Another pleasant weekend
A potential tricky Saturday eventually resolved itself with no hard decisions required on my part. Two of my options, going to see David Rovics/Attila the Stockbroker/Robb Johnson and meetup at the Shakespeare Head, fell by the wayside due to illness of various parties, leaving me to make a probably unprecedented 3rd LOTNA meeting in a row.
That said, that proved to be a close run thing too. On the way in, I stopped off at Tottenham Court Road to pick up the last two weeks' comics (and a cheap copy of Knights of the Nine for Oblivion) and then noticed Belinda Carlisle was playing that night at the Astoria. Veerrryy tempted. Heh. If it'd been Carol Decker/T'Pau, I'd definitely have bunked off ;-)
Nonetheless, meeting was most enjoyable, especially discussing the Redemption programme with katana137uk, azaxyr and silver_streamer. One bummer is that there seems to be a clash between an item on the new B7 audios (to be done by jmswallow, no less, and one on the new BSG. Bollocks. Also had fun comparing notes with silver_streamer on experiences with Oblivion on the PC versus the Xbox 360. And, for a change, the pub actually had Landlord on tap as well as my first choice of food!
Alas, definitely won't be making 4 in a row as next one clashes with Redemption. Still, I think I've already equalled my total from last year ;-)
Sunday evening: round to Liz's for pizza and DVD evening. My guidelines on what to take were a bit vague, just nothing too serious, so I took over a big carrier bag of miscellaneous stuff. In the end we ended up watching Jet Li's Fearless and the Farscape episode Out Of Their Minds.
Fearless was great stuff, starring Jet Li as legendary martial artist Huo Yuanjia. Like a lot of recent Chinese films, a tendency towards too many arty landscape shots but a very strong story and brilliantly choreographed fight scenes (by Yuen "Matrix" Woo-Ping, no less) that come across as very physical rather than the usual fantasy wirework. Easily Jet Li's best film in years. As an aside, the story's ending is a sort of indirect prequel/starting point for the likes of Fist of Fury/Fist of Legend!
As for Out Of Their Minds, don't know how many times I've seen that but it is still *the* best ever body swap episode. I found myself still laughing out loud at Rygel trying to figure out how to pee in Crichton's body or Chrichton "examining" Aeryn's ("Hey, I'm a guy!") etc. The cast also looked like they were having a hoot playing each other. Fabulous!
Otherwise, rest of weekend was mostly spent playing Oblivion. Funny, last fantasy RPG-related games I played were probably the Myth and Diablo series. Suspect the depth and attention to detail are what has grabbed me, right down to seemingly trivial things like the way the grass on hillsides sways in the wind or items dropped on a slope slide downhill. And, as if that and Knights of the Nine wasn't enough, this month's PC Zone has a 6 page article on Shivering Isles, yet another Oblivion expansion!
A minor achievement: finally managed to get my hands on a copy of The Fencing Master on VHS off eBay at a not-too-exorbitant price (well, some might argue double figures for a VHS is exorbitant). Shame the DVD has no English subtitles...
That said, that proved to be a close run thing too. On the way in, I stopped off at Tottenham Court Road to pick up the last two weeks' comics (and a cheap copy of Knights of the Nine for Oblivion) and then noticed Belinda Carlisle was playing that night at the Astoria. Veerrryy tempted. Heh. If it'd been Carol Decker/T'Pau, I'd definitely have bunked off ;-)
Nonetheless, meeting was most enjoyable, especially discussing the Redemption programme with katana137uk, azaxyr and silver_streamer. One bummer is that there seems to be a clash between an item on the new B7 audios (to be done by jmswallow, no less, and one on the new BSG. Bollocks. Also had fun comparing notes with silver_streamer on experiences with Oblivion on the PC versus the Xbox 360. And, for a change, the pub actually had Landlord on tap as well as my first choice of food!
Alas, definitely won't be making 4 in a row as next one clashes with Redemption. Still, I think I've already equalled my total from last year ;-)
Sunday evening: round to Liz's for pizza and DVD evening. My guidelines on what to take were a bit vague, just nothing too serious, so I took over a big carrier bag of miscellaneous stuff. In the end we ended up watching Jet Li's Fearless and the Farscape episode Out Of Their Minds.
Fearless was great stuff, starring Jet Li as legendary martial artist Huo Yuanjia. Like a lot of recent Chinese films, a tendency towards too many arty landscape shots but a very strong story and brilliantly choreographed fight scenes (by Yuen "Matrix" Woo-Ping, no less) that come across as very physical rather than the usual fantasy wirework. Easily Jet Li's best film in years. As an aside, the story's ending is a sort of indirect prequel/starting point for the likes of Fist of Fury/Fist of Legend!
As for Out Of Their Minds, don't know how many times I've seen that but it is still *the* best ever body swap episode. I found myself still laughing out loud at Rygel trying to figure out how to pee in Crichton's body or Chrichton "examining" Aeryn's ("Hey, I'm a guy!") etc. The cast also looked like they were having a hoot playing each other. Fabulous!
Otherwise, rest of weekend was mostly spent playing Oblivion. Funny, last fantasy RPG-related games I played were probably the Myth and Diablo series. Suspect the depth and attention to detail are what has grabbed me, right down to seemingly trivial things like the way the grass on hillsides sways in the wind or items dropped on a slope slide downhill. And, as if that and Knights of the Nine wasn't enough, this month's PC Zone has a 6 page article on Shivering Isles, yet another Oblivion expansion!
A minor achievement: finally managed to get my hands on a copy of The Fencing Master on VHS off eBay at a not-too-exorbitant price (well, some might argue double figures for a VHS is exorbitant). Shame the DVD has no English subtitles...