Admit it: Titanic rules

When I first read Matthew Hays' review of Titanic ["Love story boat", Dec. 18], I was surprised since I had heard nothing but great reviews... until my roommate saw it and told me how much he and his boyfriend could not stand it. I went a week after it came out and, well, now I cannot figure out what is wrong with you people! I sat stunned and mesmerized for three hours and 18 minutes, absolutely blown away.

Sure, the script is not brilliant, but who cares? Kate Winslet was charming, Leonardo was, well, Leonardo, Billy Zane looked hot, the storyline was pure sappy romance. What more could you ask for, except some of the best special effects in movie history? I cried like a baby, laughed like crazy and left the theatre wanting more. I'm sick of you bashing one of the most exquisite films ever made just because it may be a little "shallow."

Why is a fluffy love story all of a sudden a bad thing? This is an extraordinary movie and you and my roommate and company are just heartless losers with no romantic side.

­Dwight Rowan

Mirror bank bile bogus

I am responding to Philip Preville's article on the Canadian banking system ["Taking back our banks," Feb. 12]. As usual, I am shaking my head at the clever ways in which someone avoids central issues--in this case, the capitalist issue at the heart of the banking system. Obediently, Preville quotes banking "experts" who, in fact, are trying to hide the axes they are so clearly grinding; obediently, he takes his cues from them and thus avoids looking at the big picture (such as the ugly truth behind "shareholder mentality," one of the most pernicious recent developments).

Instead, Preville zeros in on the safest, least important aspect of the situation, but the one most visible and irritating to small bank customers: the problem of rising service charges. The author even manages to come up with a decent argument: if service charges profit the banks so little compared to income from big money owners/investors, why do they leave this visible irritant there for all the world to see? I suspect it is to detract our attention from the real profit-making game, which involves working with the interest-yielding monetary system--milking it for all it's worth, in fact.

Only those customers rich enough to make their borrowings and investments profitable to the banks, that is, to allow enormous yields of interest useful to both partners, really matter to the banks. We, the little bank customers, should stop worrying exclusively about service charges and recognize that the tiny interest gains on our savings accounts do not get us ahead. We should question the system which permits banks and multinational corporations to exploit us all via our interest-exacting and interest-yielding monetary arrangements.

­Gisela Nolting

Web site slideshow a work of art

I found the visual requiem for J & R Weir Limited on your Web site ["Zone," www.montrealmirror.com] profoundly touching. This shop, as I recall, was led by one rather dour Scotsman and several suave and capable French engineering managers. Their last major project, I believe, was rather large (say, $12 million Cdn) for precision sheet metal forming and welding for the Canadian Forces' patrol frigate program in 1992. The bare floors you see in the slideshow hummed and vibrated from the rotating shafts of dozens of vertical Bullard mills, large lathes, Stavely Asquith multiple spindle drills, and large sheet-metal bending brakes.

Having visited them to present some boiler work in the Eastern Townships they might fancy, I pulled the curlicues of metal shavings, the material removed during the lathe turning process and common to all machine shops, from the soles of my shoes.

That tiny universe which fed so many people and paid for school clothes, holidays, Xmas presents, bail, nights out on the town and down payments on maybe hundreds of little bungalows, is now gone. I was playing Shostakovich's First String Quartet quite by accident when I called up this Web site and it brought tears to my eyes.

Tip of the hat to the person who thought this one up. It is good to see at least one person who used their Fine Arts degree for something other than wrapping dead fish.

­Walter James O'Brien

Editor's note: The photos featured on our site are by photographer Diana Shearwood and will be on display at Quartier éphémère as of Friday, Feb. 27.