Back Down South

So my brief holiday up to the frozen wastes of Scotland (more specifically the rather hospitable town of St. Andrews, where my parents reside) is now over and yesterday my brother and I embarked upon the eleven-and-a-half hour drive back down south. According to my Dad's instructions, it should have lasted about nine hours, but we got lost twice and ended up stopping for an hour and a half or so in Newbury, since it was on the way.

During my time at my parents house I managed to fall behind both on my writing and my Stargate (I'm not sure which one is more serious), so I'm frantically trying to get back on top of everything. I'm pretty sure I can catch up in order to get onto other pressing things. I can't quite think of any right now, but I'm sure I'll find something. Have met up with most of my friends, seen a few movies and lounged quite comfortably on my sofa.

Yep, it's good to be home.

On the money front I think I'm stuggling to stay within my set budget, but I don't think I'm in any serious danger yet. I'm getting a whole bunch of grant/loan/bursary cash pretty soon, but until September the 27th I'm pretty limited on what I can do (should probably stop going to the cinema so often, but if I didn't I wouldn't have any films to review for you, would I?). Ah well, it's all good, far as I'm concerned.

So I can't really think of anything to talk about other than the shows I went to go see at Edinburgh with my brother, so I'll do that. First up was a group called the News Revue, who perform a sketch show based on recent political events. These guys also are the longest running group to come to the Edinburgh Fringe, at 31 years. They were frickin' HIlarious and well worth the price of admission, brilliant stuff.

Next up Mr. Reginal D. Hunter, for whom we were front row. Do I really need to say that he was brilliant?

Finally was a production called 'Stitched Up', which was an interesting take of the story of Victor Frankenstein, presented as something of a Mad Science Anonymous meeting, with the rest of his cast taking the book and movies apart in an excellent breaking the fourth wall method. The only problem I had with it was that the cast spent too much time with thier backs to most of the audiance, most notably me.

Anyway, it was a most enjoyable day/evening, even if was under 'odd' circumstances of which I will talk about some other time!

THE A-TEAM.

You know, I didn't really have any ambition to see this movie. The A-Team was never a big part of my childhood and I never really thought much of that kind of 80's action series. However, just as I got back from my last jaunt up in newbury a few weeks ago, I was invited to go see it with my friends, so go see it we did. And you know what? We liked it. We liked it a great deal.

I won't say that it's a great movie or that it's a work of art or anything, but it was pretty damn fun. There were good jokes, cool sequences, great characters and a half decent plot. And by plot I mean a thin set of excuses to link several crazy action scenes. Basically, it worked really quite well together, but it was by no means a perfect movie.

The actual movie felt like it was only about two acts long, as oppose to the standard three act structure, either that or the second and third acts were only about half the plot points they should have been, which is more likely. Basically, I think there was a chance for another sequence in there somewhere, a smaller gap-filler one.

As it stands, the cast were actually pretty awesome (there were a lot of concerns about them), most especially Sharlto Copely, who has a serious future ahead of him.

All in all, this was a pretty decent movie, with some decent lines (quite quotable) and not at all as bad as expected. Don't go in expecting much, and you'll probably enjoy it.

Next up: Piranha 3D (No, I can't believe I'm going to review it either).