"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!