Thursday 16 August 2012

fuck this shit

I'm in a really bad mood today.

I don't think it's lack of sleep, because I'm not really tired, as such.  I mean, I'm a little fatigued, having put in some hefty days at work recently (both time-wise and effort-wise), but I've been sleeping okay.

I think part of it is that people haven't really been doing what I've been asking them to.  It's been weird - I think we've agreed something or to do something in a certain way or by a certain time and then they just go and do something else.

I mean, on most of the things I don't mind that they've done it differently or at a different time or whatever, but why agree to what we had agreed if you're going to do something else?  Why not just say what you've got in mind?

I just let out a big sign then.

Roll on my long weekend!

Wednesday 15 August 2012

dead snow

You know I really wanted to enjoy this more than I did.

Zombie nazis killing a bunch of kids in a remote, snow-bound cabin?  What's not to love?

The problem is it doesn't really make a lot of sense.  I know - it's a daft criticism, isn't it?  I mean, it's a film about nazi zombies, right?  It coudln't possibly make any sense.

Well, no, but there's such a thing as internal logic.  Okay, there's no such thing as zombies, but if you're goign to have zombies you need to be consistent about what they are, what they do, how they behave, etc.  But there isn't here - most of the zombies seem pretty mindless, but one fo them is made out to be a leader of sorts - well, why is he still vaguely clever and the others aren't?

And if he is meant to be vaguely clever, why is his only motivation to do with some small amount of gold?  Gold that it's not clear how it got to be anywhere other than where the zombies left it.

There are loads of other problems too.  One f the main ones is a random old bloke who turns up basically in order to tell the youngsters the plot.  Quite why he randomly seems to have walked dozens of miles (his tent, which is in the middle of nowhere, even though it's implied he's a local, is shown to be the best part of half a day's snow mobile ride away) just to scare the piss out of these kids with a weird story is never at all clear.

Especially sicne he then gets bumped off in a way that's utterly inconsistent with what we're supposed to believe is the motivation for the zombies.

The effects are generally quite good.  There's a hell of a lot of killing and blood and severed body parts.

There's also some nice stabs at humour in an evil dead sort of veign.

But there are problems here too - everythign is derivative or unorigianl.  IT's like there's a bit where a guy chops his own arm off... like a cross between Evil Dead (chainsaws and arms) and Braindead (infected arm cut off).  Except it's utterly daft that he seems to think this will work.  Plus, it's not like it's quick - it takes ages.  And all through it the zombies apparantly stand aroudn watching him.

You see what I mean?  It's lack of any sense is so blatent that it ruins what should be the bits that make up for the stupid plot.  And it's so derivative that you just feel leik you've seen it all before.

Shame, it coudl have been so much better with little to no changes.

There were quite a lot of extras - some of which were quite entertaining.  In particular the fact the crew seems to rise up in a proto-communist, trade union kind of thing was quite amusing.

Tuesday 14 August 2012

how to loose friends and alienate people

Well, this was poor.

Loose friends was actually somethign I listened to as an audiobook and enjoyed quite a lot.  It was an odd sort of enjoyment, though.

See, the thing about it was that the person described in the book - Toby Young - was a bit of a prat.  But here's the thing - the book was written with sufficient hindsight and self knowledge (by Toby Young himself) that it made it enjoyable.

Young portrays himself during that period as a prat, fully acknowledging his prattishness and making fun of himself.  It's not entirely a self piss-take, but there's a definite air of "what the hell was I playing at?" to it that means it's enjoyable.

And it's difficult to see how the book would work without that, because it's also central to the reason he failed in New York.  Well, actually, central to both the reason he got the opportunity and then failed was that he wasn't really willing to play the game proper.

He starts off attacking what he loves because he loves it, but then when that thing tries to brign him onboard instead of flipping and playign the game, he does the opposite.  But he thinks that bu doing so he will have even more success, where in reality he creates his own failure.

Guess what happens in the film?

Well, for starters, a lot of it is toned down - the attack isn't really there, as such.  But also the point of the book is flipped on its head - he flips aroudn and plays the game and has success.  But in the film (this isn't really a spoiler, as it's predictably hollywood) he then realises his mistake and gives it all up for love.

It's almost the complete opposite fo what the book was about and therefore it renders the title pointles.  They could easily have made this film, called it somethign else and not been sued.

The other problem si that a lot fo the humour descends into the toilet.  Now don't get me wrong there's some rudeness and crudeness int he original, but it's liek those are the only bits they wanted to keep.  Also, without a lot of the more complicated and interesting things they loose some of their point, so they're just vomit, transvestism and cock & ball jokes.

To be honest, though, it's difficult to see how they would have made a film of the book as it was.  At least, it's difficult to see how a reasonable budget Hollywood film would have gotten made without drastic revisions.  A small, indipendent film maybe, but a film with the need to get quite a lot of bums in seats to pay for itself?  A tough sell.

Monday 13 August 2012

scrappy

It was a bit of a scrappy weekend.

My landlord has gone on yet another of his holidays.  Actually, holiday is probably not the right word - can you take a holiday if you're retired?  "Break" is probably more apt.

During the winter they often jet off to some exotic part of the world, but in summer they tend to go caravanning.  I'm not sure where they're off to this time, but I've a feeling it won't be for as long as they've planned.

This week it's meant to rain and drizzle a bit and they're not very tolerant of bad weather (I know - why do they go caravanning then?) so I'm guessing they'll probably be back by mid-week.

Now I'd actually thought they were going on Monday but they went on Sunday, so I decided I would make use of their going this weekend and the nice weather we were having and clean the car.

As I say there's a fair chance it will be poor weather, so while it was nice I thought it best to give it a clean.  Unfortunately I had a bit of a problem with one of the things I did and actually made it dirtier than it was already, so I'll have to buy a better cleaner and try and do it this next weekend (as I say, assuming it doesn't rain) - or maybe we'll get a reasonable evening at some point.

I was also rather fatigued on Sunday as Saturday had taken quite a lot out of me.  The thing is, though, I'm not 100% why.  I've a feeling it was actually more a case of work draining me during the week and then Saturday just sapping the last of my energy.  With it being hot and quite muggy I found my afternoon walk particularly hard work, for example.

But also everything I did seemed to take longer and/or be more difficult than I'd anticipated.  So, for example, I did a huge pile of ironing, but it took a lot longer than I was expecting.

So yeah, bit of a scrappy weekend.

This week I am taking Friday off.  I'd originally planned to take both Friday and Monday, but with the days I took looking for a new job I have ended up with all Friday and half of Monday off.  Either way it means fewer posts for the next few weeks (the week after is also the bank holiday).  I'll probably us the opportunity to post a bunch of film reviews and get myself somewhat caught up there too.