Me: Was that rain? Or maybe snow?

Brett: Neither. I blew my nose.

Me: AARGHH! NOOOO!

You can pre-order it here.

Alas I wasn’t allowed to put the Evil Edna button onto the live web-site.

I have a tendency to forget when the films are on, so I’ve put together a Google Calendar to tell me just that, along with what they’re about and so on. What’s more, I’ve made it public. It’s available in a couple of formats:

• iCal: For users of Apple iCal, Google Calendar and any other software that supports the iCal format.
• Atom: For use in your News/Feed-reader of choice.

I hope it’s useful to someone out there.

1. Tom Cruise.
2. It’s one of those historical epic things. Gladiator put me right off such films for a long while. 100% of not very good.
3. Tom Cruise.

“This one’s got samurai though!” they tell me. True, and the Samurai were really bloody cool — right up there with ninjas. But Tom Cruise? I really struggle to take him seriously in any role at all. The likes of Top Gun and Days of Thunder have forever marred him as an actor.

But it’s in my housemate’s collection and I seem to be in movie mode at the moment, so I finally caved in.

I’ll give him his due: He was quite good in this. I really was willing him to beat Ujio on the training ground. He’s still a cheesy bastard, mind (please, stop it with the thousand yard stare) and his supporting cast was much better. Ken Wanatabe in particular was fantastic as Katsumoto, and Timothy Spall played the bumbling englishman as only he can.

Then there’s the scenery. I really want to visit Japan now: Lost in Translation made me want to see the cities and after seeing this I want to explore the countryside — though hopefully they’ve cleared up the mess of dead bodies and weaponry left behind after the massive battle scenes.

So in summary, it’s an epic, starring Tom Cruise, with one of the most ridiculous plotlines ever. A recipe for disaster really isn’t it? Somehow they’ve pulled it from the jaws of becoming another Titanic and made something quite enjoyable. It’s by no means one of the all-time greats, but it’s well worth watching.

Kontroll

A tale of friends, enemies, competition, love, demons, food, suicide, murder, and a girl in a bear costume — all set in Budapest’s underground system. Absolutely brilliant.

Hotel Rwanda

Not quite the heart-wrenching tale I expected it to be, and probably all the more watchable for it. It’s one of those films that makes you think long and hard about just how fickle western governments can be, and just how nasty the human race can be. Oh, and Owen — you’ve seen Sophie Okonedo in ‘Spooks’, ‘This Years Love’, ‘Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls’ and ‘The Bill’ (I know you’re a big fan) amongst other things.

Corpse Bride

Nobody told me it was a musical! I enjoyed it despite that and the singing didn’t make me cringe once. I must be ill or something.

Amélie

I finally managed to see it on Saturday night. Its a feel-good film of the highest order — I defy you to watch this and not feel happy afterwards. You can tell it’s a Jean-Pierre Jeunet film a mile away, and not just because Dominique Pinon is in there. He has a certain style that really stands out.

City of God

It’s about boys growing up in Brazil’s slums. Despite the dark subject matter (life in the slums, drugs and gang warfare), it remains upbeat, good humoured and very enjoyable.

Æon Flux

This is complete tosh, but in a good way. There’s some fantastic fight sequences, special effects and stunts in there, not to mention Charlize Theron in very tight clothing (hummmna!). It’s just a pity that the cast appears to be made almost enitely of wood.

Right, I’m off to watch Magnolia. Wish me luck… [and then a little over three hours later]

Magnolia

Wow. I know several people who really didn’t like that, but they’re clearly all wrong :-) It’s an amazing film. I think I’d struggle to sum it up, simply because there’s so much to it. So I won’t, I’ll just recommend it, lots.

Both Sara and Weon have been raving on about it since it first aired over in the states months ago, but I never found the time to sit down and watch it. They were right: It’s absolutely brilliant. I just hope the rest of the series lives up to this one…

What’s more, I can’t really talk about it, because everyone else in this country is still watching season 1, and I have to wait another week before I’ll be able to get the next episode on t’internet!

GWAAARRGGHH!

Oh my. Lost is a bit good isn’t it? I’ve just reached the end of Season 1. Yes, I know downloading the whole series at once is cheating.

I won’t spoil it for everybody else — we’ve still got about another five months of it on TV over here. Suffice it to say that I really need to see Season 2, right about now.

The fact that I was barely aware of this distinct lack of comfort until the film was over, serves to point out that the third episode of the Star Wars saga is one hell of a lot more absorbing than either of the first two. Much, much better. I want to say more, but I’ll leave it for now to save spoiling it for those of you that haven’t seen it.

You really ought to see it at the cinema though, it’s definitely a big screen film. But do try to find one that’s slightly more comfortable than my local.

Unless you’ve been living on Mars (or indeed anywhere else outside of the UK) for the past three weeks, you’ll no doubt be aware that there’s a new series of Doctor Who airing on BBC One. Unfortunately I missed the first two episodes, but luckily Bit Torrent came to the rescue and I spent a couple of hours catching up with them this afternoon. I happened to look at the clock about two thirds of the way through the second episode and realised that i’d just missed the third one on real telly. Arse biscuits. Not to worry, I’m sure the internet will come to the rescue once more…

To be honest I didn’t think they’d be up to much, but I really enjoyed them. They were just as silly as Doctor Who always has been, had the odd creepy moment (aye, I mean the bit in the basement with the manequins) and were generally good fun to watch. I’m looking forward to the next one.

Mmmm, cleanliness!

In other news, I absolutely stink of bleach. I had a ludicrously long lie-in this morning, couldn’t be arsed to go out on my bike when I did drag myself out of bed and in the end I cleaned the bathroom, hence the subtle odour around my person. I did finally get around to sorting out the Big Red Stiffee though, so it should be rideable if I can be arsed with it tomorrow.

And then I booted a Hedgehog…

In a fit of complete geekery, I also downloaded the live CD of the new release of Ubuntu Linux, nicknames “Hoary Hedgehog”. For those of you that don’t know, Linux is an alternative operating system (like Windows or MacOS) and a live CD lets you try it out without actually installing it on your hard drive.

Its dubbed “the Linux for human beings”, and it seemed to work well enough. It was a lot like Windows really — its got a nice browser (Firefox), email (Evolution), office suite (OpenOffice), graphics package (Gimp) and even a decent set of games (including the lovely Gnometris). Unfortunately it lacks a few key applications (iTunes, Photoshop and TopStyle for a start) and I can’t be bothered to learn a whole new OS right now. Oh, and Ubuntu seem to like brown a bit too much for my liking. Maybe next time eh?

The long awaited new DVD from Descent World came through the door this morning. If you’re not into your bicycles and your dirt you’re not really going to be up for this, bus as you may well be aware I’m somewhat fanatical about the things.

I’m happy to say its a pretty good video. Not quite up to the high standards of Earthed or The Collective, but pretty damn good nonetheless. There’s a little too much dirt jumping in there for my liking, but that’s offset by some lovely footage from Fort William, Innerleithen, Dunkeld and various other tracks around Europe. Its always nice ace seeing the professionals blasting down tracks and being able to say “I’ve ridden that!” in a way that you really can’t with most of the videos coming from the States and Canada. The only real problem is that its not long enough.

Luxembourg by The Bluetones

A while back, The Bluetones had the audacity to release a new album without telling me! The bastards! Still, I got a copy of it eventually, and the early signs are that its a stormer. Its edged Evil Nine out of my work PC’s CD drive for now anyway.

Its a different sound to their previous outings, this time they’ve gone a bit rocky and electro. For me that’s a good thing — it seems to work well with their dependably great lyricism. I’m not going to say any more until I’ve had a chance to listen to it a bit more, but thus far I’m enjoying it.

Owen won’t be pleased to hear that he missed out on a really very good film (frusturiatingly events conspired against him and he wasn’t able to come along) .

I don’t know much about german cinema. The only other german film I remember seeing is Tatoo, which couldn’t be much more of a contrast to this one if it tried.

This one is a comedy, but not overtly so, and it could easily fit into so many other genres. Its full of clever political imagery, interwoven with some really very subtle family emotions. I’m finding it difficult to put this into words — there were so many parts of the film that stood out for me, but I don’t want to give any of it away. The way Alex (Daniel Brühl) gets excited by the silliest things because of his obsession is just fantastically played out, being both touching and very funny, and the way that his mother is played, especially towards the end of the film, is very well done.

I think the best thing I can do is tell you to see it yourself. Your local video shop is bound to have a copy by now.

Its acetastic. Go and see it. Now.

I joined the Cheltenham Film Society a couple of weeks back. I went along with some friends of mine and was surprised to meet a few other people I knew there, including my aunt and uncle Helen and Stephen. Its a small world isn’t it?

Anyway, tonight’s film was House of Sand and Fog, starring Jennifer Connelly (who always surprises me by actually being a good actress) and Ben Kingsley.

It was very clever, in that throughout the film, you never quite decide where your sympathies lie. A large part of me wanted Behrani [Kingsley] and his family to win out, yet I didn’t want Kathy [Connelly] to lose out at all (even if she did bring her downfall upon herself somewhat). The only person that you really end up disliking is Lester [Ron Eldard], who starts out as the friendly policeman but ends up being a bit of a psycho nut job.

Its a fantastic film, but its really not the most light-hearted in the world. In fact it verges on being downright depressing. I got to the end and thought “What the hell is she going to do with her life now?”

Myself and Ben [not Kingsley] were discussing it on the way home — is it even possible to make a really good happy film? Its just that the really good films always seem to be gritty, intense psychological dramas (or that seems to be the way at this film society). Is it even possible to portray shiny happy intense gritty realism?