Ze French are coming...

My good friend Justine came over from Britanny to visit yesterday. She's not actually French, but has been living there for the past couple of years and certainly speaks the lingo better than I ever could (despite my mother being fluent in French and Spanish AND being a former full-time languages teacher). It was good to see her, she's a link back to a different time back in newbury, when I was much more of a screw-up than I am now, I think.

In an odd way, she's a reminder of the real world to me. It's kind of easy for me to be locked away in my room with my radiator and my gaming books and laptop and forget about the real world, just as long as I stick to my writing quota then everything's fine as far as I'm concerned. Then I go online and talk to Justine and it reminds me that some people have to work 12 hours a day every day for very little money and it can wear you down after time.

Now, I'm not trying to comment on her life, I have a great deal of respect for her (although don't tell her I said that), since she works at what was her parent's dream, to make it happen for them, and it's helped her a great deal as well, it's just not easy and there's no real end in sight.

We all have to work, we all have to flail around with money and banks and councils and officials and people that tell you that you're wrong and you owe them and whatever... I guess in my life I've been quite fortunately sheltered from a lot of this, but I've had almost my share, I think.

So, hats off to the French girl, it's good to see her and it's good to know that she's doing okay. Now, back to being mean to her!

In other news, I got the essay back, the one that I ranted a fair deal about in a previous post. You want to know what I got?

66%. That's a 2:1.

Now, I have no idea what I did to deserve that. My essay was largely drivel stuck together with consistent sub-headings and sarcasm. I can't believe that Sara gave me the mark she did, even after she explained why to me I still can't quite get my head around it. I'll actually qoute some for you now:

"But that's just what I think, and what do I know? So, to find a collection of pretentious Frenchmen who've been dead for forty years to back up my claims, then my essay can be considered to have some academic weight."

And that got a 2:1. I mean, can you believe it? Apparently if I'd dropped all the sarcasm (which would have involved a fair amount of cutting, around 30% of the essay), then it would have been 1st territory, according to Sara. It's baffling, I know that I'm not that clever, why don't they?

Been talking about the French a lot, apparently, there's all sorts of influences they have. Half the characters in my latest novel attempt are French (that's Imperia, for those of you in the know), a fair few in Servants of God are French, by neccessity (they were there, after all).

I should reconsider learning French, perhaps.

SKYLINE.

Well, I can safely say that if I hadn't seen the Clash of the Titans remake at the start of the year, then this would have been the worst film of 2010. As it stands, it's the second worst.

Aliens invade Los Angeles. Survivors hole up in an apartment and watch some of the carnage, waiting for a chance to escape. Air wars outside. Giant monsters. Hynotic blue lights.

And it SUCKS?!

I mean, this is the kind of thing that I actually *like* movies to be about! This has all the ingredients for a movie that I would really, really like to enjoy! But somehow, this movie went from a promising opening 45 seconds to the biggest waste of 90 minutes since the Titans remake. I mean seriously, it's not hard to do this kind of thing, given all those ingredients and a half decent special effects budget then you can actually make an enjoyable movie without getting out of bed.

I mean, look at Cloverfield, look at District 9, look at Alien, all of these were shot on a shoestring and all of them were frickin' awesome movies.

This films has two main flaws and they're normally the ones I don't pick on, since I'm normally focussed on the writing side of things. They are:

ACTING and DIRECTING.

Acting. Now, don't let me say that I judge people on the quality of their name, but Eric Balfour and Donald 'Turk from Scrubs' Faison don't instantly inspire confidence when you hear that they're the title cast. I'm all for giving little players a chance, but if they're going to simply phone it in like they did in this movie, then screw 'em. Even the owls had more conviction.

Directing. The Brothers Strause need to be taken out behind a barn and shot. Repeatedly. While being filmed. Without any CGI. These guys couldn't make a decent movie if someone else did it for them. These guys are such talentless wastes of space that I'm pretty sure my pneumonia-stricken puppy could have done a better job at inserting tension and narrative into this movie.

This film drags its knuckles through overly shiny alien monsters and drools quietly in the face of cool as it speeds on by, oblivious to the fact that it sucks. Because at least the creatures are pretty, right? And the CGI? More CGI, yeah?

Mind you, this movie does have one thing going for it. When Battle: Los Angeles comes out next year (a film about aliens invading Los Angeles that's actually inspired by real events), this movie will make B:LA look AMAZING by comparison.

Next up: MACHETE

Third Draft

So I'm going into the third draft of my screenplay, Servants of God, which will hopefully change the nature of the central character, pack in some more action and improve the general quality of the material. I can but hope. It's been a while that I've been working on it and I'm not quite sick of it yet, so hopefully I won't be until the time I have to hand it in, in May.

You know, of all the essays and projects and assignments we've got for our third year, this one isn't worrying me. It probably should, since it's the biggest and most important one we've got, but I, for some reason, have faith in myself to pull it off. I have absolutely no justification for that faith, but then I suppose that's what faith is all about, eh?

I know that I'm way ahead of the pack with this script, some people still haven't decided what they're going to be writing about, but I know that I can't get too cocky, just have to keep chipping away at it and it'll all be okay. Ish. Maybe.

So in other news... actually, I'm struggling to think of any. I'm off to newbury later today, in about ten minutes I think, as soon as Idge arrives to drive me back and forth. She's a good mate to have like that, since I'm staying with her as well.

Better that than my previous place, that's for sure. Things were getting somewhat awkward there.

I'm working on getting me a copy of Rogue Trader, the third WH40K roleplay book, mainly because I think it has the most potential amongst the three games they've done for actual exploration and character development. But we'll see. Yeah, that really is it for the news, I really don't have much to discuss right now. I'll think of something for next time.

THE LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS:
----THE OWLS OF GA'HOOLE----

Now you look at a title like that and you think, whutdafuggisat? That's the worst kind of fantasy title right there. All fantasy has to include weird sounding names for things that are normally possessed of at least one apostraphe (*cough* long live Quan'Kira'an *cough*), but putting them in the actual title? Oooh, not a good move.

So yes, this is a film that's one part Lord of the Rings, one part Star Wars, one part Lion King and seven parts CGI all mixed together with a hefty drizzle of Owls. Yes, almost all the characters are owls and they are voiced by a massive plethora of vocal talent, including Helen Mirren, Geoffry Rush, Sam Niell, David Wenham and Hugo Weaving, to name a few.

This film is nothing you haven't seen before.

All of the story elements are taken from somewhere else, all of the characters are standard fantasy archetypes and there's nothing original in this movie. That sounds a bit harsh, but we've got to remember that this is primarily a kids film, so lets look at it from that angle, since kids probably haven't seen Lord of the Rings or Star Wars (although they should definately see the Lion King) and won't for some time. So in that respect it should conjour up all the feelings that those films inspire in older audiances, in which case... okay then.

The only real problem with it being a kids film is that it's full of a sense of urgency that doesn't make sense to us oldies. They get captured RIGHT AWAY. They learn to fly RIGHT AWAY. They're chased out of the evil owl kingdom RIGHT AWAY. They make new friends RIGHT AWAY yadda yadda yadda. It gets a bit old how nobody seems to pause for breath every now and then, but again, it's a kids film (although I should make it clear that I don't like kids, in case you didn't know that already). The only really interesting part of this movie is who its director is.

Zack frickin' Snyder.

So yes, there is a ton of slow-motion, metal claw weilding, ariel owl-on-owl action and yes, it's almost as brutal as 300 and Watchmen. I mean, getting Zack to do a kids film... you might as well get Eli Roth, it's just surprising is all. But of course, because it's Snyder, the film is brilliantly choreographed and the graphics are flawless. That's not much in terms of making up for the rest, but it'll do.

After all, it's a kids film, right?

Next time: Skyline.

NovemBEARD

So it turns out that my last post was actually my one year anniversary of blogging on this particular sight and YAY, look at all the prestige and power that it has brought me. I'm still a screenwriting student, I still live in Southampton, I'm still profoundly single and I still spend most of my nights tapping away at manuscripts that'll never see the light of day.

Anyway, this is the month of November, also know as NovemBEARD, in which men, manly men that is, grow excessive amounts of facial hair and strut it proudly in a vague relation to supporting testicular cancer research. Or breast cancer research. One of them. I've never been much of a beard man. The one time I did actually grow one was when I first moved to Solent and managed to forget my razor, which my parents brought down to me seven weeks later (no point in buying a new one, I thought). It wasn't a particularly impressive beard, more of a fuzzy chin-strap really.

Why I'm actually partaking of NovemBEARD I'm not quite sure, since the quite bright ginger of my facial hair will severely clash with my dark brown hair, so I'll probably have to shave my head in order to keep the beard, but that'll probably be around the end of November, in which case I'll be stuck like that for a while. Ah well, what's the worst that can happen, I'll look like a thug again? Maybe the next time I intervene in a pair of chavs starting on people in a bus stop (must tell that story some time), they'll be scared off by my bizarre appearence.

So. Essay. (Told you I'd complain about it, didn't I)

"To exist, the body requires language." - Discuss.

I hate this essay that we've got at the moment. We've had our fair share of them over this course and normally they're a bit irritating but fine to get to grips with. Even the dreaded Ian McKay's 2nd Year legendary essay title:

"In the Secular Age, there is an increasing pressure being placed on the media industries to offer a clear view of the role of the citizen in the 21st Century." - Discuss this statement in relation to the term 'Social Capital'...

... didn't garner as much discontent from the class. (I'm writing this section on the 14th, since I kinda left it for a few days again. By this time I've actually finished the essay and handed it in, expecting my failing grade any day now).

The problem with "To exist, the body requires language" is that we then have to reference one of only five movies to discuss in relation too, then have to draw sources from critical theory. Now, critical theory is a MASSIVE waste of time at the best of times, but in support of this subject, with such a limited basis of movies to choose from, makes this task both dull and constrictive. Those movies, in case you were interested:

- 120 Days of Sodom (don't look it up)
- The Night Porter (intensly boring)
- The Servant (almost as bad again)
- Hedwig and the Angry Inch
- Bent (interesting concept, didn't see it)

The only reason I didn't add any parantheticals for Hedwig was because it was the film I chose to reference. Each movie was supposed to talk about a high concept (The Servant was about class struggle, Bent was about oppression of homosexuality and so on), but the major problem with all these films is that they were sodding BORING. This is not a good thing.

Now, call me a philistine, but if I've got to sit and listen to someone's opinion on yadda yadda subject 9 I don't normally care about, at least make the film FUN to start off with? That way, people actually pay attention. Look at District 9 for feck's sake! So yes, Hedwig was the only film present that was actually entertaining to watch in the first place.

So. Did my essay. It's full of sarcasm.

Wow, this turned into a very long post.

R etired
E xtremely
D angerous

Now we've been looking forwards to this one for a while, haven't we? There's been a slew of team-based action movies this year, what with the Losers, the A-Team, the Expendables and Predators and RED is now up there with that lot in terms of content, but a lot higher than some in terms of quality (you know who you are).

So a retired CIA hatchetman is targeted by a bunch of Agency Killers in an inside job headed by Karl Urban and they quickly find that they've bitten off far more than they can chew. Hilarity and action ensue as their primary target, Willis, bands together his old cronies in order to take down the conspiricy against them.

Well, what can I say, really? You've got a film with Bruce Willis, John Malkovitch, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren and Brian sodding Cox taking on people a good forty years their juniour and kicking their collective backsides in well-paced, well-thought out action. The youngest good guy contributer is Mary-Louise Parker as a possibly out of place love interest, but she makes up for it by being plain sultry. Why producers must always shovel in a love interest, even when there isn't any need for one, I have no idea, but hey ho, let's get on with it.

The film is perfectly good, the action is very satisfying, the plot is just the right amount of backseat to the aforementioned action and the acting is... well, how do you think it is with those names at the top of the list? My only real problem with the plot of the movie is the 'double death' of one of the characters, since we kind of expected him to come back the second time as well, it wasn't quite serious enough second time around. After that, this is a perfectly functional movie with plenty of entertainment to be had within it.

I doubt this is going to be one of those action films that can stick it out in the long run, however, like Shoot 'em Up or Crank, which is a shame considering the cast list. It's probably one of those that'll fade in our memories after a little while, but I can live with that. It was great while it lasted.

Helen Mirren? She STILL got it.

Next up: The damned Owl movie.

Remember Remember...

I have recently discover, on the Escapist forums, a thread entitled 'It's November 5th, what are you going to be doing?'. The list of activities then listed as options were 'Nothing' and 6 variations on 'Watching V for Vendetta'.

Now... I'm not one to mock ignorance... no... wait... yes I am.

In my reply I posted 'that's like asking people what they're going to be doing on the 4th of July, killing aliens or smoking cigars with Jeff Goldblum?'. It kind of staggers me to think that someone actually believes that Alan Moore came up with November 5th as a holiday in order to write a graphic novel about it, which then became a much poorer movie. Still, it's been a while since I was on a forum site, it might help to infantalise my mind, or at least give me a non-porn based reason to spend hours on the internet at a time. Go me.

On the other front, November 5th is the birthday of one of our most treasured classmates, WILL SALE, founding member of the Knights... of CLUNGE, and general all-round legend. It was a good night, with much things being burned (it being Bonfire night after all), many things being liberated from nearby gardens in order to be burned, much shot-ing that Will managed a great deal better than his predecessors and a plethora of gifts. Will's one of these people that it's just great to help him celebrate, and we were at it for hours. Many of them.

Will is now the proud owner of his very own Knights... of CLUNGE tshirt, which'll make the rounds so that everyone in that most august of organisations can have one, then we can go to parties together and be mocked for it. Good times.

In other news, my phone is well and truly screwed (it now only works half the time), the plug for my bath is completely clogged and will no longer drain water and it feels like we're up to our ears in assessments. Que essay whinging for next post.

Good times. Oh yeah.

LET ME IN.

So, a good while back me and Ad tried to watch Let The Right One In, a Swedish Vampire movie that apparently had true vampire fans sharpening their pointy teeth and squealing in girlish delight since none of their creatures of the night sparkled. Truth be told, we got 40 minutes into it and turned it off. It was very, very slow and very, very unstimulating. We decided that we'd have to give it another go at some point, but we were just too tired to put the effort into that film at the time. Also, we'd just watched Flame and Citreon, a Danish film about WW2 Resistance Fighters, which was much more up-paced and frantic. If you haven't heard of/seen that movie, you HAVE TO check it out.

Then Coates invites me to come see Let Me In with him on an advanced viewing. We get the train, we go to Crawley, we see this absolutely MASSIVE Cineworld, we get in, we sit down, film begins.

Now, I haven't seen all of Let The Right One In, but the first half an hour might as well have been a shot-for-shot remake, with the exception of the prologue sequence in the ambulance.

This gave me a much better sense of the original film, since this one was pretty much exactly the same, even down to the visual style, as far as I could tell. Now, nothing can stop America trying to remake foriegn language films, especially popular foriegn language films, but it's always seemed like such a waste of time to me. This kind of film is probably one of the worst culprits in that regard, since it's a near-enough carbon copy of Let The Right One In. But at the same time, it's actually quite a good movie. It's tense, it's dark, it's well shot, it's well acted, there's a lot of little details that really bring it to life... which almost in a way makes it worse.

You can be okay with Quarrantine being a crap remake of [rec], but this actually threatens the original film in a way that wasn't really expected. I'd say you could see either one and be satisfied, but that feels a bit unfair to the hard-working Swedish crew who put a lot of blood (heh, pun), sweat and tears into their film, only to have it remade near as damnit, by a bunch of yanks. But decent work is decent work, and I can't blame the Americans under Matt Reeves for doing a good job, as much as I think they should be blamed for it. It's a confusing world, eh? I'm sure I'll go back and watch all of the Swedish movie one day, but the American one is just as good and half an hour shorter.

Next up: RED.

All Hallow's Eve...

I've never liked Hallowe'en. It's got a stupid name, a stupid non-history and an even stupider gimmick. But hey, people like it and it's all... I dunno... fancy-dress-y? Personally I've never gotten on with the majority of publicly celebrated annual occasions, with the exceptions of Bonfire Night and New Years. Those two I have an appreciation for, but not the rest, especially not Hallowe'en.

This year was nightmareish. After just having finished the agonisingly long run of My Fair Lady all week at the Corn Exchange, we had 'Hallowe'en Hullabaloo' in the Newbury Marketplace just outside, which featured live (not very good) music, a wandering magician, face painting, puppet making, tomfoolery, child vomitting and eighty thousand requests for pretentious coffee.

And kids. Lots of kids.

I hate kids. With a burning passion. There are few things I detest more than having to deal with lots and lots of children, but one of them is having to deal with their parents. Eugh.

But anyway, the real funtimes of this trip down to newbury was friday/saturday. A big shout out to my belov'd friend Idge, who turned the youthful and bounding age of 34 this week and we then had party times on friday night. Now, I was working friday night from 5 until 9:30 (which then turns into 10). I get across to the Canal Bar just after I've finished and join in the revelries, with (really good) live music, lots and lots of people I know and general good times. We get turfed out of the Canal Bar around midnight, as they wish to shut, and it's left to me and Kerry to make sure that Adam (Idge's fella, who had been drinking since about 5) got from the Canal Bar to the Snooty Fox, about 2 minutes walk away. This in itself was a nigh-on Herculean task, as was the ongoing process of keeping an eye on him until half 2, but all that was eclipsed by the neccessity to get him back home at that time, for which we owe eternal thanks to Jen (whom I'm ashamed to say I was not to kind too back in our college days).

So after navigating Adam home and making sure he'd passed out in the living room, I walked Jen back to the pub, found that it had just closed up, walked her back home and then set about going out to find Wiggy, my distant cousin and Rios' colleague. Found him at about 5:00 in the morning, managed to convince him to come back to Jen's, where he slept on the sofa. I then trapsed back to Emma's, where I was staying, to partake in a particularly satisfying hour and a half's sleep. I then staggered down to Rios, in order to open up the place for 10am and cover Wiggy's shift for him, since he was in no state to do it himself! I was supposed to be working at the Corn Exchange at 7pm and to my amazement, Wiggy was there at 5 to take over. I headed over to work early in order to chill out and have a drink before I started, only to be pressed into service at 5:30 and made to go and be useful. I finished at 11:30, then proceeded back to Rios to make sure that Wiggy was okay shutting the shop. Apparently, I'm *really* helpful.

That day lasted a good 39 hours.

Man, this has been a long post.

THE SOCIAL NETWORK.

First off, I just wanna say that this is one of the top three movies of the year (the other two being Inception and Four Lions). There is no competition for this movie in terms of sheer nerd-cool, script quality or acting performances. I mean, this is two hours of nerds complaining about money and facebook... and it's AMAZING.

I think this is down to the Four Principal Genius Men of this movie. Without these four guys, this film wouldn't have been good, or even in existence, really. I'm pretty sure that producers only went for this movie because they saw the potential for these four names to be attached to this movie. They are:

1) Aaron Sorkin (Writer, also the creator of the West Wing)
2) David Fincher (Director, also did Seven and Fight Club)
3) Jesse Eisenberg (Actor, from Rodger Dodger, oh yes!)
4) Trent Reznor (Composter, frontman of Nine Inch Nails)

That's four pretty hefty names going in there, all of them seriously pull their weight for this movie, there's nothing about any of their work that I can criticise. Jesse Eisenberg is a serious rising star with a lot of potential, he's everything that Michael Cera will never be (talented, likeable, in possession of a broken voice) and he's got one hell of a career ahead of him. Fincher is an uncompromising director whose quick and ruthless visual style gives us everything we need and a hundred extra little details if you want to catch them. Reznor's just great. His inclusion of Hall of the Mountian King was inspired.

But of course, I'm a writer, so I look to the writer the most. Sorkin is one of the best working at the moment, the West Wing is still his masterpiece creation, but this is up there with it. The script for this movie is so snappy, packed and glib that it's hard to believe just how much of it he managed to pack in there. It's very fast paced, skipping over whole swathes of time in the blink of an eye in some places, but at precise, almost surgical intervals. This is one of the best scripts I've ever seen, proof that you can write a great film about any subject, no matter how trivial and irrelevant it might appear to be.

On a casting note (apart from Eisenberg), it was sheer inspired. Armie Hammer carries off the best supporting character(s) award for playing the Winklevoss twins, Garfield shows promise for Spiderman and would you believe it Justin Timberlake is actually good at this acting lark.

To sum up this movie (going back to my old method of not talking about movies I actually like), at the last scene, where Zuckerberg is sitting and refreshing his webpage, I could quite happily sit there and watch that for another half hour. I wanted more of this movie. Enough said.

Next post: Let Me In.

Music and Travelling

So October's been something of an odd and strangely active/eventful month. Not in any serious way (the bad sense of the word 'eventful'), but it's just that I've had a great deal of places to go and things to do and people to meet up with. Odd how it sometimes seems to all get packed into one month.

I've been in (and am currently in) Newbury twice this month, once for four or so days at the second weekend and now for six days on this, the final week (and fifth weekend). I also took a quick trip up to Bath on the third weekend to see my brother's new BUST production of The Importance Of Being Ernest.

On the whole, that's one of the more satisfying shows I've seen him perform in as part of BUST, mainly because I know that he's such a huge fan of Wilde and the play in itself, so his passion for it shows through quite well. However, this is the first play I've seen of his where I'd say that he wasn't the best performance. Not to say that he didn't give a good show, but I think that Katie, one of his co-stars, who has been in plenty of good shows, stole the show out from under everyone's feet as Lady Bracknell. Good show all around, I say, I do love that play.

Tragically I missed seeing my parents the following weekend, owing to being in Plymouth, but they missed the play, so it all works out in my mind. Sort of. I was in Plymouth to see my friend Dave, whom I've known for 10 years now. It was his engagement party to his long-term girlfriend Sara. It was a quiet evening, but worth the trip and good to see them. Odd to think of Dave preparing to get married, but I suppose that the rest of the world isn't as phobic about these things as I am! Mind you, they implied that it'd probably be a while until it happens.

On the Music front, it's been a busy one as well. Anthony invited me to go and see Plan B with him, at the beginning of the month and it was a blast, which was a bit of surprise to me, since I was kinda thinking it'd just be chavs and tossers going to this show. It was, however, really good, a lot of passion up on the stage, which is what it's all about.

Plan B, however, was eclipsed by the other concert we went to this month, which was of course the GASLIGHT ANTHEM. Twice in one year, oh hells yeah! This time they came here, to Southampton and we got to meet and talk to the band after the show, in an absolutely freezing street with a bunch of fellow concert goers we didn't know after we started queueing at 4:30 that afternoon.

Well, that's about it...

METROPOLIS
(The longest cut)

Wow. Metropolis. I mean wow.

This film is the very reason that science fiction can truly exist, you know. Well, science fiction in film and television. It'll always have a place in novels and short stories, but this film... this film is *it*.

It's the story of a massive super-city, with the well-dressed and decedant elite on top and the grime-smudged workers below, toiling to built the New Tower of Babel and keep the Heart Machine of the city powered.

There's no story more classic than this, in fact you've probably seen Metropolis a dozen times without actually realising it, there is simply so much inspiration in it that legions of writers have set forth brimming with ideas from just watching this movie, of which I am one. It's not without it's detractors, however, H.G. Wells himself was not a fan, stating that it was a poor film and guilty of 'foolishness, cliche, platitude and muddlement about mechanical progress and progress in general'. Harsh words, considering who they were coming from.

But he's utterly, utterly wrong in that statement, I feel. This is a film about the darker side of society being redeemed by it's lighter virtues. The characters aren't so much three dimensional personalities, they're archetypes upon which three dimensional characters are built upon. Rotwang may be hammy and cheesy as a villian, but we wouldn't have the Mad Scientist without him, the Thin Man may be a charicature, but he's the original Sinister Henchman. It's a visually rich, highly detailed and immensely important film, in my humble opinion.

Since the discovery of an almost complete reel of the movie in an Argentian museum back in 2001, the film hasn't been this long since 1927, when Lang's original cut was screened a handful of times in Berlin (once to Joseph Goebbels, who frickin' LOVED IT). After that, the film was trounced, cut apart, mutilated and re-edited into various forms to suit the many propoganda needs that it found itself in. There are still scenes missing, but there's now so much that's been added back to it, it brought tears to my eyes to see it in almost all of it's glory.

It's 83 years old, it's 150-odd minutes long, it's completely silent and it's the source of so many cliches.

But sitting through it is a privilige, if only for the stunningly gorgeous cinematography and vast scope.

It's films like this that remind me why I like films. I was lucky enough to be stewarding for this movie at my place of work (The Newbury Corn Exchange) and I volunteered for this job without the slightest moment's hesitation. It's beauty as a piece of cinema has not diminished, nor has its message.

Next up: The Social Network
(A film actually from 2010!)

10/10/10

So today is 10/10/10 and I was up at 10:10:10 in order to mark this historic occasion. Then I promptly went back to bed and woke up a good hour later in order to stumble on down to the Corn Exchange and begin stewarding. The review of the film that I stewarded will be up after this one, and it's a cracker, so I won't spoil it by talking about it any further.

I've just spent an... interesting... weekend in Newbury. The town can be both awesome and disappointing at the same time. Some things never change and I'm glad about that, but some things really do need to and don't seem to.

Mostly, it's me that probably needs to change. I had an experiance back in newbury this time around that I won't go too much into but relates to my inability to have relationships with women and my own issues with them all.

Ech.

Someone more intelligent than me once said that you should never sleep with someone who has more issues than you do. Man, do I have *issues*, so I would dislike to meet the person that has more and actually fancies me. Then I realised that I already knew that person and it all goes downhill from there. I don't want to sound mean, nasty or bitchy, but I ain't going there.

It's for the best if I never even think about having a girlfriend ever again, since it would save a lot of time and bollocks, but it turns out that you can't quite control your hormones as well as you'd like to think you do.

Man, I sound whiny.

To counter that:

BACK TO THE
--FUTURE--

Back to the Future. Back to the Mother-F*^&ing Future. The day I went to see this movie was the 25th Anniversary of its original release,which means that I was 1 year old when it came out. That makes me feel old, even though I'm only 26. Only. Try saying that to yourself in a class full of teenagers.

Off point there, I'll admit. Now, Back to the Future is the story of Marty McFly, friends with a mad scientist for undisclosed reasons, who then goes back in time by 30 years (from 1985 to 1955) and manages to completely disrupt everything he's ever known or will know. Then he has to go fix it.

I'm sure you know the story of Back to the Future, if you don't then why the hell are you reading my blog? Get out! But for those of you who are well aware of why this film is so unbelievably brilliant, then let me tell you that seeing it on the big screen for the 25th Anniversary was one of the best experiences I've had in a very, very long time. Man, was this movie brilliant. The music is still great, the characters are still great, the effects still hold up. Man, I love this movie, it’s just so damn good!

The thing is, I didn't really appreciate it when I was younger, I just thought it was kinda cool, I didn't stop to actually consider just how well put together the whole thing is. I mean, every single plot point is talked about in the first 8 minutes of the film and it never deviates or throws any curveballs at you, the action is still tense after 25 years, the story is still astounding and not a single scene or line of dialogue is wasted, not a single word is unnecessary. Sheer Genius.

So yeah, this movie was still brilliant but you don’t need me to tell you that. Break open your DVD box and give it another watch, you know you want too.

Next up: The ONLY film that can top this.