30 Days of Film - Day Twenty
So today was my first day at work. Today I entered the world of the Grown Up. Scary. Was a good day though. Didn’t do any actual work, just getting up to speed on the systems and getting to know people. Lots of stuff to read and take in. There was another new starter (although technically he’s not really that new as he started a month ago) and I had actually met him before at my assessment centre for the job so that was cool. We got on really well, and accidentally took a 30 minute tea break today cos we got chatting. And then we spent the afternoon messaging each other in irc. He also may be pretty. That’s not me being coy, that’s me not having objectivity here. He could be pretty or it could be what I like to call Best Of A Bad Bunch Syndrome, where by being the most attractive person in a group of not particularly attractive people your objective attractiveness gets overestimated. Regardless, I forsee there could be trouble in the future with me developing crush. Ah well.
I got a free lunch today. I have a “buddy”, someone who had been working there a while and knows the ropes and who’s job it is to be a point of contact for stuff and make sure I’m settling in and everything. Well anyway, my buddy’s team overreached their targets last month and so their manager was taking them all out for lunch and I got invited too. And a very nice pub lunch too. One of the things I have been worrying about is finding friends and getting on with everyone, especially because most people are a fair bit older than me. Forgetting, of course, that these are people who have decided to do computers for a living, and thus are probably rather big geeks themselves. So non-work related lunch talk mainly centred on films, with topics such as what films should be in the top 250 on imdb, what films should be in the bottom 100 on imdb, how confusing Donnie Darko was, why aren’t the Star Wars films in the top 5, how crap Transformers is, whether Lord of the Rings is any good or if it’s just because it’s the only film made of the book, and how much Die Hard, Inception and Scott Pilgrim rock. Other conversational topics included how to get rid of bats, finding people in a swimming pool without your glasses and whether comparethemeerkat.com gets more traffic than comparethemarket.com. I think I’m gonna fit right in.
There is a fortnightly meeting of the development team in the afternoon and I sat in on that as well.
There are some characters in my office. I can tell already. The team leader sounds like a more camp Edgar Wright. There is a man with a Great Big Bushy Beard. There is a guy I can see from my desk who had taken his shoes off all day. Perfectly reasonable behaviour until I realised he’s gone to the meeting in his socks. This required going downstairs. And there was a guy I went to lunch with who was wearing an odd sort of boonie hat.
They seem like a nice bunch, quite friendly and relaxed and that. Can’t remember anyone’s name, but I’m sure I’ll get the hang.
Anyway, enough about me, moving on to:
· Day 20 - Favourite movie from your favourite actor/actress
This one is fairly easy because there was only one pick for absolute favourite. There are a lot of actors and actresses I really like, ones who will draw me to see something if they are in it, because they are really talented, because they’re generally in really good things, because I like their personality and yes, because they are prettyful. But really, there is only one person who completely encompasses all of these things (with Robert Downey Junior and James Spader coming a close joint second) and I think it’s fairly obvious that that person is David Tennant. And once I’d decided that it was a no brainer which film I would pick.
Bright Young Things (2002)
I love this film. Pure and simple. The 20s and 30s is my favourite period in history for all the global, political, financial and social upheaval that was going on, for the depression and the political extremes that rose out of trying to cope with it. With prohibition and gangsters in America and the rise of jazz both there and here. With a world licking its wounds from the First World War and driving inexorably to the Second. And the beginning of the breakdown of the class structure in Britain (not saying that it’s gone, far from it, but the rigidity started to break down here)
And this film captures it so brilliantly. Especially it captures the new Bright Young Things with their jazz and liquor and drugs and sex and frivolous spending clashing with the austere old guard of the Edwardian aristocracy.
It’s based on a book which I adore; Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh (unintentional poetry there)
The book is brilliant and the film really brings it alive, the odd rhythm of the speech and conversations, the characters, everything.
The screenplay is written and the film is directed by Stephen Fry and a fantastic job he makes of it too.
The cast is brilliant. Only Mr Fry could make a film with a main cast of (then) relative unknowns and then have some *huge* stars in minor supporting roles. Of course some the main cast have gone on to do very well indeed, you may have heard of them. Let’s see, there is Fenella Woolgar, Michael Sheen, of course David Tennant and another wee Scottish actor, he’s been in a few things, James McAvoy I think he’s called? /sarcasm.
Incidentally there are are three Scottish actors in this film and all of them have pitch perfect upper class English accents. In fact, James McAcoy’s accent is so good that the editor asked why he kept putting on that silly Scottish accent between takes.
And the supporting cast? Well let’s see, there is a brief cameo by Mark Gatiss. Also appearing are Stockard Channing, Imelda Satunton, Dan Ackroyd, Jim Broadbent, Richard E. Grant, Simon Callow, Peter O’Toole and Sir John Mills in on of his last film roles before he died.
A cast, I think you’ll agree, to which the descriptor “stellar” may be appropriately applied.
I just love it. It has so many things that I like all in one place. It are genius. Fact.