Passport, you had to select “Save” or “Delete” and then go back to the main menu and press SEL + “Restart playback from beginning”).

Although the new software looks much better and has a few nice upgrades, it fails miserably as a DVR. On Friday night, the DVR was set to record The Soup and Battlestar Galactica at the same time (10pm). Although I was there, sitting in front of the TV, I got up to help Lisa with some aspect of the home improvement stuff, then decided to have a smoke. “No problem”, I figured… “I’ll just wait 10-15 minutes into the show, so I can watch it ‘live’ but skip the commerials”. But no – the DVR didn’t record the episode… at all! Man, I was pissed! So I went into the guide and told it to manually record the 12:30am replay of the episode… and when I checked the settings, the DVR wanted to record the 5:00am repeat of an episode from season 2 – and there was no trace 12:30 episode I had just then set to manually record! I manually deleted the 5:00am episode, then told it to record the 12:30 episode again! (to Navigator’s credit, It did end up recording the episode).

Then there’s the issue of “New” programs. I have most of my series set up to record only “new” episodes of most series. A show like The Tudors broadcasts several times a week on the several Showtime channels, so recording only the first episode of the week saves a lot of hassle and disk space. Between local syndication, TBS, TNT and Cartoon Network, shows like Family Guy and The Simpsons come on several times a day, and deleting unwanted episodes is a chore. The Navigator software has an annoying tendency to mark every episode of these shows as new, so it ends up recording episodes you don’t want. But what’s even more annoying is that you can scan the “Scheduled Recordings” menu and fine no trace of these shows! If I were to press the “Scheduled Recordings” button right now (Monday afternoon), I’d see nothing but stuff I actually want to see – tonight’s new episode of Bones (which I actually haven’t watched in a year – I don’t know why I even have it on the DVR anymore), Tuesday night’s new episodes of The Riches and Hell’s Kitchen, then nothing on Wednesday, then a busy Thursday of My Name is Earl, 30 Rock, The Office, and Lost. There will be no trace of The Tudors in the “Scheduled Recordings” menu. Yet, somehow, tomorrow morning, there will be a “new” episode recorded on the DVR. That’s simply unacceptable.

Also, as previously reported, missing from the search feature is “keyword search”. With Passport, you could search the program guide for KATE WINSLET or LONDON or TAR HEELS or any phrase you fancied. Passport would return not only movies with Kate Winslet, but also appearances on Leno or Letterman, or Inside the Actor’s Studio. You can’t do that any more. You can only search by the name of the show. Which bites, especially since the “keyboard search” doesn’t seem to work half the time. I typed in “Deadliest Catch” the other day… and there was no trace of the show in the program list… even though I had just seen it in the guide. Nice work, Time Warner!

Navigator also has a nice feature where you can opt to have your Favorite Channels listed in the guide at the beginning of the list, or the traditional “embedded within other channels” way. The problem is that Navigator moves the Favorites to the beginning of the program guide – it doesn’t copy them. Which doesn’t work well with the music channels. If I tune in to the Alternative channel (514), then I can’t simply press the down arrow to get to the Retro-Active channel (515). This is because channel 515 has been listed at a favorite, and is now near the beginning of the guide. So the only way you can navigate to 515 is to open the guide and press the PAGE UP button all the way to the beginning of the guide (which can cause Navigator to crash) or enter the channel numbers manually: 5+1+5+SEL. What a pain!

Lastly (for now), the FF and REW buttons are… odd. If you rewind a recording, it rewinds but then skips ahead a few seconds. Passport did this too, but did it well. Navigator, on the other hand, seems to wait a variable amount of time to skip ahead after rewinding, so it’s almost impossible to get to exactly the point where the show is coming back from commercial. After futzing with it for the past few days, I usually just watch the last 8 seconds of the commercial and stew about how crappy Navigator is.

I could go on, but I won’t. I’ll just say that I long for the days of Passport. It didn’t have a lot of fancy features, but it was rock-solid at being a basic DVR. I know I seem to be the minority when I say that, but for me it’s been true. Sure, the SA8300HD could act up sometimes, but it was, for me, a pretty solid machine. I guess my local TWC head-end is just well run, ‘cos I really hadn’t had that much trouble with Passport. Navigator has crashed three times on me so far, and that’s 2 more times than Passport crashed on me all of last year. Scrolling quickly through many menu can crash Naviagtor, and rebooting the box will take up to six minutes! (No, that is not a misprint). Word is that TWC is testing some brand new Samsung DVR boxes to appear to work much better with the Navigator software. Let’s keep our fingers crossed, ‘cos the current situation sucks!

In the interest of fairness, I’d like to add a tip and dispell some myths about the Navigator software:

– To get into the “configuration screens”, press the SEL key on the remote until the “Mail” LED lights up on the front of the cable box. Then press the DOWN arrow. You will see at least 28 configuration pages – you can’t edit any of these pages, but you can get important information like the version of the software you are using, the hardware in your box, and how much free RAM\disk space you have.

– When Navigator debuted, many complained that TWC had “killed” the 15-minute skip feature that Passport had. This rumor was either not true, the feature was not documented, or perhaps it was added to the software later on, because you can easily skip in 15 minute increments by pressing and HOLDING the REW\FF keys on the remote.

– Passport had the option to change the screen resolution (Normal, Zoom, Stretch) by pressing the VIDEO SOURCE button on the remote; you could also press the pound key (#) to do the same. Navigator has killed the VIDEO SOURCE button, but you can change the resolution in Navigator by pressing the # key.

Posted on

STUFF I MISS: Famous Amos Cookies

Wally Amos was born in Tallahassee, Florida on July 1st, 1936. He moved to Manhattan with his aunt when he was twelve, and he then enrolled at the Food Trades Vocational High School. Amos had always been interested in cooking, and it was from his aunt that he would get his recipe for chocolate chip cookies. He would improve on the recipe in the following years, as he dropped out of high school to join the Air Force, eventually got his GED and went to college to become a secretary. After graduation, he was hired by the William Morris Agency, rising from his clerical position to become the agency’s first black agent. His gimmick was to bake up a batch of his delicious cookies and send them to celebrities with his business card and an invitation to come in to his office. The cookies worked… Diana Ross and The Supremes were just one of his many clients.

Over the years, many celebrities told Wally that he made the best cookies in the world. Many also suggested that he open up his own cookie store. In 1975, Wally did just that, and Famous Amos Cookies were born:

famous_amos

The cookies originally came in the above tin, but would soon work their way into the deli sections of many grocery stores in white paper bags. I remember that a 5oz. bag cost $2.99 or $3.99 (outrageously expensive for a bag of cookies in the early 80s). Who cared though? The cookies were sublime. They had bits of chocolate that always seemed unbelievably sweet, gooey and fresh. They had “just enough” pecans to make them interesting, but not enough to overwhelm the chocolate. The batter itself was unbelievably buttery and brown sugar sweet. Hmmmmmm… “the sharp, almost malty ‘tang’ of molasses…” Mmmmmmmmmm… Where was I? Oh yes, the cookies. They probably had 500 calories each, but they were so good that you didn’t care!

Sadly, “real” Famous Amos cookies lasted only a few years. Financial troubles caused Wally to sell the company in 1985, and four different companies owned the brand for the next few years. During this time, the quality of the cookies varied widely, from close facsimiles of the original to lifeless cookies that wouldn’t give Chips Ahoy a run for the money… and then back to the original formula, then again back to some cheap basic “cookie”. In 1992, President Baking bought the brand, and Keebler Foods then purchased President in 1998. Keebler was then bought out by Kellogg in 2001. By this point, Famous Amos was just a “brand” that has no resemblance to the divine original cookies. It’s sad. You’d think that Kellogg might want to go back to the original (heavenly) recipe and have both “cheap” and “upscale” cookies with one brand. But alas, that hasn’t happened yet…

But we can always dream!

Posted on

SONGS I LOVE: “My Someday”

BlondefireIf you’re new to this blog, you might not know that one of my favorite bands is the English group Saint Etienne. If you’ve been around here for a while, you probably know that I love them in large part due to Sarah Cracknell’s voice. Her voice is soft and sultry. Comforting. And although she generally sings in an “accent neutral” voice, you can just tell that she’s English. It’s all very sexy, and combined with the band’s “electro lounge\dance pop” sound, I actually feel as though the band has become my friend. When I listen to Saint Etienne, I feel like I’m wearing an old comfy sweater. I feel like I’m at a secret “cool people’s party” in London. It’s just fun! But then… what would it sound like if Sarah Cracknell were the lead singer for early Pet Shop Boys or Power, Corruption & Lies-era New Order?

Wonder no more, my friends, for I have found a band that answers the question. They’re called Blondfire, and they are the brother-sister team of Bruce and Erica Driscoll. The Driscoll children were born in Grand Rapids, Michigan to an American father and a Brazilian mother, and spent many summers in Brazil. They’re bilingual and are citizens of both the US and Brazil. Interestingly, although the band claim to be inspired by musicians like Antonio Carlos Jobim, Caetano Veloso, and Astrud Gilberto, they actually sound like a British New Wave band.

I recently stumbled upon their MySpace page and instantly fell in love with “My Someday”. Listening to the song is like eating a chocolate cupcake with pink frosting and sprinkles. It’s that sweet, comfy and just a little bit guilty. Give them a listen and tell me what you think!

[audio:blondfire.mp3]
Posted on

The Riches: Trust Never Sleeps

First of all, I apologize for this recap coming so late. The missus and I were doing some home improvement projects last week, and much of my time was taken up with taping, painting, drilling and mounting. Because of the delay, I’m also going to keep this recap short… very short. Because, frankly, I don’t remember that much of this episode of The Riches (without watching it all over again, which is something I won’t do).

the_riches_02_05

The Malloys continued to live their separate lives… Wayne is still working for the huge Bayou Hills payoff, Dahlia continues to live her triple life, Cael is now on his own (sort of) and DiDi just wants everything to be “normal” so she can live her life. Sam, on the other hand, gets closer to his Dad this week. He tells Wayne that he’s seen someone snooping through the Riches’ trash cans… and than he cleaned up a some spilled blood and put the towel into the trash. Wayne, to his credit, instantly stops everything and has a “little adventure” with Sam. He quickly figures out that the stranger is the private detective hired to find the now-deceased Pete. Sam and Wayne observe the PI in his cheap hotel room, and see him examining the blood stained towel. Wayne and Dale then hatch a plan. Wayne cuts himself with a knife and stains a towel similar to the one that Sam used. He then calls the front desk of the hotel, pretending to have an important message for the PI. The PI leaves his room, so Wayne and Sam break into his room and replace the towel. Smooth move, and it was good to see Wayne and Sam together. Plus, it’s always good to get a lot of Aidan Mitchell (Sam). That little kid is one of the few child stars that doesn’t drive me nuts, ‘cos he’s actually got good acting chops.

So yeah… Dahlia’s new “triple” life isn’t working out so well, and DiDi’s new B&E jones is kind of weird. But it’s especially weird for Cael, now that he’s back in the Traveler’s camp… with Eamon. We’ll see how that goes…

Posted on

DOWNLOAD: Steelers 2008 Schedule for Outlook!

The NFL released the official 2008-2009 schedule today… and for the FIFTH YEAR IN A ROW (how time flies!) I’m proud to offer the Pittsburgh Steelers Calendar for Microsoft Outlook!

The jimcofer.com “Pittsburgh Steelers 2008 Schedule For Outlook” is compatible with Microsoft Outlook 98 or later. It might also work with Google Calendar or any other program that can import calendar events from CSV files. It has only been tested with Microsoft Outlook, however.

The calendar contains all preseason and regular season Steelers games as well as the name of the network airing the game. All times in the Steelers Calendar are for the Eastern (USA) time zone; a reminder is also scheduled for 8:00PM the day before each game. Fans of other (lesser) teams can also download the file and use it as a template to create a schedule for their favorite teams using any version of Microsoft Excel.

A SPECIAL NOTE: games marked with an asterisk (*) are flex-time games; their start times are subject to change without notice.

Just like the 2007 version of the calendar, I have three versions of the Steelers calendar available for download: the Steelers 2008-09 schedule only, the 2008-09 Steelers schedule with the NFL playoffs, Super Bowl and Pro Bowl, and a calendar with the playoffs and Super\Pro Bowls only. Pick your poison by clicking the appropriate link below:

Steelers 2008 Calendar
Steelers 2008 Calendar with NFL Playoffs
NFL 2008 Playoff Calendar only

(4KB each, and less than 1 minute to download on a 56k connection)

To import the calendar, follow these simple instructions. Make sure to read the all the directions below (especially the “Disabling Reminders” section) carefully before you begin:

  1. Download the file to your desktop and unzip.
  2. Open Outlook and select “File” > “Import and Export” > “Import from another program or file”, then click “Next”.
  3. Choose “Comma Separated Values (Windows)”, then click “Next”.
  4. Use the “Browse” button on the next screen to select the CSV file you unzipped in step 1.
  5. On the next screen make sure to select “Calendar” as the destination then click “Next” and “Finish”… That’s it!

DISABLING REMINDERS: If you wish to disable the reminders, open the CSV file in Excel and change the value of “reminder on/off” (column G) to FALSE for each game before you import the Calendar into Outlook.

TROUBLESHOOTING: If you try to import the Calendar but don’t see any of the games listed in your calendar (especially if you do not get any kind of error message), shut Outlook down completely (open Task Manager to make sure that OUTLOOK.EXE is not running) and re-open Outlook and try the import again.

VERSION INFORMATION: This file was tested on 15 April 2008 on a Windows XP Professional machine running Office 2007 and an XP Professional virtual machine running Office 2003. It was scanned with Active Virus Shield (Kaspersky 6.0.621) and found to be virus-free. It’s the exact same file I’ve used for past versions of the schedule, so it should work for just about everyone.

Posted on

The Bank Job: Great Film!

I’ve loved movies far back as I can remember. But in the past few years, I’ve watched fewer and fewer movies. Part of this is because Lisa doesn’t much care for movies, so we don’t watch them as a “couples activity”. Another reason is that TV has gotten better and better. With Dexter, The Fixer, Pushing Daisies, Ashes to Ashes, Lost and a dozen other great shows broadcast directly into my home, why go to the movies?

Yet another reason I don’t watch a lot of movies these days – the main reason, in fact – is because movies don’t challenge me any more. We’re all familiar with romantic comedies, right? Boy meets girl, some problem comes up that keeps boy and girl apart, and the problem is resolved at the end of the film (which either involves driving at top speed to the closest airport or a party scene full of people dancing to classic pop songs like “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” or some such dreck). Predictable, right? To me, all movies are like that these days… unless you go the other route and watch nothing but Lars Von Trier or David Lynch movies, which are “anti-predictable”… so much so that you want to bang your head against the wall.

This is why I was so surprised by recent film The Bank Job. All I knew going into it was that it was “based on a true story” and that it starred Jason Statham (who could be one of my favorite actors if he’d stop appearing in shitty movies). Given how much I love Guy Ritchie films I figured it’d be just another Brit gangster film… and boy was I wrong!

the_bank_job_01

Staham plays a guy called Terry. He owns a failing used car business somewhere in London in the 1970s. He’s apparently borrowed money from a less than legitimate resource, because two “debt collectors” show up one day and smash up the two decent cars Terry has to sell. He needs money to pay his loan shark off… and quickly.

As if by magic, one of Terry’s old flames, Martine (Saffron Burrows), shows up one day with a plan: a branch of Lloyd’s Bank on Baker Street is having their alarm system replaced, and so the bank will be without a working alarm system for a couple of days while the upgrade takes place. Terry quickly assembles a team of low-level criminals and puts the plan in motion. They rent a leather goods store a couple of stores down from the bank, then begin tunneling under a chicken takeaway to get to the vault, which is stuffed with cash, bonds and jewels.

But there’s more to the story than meets the eye. It’s neither accident nor coincidence that Martine shows up with a bank robbery plan just when Terry needs lots of money. Martine, it seems, was busted trying to bring a not insignificant amount of drugs into the country. At some point during her short incarceration, an MI-5 agent (Britain’s version of the FBI*) offers her a deal: get a gang together and rob the Lloyd’s Bank (and specifically, safety deposit box 118) and not only will they let her go, they’ll even let her keep any of the loot they take from the robbery!

the_bank_job_02

One might wonder… “what sort of thing could be so serious that MI-5 would not only encourage someone to rob a bank, they’d offer immunity to them and let them keep their ill gotten gains?” How about photographs of Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth’s younger sister, involved in an interracial orgy?

Worse yet, the photographs are owned by Michael X, a pimp, drug dealer and illegal casino operator who took up the “Black Power” cause in the UK. He was the first non-white to be prosecuted for violating the Race Relations Act when he publicly urged the shooting of any black women seen with a white man. MI-5 is desperate to lock up Michael X, but as long as Michael X threatens to turn the photographs over to the media, they’re powerless to stop him.

As happens with intricate plans, things don’t quite work out the way anyone had planned. Martine was supposed to keep her deal with M-I5 a secret and let everyone else take the fall for the robbery. When she confesses the real motive behind the robbery to the gang, everything changes. And when they find a gangster’s ledger that contains records of hundreds of police bribes and compromising photographs of a high-ranking Member of Parliament (both of which are completely unrelated to the safety deposit box with the photos of Princess Margaret)… well, things get really complicated.

I won’t spoil the movie for you any more… like I said, things do work out in the end, but like I also said, it’s not exactly in the way most of them intended. The most interesting thing about this film is the “based on a true story” label. How much of this story is real, and how much of it is mere speculation?

Much of the details that make up the movie are still classified by the British government (Michael X’s file, for instance, is sealed until 2054). The film’s makers claimed to have an “inside source”, who was identified in press reports as “George McIndoe”. And it appears that the filmmakers went to decent lengths to match what’s known about the incident with the film (the store they rented was indeed called “Le Sac”, and the takeaway was called “Chicken Express”, for example). And of course, Princess Margaret really existed, as did Michael X. So who knows. What I know is that the film is wonderfully entertaining. It far exceeded my expectations, which more than I can say about most films these days!

* – OK, the FBI and MI5 are quite different, actually. But for the purposes of this post, they’re close enough.