Commando - the Russian Remake

I spent most of today trying to my US taxes, and mostly failing. Wrestling with the American Inland Revenue Service's forms is like wrestling with a pack of disgruntled alligators, except that the IRS is much more motivated than your average alligator to keep tearing off your limbs, and then patiently wait for them to regrow before tearing them off again.

I'm sorry, I got distracted in a mini-rant. Anyway, as part of my procrastination I discovered (don't ask how) that the Russian film industry had made an 80%+ shot-for-shot remake of everyone's favourite 1980's Arnie film "Commando" as "День Д" (D-Day), starring a chap called Mikhail Porochenkov who's every bit as manly as 1980's Arnie, but has much more comprehensible dialogue. Even though the film is in Russian without subtitles.

And, glory of glories, the movie is available in its entirety on YouTube:

For burning 90 minutes of your tax-preparation time, it's hard to beat. You can even play it at 1.5x or 2x speed, and not miss any significant dialogue or plot points.

Mr. Porochenkov delivers a very good alternate to Arnie's character, and the girl who plays his daughter isn't Alyssa Milano but she gets the job done. The Bennett (Vernon Wells) equivalent is awful, he's just a hulk of barely-speaking muscle rather than Wells' scarily crazy character, but the climactic fight between the two is, honestly, much more homoerotic than the original. It's quite disturbing.

The Cindy (Rae Dawn Chong) equivalent is a bit short on the emoting front, but is acceptably attractive, and within five minutes you're praying for their version of Sully (David Patrick Kelly) to suffer a long and painful death as long as it's a) soon and b) mostly off-screen. I suspect the Russian director's decision to move the shopping mall scene to a poolside location was strictly to increase the fanservice component of the film - for all sides of the audience,but at least they kept in a version of "This is my weak arm":

It's well worth 90 minutes of your time - or 60 minutes, or 45 minutes, depending on playback speed and your desire to hear the dialogue - to compare with and contrast to the original. Oh, those Russians.

Does Putin want Trump as President?

I'm a huge fan of thoughtful blogger Richard Fernandez from Belmont Club, but respectfully have to disagree on his take on the current Wikileaks leaking of Democratic National Catfight emails and voicemails:

By striking at Hillary's aura, the Russians may be attempting the same thing. Democratic voters looked up to her to protect and defend the nation because that's what presidents do. By hacking Hillary and humiliating her, Putin has sent the message that she cannot even defend herself -- and what's the use of a president who can't defend herself?

This is an excellent point, except that - despite the tone of publicity - Hillary is not actually President of the United States. She's locked in a deadly struggle with Donald Trump for the title, and the decision won't happen until November.

I have no trouble at all believing that the Russians have the goods on Hillary. FBI Director Comey's statement on the Clinton private email server left little doubt that any competent foreign security service would have gained complete access to her communications, and have any amount of blackmail material on her and on her confidants. But if you're playing poker and have four kings, why would you all-but-announce this at the start of bidding?

Wikileaks has doubtlessly been compromised by Russian security services, but such compromise is covert - the SVR doesn't have an editorial veto - and it still provides a low-friction platform for publicising controversial data. This is a classic example of a disgruntled insider publicising information to hurt someone they loathe; Wikileaks is just the medium.

If you doubt this assertion, ask yourself: if you were Putin, with whom would you want to negotiate? Trump who is well-established as a wildcard who could say or do anything, and is (in practice) very hard to blackmail because of all the unsavory facts which are already public? or Hillary who still tries to project an aura of robustness and foreign intelligence savvy from her time at State, and whose private email correspondence you have available on request?

Go easy on the tea, Lewis

Mercedes F1 racing top talent Lewis Hamilton may be well advised to steer clear of cups of tea for a while after soaking Vlad Putin's suit in champagne.

It's possible that Putin will take this in the humourous way it was intended, but if I were Lewis I'd be looking around for a watch with a built-in Geiger counter.