Film Review

This weekend, as Barry Norman would say, I have been mostly watching DVDs. We had three Blockbuster vouchers to use up before the end of March so got out three films accordingly - two of them were meant to be motoring related.

The first film, Senna, was definitely motoring-related.

Some of my favourite films have been documentaries, usually involving Morgan Spurlock or Michael Moore and this was no exception. It certainly brought back a few memories including Martin Donnelly, a driver whom I had completely forgotten the existance of. Then there was the time when Senna crashed out in the lead at Monaco in 1988 - I had also forgotten about that but had been reminded of it coincidentally just a few days ago when Jeremy Clarkson used it in his Top Gear Magazine column as an example of why speed limits should be seriously increased on Britain's roads.

Despite being a documentary, it had everything a more usual film had - a compelling story from Senna's start in F1 driving for Toleman, through to his tragic death - it also had the heroes (well, hero) and villains - to a certain extent Alain Prost but more-so Jean Marie Balestre - the forerunner to Bernie Ecclestone. Not to mention the drama of the Japanese Grand Prixs (what's the correct plural of that?) and the aftermaths of the famous incidents where Prost then Senna won World Drivers Championships after causing "accidents" that took them both out of the race.

A very dramatic, educational and emotional film - I have to admit to more than a damp eye when Roland Ratzenburger and Ayrton Senna were killed at the end - even though I knew that this was going to happen - documentaries are worse than other films - because they are based on fact. Difficult but worth the watch.

As film number 2, we were meant to be having that excellent, motoring-related film, Cars 2, but my children changed their minds and got a Scooby Doo one out instead - so I didn't watch it. Although Sarah Michelle-Geller was probably in it so maybe I should have.

The third film was Sherlock Holmes starring Robert Downey Jr, Jude Law and an actress who reminded me of a young Joan Collins.

There weren't any cars in it.

A Little Light Reading

This story today from Autoguide.com is about a rather clever new headlamp system being developed by GM in Europe.It is a matrix system and involves separate LED sections that are controlled individually by computer according to surrounding conditions as determined by a connected camera.

The system has the lights on full-beam for a lot of the time but is alledgedly clever enough to detect other vehicles and not dazzle anyone. I'm all in favour of anything that stops me being dazzled when I look in my rear-view mirror on a motorway at night as German cars other than Opels (ie Audis, BMWs, Mercs and Porsches) all tear along the outside lane with enough light shining forwards to host an evening football match - not that I would advocate playing football on a motorway - unless you're John Terry perhaps.

They have produced a video with some nice music that supposedly shows how it works but it didn't make a lot of sense to me:The bit at the start concerns me a bit where the man plays with the settings to give a light-show. I know that the systems would soon get hacked so that young rappers like Dazzle-Razzle and Bo-Diddly would have their pimped up Chrysler Voyagers annoying everyone in a 3 mile radius. Or should that be 8-mile? - spot the rap reference there proving that I am up with the kids.

The video then goes on to show the lights in action with a few German captions. Apparently "fern" means "distant", "abblen" is to fade out and "matrix" means "matrix".

I still didn't get most of it but it is possibly good news for this chap though:

One For The Sheilas

Another survey story from Caradvice.com.au today. This one is about how "Small Car Syndrome" affects women more than men. Small Car Syndrome is where drivers make up for the inadequately small size of their car by being overly agressive - a sort of Napoleon Complex (Not that Napoleon was actually short - but that's a different issue) I suppose it is also like the supposed inverse proportion rule between the size of man's car and the size of his penis.

Total and utter rubbish of course.



For example, I drive a Jaguar.

Anyway, this Australian site really like their surveys and what I like is that they always manage to produce a brilliant picture to go with it. Here's the one they used for today's story:Now here's a story of a survey stating how men are more nervous than women when driven by the opposite sex with a suitably amusing picture they've chosen:A survey for the ladies' point of view here about how men get more distracted when driving:followed by another pro-female story with a slightly less pro-female picture:This non-sexist survey uses a picture that will appeal more to the men but headlines on how Audi drivers are viewed as most attractive although I find them just more likely to tailgate - something I don't find attractive:But my all time favourite photo came with this story about a survey stating how women are more nervous than men when driving with their partners in the car:

Bad Karma for Justin Bieber?

An embarassing story today from Caradvice.com.au
This is the latest in a series of problems that have hit Fisker over the last couple of months:
They are facing a fraud lawsuit over rights to stocks.
They've had a recall to prevent a potential battery-pack leak.
and the potential killer:
They've had to lay off staff to help sort out debt issues arising from a huge Government Department of the Environment loan.

Their problems were highlighted two weeks ago in this Autoguide article.

It would be a shame if time is, as a suspiciously un-named analyst suggests, running out for Fisker. The cars look good, and the idea of using a petrol (or diesel) engine to generate elctricity to power the car makes good environmental sense - the motor should never be over-revving or free-wheeling or doing anything too wasteful.

So why mention Justin Bieber?

Simply to get a few more hits to my Blog.

But he was given a Karma for his 18th birthday. Autoguide reported it thus. God that article made me want to throw up.

Particularly this line from his manager, Scooter (yes Scooter!) Brawn, "We wanted to make sure, since you love cars, that when you’re on the road you are always environmentally friendly,” said Braun, adding, “And we decided to get you a car that would make you stand out.”

Yuk! As if Bieber wasn't sickly enough as it is.

Fisker could end up with a reputation for making cars for children - their other famous owner is Leonardo DiCaprio who may be 73 years old but only looks about 12.

Let's just hope Fisker doesn't go down like The Titanic.

Dodgy Spy-Shots

This certainly isn't your usual spy-shot. It's of the forthcoming Dodge Viper and it is actually a Hotwheels model. This story emerged two weeks ago with a poor-definition picture. It tells of how Hotwheels released a picture of their model of the 2013 Viper well before Dodge had launched the actual vehicle.

Anyway, today, Autoguide had some even better spy-shots including the one I've used here.

I'm not too sure what the fuss is about really though - it looks just like the old Viper.

Unlike the new Nissan Micra - I've got hold of some spy-shots of that and it looks like quite a departure from what went before.

Take a look at these!...