Yes, friends, it's time we told you what the best films of 2002 are going to be. And I can confidently predict that The Bourne Identity won't be one of them. From its thickset and in fact generally thick hero (who, sad to say, doesn't say "Matt Damon! MATT DAMON!" even once), to its ineffectual and drugged-up "oh, did someone just try to kill us? oh well, hee hee, in German" heroine / love interest, to its plodding pace, its lack of scale, its meaningless plot, the most amateurish secret agency ever, and its complete misuse of Julia Stiles, this is just woeful. The end song - with a chorus approximating "Oh man, then everything just fell apart" - was more welcome than usual in cases like this. Seriously, this has to tank like a big big tank of tanking things...
... what? It was successful and kicked off a three-movie franchise? God, the world has no standards. Tune in again sometime soon when we watch the second instalment and see how 2004's audiences will be amazed and awestruck by its effervescent genius.
(I'm sorry to report that I saw the third one first. It was formulaic crap with even less from Julia Stiles than the first one.)
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
"Resolve THIS..."
We did our obligatory new year planning today. And already have forty things to do in January. About fifteen of them are "attend High Spirits or Broadway Chorus rehearsal / concert", which won't tax us too greatly.
Tonight we watched Hoodwinked, a very strange CGI movie which combines the retelling-a-story approach of Rashomon with, er, Little Red Riding Hood. It's very funny. One imagines it doesn't sell itself to children though. Rebecca took Jake to see it when it came out a couple of years ago and reported it wasn't what she'd expected. Very funny though. Amongst other things it spoofs xXx. (Of which I once remarked: "You know, I could be ****ing a dead chicken rather than watching this film". Sarah pointed out that a dead chicken wasn't the best option.)
There's also a bunny. Sarah was unimpressed with the plot developments concerning the bunny, but its ears ruled.
I didn't think it would be Sarah's thing so I watched Shoot Em Up on my own. This is a daft violent movie in which Clive Owen goes around munching on carrots and shooting dead approximately three hundred bad guys while sliding under cars on his stomach, running up fallen objects, jumping over things, screwing his prostitute girlfriend, carrying a baby, abseiling, skydiving, driving... it's utterly ridiculous, and thus fantastic. It's the first Western equivalent to something like Hard Boiled (which is odd considering John Woo's been in Hollywood for years and this isn't by him). I loved it and could quite happily watch it again. Recommended, particularly for guys.
You'll remember last year I was playing a lot of hidden-object games, specifically the Mystery Case Files series. Well, this is now up to its fourth entry, Madame Fate, and while the end-of-level minigames and puzzles are still impressive-but-irrelevant-and-a-little-annoying, the object-hiding is still mostly unsurpassed. Coming up on the rails, though, is the Agatha Christie series (I know! licensed casual game in any-good shock). I accidentally played the second one, Peril At End House, first, and so for my miscreancy I'm now lumbered with playing the first, Murder On The Nile, and suffering through the lack of polish here and there which will affect you if yo play games out of order. But the pictures are gorgeous, and the object-hiding is reasonably fair - although why does bloody everyone insist on hiding butterflies, and pretzels in these games?
Sarah has been churning through casual games herself, with the most recent being Farm Frenzy (I think). I don't know what happens in the game itself, but sound effects suggest cows being tormented by something, and if you try to quit the game, it asks you to confirm your decision, and the "YES" button moves away from the mouse pointer for a while, while a cow face sobs in distress at your attempts to abandon it.
Oh! The new Sam And Max season started in November and I immediately bought the first episode and didn't play it until last week. It was, as usual, hysterical. Buying these games should be required by law.
Think it's bedtime now. Sarah is playing some bizarre platformer with an entire family being chased around in caverns, through the air, in a supermarket, etc (whatever the hell "etc" means with a list like that). I think she may be channelling her tumpiness about what happened with the bunny in Hoodwinked...
Oh! again... I added up the numbers for Take December Off, and we wound up with a grand total of 1,074 views for the video across all the sites (YouTube, Veoh, MySpace, DailyMotion, GoogleVideo, Guba). Not bad, not bad, not bad. This year will be the year of I Want To Be A Panda. One of my Christmas presents was the electric panda I've been demanding for about eight years... surely this is fate at work!
Tonight we watched Hoodwinked, a very strange CGI movie which combines the retelling-a-story approach of Rashomon with, er, Little Red Riding Hood. It's very funny. One imagines it doesn't sell itself to children though. Rebecca took Jake to see it when it came out a couple of years ago and reported it wasn't what she'd expected. Very funny though. Amongst other things it spoofs xXx. (Of which I once remarked: "You know, I could be ****ing a dead chicken rather than watching this film". Sarah pointed out that a dead chicken wasn't the best option.)
There's also a bunny. Sarah was unimpressed with the plot developments concerning the bunny, but its ears ruled.
I didn't think it would be Sarah's thing so I watched Shoot Em Up on my own. This is a daft violent movie in which Clive Owen goes around munching on carrots and shooting dead approximately three hundred bad guys while sliding under cars on his stomach, running up fallen objects, jumping over things, screwing his prostitute girlfriend, carrying a baby, abseiling, skydiving, driving... it's utterly ridiculous, and thus fantastic. It's the first Western equivalent to something like Hard Boiled (which is odd considering John Woo's been in Hollywood for years and this isn't by him). I loved it and could quite happily watch it again. Recommended, particularly for guys.
You'll remember last year I was playing a lot of hidden-object games, specifically the Mystery Case Files series. Well, this is now up to its fourth entry, Madame Fate, and while the end-of-level minigames and puzzles are still impressive-but-irrelevant-and-a-little-annoying, the object-hiding is still mostly unsurpassed. Coming up on the rails, though, is the Agatha Christie series (I know! licensed casual game in any-good shock). I accidentally played the second one, Peril At End House, first, and so for my miscreancy I'm now lumbered with playing the first, Murder On The Nile, and suffering through the lack of polish here and there which will affect you if yo play games out of order. But the pictures are gorgeous, and the object-hiding is reasonably fair - although why does bloody everyone insist on hiding butterflies, and pretzels in these games?
Sarah has been churning through casual games herself, with the most recent being Farm Frenzy (I think). I don't know what happens in the game itself, but sound effects suggest cows being tormented by something, and if you try to quit the game, it asks you to confirm your decision, and the "YES" button moves away from the mouse pointer for a while, while a cow face sobs in distress at your attempts to abandon it.
Oh! The new Sam And Max season started in November and I immediately bought the first episode and didn't play it until last week. It was, as usual, hysterical. Buying these games should be required by law.
Think it's bedtime now. Sarah is playing some bizarre platformer with an entire family being chased around in caverns, through the air, in a supermarket, etc (whatever the hell "etc" means with a list like that). I think she may be channelling her tumpiness about what happened with the bunny in Hoodwinked...
Oh! again... I added up the numbers for Take December Off, and we wound up with a grand total of 1,074 views for the video across all the sites (YouTube, Veoh, MySpace, DailyMotion, GoogleVideo, Guba). Not bad, not bad, not bad. This year will be the year of I Want To Be A Panda. One of my Christmas presents was the electric panda I've been demanding for about eight years... surely this is fate at work!
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Pictures! (Blog TARDIS, July 2007)
I just found a folder of pictures from, er, July. Oops. So this is some of what we were up to then...
Fireworks over English Bay as part of a big music-with-lightshow thing.
Apparently, a Chinese food stall. But I have no idea why Sarah took this picture!
The phone company, using the best possible promotion - "use our phones and cute bunnies will, somehow, be involved in the process".
Buy PANDA shoes now, or face the consequences.
Because you would buy that.
Never too fat to give a thumbs-up to the camera. Note approved Radical tee-shirt.
English Bay in late Fall: sunny and, by Vancouver standards, crowded.
I eat pitta bread stuffed with chilli because they're funny.
Sarah, on the other hand, still refuses to eat carrots, despite messages like this scattered around Vancouver supermarkets.
Dotey polar-bear table! I'm sensing we're into the pictures we took when we were furniture-shopping with Susan. And yes, look...
It's La Braverman herself, demonstrating where the Army is at with its revolutionary and fashionable chameleon-technology-enabled summer dresses.
I expect this was funny because of something written on those pieces of paper. As it is, it just looks like a grumpy couch watching television on its own.
This, while admittedly not the greatest ever lake and park, is nevertheless a random fixture in the middle of the Nainamo suburbs. Quite nice. This picture dates from when we went to a "harmonic overtones" class. In what later became the rainstorm of the year, caused when Bear, asked to conceal the sun which was shining in Sarah's eyes, decided to move it out of position and cause Flash Gordon-scale flooding and disaster across the entire world. If you didn't notice it, that's just because Bear moves very quickly to repair his mistakes. Sometimes.
Who could fail to love Grumpy Bunny: All Year Long?
This bunny kills fascists.
After you walk beyond Coal Harbour, on the way to English Bay, there's a lake, featuring wild geese and ducks, none of which have the faintest idea about pavement protocol.
Along the Stanley Park sea wall there's a set of rock sculptures - piles of stones apparently balanced amidst the waves. Unsettling when you first see them. A moment after we took this picture, a jogger came along (posing by running along the elevated section of the wall) and double-taked almost hard enough to fall into the water as he noticed what he was running past.
This reminds me of the painting which hung in our lounge for years in Teignmouth.
Fireworks over English Bay as part of a big music-with-lightshow thing.(I can be even less specific if you like.)
Apparently, a Chinese food stall. But I have no idea why Sarah took this picture!
The phone company, using the best possible promotion - "use our phones and cute bunnies will, somehow, be involved in the process".
Buy PANDA shoes now, or face the consequences.
Because you would buy that.
Never too fat to give a thumbs-up to the camera. Note approved Radical tee-shirt.
English Bay in late Fall: sunny and, by Vancouver standards, crowded.
I eat pitta bread stuffed with chilli because they're funny.
Sarah, on the other hand, still refuses to eat carrots, despite messages like this scattered around Vancouver supermarkets.
Dotey polar-bear table! I'm sensing we're into the pictures we took when we were furniture-shopping with Susan. And yes, look...
It's La Braverman herself, demonstrating where the Army is at with its revolutionary and fashionable chameleon-technology-enabled summer dresses.
I expect this was funny because of something written on those pieces of paper. As it is, it just looks like a grumpy couch watching television on its own.
This, while admittedly not the greatest ever lake and park, is nevertheless a random fixture in the middle of the Nainamo suburbs. Quite nice. This picture dates from when we went to a "harmonic overtones" class. In what later became the rainstorm of the year, caused when Bear, asked to conceal the sun which was shining in Sarah's eyes, decided to move it out of position and cause Flash Gordon-scale flooding and disaster across the entire world. If you didn't notice it, that's just because Bear moves very quickly to repair his mistakes. Sometimes.
Who could fail to love Grumpy Bunny: All Year Long?
This bunny kills fascists.
After you walk beyond Coal Harbour, on the way to English Bay, there's a lake, featuring wild geese and ducks, none of which have the faintest idea about pavement protocol.
Along the Stanley Park sea wall there's a set of rock sculptures - piles of stones apparently balanced amidst the waves. Unsettling when you first see them. A moment after we took this picture, a jogger came along (posing by running along the elevated section of the wall) and double-taked almost hard enough to fall into the water as he noticed what he was running past.
This reminds me of the painting which hung in our lounge for years in Teignmouth.2007 In Retrospect Part Two: We Live In Vancouver!
We've been here eleven months. Blimey. It feels like a year. It feels like forever. It feels like we were having our goodbye party a week ago.
What do we miss about England? The people. Or more accurately, our friends who we left in Littlehampton and the collateral damage zone surrounding it, and our families (which in Sarah's case doesn't even mean 'in England'). When we went back in September it was mostly unpleasant but for them. Grimy, dark, bad air, no smiles, and to quote an Alan Moore CD, the moral atmosphere of the week before last. Yuk. Everyone we like should come out here as soon as possible. It's like being sluiced.
Other things I miss: alcohol on sale pretty much everywhere; the singing and the parties, although we're trying to train them up... so many people here are responsible adults, which SUCKS... it may be the apartment-living that does this... it can be difficult to have a rave at 2am when there are neighbours in five directions; long skirts... fashion here is a little on the woeful side; young people... there don't seem to be any downtown, or in the choirs, or in the community theatre... they have separate Young People's Choirs and Theatre groups, perhaps to avoid any hint of impropriety or dubiety; everything being within walking distance (although most things are, and pretty much everything else is in range of mass transit); our rabbits.
That might not be a complete list, as I thought of it while I was typing. But on the other hand, it might be a complete list, in which case, my god, are we better off here.
What do I like about Vancouver? Almost everything. It's wonderful to live in a city. The variety of the architecture... the surprising spaces between, above, and under the buildings... the randomness of two-storey old-style houses jammed between skyscrapers... the immensity of the Shangri-La apartment complex they're putting up across from us... the convenience of having two dozen of anything to choose from within ten minutes' walk... the unparalleled transit system which for $80 a month lets me travel pretty much anywhere at any time on bus, SkyTrain, and even the ferry... the quality of the shows and music... the freshness of the air... the view from the bridges as we head back into downtown in the evening... the way life here is vertical and not horizontal... and peeking between the buildings in almost every direction, mountains like we're on an Orbital. Vancouver is just awesome. And although the overuse of the word awesome is a big strike against Canadians, it's appropriate here. You look at this city and you think, god, it's big and it's beautiful and it's amazing. Hurrah for Vancouver!
It's been a hell of a year for our music. We've written about thirty songs since April and performed in a bunch of random pubs and cafes - Sarah's stage nerves appear to have gone, even if they actually haven't - we've joined two choirs and a theatre group and done shows for them all, we've done some Christmas quartet singing, and we've even collaborated... erk... loss of control... does not compute...
Next year - this year - our resolutions are: make more time for ourselves, figure out our long-term plan for Canada and our lives, and make the ultimate step in music - getting other people to do our stuff, as often as possible.
(And, er, post to this blog more often...)
What are your plans? And HAPPY NEW YEAR!
What do we miss about England? The people. Or more accurately, our friends who we left in Littlehampton and the collateral damage zone surrounding it, and our families (which in Sarah's case doesn't even mean 'in England'). When we went back in September it was mostly unpleasant but for them. Grimy, dark, bad air, no smiles, and to quote an Alan Moore CD, the moral atmosphere of the week before last. Yuk. Everyone we like should come out here as soon as possible. It's like being sluiced.
Other things I miss: alcohol on sale pretty much everywhere; the singing and the parties, although we're trying to train them up... so many people here are responsible adults, which SUCKS... it may be the apartment-living that does this... it can be difficult to have a rave at 2am when there are neighbours in five directions; long skirts... fashion here is a little on the woeful side; young people... there don't seem to be any downtown, or in the choirs, or in the community theatre... they have separate Young People's Choirs and Theatre groups, perhaps to avoid any hint of impropriety or dubiety; everything being within walking distance (although most things are, and pretty much everything else is in range of mass transit); our rabbits.
That might not be a complete list, as I thought of it while I was typing. But on the other hand, it might be a complete list, in which case, my god, are we better off here.
What do I like about Vancouver? Almost everything. It's wonderful to live in a city. The variety of the architecture... the surprising spaces between, above, and under the buildings... the randomness of two-storey old-style houses jammed between skyscrapers... the immensity of the Shangri-La apartment complex they're putting up across from us... the convenience of having two dozen of anything to choose from within ten minutes' walk... the unparalleled transit system which for $80 a month lets me travel pretty much anywhere at any time on bus, SkyTrain, and even the ferry... the quality of the shows and music... the freshness of the air... the view from the bridges as we head back into downtown in the evening... the way life here is vertical and not horizontal... and peeking between the buildings in almost every direction, mountains like we're on an Orbital. Vancouver is just awesome. And although the overuse of the word awesome is a big strike against Canadians, it's appropriate here. You look at this city and you think, god, it's big and it's beautiful and it's amazing. Hurrah for Vancouver!
It's been a hell of a year for our music. We've written about thirty songs since April and performed in a bunch of random pubs and cafes - Sarah's stage nerves appear to have gone, even if they actually haven't - we've joined two choirs and a theatre group and done shows for them all, we've done some Christmas quartet singing, and we've even collaborated... erk... loss of control... does not compute...
Next year - this year - our resolutions are: make more time for ourselves, figure out our long-term plan for Canada and our lives, and make the ultimate step in music - getting other people to do our stuff, as often as possible.
(And, er, post to this blog more often...)
What are your plans? And HAPPY NEW YEAR!
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