The Darkest Hour is the best worst movie of the year

Alien invasion flick The Darkest Hour, released this morning, is like a bad holiday fruitcake that somebody tried to spruce up with a zillion lumps of neon-colored, soggy jellybean guts. Put another way, this movie is what you get when you add the plot of Skyline to the creature effects of The Happening. It is truly the greatest bad monster movie of 2011.

Two guys, one of whom is played by Emile Hirsch, fly into Moscow to sell some people in suits on their real-time mobile travel social nightlife youth software, called something like MySquareDoppler, which is variously described as a "blog" and an "app." When they arrive at their business meeting, they discover that some Swedish guy they were working with on the intertubes has stolen their app blog social thing and is making the pitch to the Russian investors on his own.

"OMG WTF BBQ!" the guy who isn't Emile Hirsch says.

"You should have made me sign an NDA!" retorts Swedish intertube guy.

"You mean a Non Douchebag Agreement?" Hirsch snarks in one of the film's many "clever quip" moments.

And then a bunch of people yell in Russian and suddenly we're in a nightclub and Hirsch and not-Hirsch are drinking and hitting on some women who know them from MySquareDoppler.

Which is around the time a bunch of lens flares fall from the sky and start menacing everybody with their invisibleness, which has the property of reducing anybody who touches it to glowing specks that are super cheap to render in Photoshop. Our gang of social mobile app developers, including Swedish guy, have to make their way across a foreign city with the two women while dodging the invisible monsters! The only hint that the monsters are around is that they juice up all electrical devices - including lights, cell phones, car alarms, whatever - so that their presences are announced by flickering lights and other spooky shit.

I should note that the "we had no money and therefore made invisible monsters" thing isn't quite as bad as you might think. The idea of tracking aliens indirectly with handfuls of lightbulbs is pretty cool, and there are some amazing scenes of the shredded Mocow: planes have plowed into malls, tankers have shattered bridges, and the aliens are vaporizing buildings spectacularly in order to extract minerals or tap into our geothermal heat or maybe mine for holiday fruitcakes.

When it comes to plot and dialogue, however, all this creative conceptual design is wasted. Scenes are so hastily edited that we actually see characters run through exactly the same place twice in the opening alien attack sequence. And, inevitably, the aliens' powers change dramatically from scene to scene as the plot requires. At first they reduce everything they touch to dust. Then it turns out they have to lasso people with poorly-aimed lightning ropes first. Also they can't see through glass for some reason, and they can't seem to run or fly even though they flew down to Earth.

Eventually our band of mobile social app losers randomly stumbles across several other survivors, one of whom is a mad scientist living in a Faraday cage who has developed microwave guns to "disrupt the alien shields." Because - wait, whut? They aren't electrical aliens? Nope - they actually just have electrical SHIELDS, which we can disrupt and then "shoot with good Russian bullets," as another resistance guy says. Also, Faraday cages are the magical weapon humans can use against the aliens because the aliens can't see inside them - but the humans can use radios and cell phones inside them to communicate with each other. The mad scientist has even wrapped his adorable orange cat in a bunch of wires (a feline Faraday cage?) to make him invisible to the aliens.

OK, time out for a moment of nerd snarkage. The whole Faraday cage bit pissed me off. I was willing to give you the "glass as shield" defense because, hell, glass is an insulator. (Sadly, nobody thought of dressing Emile Hirsch in a rubber fetish suit to make him invisible because hey - rubber is an insulator too!) But people - the whole point of a Faraday cage is that most electrical signals cannot penetrate it. That means signals can't come in, and they can't come out. You cannot use radio or mobile phones inside them. Sigh.

Anyway, my OCD Faraday cage issues are like screaming about a grease fire during a mega volcano eruption. There were so many inconsistencies in this flick that it seemed like the whole crew had decided to embrace the credo that Hirsch and not-Hirsch espouse early on: "Every culture has alcohol and religion. That's why I drink religiously!" See what I mean about the writing in this flick? Pure gold.

High time to grow up

Clever garden designers have burst on to the green scene by thinking laterally – or vertically, in fact – when it comes to getting creative with small spaces.

“The dynamic quality about vertical gardens, is that you can create 110m2 of garden within a 10m2 floor space,” says Durban landscape artist Brendon Edwards. “Aesthetically, they provide very powerful imagery as you experience the whole garden immediately, unlike a conventional garden that one needs to walk through to appreciate the visual impact of colour and texture.”

The look and feel of a vertical garden can be designed to suit almost every need and taste of the user. No one green wall needs be the same.

The fundamental reason that this form of wall-scaping can be successfully created, says Edwards, is that plants do not need soil in order to grow.

“Firstly, a frame is built on the wall over which a waterproof membrane is fixed. Placed over this is an inert matrix, which acts as the soil into which the chosen plants are bedded, and through which a micro-drip irrigation system is woven.” The upside of this garden is that is that it does not have to be cleaned. The irrigation cloth is a micro-ecosystem that recycles through a biological process.

“Water and plant food are pumped through the system and filtered down to a gutter, from where the water is recycled. Over time, the garden becomes its own self-sustaining ecological environment,” says Edwards.

Apart from greening outdoor and interior walls the environmental benefits are impressive. This natural wall covering reduces heat-loss from the building, acts as a natural insulator, cleans the air around it and acts as a soundproof barrier.

As well as recycling the water through the irrigation system, excess water from air-conditioning units and grey water can be used to feed the living walls.

If you are keen to push the boundaries when it comes to traditional gardening principles and can’t grow out – grow up. Create a three-dimensional living piece of art that will add beauty and energy to any urban space. - The Mercury

The modern vertical gardens, also referred to as living walls, bio walls or green walls, can be entirely attributed to French botanist and artist Patrick Blanc. When he created his ‘mur vegetal’ collection, the green world sat up and took instant notice.

His numerous creations, which include the exterior of the Quai Branly Museum in Paris and the parliament in Brussels, prove that living in a city does not have to mean abandoning the natural world.

Blanc has helped to solve one of the biggest urban planning problems of modern times – how to find space for the greenery that we need to maintain our air quality and emotional health.

Ambitious power sector program of the government will boost the insulators demand

Netscribes (India) Pvt. Ltd., launches a report on the Insulators Market in India

2011 as part of Netscribes’ Power Equipment Industry report series.

Mumbai, India – March 7, 2011 – Netscribes (India) Pvt. Ltd., a knowledge

consulting solutions company, announces the launch of its Insulators Market in India

2011 report. Insulators are a part of the Indian transmission line equipment

industry. They have shown rapid growth owing to the increasing capacity in the power

as well as the transmission lines in India. In India, ceramic insulators are most

widely used by utilities. Composite insulators are however finding a huge market now.

Government is providing huge opportunities to the sector and in order to meet its

11th and 12th Plans proposal, huge capacity additions have been planned for power

generation. This move is expected to entail huge investments by various power

utilities (central, state and private) in Transmission and Distribution (“T&D”)

sector which will boost the consumption of insulators as well. Many State

transmission utilities are also increasing their T&D line network capacity and

associated High Voltage (“HV”) and Extra-High Voltage (“EHV”) Sub Stations which

will again boost the need of insulators.



The report begins with an introduction of the insulators market in India. It gives a

clear overview of the equipment and highlights the category it falls in. The types of

insulators prevalent in India on the basis of material have been analyzed and their

differentiation has been provided on various parameters. A brief overview of the

types of insulators on the basis of construction has also been included to highlight

their requirements at different voltage levels. The market overview section provides

an insight into the Insulator market and includes the market size and growth of

insulators on the basis of value. Market segmentation of the transmission line

equipments has been included on the basis of volume as well as value. The import and

export figures of insulators in India and the region-wise breakup of the same has

been provided.

An analysis of the drivers explains the factors for growth of the industry including

growth in transmission sector, growth in power sector, government initiatives, growth

potential of composite insulators and opportunities offered by private sector. The

key challenges include lack of proper testing facilities and competition from Chinese

products.

The competition section provides an overview of the competitive landscape in the

industry. It includes the segmentation of the market on the basis of organized and

unorganized players with respect to the market in value. It includes a brief profile

of the major players in the market including their financials.