May diversions
Films: Eight this month!
Deception: Poor thriller with Hugh Jackman and Ewan MacGregor.
Sleuth (2007): Remake of a "classic", should be a blistering two-hander, but the house is the best thing in it.
Cloverfield: Neat concept, but vomit-inducing camerawork and by-the-numbers Godzilla-lite plot.
Wolverine: Disappointing with laughable CGI, but Hugh Jackman and Live Schreiber are both damn hott. Made me go read Wolverine/Gambit slash, so not a complete waste.
Holes: Fairly average kids film, happily manages to avoid the saccharine until the end.
Star Trek: Big splodey space ships explode in space!! Utterly ridiculous plot, lots of nods to the Original and other series, lots of silly fun. Zachary Quinto is quite disturbingly Spockish.
Wanted: Stylish-looking utterly silly dreck. There are worse ways of spending time.
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968): Sadly dated, although Steve McQueen manages to be charmingly louche and debonair throughout most of it.
Books: Two this month: The Artist Of The Floating World, Kazuo Ishiguro; a beautifully controlled, first-person unrelaible narrative, where almost the entire story is hidden beneath the surface. In other words, it's a book by Ishiguro.
The Suspicions Of Mr Whicher, Kate Summerscale. A cross between a novel and a documentary account of a brutal murder at a remote country house in Somerset, in 1860. More than that, it's biography on many levels; the biography of the murder itself, of detectives as a form or law enforcement, of detective fiction, of the specific detective involved, or the inhabitants of the house... the constant referral to other contemporary issues, murders and fiction can be a little wearing, but overall it's a rather compelling story, told with informed rigour.
And of course, still on track with Anathem :-)
TV:Lie To Me new show from the States with Tim Roth as a specialist in body language. The Mentalist, the other show in this genre on British TV at the moment, has it's anti-hero as a Derren Brown type, but Roth plays a doctor who obsesses with the science of his work. The show (and the character) make frequent visual references to famous shots of famous people pulling similar facial expressions to those he's identified on a character; that gets old pretty quickly. The show also implies that this type of body language is inherent, fixed and universal, which is pretty much utter bollocks. But Tim Roth is nicely watchable, so we're sticking with it for now. Testees is about two losers who work testing out new drugs and treatments for a pharmaceutical testing company named Testico. Between the name of the show, and the name of the company, you know pretty much all you need to know about it. Frequently tasteless, often borderline or overtly offensive, obsessed with dicks, bums, sex and homosexuality, it's also frequently funny as fuck. House. Yay, House! Season 5 started at the weekend, with a couple of wonderful episodes exploring the fall-out from S4's devastating climax. As ever, this show refuses to pull it's emotional punches where the main characters are concerned, and watching House struggle to comprehend, let alone accept, the reality of the situation was brilliant. And finally, ER finished. I haven't seen the final episode yet and I'm not sure if I'll bother; the cast as changed so much since the last time I watched. But I did watch Previously on ER, a show about the show, with interviews with actors past and present, and clips from shows going right back to the beginning. Alex Kingston cried as she talked about filming the final scenes with Anthony Edwards, Noah Wyle talked about thinking the script for the pilot was for a film, because of the scope and scale. And everyone mentioned the brilliant fuckery of Romano.
Music: We went to The Great Escape, in Brighton:
Thomas Dybdahl - with a band, very good.
Planet Earth - not so good. Noisy audience, poor choice of songs, no stagecraft.
Miranda Lee Richards - pretty damn good; even better anonymous bloke accompanying on guitar.
Little Lost David - stunning. Awesome. Go see this kid.
Ohbijou - Canadian band, very good, lots of them crammed onto a tiny stage.
Luke Ducet - with Melissa McClelland (his wife) accompanying, pretty good folky rocky Canadian.
Jaakko & Jay - batshit insane Finns. Described as "acoustic folk punk". Several kinds of joyous awesome.
Thomas Dybdahl - solo this time, soulful and melancholy.
Neil Halstead - acoustic folkie with a woolly bobble hat. Really rather good.
Melissa McClelland - with Luke Ducet (her husband) accompanying, pretty good southern gothic soul, but the folky rock accompaniment doesn't really work.
Angel Pier - Dublin indie rockers (saw them a couple of years ago at Hard Working Class heroes), good at what they do.
Jaakko & Jay - again, batshit insane.
Kate Rogers Band - OK bit a bit bland.
And we saw Dan Hartland play at The Old Rectifying House in Worcester at Whitsun, and he wasn't too shabby at all :-)
Football: Happily watched Man Utd win the Premiership, sadly watched them lose the Champions League.
Deception: Poor thriller with Hugh Jackman and Ewan MacGregor.
Sleuth (2007): Remake of a "classic", should be a blistering two-hander, but the house is the best thing in it.
Cloverfield: Neat concept, but vomit-inducing camerawork and by-the-numbers Godzilla-lite plot.
Wolverine: Disappointing with laughable CGI, but Hugh Jackman and Live Schreiber are both damn hott. Made me go read Wolverine/Gambit slash, so not a complete waste.
Holes: Fairly average kids film, happily manages to avoid the saccharine until the end.
Star Trek: Big splodey space ships explode in space!! Utterly ridiculous plot, lots of nods to the Original and other series, lots of silly fun. Zachary Quinto is quite disturbingly Spockish.
Wanted: Stylish-looking utterly silly dreck. There are worse ways of spending time.
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968): Sadly dated, although Steve McQueen manages to be charmingly louche and debonair throughout most of it.
Books: Two this month: The Artist Of The Floating World, Kazuo Ishiguro; a beautifully controlled, first-person unrelaible narrative, where almost the entire story is hidden beneath the surface. In other words, it's a book by Ishiguro.
The Suspicions Of Mr Whicher, Kate Summerscale. A cross between a novel and a documentary account of a brutal murder at a remote country house in Somerset, in 1860. More than that, it's biography on many levels; the biography of the murder itself, of detectives as a form or law enforcement, of detective fiction, of the specific detective involved, or the inhabitants of the house... the constant referral to other contemporary issues, murders and fiction can be a little wearing, but overall it's a rather compelling story, told with informed rigour.
And of course, still on track with Anathem :-)
TV:Lie To Me new show from the States with Tim Roth as a specialist in body language. The Mentalist, the other show in this genre on British TV at the moment, has it's anti-hero as a Derren Brown type, but Roth plays a doctor who obsesses with the science of his work. The show (and the character) make frequent visual references to famous shots of famous people pulling similar facial expressions to those he's identified on a character; that gets old pretty quickly. The show also implies that this type of body language is inherent, fixed and universal, which is pretty much utter bollocks. But Tim Roth is nicely watchable, so we're sticking with it for now. Testees is about two losers who work testing out new drugs and treatments for a pharmaceutical testing company named Testico. Between the name of the show, and the name of the company, you know pretty much all you need to know about it. Frequently tasteless, often borderline or overtly offensive, obsessed with dicks, bums, sex and homosexuality, it's also frequently funny as fuck. House. Yay, House! Season 5 started at the weekend, with a couple of wonderful episodes exploring the fall-out from S4's devastating climax. As ever, this show refuses to pull it's emotional punches where the main characters are concerned, and watching House struggle to comprehend, let alone accept, the reality of the situation was brilliant. And finally, ER finished. I haven't seen the final episode yet and I'm not sure if I'll bother; the cast as changed so much since the last time I watched. But I did watch Previously on ER, a show about the show, with interviews with actors past and present, and clips from shows going right back to the beginning. Alex Kingston cried as she talked about filming the final scenes with Anthony Edwards, Noah Wyle talked about thinking the script for the pilot was for a film, because of the scope and scale. And everyone mentioned the brilliant fuckery of Romano.
Music: We went to The Great Escape, in Brighton:
Thomas Dybdahl - with a band, very good.
Planet Earth - not so good. Noisy audience, poor choice of songs, no stagecraft.
Miranda Lee Richards - pretty damn good; even better anonymous bloke accompanying on guitar.
Little Lost David - stunning. Awesome. Go see this kid.
Ohbijou - Canadian band, very good, lots of them crammed onto a tiny stage.
Luke Ducet - with Melissa McClelland (his wife) accompanying, pretty good folky rocky Canadian.
Jaakko & Jay - batshit insane Finns. Described as "acoustic folk punk". Several kinds of joyous awesome.
Thomas Dybdahl - solo this time, soulful and melancholy.
Neil Halstead - acoustic folkie with a woolly bobble hat. Really rather good.
Melissa McClelland - with Luke Ducet (her husband) accompanying, pretty good southern gothic soul, but the folky rock accompaniment doesn't really work.
Angel Pier - Dublin indie rockers (saw them a couple of years ago at Hard Working Class heroes), good at what they do.
Jaakko & Jay - again, batshit insane.
Kate Rogers Band - OK bit a bit bland.
And we saw Dan Hartland play at The Old Rectifying House in Worcester at Whitsun, and he wasn't too shabby at all :-)
Football: Happily watched Man Utd win the Premiership, sadly watched them lose the Champions League.