New plants
I’m very excited. To start with, I bought a little punnet of mini cyclamens, which make very good presents. I also bought a new helleborus – one of the ones I got last year is flowering beautifully; not sure the other is very happy though. And the other part is that I’ve added some stuff to the front garden that I am hoping will turn out well. On the right, I’ve planted some alyssum – I did this a while ago but didn’t water it enough and they withered through neglect. On the other side, I have pulled out half the creeper, and added some totally gratuitous cottage plants, which I hope will survive and flower for me: delphiniums, foxploves, snapdragons and violas (I said it was gratuitous). Here’s hoping.
Films I saw in the holidays…
… which was a while ago now, but what the heck.
Batman Begins
Fantastic. So well filmed; Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman were great in support, and I barely noticed Katie Holmes (‘ray). And Batman himself – well, he was brilliant. Played the dark and brooding very convincingly. I am definitely looking forward to the sequel, because this Batmas – with all new and improved gadgets – is very entertaining to watch.
War of the Worlds
Yeh. Not convinced. Thinking back on the book, I’m wondering whether it is actually the book’s fault. HG Wells did not exactly write a book that could be easily turned into a movie; I haven’t read it in years, but I think he was writing with less of an idea to character development than to exploring the concept of alien invasion and its consequences for the world. As a result, any movie (and what I’ve seen of the 50s version, while being an intersting commentary on nuclear USA, was crap) has to have some people-stuff inserted by someone else, and I just don’t think it works – not and still calling it War of the Worlds. I think Tom Cruise was actually quite weak in it, but then the character itself didn’t allow for much. There were some cool effects.
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Did I see it on holidays? Don’t recall; anyway. I liked it, in defiance of all the purists I think. The fact that it was started before Adams died made me feel a bit better about it. Yes, there were bits that were totally not in the book, but anyone who thinks those books could be successfull translated to the screen and be understood by total Adams-novices, which is a large part of the world, needs their heads read. I liked most of the insertions, actually, and I thought John Malkovitch was quite funny. Truly, though, Arthur was very enteraining, but for me the entire film was owned by Zaphod. He was perfect.
There was another movie we saw in Darwin, too, but I forget what it was…
Sin City
Hmmm.
J has wanted to see this film for a long time, and I thought it looked interesting too – quite like film noir usually, and such a fantastic cast (Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, Mickey Rourke, Rosaria Dawson…)! I must say that I hadn’t heard very much about it before we saw it, except that it was black and white with bits of colour. I wish now that I had been a bit more prepared – well, the dude at the theatre warned me a bit, saying it was gruesome, but still. It was very good: fascinating and intertwined stories, very well done as an adaption of a graphic novel because that’s just what it looked like, and the colour was superbly done. However. Gruesome and not a little grotesque; I had not realised that it is rated MA+. I would definitely have to think before I recommended it to anyone.
The Island
Someone I know described this as The Rock (Sean Connery, Nicholas Cage) meets Minority Report, with a little bit of Matrix thrown in. Pretty much. I liked the story, and I thought it was developed well; the characters were mostly quite realistic, and the acting was great – Steve Buscemi is, as ever, very good, although I wouldn’t have recognised Sean Bean until the end if I hadn’t seen his name in the credits, since mostly he looks (unusually) very slick.
Overall, worthwhile. Some superfluous explosions and chases, and some scenes that just made me impatient because of their patent absurdity, but those were fairly minor. The ending… well, you can probably imagine. It is Hollywood, after all.
Penguins
Well, penguin tetras, anyway. Actually, to be precise, they are long-finned penguin tetras; apparently their dorsal fin will eventually stream past their tails. I’ll wait and see. We got them about two weeks ago (mm, slack me); they transferred into the main tank yesterday. I think my tank is now officially Full. It certainly looks it, particularly with my two Monster Angels. And the Colombians are no dwarves, either.
We also got some plant called Red Pogo. It is red – the old bits, anyway; new growth is green. I know this because it seems to be growing well, in the two weeks we’ve had it. And it’s sent out lots of roots.
And the lily-pad plant is still going berko. Lots of bits actually outside of the tank. Have I mentioned that? It flowers, when outside of the tank.
Randomly Yours, Alex 