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Friday, March 11, 2005

High there.
So I've been meaning to write about what else I got up to last weekend, aside from watching kickass korean movies- it was Gill's birthday after all, and we didn't just spend all our time in front of the telly.
We went out to see Lemon Jelly in the Octagon, which was a mighty gig- despite the usual shortcomings of the sheffield audience (ie. pay £15 to go see a band then spend the evening shuffling to+from the bar looking mightily unimpressed and taking pains to avoid doing anything that may compromise their cool- like dancing). We had a great night though.
Then on Sunday we went for a chinese buffet in town: after spending ages trying to navigate inner sheffields arcane road system (thank God I wasn't driving, I would have suffered some kind of breakdown and abandoned the car in the middle of pinstone street and walked home crying; I can't believe Gill wants us to get a car.) The food was great- but it doesn't bear thinking too closely about the parade of diseased chavs who troop up and down breathing over the food all day.
Jonathan has returned my playstation to me- citing his inability to do anything except try and crack the last level of 'Viewtiful Joe' during his waking hours as the reason. Welcome to my world. His mother also pointed out that it's cheating at lent if the source of temptation is removed. She never told me what she had gone off though...
That's all for now,
Slan.
Aido.

Saturday, March 05, 2005

Good news everyone! Quality cinema is alive and well and living in Korea.
An unlikely sequence of events on thursday saw me wandering into HMV (Unlikely event no. 1) to get Gill her last Birthday present. After ploughing through millions of sales items (slurry) I came to the world cinema bit, which is traditionally under-represented, way fucking overpriced and several years out of date. Huge Man Vagina (or whatever it stands for) had gotten their acts together since I was in there last though, and their selection was pretty good (still overpriced, but hey) and I remembered that 'A Tale of Two sisters' had come out on DVD and got that for the dragon. I then saw 'Oldboy', which I missed in the cinema, and bought on the strength of the trailer alone (unlikely event no 2).

****WARNING!***** Those who distain hype and overzealous gushing, may wish to not read the next paragraph, esp. those of you who have yet to see either of the above movies.

Oldboy is as stylish, memorable and robust a piece of cinema as I can remember ever having seen. It is violent, certainly, but not that bloody. Some of the scenes of torture are very graphic, and detailed, but there seems to have been a conscious decision to keep the blood to a minimum. This works remarkably well, and all the violence has a very unique 'look' to it. I loved the film while I was watching it, but when we watched the extras we realised that everything in it was thought out thoroughly and they had about 5 good reasons to do everything, even lighting. Masterful stuff.
I had already seen 'Tale of two sisters' in the cinema, so I know I kicks ass, but as anyone who has seen it will attest, watching it the second time around promices to be a whole new experience.

So my question is this: When did Korea become the new cinematic superpower? I swear I'd never even seen a Korean film 5 years ago, now they are strutting around blowing the tits of every other moviemaking hotspot around- including Hong Kong and arguably Japan. Why wasn't I notified?
Have to get back to work now. Heed my word.
Aido 'evergreen' potato

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Come with me on a journey through time and space, to the land of the mighty boosh...

We're not really going on a journey, I just thought I'd open with something that sounded vaguely mythical, and I'm very happy that that BBC has seen fit to repeat 'the mighty boosh' on sunday nights now, especially since the one that was on on sunday was one I'd missed the first time around. Have you noticed how BBC only seems to get one decent sitcom every twelve years or so- (Seinfeld, Boosh, Arrested Development) but bury them in really weird timeslots? And if they repeat them, the timeslot is even weirder? Channel 4 get more good shows, and have a bit more nous about promoting them/finding suitable timeslots, but only ever seem to find the time to repeat Friends, or early episodes of Cheers. It's hard to know which of these practices is preferable, but the day when terrestrial TV becomes too nerve-shreddingly incompetent to put up with draws ever nearer. I watched a show the other day about this village in the south of wales where the government have switched off the analogue signal already, and dished out free digiboxes to everyone- sometimes multiple boxes for each household- or in the case of a local hotel, 96 boxes! Now I'm quite cheap, you all know that, and while there is a promise, in the non-specific future, of a free anything, there's no way I'm paying for it. However, blair has categorically said that there is no promise of free digiboxes for the UK in general. He has however, said that the analogue signal will be switched off by 2010. (I believe it was originally 2005, then 2007) To do this without issuing free digiboxes to people without would be unlawful. My opinion? I think he knows if he ever wants standardised digital TV nationwide- shelling out for boxes is unavoidable; however, if he keeps procrastinating, more people will lose patience and buy their own, thereby saving him a few pounds. I hope my impotent rage at the inanities of terrestrial TV doesn't overwhelm my natural tight-fistedness, though, as I quite like the idea of Blair paying for me to watch dutch lesbian wrestling and korean mole humping.
Speaking of humping moles, we finished watching Our Friends in the North. In my last post I was commending it for it's performances and script and yadda yadda, this was before we reached the latter episodes where all the leads grow old and bitter and by the time we got halfway through 1994 I was silently screaming 'just kill yourselves, you miserable bloody bastards, you know you want to!'. I'm all for 'serious' TV, but why does that always translate into 'the televised depths of human misery'? Actually, I'm not opposed to the depths of human misery either, but prefer it in quick, 'You've been framed/Battle Royale' style format as opposed to this turgid 20-hour directionless bumf. But that’s just me. Best show of the last 20 years.
Also watched 'Public Access', Brian Singers directorial debut that, as you might expect, is noir-ish, low-rent, engaging and sparse. I really liked it, but was amazed by how very scared Gill was when it had finished. It's not a horror, it's a little violent in places but nothing too graphic. I think it was the performance of the lead guy that did it- he was very cold and measured, and you really couldn't tell what was going on with him- even at then end you have no clue what his motivations were, but it struck me as odd that she was pretty terrified by it all.
On to 'Catch me if you can' which, for obvious reasons, I had dubbed 'Miss me if you can' until now. It wasn't fantastic by any stretch, but considering I usually feel ill at the thought of either Tod Honks or Leonardo Sproutface, and even I quite enjoyed it, should say something. I think it had more to do with the real-life Abagnale's voice, which was ever present (not as a VO or anything, just in the perception of events and such like) than the performances. And that Spielberg, it's been a long time since I credited him with anything other than mindless artistic whoredom/rampant emotional button-pushing, but you can't deny he knows how to drive a story along- he works better with something fast and zippy and simple like this, rather than something (snooze)worthy like Schindler's fist.
Oh yeah, if you haven't seen it already (and Paddy probably has) watch 'Walking Tall' with The rock and Johnny Knoxville. You won't be sorry. He's good. His town has gone bad. He has a big stick. That's the bulk of the dramatic content out of the way- there's also a fabulous scene where he represents himself in court. Yes, it's that good. My only regret is I missed it in the cinema.
It's not all good, though. I've taken to watching films in the back office when I'm at my work, the problem is the library has a limited supply of 'good' films all of which I've watched by now, so I've had to move on to the not so good ones. I watched Catwoman on monday, which was not as hilariously bad as I had been led to believe, but must've subliminally lowered my expectations of cinematic endeavour to some extent because The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which I watched on Tuesday, was almost credible by comparison. It goes without saying it is a hopeless piss-stain on the memory of the graphic novel, but at least it had the decency to have impressive special effects. Connery wants euthanised though.
Aido 'What's wrong with Brewster?' Potato

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