It's Time to Turn the Page.

A new day and all that.

During the 2008/9 Israeli war in Gaza known as "Operation Cast Lead" I came to a conclusion. I could either sit there all day watching the news and becoming increasingly angry or I could go off and centre myself by doing something I enjoyed. That way when the time came for me to make my post I could give it my all and do my best. So one day I decided to spend the afternoon watching this film called "Juno."

If you've not seen it Juno is a feelgood comedy about a US High School girl (Ellen Page) who gets pregnant and rather then having an abortion embarks on a quest to find the perfect parents to adopt the child. However about halfway through the film takes on a slightly more serious tone although it's always an upbeat comedy rather then a serious drama. It was as the mood started to change that I decided to stop the film and go off to have a cigarette break. While doing this I foolishly decided to turn on the news and discovered that Israel had attacked a UN food store with white phosphorous weapons. This not only killed and maimed a lot of people but also destroyed a significant proportion of Gaza's food supplies and is the sort of extreme brutality that Israel only really produces when it suffers the misfortune of having Livni and Labor in government.

So when I finally went back to watch the slightly more serious second half of Juno I found it to be a far more depressing and soul destroying experience then the film makers ever intended it to be. I may have told highly exaggerated versions of what an utterly miserable film I found Juno to be on numerous occasions. Loudly and in pubs.

One of the next films Ellen Page went on to work in was "Inception." In this film Leonardo Di Caprio's character keeps using a cast lead dreidel to centre himself. This is really just a little in joke because while it takes you two hours to watch the film it probably took more then two years to make. Unfortunately Operation Cast Lead ended very neatly in time for Barack Obama to take up the office of President of the United States in January 2009 and rather then having a traditional plot Inception is more of an exercise in existentialism. As a result the current US administration seems to have become utterly fixated on the cast lead dreidel.

So during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia we had the shocking announcement that Ellen Page had come out as gay. I was going to tell this story then but I've never thought that it was particularly important and at that point it was being more then drowned out by events in Ukraine and the US committing itself to setting back the cause of gay rights in Russia by about a generation.

In the last couple of days rumours have started to circulate that Rihanna is now dating Leonardo Di Caprio. Although he's someone I'm aware of on a professional level rather then knowing much about his personal life Di Caprio is an accomplished man. Not only has he made numerous successful films and is very rich but he is also highly intelligent playing a very engaged role in international efforts to combat climate along with other important social issues. By comparison Chris Brown and Drake who Rihanna has previously been linked too are simply just toddlers in a playpen.

It is somewhat depressing then that these rumours are highly unlikely to be true. Instead they're just being circulated to allow the US to show the world - particularly Israel and UNFCCC - that it is now prepared to treat Rihanna better. Unfortunately the message most people are likely to take away from it is that the US still thinks of Rihanna as its property and is therefore entitled to pass her around for sex as it wishes.

As something of an aside last night Chris Brown again had his probation revoked after violating it by leaving Los Angeles County without permission. A further hearing has been set for March. Hopefully Judge Brandlin Gluber will take that opportunity to finally punish Brown for his assault on Rihanna. After all Brown's now been replaced several times over and still no-one's particularly interested.

On the subject of the little people that live in my TV last the UK's Channel 4 broadcast a one off documentary/drama called "Cyberbully." This featured "Arya" from "Game of Thrones" as a teenage girl whose computer is hijacked by a hacker. She is then coerced into doing a series of unpleasant things under threat of having all her private emails and photographs leaked online. If I was being charitable I would say that the theme of bullying touched on issues of how people come to cause offence to others and how people react to that offence. Primarily though it was yet another sensationalist attempt to get Channel 4 trending globally on Twitter so they don't feel so bad about letting Celebrity Big Brother (CBB) to go Channel 5. At the same time it was intended to manufacture support for the government's proposed increased restrictions on Internet freedoms - after all Won't someone think of the children!!!!

My main takeaway though was that it was simply a well acted rip-off of a slightly wobbly US independent film called "Compliance." So much so that the way the set was dressed and the props used in Cyberbully contained a lot of little references to Compliance. Therefore at the risk of getting people into trouble I like to think the behind the scenes staff on Cyberbully were placing bets to see who could get away with most blatantly mocking Channel 4 "Bold, Artistic Vision."

11:35 on 16/1/15 (UK date).