Fuck the rest of you who can't...

(I was looking to see if 'Journey To The Centre of the Earth' was showing in 3d anywhere around here and went to the 'RealD' website. Clicking on the 'find a reald cinema' link brought this up:



Service with a grimace...

Not that I actually want to see the film, but I'd have been more tempted if I could have seen it in the format for which it was filmed.

ETA: Nicked from jenndolari
100 Movie Meme
( Really, I don't wanna think today )

Well, continuing on with what I did yesterday - although re-reading it, I'm going to have to do some serious rewriting of the opening, but it can wait - I can see a story starting to slowly force its way out of the mire, like a delicate flower in the middle of a swamp. I've got a few ideas about where to go, although no idea about the end yet.

Apropos of absolutely nothing, I watched Priscilla, Queen of the Desert again last night. It's a wonderful film. Utterly silly, although with some vety serious points about homophobia. And all three of the actors made excellent girlies. And, all three of them are in some of my other favourite films - Terrance 'Kneel Before Zod!' Stamp in Superman 1 and 2, Hugo Weaving in The Matrix (I still really like the first one. As far as I'm concerned the sequels never happened.) and Lord of the Rings (and V for Vendetta, although that is less favourite. Not bad, but certainly on a different level to the other films mentioned here) and Guy Pearce (In Priscilla pretty much straight from playing a pretty boy in Neighbours going to playing a pretty boy of an entirely different sort) in LA Confidential. A wonderful film with fabulous outfits. Although none I would actually want to wear, you understand. And some gorgeous imagery - Guy Pearce's character sitting on a giant stilletto shoe on top of the bus, in a sparkly silver outfit, huge sheets of silver material fluttering out behind him while he lipsyncs to opera. Utterly ridiculous and yet utterly fantastic!

And, by the way, if anyone has any interest in comics, you should do yourself a favour and check out this week's Marvel Adventures:The Avengers (#9). It's hilarious. It hs the Avengers getting captured and transformed into MODOKs (here changed to MODOC - the C for Conquest rather than the K for Killing, 'cos, y'know, it's for kids...) - giant headed, psychotic, psychic versions of themselves who travel around in floating chairs. And then they go and fight Rommbu. It's very, very, very silly. And I liked it lots.

And try to work out what I'm going to write about next (time travelling, gun-toting dinosaurs, anyone?), I'm going to write some aimless rubbish here. Just talk about... stuff... So, if I were you, I'd skip to the next entry in your friends list.

( Nasty talk about toe nails )
This cycling thing really isn't working so far this year.
( Random rambling about cycling and the weather )
Did that paragraph actually make sense?

I finally got round to watching Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut last night. ( Superman, Superman, Does the Things A Super Can... No wait, that's not right... )
I'll leave it there for the moment. I've actually got quite a lot of work to do at the moment. And a MP3 player full of BBC radio show to listen to while doing it. So, I'd better get on with it.

I'm tired. Really tired. There are several reasons for this and I am now going to ennumerate them. Because it's pretty much all I can think about at the moment.

The main cause for being very, very (trying to think of a synonym for 'tired, but can't because... well, you know the rest) is because I slept really badly all last week - having a completely blocked nose makes deep sleep really difficult, you know? Coupling this with Max's tendency last week to wake up in the middle of the night (he appeared to be having nightmares about big bees in his bedroom) and I'm sure you can understand that tiredness was pretty much on the cards for me last week.

Secondly, I was up late on Monday, after having been to see Battleship Potemkin with a soundtrack performed by The Pet Shop Boys and Northern Sinfonia. The film was wonderful, the soundtrack less so. I dunno, but it just seemed to me that the PSB's camp, electronic disco stylings just didn't really seem to fit in with the excitement and grandeur of a movie about a revolution (failed or otherwise). It didn't help that there were points when it seemed to me that they hadn't actually been watching the film when composing as the music seemed to be wildly out of sync with the emotions and actions portrayed on screen. I suppose the big final scene worked reasonably well, but it was too little too late. Loved the film though - for a film of this period (made in 1925)it was technically amazing. Beautifully shot, brilliantly imagined and
just gorgeous to look at. This was the first time I'd seen it and there were times when I got lost in the film and actually managed to ignore the music. Still, it could have been worse, at least it wasn't Giorgio Moroder's Metropolis.

Finally, I was also up very late last night (until about 12.30)researching and writing a talk that I was meant to give at Candy's school this afternoon about comic books. I say meant to because Candy has just (literally) rung me to say that it's been postponed until next week. Now, obviously I am now best pleased by this as I put so much work into it last night (I know, I should have started working on it a lot earlier, but I didn't think it was going to take as long as it did to get done. I was expecting it to take a couple of hours and I ended up working at it for four hours.) Oh well, I can get Candy to take a look at what I've done and tell me if I'm going to bore the kids utterly rigid or not now.

So. Tired. Yup. Need some sleep now, please.

I've just come across this list of the 101 greatest screenplays ever written, according to the Writer's Guild of America, East. It's pretty interesting and I think that I'd probably go along with most of them. However, looking at the top 10 I was kind of ashamed that I'd only seen four of them - Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Annie Hall and Some Like It Hot. Can you believe that I've never seen The Godfather? I find it fairly amazing myself. Expecially considering I've got the DVD at home on my shelf.

Fortunately, as I go further down the list my hitrate improves. I've seen 55 of the 101 movies. At least that's more than half. Just.

Should I list the one's I've seen? What the hell, why not?

( But I'll put it behind a cut because it's pretty self-absorbed )

I've just been told I can go home so any further thoughts on this subject will have to wait.


Music:
Texas - I Don't Want A Lover
The Farm - Groovy Train
Ella Fitzgerald - I've Got You Under My Skin

Well, it was a pretty good weekend.
( What I did on my Summer Holidays. Well, this weekend, anyway )
We went to see V for Vendetta on Sunday evening. I enjoyed it a lot.
( Spoilers! )
And, thanks to shewhomust I have discovered Digger by ursulav. It's rather wonderful - kind of a cross between Cerebus and Bone, but not really anything like either one of them. And the art work is gorgeous - wood cut/lino print type stuff. Buy the print version, to ensure that volume 2 comes out so I can read that as well.

Well, after saying that I was going to attempt to keep my LJ up to date back at the beginning of December, I did a pretty piss poor job of it, didn't I?

But, I now have a new job, where I have internet access, so, maybe I'll be able to do something about actually doing something. We'll just have to see.

At the beginning of the year (literally - on the 3rd of January) I got a temp job working for a company called ClientLogic. This lot are a call-centre company and I was working as BT Broadband First Line help. That essentially meant that anyone who had problems with there BT Broadband would ring me and I would run through some basic checks (you know - is it switched on and plugged in...) to see if it was easily fixable.

This was a bloody awful job. I have to say that I did quite enjoy talking to some of the customers, but, considering that I would probably have about an hour or an hour and a half's worth of talking in an eight and a half hour shift, there wasn't a lot of that happening. It did mean I got a lot of reading done though - I read all of Neal Stephenson's 'System of the World' (850 odd pages) in a week. And, if you haven't read his Baroque Cycle series (of which SOTW was the third and final volume) and you have any interest in history, science or SF, or just really good writing, then you should really seek them out.

But, there were drawbacks. The biggest three were the hours - shift work and weekend work, the pay - £6.15/hour and the fact that it was in a call centre. Considering I always said that I'd never work in a call centre, do evening or weekend work ever again, this wasn't what you'd call an ideal position for me.

However! All that is behind me now! I have just started (today!) a new job as Data Administrator at Newcastle College. It's better wages (still not brilliant, but it'll do for the moment, at least until I finish my MCSE), no evening work and no weekends. And the work has the potential to be interesting as well. So that's all groovy then.

Now, I just need to get the rest of my life in order. My next goal is start dressing and going out dressed more often. Actually, just going out more often would be kind of nice...

There are a few films that I have got to get to see in the next few months, starting with MirrorMask which opens in the UK this weekend and V For Vendetta which is, I think, Mid-March. I'm slightly dubious about V but the trailer at least makes it look kind of interesting and David Lloyd has said nice things about the film. So, whilst dubious, I'm also hopeful that it won't be an appalling film. And MirrorMask will be just gorgeous to look at. I don't really care if it's not a great film. It'll be a moving, live-action Dave McKean picture.

And Serenity is out on DVD this week, so should be arriving from Amazon any day now. So that's all good as well.

Now. I have fifteen minutes before I have to leave and no work to do. What should I do? Try and catch up a bit on all the friends I have on LJ and haven't read in so long? I think that's the best idea, don't you?