Milk was a middle-aged closet case who moved to San Francisco in the early 1970s, became po­lit­i­cal­ly active, and started running for office, un­suc­cess­ful­ly at first. “The Mayor of Castro Street” was elected to the San Francisco Board of Su­per­vi­sors in 1977, the first openly gay man to hold public office in the United States. A year later, only days after the anti-gay Cal­i­forn­ian ballot initiative, Propo­si­tion 6, went down to defeat, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were murdered by ex-Supervisor Dan White.

Sean Penn is convincing as Harvey Milk, an ordinary man who became an im­pas­sioned gay activist and an …continue.

Daniel Craig once again plays James Bond in Quantum of Solace. Casino Royale rebooted the Bond franchise, going back to Bond's first 00 mission to recreate the character. The plot takes up where Casino Royale left off, as MI6 becomes aware of a hitherto secret or­ga­ni­za­tion, Quantum, a sort of latter-day SPECTRE.

Said plot makes as little sense as these plots normally do. Rich, evil mastermind wants to corner the market on <substance> as a stepping stone towards world dom­i­na­tion; Bond follows villain and henchmen across several continents, blowing stuff up and killing people; sexy women are bedded along the way; nice …continue.

Eric and I got advance screening tickets to Slumdog Mil­lion­aire, Danny Boyle's new movie about a former Indian street kid who wins round after round on Who Wants to be a Mil­lion­aire?. The show can't believe that he's not cheating, he's arrested, and the police beat the truth out of him. As Jamal tells his tale, we learn how an 18-year-old chai wallah in a call center came to know the answers.

Although there's little doubt about the ending, the journey is un­pre­dictable. Jamal and his older brother Salim are orphaned at a young age. Latika, a girl, joins them, and they …continue.

At SIFF 2004, I saw an acclaimed trilogy from Hong Kong, Infernal Affairs, Infernal Affairs-II, and Infernal Affairs-III on three con­sec­u­tive nights, Yan is a cop who's been in deep cover for ten years, in­fil­trat­ing the triads. Lau is a triad who joined the cops about ten years ago, rising to the rank of inspector. Only their respective bosses, Su­per­in­ten­dant Wong and Big Sam, know who they are. Each becomes aware of the other about the same time, and the chase to find the moles is on.

It's a tense and complex thriller and a meditation on good and evil. Yan has long blurred the line between cop and gangster. Lau is having …continue.

As I implicitly promised here, we went to see Al Gore's new doc­u­men­tary on global climate change, An In­con­ve­nient Truth, when it opened in Seattle last night. We brought some friends too.

Gore lays out a compelling case that global climate change is real, that it's been happening for decades, and that it's spiralling out of control. He backs it up with plenty of statistics and graphs.

• The ten hottest years on record have all been since 1990.
• The glaciers are in full retreat everywhere. The "snows of Kil­i­man­jaro" are almost gone.
• At current rates, the Arctic ocean could be ice-free by 2050.
• If either the ice covering Greenland or the ice …continue.