Been at Mum’s – she’s got Foxtel.

Half of Virtuosity; we happened to turn on to it the other day.  Such a young Russel Crowe!  And Denzel.  Not a bad 80s techie movie, over all.

Arsenic and Old Lace, which I have of course always wanted to see; I’m sure it’s on the 1001 list.  I didn’t really know what to expect; I hadn’t realised quite how much of a comedy it was.  I didn’t think Cary Grant was that great, to be honest; a bit too over the top for me, which I think is both a reflection of the generation it comes from, but also my preferences in comedy.  Raymond Massey was probably the best bit, with all the jokes about looking like Boris Karloff, and I think this may be the first movie I have seen with Peter Lorre in it – he just makes me think of the Geni in Aladdin; he must play Igor somewhere.

I saw A Life Less Ordinary when it first came out, which I reckon was about 1997 or 98.  Ewan is so young!  And so is Cameron, of course.  I had forgotten a lot of it – a lot of the slightly weirder bits – but I really enjoyed it again.  Delroy Lindo is always pretty entertaining, of course.  I liked the slightly oddball narrative structure; it’s nice to see a fairly mainstream Hollywood movie (although I don’t know that it did that well…) not being completely linear and predictable.

And since I’ve come home…

Takedown is about one of the first computer hackers actually to get done, in the US.  It was a fairly average movie, in some ways – obviously not a huge budget, some mediocre actors (although Tom Berengar was pretty good, for his 5 minutes or so).  The idea, though – particularly because it was ‘adapted from a true story’ – was really quite fascinating.  The most interesting thing, I think, was the idea that a large amount of ‘cracking’ is actually social:  conning susceptible people into giving out information or codes, and using that to get into systems.  I had always assumed that it really did all depend on being tech savvy, but really – no.

The X-Files Movie: I have never seen this!  I got really into the series for a few seasons; I was a bit young when it first started, and after a while I got a bit sick of it.  But this was quite good; I liked it.  David Duchovny really was a cutey, and Gillian Anderson really was quite cardboardy (although I note that she is in some period thing at the moment).  I’m not quite sure where this fits into the timeline; I think it must be near the end, or at the end, because they came this close to kissing, and really X-Files was the worst/best show I think I have ever seen for URST (as a friend puts it; UnResolved Sexual Tension).  Pretty entertaining.

We watched Predator just tonight, because I had never seen the whole thing, which J thought was terrible.  It was surprisingly good.  I knew some bits of it, so there were few surprises, although both of us had forgotten or not got the very hunting-for-fun aspect of it.  Which makes Alien v Predator make a bit more sense.  Best quote:  “Ah ain’t got tahm [time] t’ bleed.”

He’s so fabulous!  He was on the radjo with Jay and Doctor,on JJJ, for breakfast – literally, just about:  he made them a fruit salad (actually, I think he threatened to take it away with him, because his hands had been in it…).  He was talking about a new movie coming out, Wawa (or some such), which is based on his life – rotten as it was, apparently, growing up in Swaziland:  at 15, his alcoholic father held a gun to his head for pouring his Scotch down the sink.  Nasty…

He has such a wonderful, plummy English voice.  The Englishman’s Englishman.

There’s a woman on The Einstein Factor whose topic is Daria!  Yeh!!  Way cool.  And she is kicking the WWII small-arms dude, and the stamp guy too.

This is probably one of the funniest blogs I’ve ever, ever come across:

http://thepastrypirate.blogspot.com/

Read it.  I have seriously been laughing out loud. 

Pastry!  Piratical overtones!  Chef costumes that don’t fit women!  And more!!

**Much later edit: the Pasty Pirate has decided to pull in to the dry docks, perhaps forever. Apparently she discovered that, potenitally, one of her chef-teachers was reading her blog – and, in case she ever had a bad experience, she has pulled the entire thing. And I mean totally; she has deleted all of her old posts and everything. I guess I understand (there are definitely people I would not like to have read this), but it still seems very sad!

We saw this on the opening night.  I really liked it.  J was quite dismissive.

I liked the changes in Jean Grey/Phoenix – I thought they worked, and they were explained appropriately.  I thought it made for a great story, personally.

I liked the storyline as a whole; I thought it made sense, and it worked.  Rogue made sense, Magneto made sense… there were some very clever twists and turns, which were indeed unexpected and clever and made the storyline very interesting indeed.

I don’t really see what J’s problem with it was.  Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he fell aseep for a while in the middle…

I bought the March edition of this magazine a couple of weeks ago – see how far behind we are? – and it was good.  At last I have an understanding of where William and Mary and Anne fit in, and where, and why!  Hurrah.  Also had quite an interesting look at Mary, and exactly how bloody she actually was in terms of prosecuting Protestants.  Fairly, I think; but she wasn’t as bad as we still think, which seems to be mostly based on Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.  Mmm, propaganda.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while.  I think there are some classics that I really would like to own.

1.  The Jungle Book

2.  Aladdin (Look at this!  So ticked off that I’m molting…)

3.  Robin Hood (he’s so handsome… just like his reward poster)

4.  Fern Gully (so, not Disney, but eh; Batty Coda rocks!)

I think that’s all.

1.  Eskimo Joe’s “Black Fingernails, Red Wine” is awesome.  It’s incredibly INXS-influenced.

2.  Video Hits announced someone had announced their Madonna competition this morning, and I quote: “her and a friend will go to London…”

3.  I think I might buy a best of Hoodoo Gurus, if I can find one.

4.  I had to explain to some of my kids that the new Chili Peppers video clip was ripping off lots of other bands.  Argh.

5.  I bought a 3-CD best of the Beach Boys the other day.  J was amazed that I knew the words to a large majority of the songs… how had I missed telling him that they were my favourite band for a significant part of my teen years?

6.  TZU’s “In front of me” is brilliant, and I just saw the film clip – also brilliant!  Very clever hand puppets.

7.  I’m not a huge fan of Augie March – I think they’re an Aussie equivalent of whingy Englishman, like Coldplay – but I must say that “One Crowded Hour” is growing on me.

8.  I am also thinking about buying the Gnarls Barkley album.  Just… cos.

I am glad I did not spend money to see this.

It was narrated by Nia V… whoever did My Big Fat Greek Wedding.  It felt like it had lots of discontinuities in what they were talking about.  And it was full of Greek hubris, despite the discussion near the end about how Athenian hubris led to their downfall:  5th century Athens being something like the greatest flowering of human something-or-other.  And it wasn’t what I expected, either.

Half of the movie was about the explosion that destroyed Thera, on Santorini:  the archaeology of it, the discovery of frescoes, the timing of the eruption itself… that bit was pretty cool.  The second half was about Athens in 500BC – Perikles, the building of the Parthenon, drama… This bit was ok.  I was very impressed by the CGI reconstruction of the Parthenon, and their imagining of the statue of Athene.  And I really like the zooming over Santorini and Delos, showing the pillars and ruins.

Overall, I was quite disappointed.  Sigh.