The Breed

Taryn Manning and Michelle Rodriguez in The Breed

Five horny college kids head off to an idyllic island for a weekend of booze and death in this tiredly formulaic horror film which subjects the isolated 20somethings to violent interaction with dogs – German shepherds, to be precise. To spend more time on the plot than is strictly necessary, it seems that someone has genetically fiddled with the dogs’ minds, making them super-intelligent and super-angry. Though not, it would seem, constantly so. Which gives our buff crew time to get drunk, have a laugh, and get into their bikinis (not the boys, obviously). After wondering when the black guy (Hill Harper) is going to die, you might also ask yourself what function exactly … Read more

Hacking Democracy

Hacking democracy screengrab

It’s amazing what a bit of solid investigative journalism can turn up. Hacking Democracy is essentially an interim report on the work of the Black Box Voting (BBV) organisation, a group of public spirited US individuals who were set up by activist Bev Harris after she discovered that a US senator had been the CEO of the company that counted his votes. BBV started asking awkward questions about the nation’s “impregnable” electronic voting system after cock-ups and/or fixes (delete according to political allegiance) at both the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. Couching questions so cautiously that you suspect that legal departments might have had a hand in writing the script, the documentary nevertheless … Read more