Indian Summer

I know that one of my jobs involves working in a grill kitchen that has a pretty high average temperature, so it may just be me... or is it just really frickin' hot for the end of September? Newbury seems to be awash with people in shorts and sunglasses... and it's October tomorrow! What's with that?!

I'm not really a summer person, I'm much more of a winter person, as many peolpe may know about me. Possibly because they've met me. My friend Coates once got confused because I said I didn't like Christmas and then took a second to analyse all he actually knew about me. It made more sense after that.

I like cold weather, I'm pysically more suited to it (being a fatass actually has a use) and most of my 'wardrobe' (and I use the term in the loosest possible sense) is better fitted to colder weather. I just don't know what to do in summer, other than burn slightly and bitterly complain, which is what people do during winter, so I guess it evens out.

Still, we're stuck in this Indian Summer for at least another weekend and I'm gonna have to put up with 'my time' of the year being taken over by people saying just how wonderful it is that we can be sweating uncomfortably in our tshirts. Ech, bring on the sodding snow.

POETRY.

I watched this film the same day as Beginners and it was a pretty difficult slog, I'll tell you that. I'm not saying that this is in any way a bad film, it's very well put together, it's got some decent performances and the story is... well, I'm not quite going to say compelling, but it was least interesting. An elderly Korean woman decides to take a poetry class and is the only student in that class dedicated enough to actually write a poem.

All the while, she must deal with the early stages of Alzhiemers developing (a plot factor that was woefully under-developed considering how topical it can be) and that her grandson, who lives with he full-time is part of a gang of schoolboys that raped a girl and left her suicidal. She has problems at all angles, really and the film is about her trying to cope with them in the ways that she can, all while trying to look at the flowers.

I'm not entirely sure where I stand on this film, but I think I'll say that it had a great deal more potential that was actually realised within it. The intricacies of Korean (and to a lesser degree Oriental in general) culture continue to astound me. The family of the girl who committed suicide are willing to accept money from the families of the boys who did it... in order that they don't go to the police or press? If I were a parent of one of those boys I'd drag them there myself, but that must be the Westerner in me thniking that.

All in all, this film is trying to be a bit more beautiful than it is, but isn't a bad effort. It's a little depressing, but not as bad as first feared.

Next up: Bobby Fischer Against The World.

Making The Numbers, Al's Own Style

Obviously I've mention just how OCD/Anally Retentive I am about the whole posting thing and when to post and how many in a month and blaah blaah blaah.... well screw that, to be completely honest. I am who I am and apparently people like that about me, so in order to make up for what I'm calling 'The September Gulch', I'm doing one a day until we hit October and am then going to six a month until the end of the year. Next year, I'm going to do four a month and that's gonna be it.

I work out how many blog posts I do these days based on how many films I see and I do tend to see a lot of them. Back in Southampton I had a couple of friends who worked at Cineworld and they used to be kind enough to let me in with buying a coke. Now that I'm working back up at home, I get to see the films we show in Screen One of the Corn Exchange (best cinema screen in Newbury and it isn't in the Vue) as long as I steward for them, which entails checking people's tickets and selling sweets.

But I get to see the film, which is awesome. Obviously back in Cineworld the films shown were much more mainstream, so I saw a lot more of the blockbusters and stuff, while in the Corn Exchange we focus on showing a lot more arthouse stuff, which is why you may have noted the shift in my reviewing to that sort of film. It's not because I've started wearing a beret and thinking myself better than going out to the Vue every week, it's just because it's what's put in front of me.

Since I don't have all the money in the world, it's neccessary to pick and choose when I go to the big cinema and when I don't, which leads to me being very reserved about big films. Actually had to pay to see Conan and that sucked, so I'm trying to be more wary about what I want to go see.

BEGINNERS.

Now this really wasn't the film people were expecting. They saw a bright, cheerful poster that declared the film was about Love, they saw Ewan McGregor standing there with a big smile on his face and thought 'hey, a romcom that looks a bit more intelligent, let's go see that'. And that is definately not the film they got, leaving a noticable number of our audience at the Corn Exchange rather disappointed in what they saw.

It's not a bad film, but much like Hanna a few months ago, I think it takes itself far too seriously. Christopher Plummer gives an astounding performance and the movie most certainly makes you rethink all you knew about homosexual life. McGregor and Laurent both give good shows, but are overshadowed by Plummer and Goran Visnjic (thank you IMDb for correct spelling there) and their exploration of homosexuality.

The film is thoughtful and provoking in it's own, quiet way, but there's too much artistic lavish placed on Oliver's view of the world, which can be quite pretentious and alienating to the people that have to sit and watch it. His art is a central theme and how he sees the world is quite interesting, until about the third time he launches into 'this is 2003' and then you just want it to go away, because by that point the film should have ended.

In fact there were about three points roughly half an hour/twenty minutes from the end where the film could have ended and it'd probably have been better for it. But that's just me. All in all, it's worth a watch, but don't get surprised if you feel that it's talking down to you, because it is. The dog, however, is easily the best character.

Next up: Poetry.

We Didn't Like The Wallpaper, Right?

So my new bed did arrive yesterday, shortly after I posted that last blog entry. Here I am sitting upon it and it is pretty damn comfy. They're futon mattresses, which is great. It has a top single bunk and a lower double bunk and the lower one actually folds out to become a sofa. This is also great.

Now all I need is some kind of TV to put in my room and I may never leave it again. I barely have any other furniture in here and it's quite a large room, so I do tend to notice just how empty it can be a lot of the time. Still, at least with this bed in here now I'm a bit more invested in the place.

Although the wallpaper on the stairs... yeah... my bad, I'll cover that. Moving it up wasn't quite as good a fit as me and Vicky thought it'd be...

Still, Vicky's now a member of the gaming group, which means I've got four regulars on a sunday afternoon now for November's Chosen, which is all cool.

You may have noticed that I'm filling in the gaps with the ones I left behind, by which I mean blog entries. For the new batch that I've started at the end of September, there are still unpublished ones dated the end of July and most of August to get through, and I will get through them, I promise.

Don't want to let this blog slip, I do actually like doing it and, as I was explaining to a friend last night, that's the only real reason to do something.

CONAN THE BARBARIAN
(2011)

You know what is good in life? *Arnie voice* To crush your enemies, to drive them before you and hear the lamentation of the women *end Arnie voice*. This remake does none of those things. It doesn't capture the huge, expansive world of Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age (despite trying to show you more of it than the Arnie film ever did) and it doesn't capture the sense of mystery and violence combined that the last one did either (despite having more of the violence, but that's to be expected).

Credit where credit is due, Ron Perlman and Jason Momoa both did pretty good jobs, I was rooting for Momoa to get this leading role for quite some time, he is ideally suited to it after his extensive experiance with Stargate Atlantis and Game of Thrones, although he was severely let down by the movie in general. The sequence of Conan as a boy had undoubtably the best and most brutal fight scene of the movie, but was also the least neccessary part of the story and probably should have been cut.

All it really did was serve as a reason as to why Conan was hunting down this particular badguy (who managed to spend just enough time on his massive quest to become an even bigger cliche for Conan to grow to manhood and gain the neccessary fighting skills to defeat him) and for the badguy to introduce his array of increasingly ethnic sidekicks. I don't know about anyone else, but as soon as all these colourful sub-characters that got about two lines each were introduced all I could think was that Conan will now go on to have a showdow with each of them in sequence. Oh look at that, that's what he did. And that there was the entire film. The bad guy spends the whole thing tracking down an ancient mask and the bloodline of an order of necromancers to activate it and.... it does what? Make him slightly more likely to be beaten up by Conan? Right....

All in all, pretty poor effort, nothing really in it and why was there a ship being carted around the jungle by a dozen elephants for no reason? Jog on guys, Arnie's still got this one.

Next up: Beginners.

Beds

I like beds, pretty sure that everyone does. For the last three months (the ones that I've been living in Newbury) I've been sleeping on what appears to be a pallet with a layer of foam on top. Now this is actually a kind of bed, it's designed to be from the appearance of it and it would have been reasonably comfortable if it didn't keep snapping underneath me when I'm trying to sleep. Add to that the rusty/rickety old metal frame that barely supported it and I'm not sure that I wanted to sleep on it. In fact first thing I did was take the frame apart and use it as a drying rack and just put the pallet thing on the floor.

Today, however, today I get a new bed. It should have arrived some time around now, but it's running late so I thought I'd share my thoughts with the big, wide, uncaring internet for a few minutes, just to remind me that blogging can be fun and all that. Anyway, I'm told this one (which I'm inheriting for a few quid from a co-workers parents) has a mattress already (otherwise I'm screwed) and is a double that has a single top bunk. Score! I have no other furniture in my room, so that at least gives me a place to put clothes and stuff that I want to keep off the floor. All I need now is for it to turn up, that would be nice.

In other news... well, since yesterday there has been no other news? Rios is open on a monday night now, as a trial run for a month? That's about it. On with the film.

SUPER 8.

Well this was a... mixed film. Don't get me wrong, it is actually pretty good, there is definately a vibe that this is the spiritual successor to ET, but it's almost trying too hard to be the next ET that it forgets that it could be a film all in its own right. If ET were the Cloverfield monster, that's pretty much one way to think of this movie.

It starts out with the death of our central kid's mother. Now that's the thing with the kid actors in this film. They are really good, I mean really, really good at the emotional scenes. When they need to jerk a tear or make you laugh or anything like that, they're good for it. The only downside to them is in the casual scenes, when they appear a bit wooden.

See that's the difference between a good child actor and a good adult actor, kids are good for the emotion, adults are good for the bits when they're sitting around and talking rubbish (mainly because they're jaded and dead inside, so they don't have emotions anymore). It's just a little thing I kept noticing throughout the course of this movie.

Other little things, why does the explosion/crash of the train (the catalyst for the entire plot) take 5 minutes to play out? Why does the alien abduct people and then seemingly kill them if all it wants is to go home? Why did one of the kids get left behind at the camp, just so that the main kid's dad could demand to know where his son is? Why the lens flare?

There are a lot of little things with the movie, but the biggest is that towards the end it really does feel like there's two scripts trying to break free of each other and be different movies. Is the part where the deputy goes all commando and breaks out of the army base entirely neccessary? Is the tearful acceptance of both fathers actually helping to move the plot forward? This, in many ways, is a very typical JJ Abrahms plot, very interesting opening, a few too many 'ooh no, can't let you see that *yet*' moments and then a couple of hasty and half-arsed reveals at the end that just don't cut the build-up that was placed upon them.

This is a good film, but it's poorly put together. That's about as well as I can judge it.

Next up: CONAN THE BARBARIAN (2011).

Chastised

Okay, so I was chastised into blogging once again. My good friend Martin sent me an email (which actually included the words 'hit me up') asking, among other things, why I hadn't blogged in a while. To be honest, I don't really know, it just kind of fell by the wayside and I'm regretting that a little. I am fond of this blog, but it does take a little time and effort that I didn't always have free in the last few weeks.

So, life at the moment. I'm still living in the same place, it looks unlikely I'll move now for the foreseeable future, despite the fact that this place has more problems than an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. So does my flat in southampton, it seems, since I moved out of it. Barely a week goes by without my friends/tennants down there don't call me up to tell me some new and interesting quirk that the place has developed.

This makes me sad, as it means that there are now three of my friends that I dread to get phone calls from.

In other news, the hours I'm working have increased at both of my jobs, so I barely have free time anymore.

Been doing some serious gaming in the brief windows that I do have, we finished the final battle of November's Children and have moved on to the sequal, November's Chosen. What with the success of Being Human and now this new show 'The Fades' (which is worth checking out, by the way), I think the BBC3 is going for some kind of fantasy horror vibe, so I'm considering writing up the opener for November's Children as a script (stripping out the obvious World of Darkness copyrights) and sending it in to the Writer's Room. You never know, it could work.

I'll resolve to write some more blog entries in the future, I've actually got a backlog from August and July that never saw the light of day, so I'll try and get those up at some point. It's not that I grew bored with blogging, it's just that there's been a lot on in the last few weeks. Including me getting a girlfriend, which was odd enough. I'm just trying to keep on top of it all, to be honest. Hope you didn't miss me too much!

HR GIGER MUSEUM

Now, while we were on holiday in Sunny Swissland, my brother and I noticed a rather odd thing. In the middle of a tiny historic tourist town called Gruyeres (pronounced somewhat like Gree-urrr to us English-speaking lot), we spotted a museum dedicated to the work of HR Giger, a name that movie buffs will recognise as the artist that designed the Alien from the legendary film Alien (as well as its sequels). So we thought after we'd done the obligitary walk around the castle and lunch consisting of over-priced fondue, my brother and I decided to visit the art museum. I mean, it's only an art museum, how weird can that be?

Weird.

So. Very.

WEIRD.

This man's head was not a nice place to be, I assure you. It's got to be one of the most disturbing experiances of my life, spending time in this museum. There are of course whole rooms dedicated to the Alien and the many incarnations that the design went through (it had eyes once upon a time), as well as concept sketches for the Bambi-Alien in Alien 3. But that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this guy. His sequences on The Spell and Corruption were both intensely horrifying and morbidly fascinating to behold, there were images in there that I'm hoping I don't remember too clearly, to be honest with you.

All in all, the appreciation I got from his work was a yearning for a deeper understanding of how humanity and machinery will blend together in the future to come, how the human body can be broken down and replaced wuth augmetics, cybernetics, hydraulics, all kinds of mechanics, how flesh is just another machine to be dismantled and put back together again. Combined with a clearly frustrated sexual tension underlying all of his work (there is an entire section of work that was off-limits to under 18's), this exhibit was both enlightening and disturbing. I came out of that museum slightly shaken and mostly numb.

On the plus side, there's a bar opposite with all of his designs incorporated into the chairs, tables and scenery, which is pretty awesome, as well as, in the lowest corner, kept enshrined, the Oscar he won for the design of Alien. Worth a visit, but take a strong stomach with you.

Next up: SUPER 8.