Sunny Swissland

So I find myself in the middle of Europe, with my parents, my brother, his girlfriend and the family dog, all waiting for the opportunity to meet up with twenty more members of my family in the days to come. Oh yes, it's that time again, it's Swissland time. You see, every couple of years, someone on my Mum's side of the family (that is to say, the Hobkirk clan), gets the idea that we just don't see enough of each other, so we organise a get-together at my Uncle Alan's house, which is in Gilly. Next to Geneva.

So holiday time for us, then. We've taken my brother's girlfriend with us, which is intersting, having five humans and one beagle crammed into one tiny chalet for five days in Lauterbrunen before we actually go to Gilly. We made it work, but only due to being outside for a fair amount of the time and having a regularly scheduled family film night (Mammia Mia, The King's Speech, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, then Shakespeare Retold's Much Ado, if you were interested) and walking the dog.

That dog got walked a lot.

I think the one thing that will sadly stick with me from this holiday is that I find it difficult to spend too much time with my dad, especially in close quarters. We're very different people these days, but then some would say that we're very similiar just with alternate view-points and both have the same kind of stubborn-ness when those view-points conflict. Which is a lot. I found that there were times that I didn't fully enjoy this holiday because I was being forced to spend too much time sitting next to him, which is of course quite sad in it's own way.

However, I am reminded that Swissland is a beautiful country with very nice multilingual people who rely utterly on you as a tourist. The Eiger and the Junfrau are some of the most visually stunning places I've ever been, as my uncle Bill put it, even the lav has a stunning view. We walked up and down and across mountain tops, we clambered through breath-taking waterfalls and we explored through at least one famous cheese-making chateaux. I do like these every-few-years jaunts, if just to see some of the rest of the family and how they are getting on.

My cousins Robin and Kenneth are both completely different from how they were as little brats (I mean kids, yes... kids), Aunty Marion was born to be a Grandmother, I know that for certain now, our collection of family Dogs continues to grow, as does the new third generation (Ryan is 10, Reese is 4, Rory is 3 and Alex is 2) and I'm reminded that I'm just a little bit behind all of my various cousins in terms of career and family.

But at this point, it doesn't matter, I'm here, I'm not changed much and I'm just glad to see most of them. I was even getting on with Carolyn towards the end of it, she's fun to wind up. I do wish that I could see more of my extended family, but there's a fair few that live in Scotland and just one or two that live in Swissland, so I'll have to make do with the ones I do have access too, even if I don't get to see them very often.

GREEN LANTERN.

So this review has been a long time in the genesis. I've been ranting, raving, brooding, bitching and generally sulking about the Green Lantern movie ever since I heard that they'd chosen to go with Ryan Reynolds in the lead role of Hal Jordan rather than an actor. Any actor. Fuck it, they could have just used cut-out images from the comics that didn't move and they'd still be preferable to that insufferably pretty douche.

And so it's here, on the big screen, taking up my money. And it sucks. It really, really does suck. I'm pretty sure that you saw that one coming, but I just can't stress enough how unimpressed with this movie I am. I mean seriously, the amount of money spent on this thing and you'd think they'd put some frickin' effort into it. It really seems like this movie was made with all the attention of watching other super hero movies and copy-pasting the tropes.

There's absolutely nothing in this movie that makes it stand out as original in any way. There's nothing in this movie worth watching. The terrible CGI (where Reynolds actually gains a few pounds from shot to shot where he takes the suit off suddenly) to the utterly pointless version of Parrallax that simply doesn't do any justice to the comics. The only decent recommendation was having the Guardians create the Yellow Ring in the first place, as a weapon of last resort. That worked for me, as did Mark Strong's performance as Sinestro, but all in all, I just can't stress it enough.

This film sucked. SUCKED.

I want my idolation back.

Next time: Potiche