Today is "Red Nose Day" - the day devoted to people engaging in hilarious antics in a bid to raise oodles of cash for Comic Relief.
I've no particular beef with comic relief. I used to watch it years ago, even did a bit of fundraising, although my general interest has waned.
I'm not a big believer in charity. It's always felt a bit wrong to me - not so much because I don't think the causes are worthy, but more because I don't think there should be any need for it. In other words, I think those things done by charity are often so important that they should be being paid for by Governments. My take on the issue is that part of the reason I pay taxes is so that the government will take care of most, if not all of that stuff.
But anyway, I did actually donate this year. Nothing huge, but I texted in a few times in support of the Kilimanjaro climb. I did this mainly because fellow lard-arse, Chris Moyles was dragging his arse up the mountain, so I thought I'd show my support.
The anime mags turned up yesterday, which was nice, so I'll get to scan them in this weekend. I should also really get my hair cut - it's starting to get a bit unweildy. If I ever won the lottery one of the odder things I would do is start trimming my hair again.
I've had a variety of very bad haircuts over the years, btu the one I really liked most was having my hair trimmed "number 1" all over. That's a bit like a longer skin-head type cut if you've never seen one. I just foudn it so much easier not having hair, but the problem was it made me look "evil" or "like a thug" (the words of my friends) and since that's not a good thing when you're having business meetings, etc, I basically try to maintain a 'short, side-parting' type cut.
I splattered a lot of ant powder mid-week and since then I've not seen a single ant. I don't know that it's actually finished them off, so I think I'll stock up on powder just in case they find some other way in. I've still no actual idea how they're getting in or if they've nested somewhere close by, so I'll just have to maintain vigalence.
My other plan for the weekend is to sort out my computer desk. Since I got the big LCD monitor I've freed up a lot of desk real-estate so I can have a re-arrange. But also it's exposed a lot of nooks and crannies so I need to give it a good dust around as well.
Friday, 13 March 2009
Thursday, 12 March 2009
more mu
I've been watching Red Garden this week. I'm about half the way through - interestingly, the show is only about 22 eps, although there's also an OAV which is thankfully on the disks too.
Red Garden was one of those shows that got poxed up by ADVs implosion a while back: the last disk was unreleased when it all happened and initially funimation weren't going to put it out - they were fixed on doing half season box sets. Luckily they relented so I was able to get the last disk.
The other show that happened on was Welcome to NHK, which I'll probably watch next.
Anyway, RED Garden is pretty good.
It's firmly a horror show with just a smidge of fantasy thrown in. There are very few laughs and it's better for it. The show is really quite brutal, to be frank. Not in a gory way, though - it's more of a psychological brutality that these girls go through.
I have to admit for about the first six or so episodes I was a bit unsure about the show. In a way it's a bit difficult to love.
A good, obvious example is that the character designs are quite unappealing, if I'm honest - big bulbous noses, sharp angular, too-skinny bodies and horrible clothes are just a few of its crimes on this front. But after a whole you do get used to them. I'm not sure I'll ever like them as such, but I can certainly accept them.
I'll stop there as I'll start doing a full review, which would rob trismugistus.com of content - let's just say I've grown to enjoy it more than I initially did.
I'm expecting the anime magazines to turn up sometime this week - they may even be waiting for me when I get home. That should mean a weekend of scanning, so I should tackling the shows from January mid-season. Predictably I've got a bit behind with these - not least because of my determination to clear my unwatched anime DVDs, of course!
And speaking of DVDs I've been buying some more (eek). Baccano disk 2 has turned up. Can't wait to have all of the disks so I can watch it - I really liked that show when I sampled it on fansubs.
I've also been collecting Claymore and Darker than Black and they're about half way through the disks. But I also bought Rocket Girls, which is another show I really liked on fansub.
Plus I recently got the last disks for Code Geass (the error the company made was swiftly rectified, as I knew it would be) so I'll have to make sure I watch that too. I've not heard anything about the second series coming out yet, but I'm sure it must be pending.
Red Garden was one of those shows that got poxed up by ADVs implosion a while back: the last disk was unreleased when it all happened and initially funimation weren't going to put it out - they were fixed on doing half season box sets. Luckily they relented so I was able to get the last disk.
The other show that happened on was Welcome to NHK, which I'll probably watch next.
Anyway, RED Garden is pretty good.
It's firmly a horror show with just a smidge of fantasy thrown in. There are very few laughs and it's better for it. The show is really quite brutal, to be frank. Not in a gory way, though - it's more of a psychological brutality that these girls go through.
I have to admit for about the first six or so episodes I was a bit unsure about the show. In a way it's a bit difficult to love.
A good, obvious example is that the character designs are quite unappealing, if I'm honest - big bulbous noses, sharp angular, too-skinny bodies and horrible clothes are just a few of its crimes on this front. But after a whole you do get used to them. I'm not sure I'll ever like them as such, but I can certainly accept them.
I'll stop there as I'll start doing a full review, which would rob trismugistus.com of content - let's just say I've grown to enjoy it more than I initially did.
I'm expecting the anime magazines to turn up sometime this week - they may even be waiting for me when I get home. That should mean a weekend of scanning, so I should tackling the shows from January mid-season. Predictably I've got a bit behind with these - not least because of my determination to clear my unwatched anime DVDs, of course!
And speaking of DVDs I've been buying some more (eek). Baccano disk 2 has turned up. Can't wait to have all of the disks so I can watch it - I really liked that show when I sampled it on fansubs.
I've also been collecting Claymore and Darker than Black and they're about half way through the disks. But I also bought Rocket Girls, which is another show I really liked on fansub.
Plus I recently got the last disks for Code Geass (the error the company made was swiftly rectified, as I knew it would be) so I'll have to make sure I watch that too. I've not heard anything about the second series coming out yet, but I'm sure it must be pending.
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
the unbearable lightness of being
It's a title and a half is that isn't it? The Unbearable Lightness of Being. You could get half a dozen regular titles out of it. I'm going to call it TULB.
The film itself is long - the best part of 3 hours. I'm not sure that entirely endeared me to it. I have to admit it seemed a bit too long if I'm honest.
Y'know, the problem here is I'm a little worried I'm going to come across as something of a philistine. You see TULB is a proper film.
I don't tend to think of myself as a snob. I'm perfectly happy to enjoy low-brow entertainment as much as I am high-brow. I'm not one of those people who will dismiss an action film simply because it is an action film.
But then equally I wouldn't hesitate to criticise it either, and the same goes for higher art as well. To be frank I both enjoyed TULB about as much as I didn't enjoy it.
The film is mostly set in Prague atthe end fo the 60s. If you know anything of history you'll realise that's when the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia. However, the film isn't really about that, as such.
I mean on one level it is, but on another level it isn't. The events affect the characters, but I dunno, it almost seemed like the characters didn't quite engage properly with the events. It's like sometimes they seemed really involved in the politics, but at other points it was reduced to a backdrop.
I was reminded a lot of Dr Zhivago actually, which is set during the whole tumultuous period of the first world war and the Russian revolution. But at it's heart it's a complicated love story - a romantic story; a tragedy.
But in Dr Zhivago the events of the time genuinely seemed to actually impact the character, whereas here that was less apparent.
Also, Dr Zhivago doesn't have a lot of tits and ass.
I'm not sure how I felt about the tits and ass. I mean on one level it's real, and realistic, and makes an important point, but on the other it gave the whole film a sort of artificial European-ness. The film isn't European - it was made by an American studio and is in English, etc, but it seemed to adopting a faux-European style.
Not wanting to be harsh, but it was like someone had watched a lot of European films and tried to mimic them without quite 'getting it'.
But then to be fair I could almost level the same criticism at European cinema. It can be quite pretentious at time. "We're showing you these nipples, because this is totally serious 'art'... phwoar, look, nipples!"
I'm being over-critical - a lot of the film worked. The characters were wonderfully deep and complex, for example. They felt quite real a lot of the time. The ending is particularly poignant, and the whole storyline with the dog was beautifully realised.
It just felt a bit too disconnected from the whole soviet invasion = bad and communism = bad things, I think. Like they were more of a boorish imposition than genuinely scary things.
The film itself is long - the best part of 3 hours. I'm not sure that entirely endeared me to it. I have to admit it seemed a bit too long if I'm honest.
Y'know, the problem here is I'm a little worried I'm going to come across as something of a philistine. You see TULB is a proper film.
I don't tend to think of myself as a snob. I'm perfectly happy to enjoy low-brow entertainment as much as I am high-brow. I'm not one of those people who will dismiss an action film simply because it is an action film.
But then equally I wouldn't hesitate to criticise it either, and the same goes for higher art as well. To be frank I both enjoyed TULB about as much as I didn't enjoy it.
The film is mostly set in Prague atthe end fo the 60s. If you know anything of history you'll realise that's when the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia. However, the film isn't really about that, as such.
I mean on one level it is, but on another level it isn't. The events affect the characters, but I dunno, it almost seemed like the characters didn't quite engage properly with the events. It's like sometimes they seemed really involved in the politics, but at other points it was reduced to a backdrop.
I was reminded a lot of Dr Zhivago actually, which is set during the whole tumultuous period of the first world war and the Russian revolution. But at it's heart it's a complicated love story - a romantic story; a tragedy.
But in Dr Zhivago the events of the time genuinely seemed to actually impact the character, whereas here that was less apparent.
Also, Dr Zhivago doesn't have a lot of tits and ass.
I'm not sure how I felt about the tits and ass. I mean on one level it's real, and realistic, and makes an important point, but on the other it gave the whole film a sort of artificial European-ness. The film isn't European - it was made by an American studio and is in English, etc, but it seemed to adopting a faux-European style.
Not wanting to be harsh, but it was like someone had watched a lot of European films and tried to mimic them without quite 'getting it'.
But then to be fair I could almost level the same criticism at European cinema. It can be quite pretentious at time. "We're showing you these nipples, because this is totally serious 'art'... phwoar, look, nipples!"
I'm being over-critical - a lot of the film worked. The characters were wonderfully deep and complex, for example. They felt quite real a lot of the time. The ending is particularly poignant, and the whole storyline with the dog was beautifully realised.
It just felt a bit too disconnected from the whole soviet invasion = bad and communism = bad things, I think. Like they were more of a boorish imposition than genuinely scary things.
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
return of the ants
Worrying sign yesterday - there were a few ants running along the floor.
It seems a bit early in the year for them to have appeared, as it's still pretty cold, but I guess it is spring now.
I put down these "ant trap" things that I bought a while back. They're supposed to have stuff in them that they take back to nest and it kills the queen or something. I couldn't see much evidence of the ants taking much interest in them, though.
I had a really difficult time trying to find anything to deal with the ants last year - everywhere I thought would sell ant powder didn't for some reason. I've a few more ideas now and may try looking on the interwebs.
Part of the problem is I have no idea where the nest is or how they're getting in. Every time I see them they seemed to be in a different place, and what's more it was illogical where they were. It's like at one point they were in a particular cupboard. They'd obviously got in because my tin of golden syrup was there and they were after the sugar.
But when I looked around the edges of the cupboard I couldn't see a trail of them going in or out. However, the cupboard is attached to the wall, but it's not an external wall - it's an internal wall. Does that mean the nest is in the wall? That seems bizarre - how the hell would they have got in there?
Bloody things.
I watched Gatekeepers 21 last night.
It's pretty good. I mentioned I've seen it before, but I hadn't watched the original gatekeepers, so I don't think I really understood it. Gatekeepers 21 is a short 6-part OAV and is set closer tot he present day, so it actually stars the descendents of the original gatekeepers.
My only real criticism is that they did bugger about with some aspects of the original. Some of these meant the show made more sense, but others just seemed a bit random. It's a bit more adult - if Gatekeepers is basically a Japanese shounen action show, then gatekeepers 21 shares more in common with dark American superhero comics. The hero is a bit maladjusted and dislikes the world around her.
The animation was pretty good, but then you tend to get that with OAVs. Overall I quite enjoyed it, and it's a good sequel.
It seems a bit early in the year for them to have appeared, as it's still pretty cold, but I guess it is spring now.
I put down these "ant trap" things that I bought a while back. They're supposed to have stuff in them that they take back to nest and it kills the queen or something. I couldn't see much evidence of the ants taking much interest in them, though.
I had a really difficult time trying to find anything to deal with the ants last year - everywhere I thought would sell ant powder didn't for some reason. I've a few more ideas now and may try looking on the interwebs.
Part of the problem is I have no idea where the nest is or how they're getting in. Every time I see them they seemed to be in a different place, and what's more it was illogical where they were. It's like at one point they were in a particular cupboard. They'd obviously got in because my tin of golden syrup was there and they were after the sugar.
But when I looked around the edges of the cupboard I couldn't see a trail of them going in or out. However, the cupboard is attached to the wall, but it's not an external wall - it's an internal wall. Does that mean the nest is in the wall? That seems bizarre - how the hell would they have got in there?
Bloody things.
I watched Gatekeepers 21 last night.
It's pretty good. I mentioned I've seen it before, but I hadn't watched the original gatekeepers, so I don't think I really understood it. Gatekeepers 21 is a short 6-part OAV and is set closer tot he present day, so it actually stars the descendents of the original gatekeepers.
My only real criticism is that they did bugger about with some aspects of the original. Some of these meant the show made more sense, but others just seemed a bit random. It's a bit more adult - if Gatekeepers is basically a Japanese shounen action show, then gatekeepers 21 shares more in common with dark American superhero comics. The hero is a bit maladjusted and dislikes the world around her.
The animation was pretty good, but then you tend to get that with OAVs. Overall I quite enjoyed it, and it's a good sequel.
Monday, 9 March 2009
goggle box
So this weekend I watched telly.
Seriously - that's pretty much all I did all weekend.
As I mentioned last week the problem with watching anime at the exclusion of everything else is that it means I get a PVR jammed with stuff. I easily had more than 20hours of stuff recorded and this weekend I watched all of it. It didn't help that this weeks rental DVD was 3 hours long (!) and also had a commentary track (so six hours total!).
I did manage to watch some anime, though. I watched Koharu Biyori (Indian Summer). It's actually a really quick turn around - the show only came out in Japan at the end of 2007, and it's a 3-part OAV with the last part coming out March 2008, so that's less than a year for the US DVD coming out.
It lacks a dub, but that's no great loss as I don't really care about dubs, but there are no extras to speak of. That doesn't make it great value as there are only 3 eps at about 30 minutes each.
It was also not quite as good as I remembered it from fansubs. I think partly it was my own fault - I was clearly knackered from watching all that telly, and it's a high energy, slightly zany show, so I perhaps wasn't in the best mood to watch it. It was okay, though.
It's a fan-service packed comedy, btw. Perhaps the most annoying thing was the female voices - they were very high pitched (another thing I didn't really remember from watching it on fansubs). They were also really fast talking (again, maybe it was more me being a bit goggle-eyed from all the telly, though) and it was difficult to read the subs... especially when stuff was jiggling.
Dunno - "okay" is my verdict, I think.
I'll be trying to watch lots more anime this week too. Luckily several of the telly programs I've been watching have either ended or were 1-off documentary types. Also, comic relief is this Friday so I think a lot of shows are taking a break while they put specials on and stuff.
Seriously - that's pretty much all I did all weekend.
As I mentioned last week the problem with watching anime at the exclusion of everything else is that it means I get a PVR jammed with stuff. I easily had more than 20hours of stuff recorded and this weekend I watched all of it. It didn't help that this weeks rental DVD was 3 hours long (!) and also had a commentary track (so six hours total!).
I did manage to watch some anime, though. I watched Koharu Biyori (Indian Summer). It's actually a really quick turn around - the show only came out in Japan at the end of 2007, and it's a 3-part OAV with the last part coming out March 2008, so that's less than a year for the US DVD coming out.
It lacks a dub, but that's no great loss as I don't really care about dubs, but there are no extras to speak of. That doesn't make it great value as there are only 3 eps at about 30 minutes each.
It was also not quite as good as I remembered it from fansubs. I think partly it was my own fault - I was clearly knackered from watching all that telly, and it's a high energy, slightly zany show, so I perhaps wasn't in the best mood to watch it. It was okay, though.
It's a fan-service packed comedy, btw. Perhaps the most annoying thing was the female voices - they were very high pitched (another thing I didn't really remember from watching it on fansubs). They were also really fast talking (again, maybe it was more me being a bit goggle-eyed from all the telly, though) and it was difficult to read the subs... especially when stuff was jiggling.
Dunno - "okay" is my verdict, I think.
I'll be trying to watch lots more anime this week too. Luckily several of the telly programs I've been watching have either ended or were 1-off documentary types. Also, comic relief is this Friday so I think a lot of shows are taking a break while they put specials on and stuff.
Friday, 6 March 2009
animu challenge
Well I finished gatekeepers.
I've got to say I'm mildly impressed. I don't think it's the greatest anime ever made, but it's a long way from the worst as well. There are a few niggley points I had - especially with the main bad guy - but expect a basically positive review some time in the future over on trismugistus.com.
The animu challenge of actually sitting down and watching DVDs has got off to a reasonable start then. I guess I averaged 2 disks a night (gatekeepers was 24 eps across 8 disks) so about 6 episodes-ish a night. That's not at all bad given all the stuff I have to do.
Now to watch the sequel - gatekeepers 21. Only, I've actually already seen it. I know, that's a bit odd, isn't it? But I kinda ended up buying without realising it was a sequel. I'm guessing now, having seen the original show it will make more sense, though :).
All this anime watching does sorta mean I lost a bit of momentum on the script I was writing. This kinda opened a slot for me to do one of the more frustrating things I do. Rather than finish the script and then think about redrafts I got suckered into reading some "how to" sites.
One is written by a very successful screenwriter so he knows what he's talking about.
The slightly odd thing is that I kinda managed to tick lots of boxes without having really read these before. However, the annoying this is I've now started to pick my work apart and find flaws with it before I've even finished it. Clearly this is bad because to be a writer, first you must write, and you can only say you've written if you finish.
Ah well, I'm sure I'll crack this one day.
I'll possibly get my hair cut this weekend. I'm also planning to have a crack at making soem carrot and pineapple muffins.
I've been on something of a cooking spree lately. I'm not sure what's inspired it, but I've been making stuff like spaghetti bolognese, liver and bacon, toad in the hole - this is rather than relying on buying pre-made / microwave meals type stuff.
It's been pretty successful, actually, so this weekend I though I might tackle some muffin recipe. I've found muffins to be tricky in the past. Cakes are pretty easy - all cake recipes rely on using a fixed 1:1:1 ratio of eggs, S.R. flour and sugar. Muffins replace the eggs with things like vegetable oil and you use plain flour but with bicarbonate of soda instead of S.R. flour. They're more complicated, in other words, so fingers crossed.
I've got to say I'm mildly impressed. I don't think it's the greatest anime ever made, but it's a long way from the worst as well. There are a few niggley points I had - especially with the main bad guy - but expect a basically positive review some time in the future over on trismugistus.com.
The animu challenge of actually sitting down and watching DVDs has got off to a reasonable start then. I guess I averaged 2 disks a night (gatekeepers was 24 eps across 8 disks) so about 6 episodes-ish a night. That's not at all bad given all the stuff I have to do.
Now to watch the sequel - gatekeepers 21. Only, I've actually already seen it. I know, that's a bit odd, isn't it? But I kinda ended up buying without realising it was a sequel. I'm guessing now, having seen the original show it will make more sense, though :).
All this anime watching does sorta mean I lost a bit of momentum on the script I was writing. This kinda opened a slot for me to do one of the more frustrating things I do. Rather than finish the script and then think about redrafts I got suckered into reading some "how to" sites.
One is written by a very successful screenwriter so he knows what he's talking about.
The slightly odd thing is that I kinda managed to tick lots of boxes without having really read these before. However, the annoying this is I've now started to pick my work apart and find flaws with it before I've even finished it. Clearly this is bad because to be a writer, first you must write, and you can only say you've written if you finish.
Ah well, I'm sure I'll crack this one day.
I'll possibly get my hair cut this weekend. I'm also planning to have a crack at making soem carrot and pineapple muffins.
I've been on something of a cooking spree lately. I'm not sure what's inspired it, but I've been making stuff like spaghetti bolognese, liver and bacon, toad in the hole - this is rather than relying on buying pre-made / microwave meals type stuff.
It's been pretty successful, actually, so this weekend I though I might tackle some muffin recipe. I've found muffins to be tricky in the past. Cakes are pretty easy - all cake recipes rely on using a fixed 1:1:1 ratio of eggs, S.R. flour and sugar. Muffins replace the eggs with things like vegetable oil and you use plain flour but with bicarbonate of soda instead of S.R. flour. They're more complicated, in other words, so fingers crossed.
Thursday, 5 March 2009
abandoned ideas 4
Given that I've been religiously watching Gatekeepers in the evenings I've not really been up to much. And also since I can't be arsed discussing it at the mo, I thought I'd do what is probably the last of these abandoned ideas:
charlotte
This ides was abandoned for a very specific reason - it was almost plagiarism.
Not sure if you know what Chobits is - it's a manga originally by Clamp and there's an anime adaptation to. Now, I'm not actually a big fan of Chobits as it's a bit sick in the head in my opinion.
But anyway, the story wasn't really a rip-off of Chobits as much as that whole sort of area.
The main character was a scientist working for some weapons manufacturer in their R&D department. He has no real life, as such.
Anyway, one day he goes home (it's pouring with rain) and sees the police searching for something. As he gets into his apartment he sees something but then dismisses it.
He then goes home and I wasn't sure - he gets knocked out, maybe? Essentially he needed to meet a robot girl (she's a weapon, natch) that's escaped from his facility and is hiding in his apartment. He'd end up unconscious or go to sleep or something and then there would be the classic "it was just a dream" wake up sequence followed by a "omg, she's real".
The android would then continue to hide/live in his apartment and try to be his wife/girlfriend... or something like that. Basically, although he didn't work on her specifically she'd seen him do some act of kindness and fallen in love.
Which was kinda where I stopped as it was basically just ripping off about a dozen anime :/.
charlotte
This ides was abandoned for a very specific reason - it was almost plagiarism.
Not sure if you know what Chobits is - it's a manga originally by Clamp and there's an anime adaptation to. Now, I'm not actually a big fan of Chobits as it's a bit sick in the head in my opinion.
But anyway, the story wasn't really a rip-off of Chobits as much as that whole sort of area.
The main character was a scientist working for some weapons manufacturer in their R&D department. He has no real life, as such.
Anyway, one day he goes home (it's pouring with rain) and sees the police searching for something. As he gets into his apartment he sees something but then dismisses it.
He then goes home and I wasn't sure - he gets knocked out, maybe? Essentially he needed to meet a robot girl (she's a weapon, natch) that's escaped from his facility and is hiding in his apartment. He'd end up unconscious or go to sleep or something and then there would be the classic "it was just a dream" wake up sequence followed by a "omg, she's real".
The android would then continue to hide/live in his apartment and try to be his wife/girlfriend... or something like that. Basically, although he didn't work on her specifically she'd seen him do some act of kindness and fallen in love.
Which was kinda where I stopped as it was basically just ripping off about a dozen anime :/.
Wednesday, 4 March 2009
the wintersmith
So I finished The Wintersmith. It's a good read.
I think if I was criticising, I would pick on two things. First off, it starts with a later event in the narrative and then the next three quarters of the book are effectively flashback.
The trouble with this is it kinda robs it of tension. I mean, the book still has it because the bit it starts with isn't the end, but it is close. If you know up-front that characters are alive and well at the end, then you also know they're not going to die in a flashback. That's a bit extreme, but you see what I mean.
Also there was a bit of a lack of Wee Free Men. I guess that's sensible in the fact that this is the third novel, so there's not much left in the way of surprises, but they're so entertaining it could have done with a bit more of them.
A bit more of them on there own, I mean - they were present in a lot of scenes, but didn't really do much of anything.
However, saying that, what had replaced them was all good stuff. It was a lot more 'witchy' than the previous books, as Tiffany had grown up a bit and done more training, etc. It was especially nice to see plenty of the elder witches - Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, etc - as they're such great character.
The book did leave a few sort-of loose ends that could be carried over into new books, but equally don't really matter or could easily be explored by your own imagination.
The plan to watch some anime has got off to a good start. I started on Gatekeepers.
For some reason I thought this was a very old anime, but it seems it was only broadcast in Japan in 2000. If you allow the normal couple of years for it to make it across from Japan it's not that old at all.
It's a good show as well - I was kinda unsure what to expect. It's basically a shounen action / monster-of-the-week show with some harem type elements so it's not hugely innovative in that sense, but there's a mean streak of wit and imagination runnign through it. Some of the monster designs are particularly clever, for example.
I think if I was criticising, I would pick on two things. First off, it starts with a later event in the narrative and then the next three quarters of the book are effectively flashback.
The trouble with this is it kinda robs it of tension. I mean, the book still has it because the bit it starts with isn't the end, but it is close. If you know up-front that characters are alive and well at the end, then you also know they're not going to die in a flashback. That's a bit extreme, but you see what I mean.
Also there was a bit of a lack of Wee Free Men. I guess that's sensible in the fact that this is the third novel, so there's not much left in the way of surprises, but they're so entertaining it could have done with a bit more of them.
A bit more of them on there own, I mean - they were present in a lot of scenes, but didn't really do much of anything.
However, saying that, what had replaced them was all good stuff. It was a lot more 'witchy' than the previous books, as Tiffany had grown up a bit and done more training, etc. It was especially nice to see plenty of the elder witches - Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, etc - as they're such great character.
The book did leave a few sort-of loose ends that could be carried over into new books, but equally don't really matter or could easily be explored by your own imagination.
The plan to watch some anime has got off to a good start. I started on Gatekeepers.
For some reason I thought this was a very old anime, but it seems it was only broadcast in Japan in 2000. If you allow the normal couple of years for it to make it across from Japan it's not that old at all.
It's a good show as well - I was kinda unsure what to expect. It's basically a shounen action / monster-of-the-week show with some harem type elements so it's not hugely innovative in that sense, but there's a mean streak of wit and imagination runnign through it. Some of the monster designs are particularly clever, for example.
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
the simpson's movie
This week's rental was The Simpson's Movie.
I totally avoided this at the time it was released in the cinemas. The Simpson's kinda stopped being funny about 4 or five years ago, if not longer. The real problem was that they ran out of jokes. When a comedy show has been going for something like 20 years that's pretty much inevitable.
They've been repeating and recycling the same things for a good while now. And worst of all they seem to have taken their own format to a point beyond ridiculousness.
When the Simpsons started it was actually fairly standard in terms of its storytelling. For example it often tended to have "morals". Now I don't mean that in terms of it having morality - a sense of right and wrong - I mean that in the sense of having a bit at the end where someone goes "and the moral of the story is".
I've nothing wrong with cartoons educating, but I've always hated when they deliberately explain the point. It smacks of very poor story telling for one thing.
Anyway, from about the second season on they started to play with this format a lot. They stopped having "moral of the story" bits and instead just go with the flow. If anything characterised the Simpsons it was this flexibility of the format.
Some of would follow fairly normal narrative structure, but other stories would be totally non-sequitur in nature. You'd start off with one thing (homer trashes Lisa's saxophone) then end up somewhere else (homer stopping an alien invasion).
But generally these were kept in check. However, as the show progressed and they ran out of normal narratives, they all became non-sequitur. Recent shows it's like they're coming up with random gags (that they've probably already done) and short stories and simply trying to weld these together to make 22 minutes of screen time.
My fear then was that the film would be like this too and from that standpoint they succeeded. There is a much more consistent narrative story in the film - a plot you can follow and understand.
The problem is that they've done all of those, so it also feels like a mash-up of plots they've already done.
Also, there are a lot of logical failures. The most obvious is that the town ends up under a big glass dome. How comes they don't all suffocate? They hint that they run out of food and water, but it doesn't really seem like it. Why does no-one else in the country notice?
But worst of all, the dome doesn't go underground - it's just on the surface. So why doesn't anyone think of tunnelling out? Alright there's a bit where they say to put guards on, but that's is later on. Plus the residents of Springfield rebel later on and they try to crack the glass - none of them think to tunnel under? Especially when the end part comes and they could all dies. What, they just sort of stand and watch?
This is the problem with telling a story - if that's what you're doing it needs to make sense, and this didn't.
There are lots of other problems too. A severe lack of good jokes, for example. All of the good ones are in the trailers - that can't be a good sign.
Also there seemed to be too much of a desire to shoe-horn in all of the secondary characters from the series. I guess it's okay when they're in the crowd, but having little 'bits' for some of them feels very artificial when it's a plot-driven film.
One of the mistakes I think they made was testing the movie to audiences. It's almost like the fact it was animation acted against them. In a movie you couldn't reshoot the entire thing - just bits, but with animation you potentially could.
And from the commentaries it's sounds like they did. A lot. It also sounded like this toned down or removed a lot of the jokes and if nothing else a Simpsons Movie needs to be funny.
I totally avoided this at the time it was released in the cinemas. The Simpson's kinda stopped being funny about 4 or five years ago, if not longer. The real problem was that they ran out of jokes. When a comedy show has been going for something like 20 years that's pretty much inevitable.
They've been repeating and recycling the same things for a good while now. And worst of all they seem to have taken their own format to a point beyond ridiculousness.
When the Simpsons started it was actually fairly standard in terms of its storytelling. For example it often tended to have "morals". Now I don't mean that in terms of it having morality - a sense of right and wrong - I mean that in the sense of having a bit at the end where someone goes "and the moral of the story is".
I've nothing wrong with cartoons educating, but I've always hated when they deliberately explain the point. It smacks of very poor story telling for one thing.
Anyway, from about the second season on they started to play with this format a lot. They stopped having "moral of the story" bits and instead just go with the flow. If anything characterised the Simpsons it was this flexibility of the format.
Some of would follow fairly normal narrative structure, but other stories would be totally non-sequitur in nature. You'd start off with one thing (homer trashes Lisa's saxophone) then end up somewhere else (homer stopping an alien invasion).
But generally these were kept in check. However, as the show progressed and they ran out of normal narratives, they all became non-sequitur. Recent shows it's like they're coming up with random gags (that they've probably already done) and short stories and simply trying to weld these together to make 22 minutes of screen time.
My fear then was that the film would be like this too and from that standpoint they succeeded. There is a much more consistent narrative story in the film - a plot you can follow and understand.
The problem is that they've done all of those, so it also feels like a mash-up of plots they've already done.
Also, there are a lot of logical failures. The most obvious is that the town ends up under a big glass dome. How comes they don't all suffocate? They hint that they run out of food and water, but it doesn't really seem like it. Why does no-one else in the country notice?
But worst of all, the dome doesn't go underground - it's just on the surface. So why doesn't anyone think of tunnelling out? Alright there's a bit where they say to put guards on, but that's is later on. Plus the residents of Springfield rebel later on and they try to crack the glass - none of them think to tunnel under? Especially when the end part comes and they could all dies. What, they just sort of stand and watch?
This is the problem with telling a story - if that's what you're doing it needs to make sense, and this didn't.
There are lots of other problems too. A severe lack of good jokes, for example. All of the good ones are in the trailers - that can't be a good sign.
Also there seemed to be too much of a desire to shoe-horn in all of the secondary characters from the series. I guess it's okay when they're in the crowd, but having little 'bits' for some of them feels very artificial when it's a plot-driven film.
One of the mistakes I think they made was testing the movie to audiences. It's almost like the fact it was animation acted against them. In a movie you couldn't reshoot the entire thing - just bits, but with animation you potentially could.
And from the commentaries it's sounds like they did. A lot. It also sounded like this toned down or removed a lot of the jokes and if nothing else a Simpsons Movie needs to be funny.
Monday, 2 March 2009
erm
Bit of a non-weekend to be honest.
Saturday I got swamped with stuff I had to do - shopping, cleaning, fill the car up with petrol, loads of ironing, etc.
I'm also trying to close down my aol account. I kept the dial-up "just in case" but never used it. Unfortunately I've had a dickens of a time changing e-mails on a lot of sites. They're often ones I only visit occasionally, if rarely, but are important.
The trouble is you forget your passwords or usernames or whatever and you need to get them sent to your old e-mail. That means you can't get rid of it just yet otherwise you'll never get the e-mail changed or access to it again :/.
The other problem was I was knackered, so most of these jobs took longer than they should as I just couldn't be arsed.
I was knackered for a very specific reason - last week I was working on a movie script. What I was trying to do was see how far I could get, see how much I could do. The answer was the best part of half of it.
The problem was it totally drained me. By the end of the week I was basically a dribbling moron with no thoughts left in my head. This wasn't good for work, let alone keeping going with the script. I may deliberately avoid working on it this week to try to get the juices refreshed.
Which feeds into my other plan. The amount of unwatched anime I've got stacking up is silly - my shelves are literally overflowing. I've therefore decided I'm going to force myself to sit down and watch loads of anime DVDs.
This probably means at the cost of watching normal telly. As I mentioned on Friday there's quite a bit I'm watching at the moment, so really I'm creating some problems for myself down the line. But really the key point is that I can't flog stuff on telly on e-bay, whereas I need to do that with the anime DVDs.
Sunday was then a non-event. I was still knackered and just watched some recorded telly and finished off the Wintersmith.
I'm really loving my new monitor, btw. Sometimes I catch myself just looking at the desktop - a good wall on a big widescreen monitor is a thing of wonder.
Saturday I got swamped with stuff I had to do - shopping, cleaning, fill the car up with petrol, loads of ironing, etc.
I'm also trying to close down my aol account. I kept the dial-up "just in case" but never used it. Unfortunately I've had a dickens of a time changing e-mails on a lot of sites. They're often ones I only visit occasionally, if rarely, but are important.
The trouble is you forget your passwords or usernames or whatever and you need to get them sent to your old e-mail. That means you can't get rid of it just yet otherwise you'll never get the e-mail changed or access to it again :/.
The other problem was I was knackered, so most of these jobs took longer than they should as I just couldn't be arsed.
I was knackered for a very specific reason - last week I was working on a movie script. What I was trying to do was see how far I could get, see how much I could do. The answer was the best part of half of it.
The problem was it totally drained me. By the end of the week I was basically a dribbling moron with no thoughts left in my head. This wasn't good for work, let alone keeping going with the script. I may deliberately avoid working on it this week to try to get the juices refreshed.
Which feeds into my other plan. The amount of unwatched anime I've got stacking up is silly - my shelves are literally overflowing. I've therefore decided I'm going to force myself to sit down and watch loads of anime DVDs.
This probably means at the cost of watching normal telly. As I mentioned on Friday there's quite a bit I'm watching at the moment, so really I'm creating some problems for myself down the line. But really the key point is that I can't flog stuff on telly on e-bay, whereas I need to do that with the anime DVDs.
Sunday was then a non-event. I was still knackered and just watched some recorded telly and finished off the Wintersmith.
I'm really loving my new monitor, btw. Sometimes I catch myself just looking at the desktop - a good wall on a big widescreen monitor is a thing of wonder.
Friday, 27 February 2009
telly annoyance
So this week I've not really gotten up to much - well, other than spending all that money I don't really have that is. I've been trying to watch more of the telly shows I normally record and then watch over the weekend.
I don't normally talk about all the telly I watch on here for some reason. I think that's partly because I'm such a PVR-whore. A PVR if you don't know is basically the digital/modern world equivalent of a VCR. It stands for Personal Video Recorder and does pretty much what it says - records programmes for you.
Only unlike a VCR, which uses magnetic tape, it does so to a hard drive. PVRs are actually the miracle that has spawned the modern anime fansub industry. In Japan, the fans PVR the anime shows (one thing we don't often realise in the west is that even though anime is on TV, it's often shown very late at night) and then make them available via peer-2-peer networks and Usenet type services.
Generally speaking they don't do this for western fans, though I understand there are some who do it on behalf of us westerners, but those are mainly western ex-pats. The Japanese fans do it to share with each other and the fansubbers just make use of the availability of it and add the subtitles.
Anyway, the point is that a while back I got digital telly. I bought quite an expensive model of decoder and it has a PVR built into it. Now during the week there are a variety of shows on that I want to watch, but because of a combination of work, eating, the time I go to bed and the types of stuff I actually fancy doing in the evenings, I tend to PVR everything.
That then means that I'm out of step with programmes, but it also means that at the weekends I watch a huge amount of telly. So much in fact that on the average Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning that's essentially all I do.
It's at its worst over the winter months as you get a lot more stuff on during winter. Over summer you get more sports stuff for one thing, but because people are expected to be out more in the evening, dramas and stuff tend to dry up too.
But this week I've been trying to get ahead of myself, watch more stuff as it's aired, rather than have a big stack at the weekend. Hopefully that'll free up some time at the weekend as I've a couple things I need to get done.
Anyway, the point of this blog wasn't really all of the above - what I wanted to do was moan about something.
Basically, two of my favourite shows are The Shield, which is a sorta-cop show and 30Rock a comedy show. They're both American and both air on channel 5. Or at least they used to - now they're being aired on 5Us (or something like that).
See as I mentioned there are more channels on digital, but quite a few of them are from the same broadcasters, so you have E4 and More4 and BBC3 and BBC4 and one of five's is 5US.
Now that's all well and good, except that my reception of 5's channels is really touch-and-go.
At the moment the digital broadcasts are "turned down" - they're not as powerful as they will be when they turn the analogue broadcasts off, because otherwise they'd interfere.
So that means that 5's signal strength is really borderline. I dunno if you've ever tried to watch poor-signal digital telly but it's impossible. With normal analogue what happens is it gets static and maybe the sound hisses, but it's still just about watchable. With digital it's more like a threshold - it'll be fine and then suddenly *boom* it's totally unwatchable because the picture and sound break up.
And that's what I've discovered with The Shield and 30Rock.
Now I would be buying DVDs of them anyway, admittedly, but they won't be out for months I imagine. What a pain in the arse.
I don't normally talk about all the telly I watch on here for some reason. I think that's partly because I'm such a PVR-whore. A PVR if you don't know is basically the digital/modern world equivalent of a VCR. It stands for Personal Video Recorder and does pretty much what it says - records programmes for you.
Only unlike a VCR, which uses magnetic tape, it does so to a hard drive. PVRs are actually the miracle that has spawned the modern anime fansub industry. In Japan, the fans PVR the anime shows (one thing we don't often realise in the west is that even though anime is on TV, it's often shown very late at night) and then make them available via peer-2-peer networks and Usenet type services.
Generally speaking they don't do this for western fans, though I understand there are some who do it on behalf of us westerners, but those are mainly western ex-pats. The Japanese fans do it to share with each other and the fansubbers just make use of the availability of it and add the subtitles.
Anyway, the point is that a while back I got digital telly. I bought quite an expensive model of decoder and it has a PVR built into it. Now during the week there are a variety of shows on that I want to watch, but because of a combination of work, eating, the time I go to bed and the types of stuff I actually fancy doing in the evenings, I tend to PVR everything.
That then means that I'm out of step with programmes, but it also means that at the weekends I watch a huge amount of telly. So much in fact that on the average Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning that's essentially all I do.
It's at its worst over the winter months as you get a lot more stuff on during winter. Over summer you get more sports stuff for one thing, but because people are expected to be out more in the evening, dramas and stuff tend to dry up too.
But this week I've been trying to get ahead of myself, watch more stuff as it's aired, rather than have a big stack at the weekend. Hopefully that'll free up some time at the weekend as I've a couple things I need to get done.
Anyway, the point of this blog wasn't really all of the above - what I wanted to do was moan about something.
Basically, two of my favourite shows are The Shield, which is a sorta-cop show and 30Rock a comedy show. They're both American and both air on channel 5. Or at least they used to - now they're being aired on 5Us (or something like that).
See as I mentioned there are more channels on digital, but quite a few of them are from the same broadcasters, so you have E4 and More4 and BBC3 and BBC4 and one of five's is 5US.
Now that's all well and good, except that my reception of 5's channels is really touch-and-go.
At the moment the digital broadcasts are "turned down" - they're not as powerful as they will be when they turn the analogue broadcasts off, because otherwise they'd interfere.
So that means that 5's signal strength is really borderline. I dunno if you've ever tried to watch poor-signal digital telly but it's impossible. With normal analogue what happens is it gets static and maybe the sound hisses, but it's still just about watchable. With digital it's more like a threshold - it'll be fine and then suddenly *boom* it's totally unwatchable because the picture and sound break up.
And that's what I've discovered with The Shield and 30Rock.
Now I would be buying DVDs of them anyway, admittedly, but they won't be out for months I imagine. What a pain in the arse.
Thursday, 26 February 2009
splooge
I've kinda splooged money away this last week.
To be fair, it's not entirely my fault as such. And they are things I need or have to get. Plus I have managed to hold back on going totally nuts with spending.
What am I on about?
Well, basically this year my Dad turns 65. So this is something of a special birthday anyway and on top of that we, the family, have got a special trip planned (more on that at a later date). So as part of that it seemed an opportune time to get him a particular gift that's special to the event and his birthday.
Me and my sister are going halves on it, but I've actually bought the items in question, so that was big pay out number one. Actually technically, it's not finished as we need to get some supporting bits, but I think I'm going to shop around in the "real world" as I think I need to actually see them up close to some extent.
Now really my Dad's birthday isn't until October and we've also decided to use the money we would normally spend at Christmas as well. However, because of when the trip is, we needed to get the stuff early and I'd noticed some good deals (credit crunch seems to be having some benefits :/) so I took the plunge this week.
The other big spend was one I had to make. Well, actually, I didn't have to get what I did - I could have spent a lot less - but it seemed daft taking a step down from my current model if I was getting a new one.
Not sure why I was being so cryptic there - unlike the present I'm perfectly free to tell you I got a new monitor for my computer. What I got was a 24 inch widescreen LCD monitor.
It's really rather spiffing, although I had a Dickens of a time getting the base on. I ended up having to grease the attachment bit so it would slip on, but before that I think I pulled a muscle in my arm I was pushing to hard to get it on :(.
The monitor is really bright and clear - almost painfully so in a dark room with it up high. I had to turn it down quite a bit to make it comfortable. Also, the big thing I was worried about with it was colour reproduction.
There seems to be something of an issue with LCD/flat panel type monitors in that the colour reproduction varies wildly. On some monitors what can appear to be a dark red just becomes black on another. However, in my experience, colour on Samsung monitors is really good, so I got one of those and I tried it out and I can't tell any difference in colour with my old monitor.
Yes, my old monitor does still technically work, but here's the thing - it's started making a really loud "squeaking" noise. It's like a really high pitched buzzing - I'm sure you've heard electrical equipment make such noises. The problem of course is it becomes staggeringly annoying when you're sat working at you pc for hours and it's squeaking like that. Especially since it's not constant - it goes up and down in volume and pitch.
So that's why I got the new monitor. I got a really big widescreen one because they're dirt cheap. This one literally only cost a smidge over £200 - for a 24 inch widescreen monitor! It's 1920 & 1200 res - that's huge, and for only two-hundred quid! Marvellous.
My real problem, though is I still have lots more expenses coming up.
Firstly, it's my sister's 30th this year (I know - my Dad's 65th and my sister's 30th all in one year. How poor timing is that?) and so I'll need to spend a good couple of hundred on that.
Plus the other problem is this trip - I need to get loads of stuff for that. I never really go on proper holidays, so I don't even have a suitcase, for example. Plus I want (or need, since these ones are scratched) some new glasses for then and they're not cheap. Well, the frames are okay, it's lenses that are expensive as I have a high prescription and have to get the special glass to make them thin or it looks like I'm wearing double glazing.
And on top of that in March car stuff will be due - car tax, insurance and service. Service won't be so bad as the deal I had was to get that for free for 3 years, but I'm pretty sure my car will need a new set of tyres and those certainly won't be free.
But also, like some sort of idiot-that-doesn't-actually-have-the-money-but-is-going-to-spend-it-anyway I've a hankering to buy the latest versions of Photoshop and painter, as well as upgrade to Vista.
To be fair, it's not entirely my fault as such. And they are things I need or have to get. Plus I have managed to hold back on going totally nuts with spending.
What am I on about?
Well, basically this year my Dad turns 65. So this is something of a special birthday anyway and on top of that we, the family, have got a special trip planned (more on that at a later date). So as part of that it seemed an opportune time to get him a particular gift that's special to the event and his birthday.
Me and my sister are going halves on it, but I've actually bought the items in question, so that was big pay out number one. Actually technically, it's not finished as we need to get some supporting bits, but I think I'm going to shop around in the "real world" as I think I need to actually see them up close to some extent.
Now really my Dad's birthday isn't until October and we've also decided to use the money we would normally spend at Christmas as well. However, because of when the trip is, we needed to get the stuff early and I'd noticed some good deals (credit crunch seems to be having some benefits :/) so I took the plunge this week.
The other big spend was one I had to make. Well, actually, I didn't have to get what I did - I could have spent a lot less - but it seemed daft taking a step down from my current model if I was getting a new one.
Not sure why I was being so cryptic there - unlike the present I'm perfectly free to tell you I got a new monitor for my computer. What I got was a 24 inch widescreen LCD monitor.
It's really rather spiffing, although I had a Dickens of a time getting the base on. I ended up having to grease the attachment bit so it would slip on, but before that I think I pulled a muscle in my arm I was pushing to hard to get it on :(.
The monitor is really bright and clear - almost painfully so in a dark room with it up high. I had to turn it down quite a bit to make it comfortable. Also, the big thing I was worried about with it was colour reproduction.
There seems to be something of an issue with LCD/flat panel type monitors in that the colour reproduction varies wildly. On some monitors what can appear to be a dark red just becomes black on another. However, in my experience, colour on Samsung monitors is really good, so I got one of those and I tried it out and I can't tell any difference in colour with my old monitor.
Yes, my old monitor does still technically work, but here's the thing - it's started making a really loud "squeaking" noise. It's like a really high pitched buzzing - I'm sure you've heard electrical equipment make such noises. The problem of course is it becomes staggeringly annoying when you're sat working at you pc for hours and it's squeaking like that. Especially since it's not constant - it goes up and down in volume and pitch.
So that's why I got the new monitor. I got a really big widescreen one because they're dirt cheap. This one literally only cost a smidge over £200 - for a 24 inch widescreen monitor! It's 1920 & 1200 res - that's huge, and for only two-hundred quid! Marvellous.
My real problem, though is I still have lots more expenses coming up.
Firstly, it's my sister's 30th this year (I know - my Dad's 65th and my sister's 30th all in one year. How poor timing is that?) and so I'll need to spend a good couple of hundred on that.
Plus the other problem is this trip - I need to get loads of stuff for that. I never really go on proper holidays, so I don't even have a suitcase, for example. Plus I want (or need, since these ones are scratched) some new glasses for then and they're not cheap. Well, the frames are okay, it's lenses that are expensive as I have a high prescription and have to get the special glass to make them thin or it looks like I'm wearing double glazing.
And on top of that in March car stuff will be due - car tax, insurance and service. Service won't be so bad as the deal I had was to get that for free for 3 years, but I'm pretty sure my car will need a new set of tyres and those certainly won't be free.
But also, like some sort of idiot-that-doesn't-actually-have-the-money-but-is-going-to-spend-it-anyway I've a hankering to buy the latest versions of Photoshop and painter, as well as upgrade to Vista.
splooge
I've kinda splooged money away this last week.
To be fair, it's not entirely my fault as such. And they are things I need or have to get. Plus I have managed to hold back on going totally nuts with spending.
What am I on about?
Well, basically this year my Dad turns 65. So this is something of a special birthday anyway and on top of that we, the family, have got a special trip planned (more on that at a later date). So as part of that it seemed an opportune time to get him a particular gift that's special to the event and his birthday.
Me and my sister are going halves on it, but I've actually bought the items in question, so that was big pay out number one. Actually technically, it's not finished as we need to get some supporting bits, but I think I'm going to shop around in the "real world" as I think I need to actually see them up close to some extent.
Now really my Dad's birthday isn't until October and we've also decided to use the money we would normally spend at Christmas as well. However, because of when the trip is, we needed to get the stuff early and I'd noticed some good deals (credit crunch seems to be having some benefits :/) so I took the plunge this week.
The other big spend was one I had to make. Well, actually, I didn't have to get what I did - I could have spent a lot less - but it seemed daft taking a step down from my current model if I was getting a new one.
Not sure why I was being so cryptic there - unlike the present I'm perfectly free to tell you I got a new monitor for my computer. What I got was a 24 inch widescreen LCD monitor.
It's really rather spiffing, although I had a Dickens of a time getting the base on. I ended up having to grease the attachment bit so it would slip on, but before that I think I pulled a muscle in my arm I was pushing to hard to get it on :(.
The monitor is really bright and clear - almost painfully so in a dark room with it up high. I had to turn it down quite a bit to make it comfortable. Also, the big thing I was worried about with it was colour reproduction.
There seems to be something of an issue with LCD/flat panel type monitors in that the colour reproduction varies wildly. On some monitors what can appear to be a dark red just becomes black on another. However, in my experience, colour on Samsung monitors is really good, so I got one of those and I tried it out and I can't tell any difference in colour with my old monitor.
Yes, my old monitor does still technically work, but here's the thing - it's started making a really loud "squeaking" noise. It's like a really high pitched buzzing - I'm sure you've heard electrical equipment make such noises. The problem of course is it becomes staggeringly annoying when you're sat working at you pc for hours and it's squeaking like that. Especially since it's not constant - it goes up and down in volume and pitch.
So that's why I got the new monitor. I got a really big widescreen one because they're dirt cheap. This one literally only cost a smidge over £200 - for a 24 inch widescreen monitor! It's 1920 & 1200 res - that's huge, and for only two-hundred quid! Marvellous.
My real problem, though is I still have lots more expenses coming up.
Firstly, it's my sister's 30th this year (I know - my Dad's 65th and my sister's 30th all in one year. How poor timing is that?) and so I'll need to spend a good couple of hundred on that.
Plus the other problem is this trip - I need to get loads of stuff for that. I never really go on proper holidays, so I don't even have a suitcase, for example. Plus I want (or need, since these ones are scratched) some new glasses for then and they're not cheap. Well, the frames are okay, it's lenses that are expensive as I have a high prescription and have to get the special glass to make them thin or it looks like I'm wearing double glazing.
And on top of that in March car stuff will be due - car tax, insurance and service. Service won't be so bad as the deal I had was to get that for free for 3 years, but I'm pretty sure my car will need a new set of tyres and those certainly won't be free.
But also, like some sort of idiot-that-doesn't-actually-have-the-money-but-is-going-to-spend-it-anyway I've a hankering to buy the latest versions of Photoshop and painter, as well as upgrade to Vista.
To be fair, it's not entirely my fault as such. And they are things I need or have to get. Plus I have managed to hold back on going totally nuts with spending.
What am I on about?
Well, basically this year my Dad turns 65. So this is something of a special birthday anyway and on top of that we, the family, have got a special trip planned (more on that at a later date). So as part of that it seemed an opportune time to get him a particular gift that's special to the event and his birthday.
Me and my sister are going halves on it, but I've actually bought the items in question, so that was big pay out number one. Actually technically, it's not finished as we need to get some supporting bits, but I think I'm going to shop around in the "real world" as I think I need to actually see them up close to some extent.
Now really my Dad's birthday isn't until October and we've also decided to use the money we would normally spend at Christmas as well. However, because of when the trip is, we needed to get the stuff early and I'd noticed some good deals (credit crunch seems to be having some benefits :/) so I took the plunge this week.
The other big spend was one I had to make. Well, actually, I didn't have to get what I did - I could have spent a lot less - but it seemed daft taking a step down from my current model if I was getting a new one.
Not sure why I was being so cryptic there - unlike the present I'm perfectly free to tell you I got a new monitor for my computer. What I got was a 24 inch widescreen LCD monitor.
It's really rather spiffing, although I had a Dickens of a time getting the base on. I ended up having to grease the attachment bit so it would slip on, but before that I think I pulled a muscle in my arm I was pushing to hard to get it on :(.
The monitor is really bright and clear - almost painfully so in a dark room with it up high. I had to turn it down quite a bit to make it comfortable. Also, the big thing I was worried about with it was colour reproduction.
There seems to be something of an issue with LCD/flat panel type monitors in that the colour reproduction varies wildly. On some monitors what can appear to be a dark red just becomes black on another. However, in my experience, colour on Samsung monitors is really good, so I got one of those and I tried it out and I can't tell any difference in colour with my old monitor.
Yes, my old monitor does still technically work, but here's the thing - it's started making a really loud "squeaking" noise. It's like a really high pitched buzzing - I'm sure you've heard electrical equipment make such noises. The problem of course is it becomes staggeringly annoying when you're sat working at you pc for hours and it's squeaking like that. Especially since it's not constant - it goes up and down in volume and pitch.
So that's why I got the new monitor. I got a really big widescreen one because they're dirt cheap. This one literally only cost a smidge over £200 - for a 24 inch widescreen monitor! It's 1920 & 1200 res - that's huge, and for only two-hundred quid! Marvellous.
My real problem, though is I still have lots more expenses coming up.
Firstly, it's my sister's 30th this year (I know - my Dad's 65th and my sister's 30th all in one year. How poor timing is that?) and so I'll need to spend a good couple of hundred on that.
Plus the other problem is this trip - I need to get loads of stuff for that. I never really go on proper holidays, so I don't even have a suitcase, for example. Plus I want (or need, since these ones are scratched) some new glasses for then and they're not cheap. Well, the frames are okay, it's lenses that are expensive as I have a high prescription and have to get the special glass to make them thin or it looks like I'm wearing double glazing.
And on top of that in March car stuff will be due - car tax, insurance and service. Service won't be so bad as the deal I had was to get that for free for 3 years, but I'm pretty sure my car will need a new set of tyres and those certainly won't be free.
But also, like some sort of idiot-that-doesn't-actually-have-the-money-but-is-going-to-spend-it-anyway I've a hankering to buy the latest versions of Photoshop and painter, as well as upgrade to Vista.
Wednesday, 25 February 2009
aliens v predator: requiem
The weekends DVD rental was Aliens v Predator: Requiem (or AVPRR as they rather sensibly re-named it).
I'm not sure I'd quite go so far as to say it was poor, but it wasn't great either.
Let's start with the positive - there were some fairly good fight scenes between the aliens and predator. There was also an appropriate aliens/predator total disregard for the humans approach.
One of the points of aliens and predator is that they're actually more horror than they are sci-fi and that means characters die randomly and in bucket loads, whether we as viewers like them or not.
It also tried a fairly neat trick - plopping the aliens and predators down in the middle of domestic life. The rest of plot was meant to resemble a soap-opera or similar and then bam! aliens and predators hacking and slashing their way through the town.
And there's a fairly cool coda/prologue type moment at the end.
However, the problems were myriad.
Firstly and most importantly it was way too dark. My guess is that this was almost necessary due to budgetary constraints. The film only cost $40M, so I guess making it pitch black means you can get away with more on the SFX front. Problem is that meant it was frustratingly difficult to see, well, anything. I had to slam the brightness way up on my TV :/.
Secondly, the whole normal suburban life thing kinda failed to be interesting. The characters were a little dull and predictable and it was difficult to really care about them. This whole aspect also seemed to be dumped wholesale about half the way through. When the aliens and predator really start doing there thing this aspect becomes almost totally irrelevant.
There were also a lot of weird things that didn't make any sense, mainly involving the predator.
At the beginning there's a whole thing with a distress signal. This is only answered by 1 predator, which seemed odd.
Then that predator behaves oddly when he finds the crashed ship, like he knew one of the other predators personally, but it's not really properly explained.
He then also behaves strangely when killing the aliens, using some weird blue fluid to dissolve them and any trace of them. Why, exactly he does this is not readily apparent. No predator has ever done anything like that before :/.
And if it's so that the humans don't catch on, firstly that makes no sense - predators don't give a shit about us - but also later on he kills a human and does the whole skinning them thing. So it's okay for humans to find that, but not traces of the aliens? Odd.
There's other stuff too (especially the Peed-Alien), but you get the point.
Overall I wouldn't really recommend it.
I'm not sure I'd quite go so far as to say it was poor, but it wasn't great either.
Let's start with the positive - there were some fairly good fight scenes between the aliens and predator. There was also an appropriate aliens/predator total disregard for the humans approach.
One of the points of aliens and predator is that they're actually more horror than they are sci-fi and that means characters die randomly and in bucket loads, whether we as viewers like them or not.
It also tried a fairly neat trick - plopping the aliens and predators down in the middle of domestic life. The rest of plot was meant to resemble a soap-opera or similar and then bam! aliens and predators hacking and slashing their way through the town.
And there's a fairly cool coda/prologue type moment at the end.
However, the problems were myriad.
Firstly and most importantly it was way too dark. My guess is that this was almost necessary due to budgetary constraints. The film only cost $40M, so I guess making it pitch black means you can get away with more on the SFX front. Problem is that meant it was frustratingly difficult to see, well, anything. I had to slam the brightness way up on my TV :/.
Secondly, the whole normal suburban life thing kinda failed to be interesting. The characters were a little dull and predictable and it was difficult to really care about them. This whole aspect also seemed to be dumped wholesale about half the way through. When the aliens and predator really start doing there thing this aspect becomes almost totally irrelevant.
There were also a lot of weird things that didn't make any sense, mainly involving the predator.
At the beginning there's a whole thing with a distress signal. This is only answered by 1 predator, which seemed odd.
Then that predator behaves oddly when he finds the crashed ship, like he knew one of the other predators personally, but it's not really properly explained.
He then also behaves strangely when killing the aliens, using some weird blue fluid to dissolve them and any trace of them. Why, exactly he does this is not readily apparent. No predator has ever done anything like that before :/.
And if it's so that the humans don't catch on, firstly that makes no sense - predators don't give a shit about us - but also later on he kills a human and does the whole skinning them thing. So it's okay for humans to find that, but not traces of the aliens? Odd.
There's other stuff too (especially the Peed-Alien), but you get the point.
Overall I wouldn't really recommend it.
Tuesday, 24 February 2009
the wee free men
I finished the wee free men over the weekend. It's pretty damn good I have to say. I've started on Wintersmith, which is the third of this set of books and it seems pretty good too.
I've always liked the Discworld's take on Witches. I think it's one of the things I miss the most from the earlier books. A lot of the earlier books involved both the witches and the wizards and while I wouldn't want to put down the later books simply because the witches aren't in them, I wish they'd pop up more often.
The wizards make a few appearances, but then Unseen University is on the outskirts of Ankh Morpork, so it's not much of a stretch. The witches seem mainly to live in the rural areas and most of the recent books have been set in Ankh Morpork so it's less easy to have them pop up, I guess.
Hopefully I can also keep up a decent head of steam with book reading and plough into my unread book pile some. If I'm honest it's the pile that I'm most regretful about not tackling. Reading is kinda my lifeblood - sort of like entertainment in its purest form for me.
The next most regretful pile is the games I think. This is mainly because I know the amount of time it would take to play them all through properly makes it the most difficult pile to tackle properly. Plus of course I've got a really powerful machine "for gaming" that just sort of sits there doing nothing most of the time :(.
I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I've been trying to write scripts recently, rather than a novel. It's been going pretty well and I'm kinda enjoying the process more than I do writing prose.
I started off with doing Man-in-the-Loop, which has generally been my most consistent project, though it's a bit complex and twisty at times for me to get my head around. Plus I realised I wanted the murders in it to be more realistic and I think I need to let it gestate a bit more before I continue properly.
I have started adapting another plot idea I had into a film script, though. It's going pretty well, but then it was always one of those ideas that I had quite well mapped out in my mind but never got properly started on actually writing.
Oh, and I forgot to mention yesterday, but that order cock-up I mentioned last week got all sorted so that was good, and I want' out of pocket. Plus now I finally get to watch Code Geass ! Yay!
I've always liked the Discworld's take on Witches. I think it's one of the things I miss the most from the earlier books. A lot of the earlier books involved both the witches and the wizards and while I wouldn't want to put down the later books simply because the witches aren't in them, I wish they'd pop up more often.
The wizards make a few appearances, but then Unseen University is on the outskirts of Ankh Morpork, so it's not much of a stretch. The witches seem mainly to live in the rural areas and most of the recent books have been set in Ankh Morpork so it's less easy to have them pop up, I guess.
Hopefully I can also keep up a decent head of steam with book reading and plough into my unread book pile some. If I'm honest it's the pile that I'm most regretful about not tackling. Reading is kinda my lifeblood - sort of like entertainment in its purest form for me.
The next most regretful pile is the games I think. This is mainly because I know the amount of time it would take to play them all through properly makes it the most difficult pile to tackle properly. Plus of course I've got a really powerful machine "for gaming" that just sort of sits there doing nothing most of the time :(.
I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I've been trying to write scripts recently, rather than a novel. It's been going pretty well and I'm kinda enjoying the process more than I do writing prose.
I started off with doing Man-in-the-Loop, which has generally been my most consistent project, though it's a bit complex and twisty at times for me to get my head around. Plus I realised I wanted the murders in it to be more realistic and I think I need to let it gestate a bit more before I continue properly.
I have started adapting another plot idea I had into a film script, though. It's going pretty well, but then it was always one of those ideas that I had quite well mapped out in my mind but never got properly started on actually writing.
Oh, and I forgot to mention yesterday, but that order cock-up I mentioned last week got all sorted so that was good, and I want' out of pocket. Plus now I finally get to watch Code Geass ! Yay!
Monday, 23 February 2009
website-a-rific
This weekend was mainly spent creating updates for my main websites, trismugistus.com and digital-bondage.net.
It can be something of a painful experience updating the websites. This is mainly because I don't really know much of anything about html or all the other web languages. My guess is that a lot of stuff on the sites could be done in much better, more automatic ways, but I don't know how, so they aren't.
The other problem is I like to mix things up. By that I mean that if this week I upload an anime review then next week I want to have anew wallpaper and then after that a manga review, then a psd file.
Admittedly that's not a huge range of stuff, but then over the years I've kinda learnt to focus the site on a few small areas. However, it still makes things chaotic, because that means I'm all over the place. In order to update something different I have to fiddle about with a different bit of the site (and also get the raw materials from a different part of my computer) and so I get very confused very quickly.
I swear sometimes that updating the site is 90% me looking in the wrong folders and 10% me actually doing stuff.
You see what I generally do is create the material I use on my site weeks, even months in advance. This allows me the chance to do it properly as well as allow things to gestate and change over time.
I then have a weekend like this one every so often where I blast through and do maybe anything up to 10 updates. The new and modified files for each update are then archived (and backed up - I learnt that lesson the hard way!) and I upload them at the appropriate time anything up to a few months later.
But as I say - it's easy to get very confused.
What else?
Oh yeah, I finally finished Trigun. It gets massively better in the last third or so, but for me it was just not enough to elevate the series.
Fundamentally, I guess the question comes down to whether the early stuff is necessary or not. Some of it is, in that it gives a contrast to the later parts. You couldn't jump into the last third and really get the full impact. But then I think you could easily loose about half of it and still get the impact.
I mean, it's not exactly filler, as such, but it's also not totally necessary.
Also, there was the issue I mentioned before about Vash suddenly pulling a stupid face and bursting out laughing at random or inopportune moments. That grated a bit.
I'll do a full review at some point.
It was quite the week for big announcements last week, as I mentioned before, and Funimation finished it off with Mnemosyne, another show I want.. Plus tokyopop appear to have a few new licenses that look interesting. I'm gonna be really skint in the coming months :(.
It can be something of a painful experience updating the websites. This is mainly because I don't really know much of anything about html or all the other web languages. My guess is that a lot of stuff on the sites could be done in much better, more automatic ways, but I don't know how, so they aren't.
The other problem is I like to mix things up. By that I mean that if this week I upload an anime review then next week I want to have anew wallpaper and then after that a manga review, then a psd file.
Admittedly that's not a huge range of stuff, but then over the years I've kinda learnt to focus the site on a few small areas. However, it still makes things chaotic, because that means I'm all over the place. In order to update something different I have to fiddle about with a different bit of the site (and also get the raw materials from a different part of my computer) and so I get very confused very quickly.
I swear sometimes that updating the site is 90% me looking in the wrong folders and 10% me actually doing stuff.
You see what I generally do is create the material I use on my site weeks, even months in advance. This allows me the chance to do it properly as well as allow things to gestate and change over time.
I then have a weekend like this one every so often where I blast through and do maybe anything up to 10 updates. The new and modified files for each update are then archived (and backed up - I learnt that lesson the hard way!) and I upload them at the appropriate time anything up to a few months later.
But as I say - it's easy to get very confused.
What else?
Oh yeah, I finally finished Trigun. It gets massively better in the last third or so, but for me it was just not enough to elevate the series.
Fundamentally, I guess the question comes down to whether the early stuff is necessary or not. Some of it is, in that it gives a contrast to the later parts. You couldn't jump into the last third and really get the full impact. But then I think you could easily loose about half of it and still get the impact.
I mean, it's not exactly filler, as such, but it's also not totally necessary.
Also, there was the issue I mentioned before about Vash suddenly pulling a stupid face and bursting out laughing at random or inopportune moments. That grated a bit.
I'll do a full review at some point.
It was quite the week for big announcements last week, as I mentioned before, and Funimation finished it off with Mnemosyne, another show I want.. Plus tokyopop appear to have a few new licenses that look interesting. I'm gonna be really skint in the coming months :(.
Friday, 20 February 2009
free and easy
It looks like this weekend I'm going to have a lot of spare time in the sense that there's nothing I've got to do.
Hopefully that means I'll have some time to sort out various odds and sods I've got kicking about. Examples are things like getting a couple of walls and vectors finished that are 'nearly there' and making some more updates for my websites.
Speaking of websites I had a request the other day to pull my finger out and get scan-city moving. Only problem there is I need to pay for some extra webspace for what I've got planned and, more importantly, I need to get a much newer version of photoshop. Both of these mean I need to get a replacement credit card - I chopped them all up when I was having my severe financial troubles last year.
I should also really get watching some anime DVDs (not least of all so I can sell them e-bay, speaking of money troubles :/). stuff has started to fall out of my shelves again where they're so overloaded.
It's been quite a good week on the anime front from one point of view. Funimation has been announcing new licenses like crazy (presumably at comicon, or a similar event in American). Early in the week these include Dragonaut the Resonance, Bamboo Blade, the Aegis of Uruk (but both series) and blassreiter.
These put me in something of a quandary. Dragonaut and Bamboo Blade I'll definitely pick up (eek - more money) and Blassreiter I'm pretty okay just to leave as having watched it online. However, Aegis of Uruk was really quite good and I'd quite like to be ablse to sit down and watch it properly on the telly.
See this is the problem with downloads for me. They'll never be quite as good as DVDs. I just prefer to watch DVDs... but I've already seen (and, more importantly, paid for) the first part of Aegis of Uruk. I dunno. I'll have to think about it.
What I wil definitely be getting is Seto No Hanayome. This was one of the funniest shows I've seen in ages and I've been eagerly waiting to see if someone would pick i tup. Of less interest is El Cazador de la Bruja. Basically it was by the same people that did Noir and Madlax. Not seen Madlax, but Noir was poor in my opionion, and Bruja didn't seem to stray much from the same basic formula.
That's on top of a few other really good shows I want coming on sale like Baccano and Clannad... I thought the anime industry in the west was meant to be in terminal freefall :/.
And talking about anime, I've spent the evenings this week scanning animedia and animage (both of which had a surprisingly good scan count - I thought this month was goign to be a total duffer), and I watched some new anime shows:
And on top of that I need a new PC monitor!
Hopefully that means I'll have some time to sort out various odds and sods I've got kicking about. Examples are things like getting a couple of walls and vectors finished that are 'nearly there' and making some more updates for my websites.
Speaking of websites I had a request the other day to pull my finger out and get scan-city moving. Only problem there is I need to pay for some extra webspace for what I've got planned and, more importantly, I need to get a much newer version of photoshop. Both of these mean I need to get a replacement credit card - I chopped them all up when I was having my severe financial troubles last year.
I should also really get watching some anime DVDs (not least of all so I can sell them e-bay, speaking of money troubles :/). stuff has started to fall out of my shelves again where they're so overloaded.
It's been quite a good week on the anime front from one point of view. Funimation has been announcing new licenses like crazy (presumably at comicon, or a similar event in American). Early in the week these include Dragonaut the Resonance, Bamboo Blade, the Aegis of Uruk (but both series) and blassreiter.
These put me in something of a quandary. Dragonaut and Bamboo Blade I'll definitely pick up (eek - more money) and Blassreiter I'm pretty okay just to leave as having watched it online. However, Aegis of Uruk was really quite good and I'd quite like to be ablse to sit down and watch it properly on the telly.
See this is the problem with downloads for me. They'll never be quite as good as DVDs. I just prefer to watch DVDs... but I've already seen (and, more importantly, paid for) the first part of Aegis of Uruk. I dunno. I'll have to think about it.
What I wil definitely be getting is Seto No Hanayome. This was one of the funniest shows I've seen in ages and I've been eagerly waiting to see if someone would pick i tup. Of less interest is El Cazador de la Bruja. Basically it was by the same people that did Noir and Madlax. Not seen Madlax, but Noir was poor in my opionion, and Bruja didn't seem to stray much from the same basic formula.
That's on top of a few other really good shows I want coming on sale like Baccano and Clannad... I thought the anime industry in the west was meant to be in terminal freefall :/.
And talking about anime, I've spent the evenings this week scanning animedia and animage (both of which had a surprisingly good scan count - I thought this month was goign to be a total duffer), and I watched some new anime shows:
- Sora Kake Girl was kinda good actually. It's definitely not a show I would describe as new or innovative, but I dunno, it seemed to have a certain charm to it. Plus it had jiggle and jiggle can count for a lot, although the character designs are a little unusual, but not in an un-appealing way. Dunno, maybe I'm going a bit soft.
- Asu no Yoichi might also be more confirmation that I'm goign soft. As far as I can make out the title actually translates as "Samurai Harem" or similar. To say it's therefore wearing its heart on its sleave is therefore something of an understatement - it's all there in the title. But do you know what, it's actually pretty good. And I think I know why - the main chracter isn't a douche bag. He's nice and kind but also tough and a good fighter. You can kinda see why the girls might like him. Plus it's agot a lot of good gags in it and - you guessed it - more jiggle. Did I mention jiggle can count for a lot?
And on top of that I need a new PC monitor!
Thursday, 19 February 2009
abandoned ideas 3
Third one of these as I'm just not in the mood to type out a proper blog entry, I'm afraid.
It's weird - yesterday I was totally "up" and full of energy. Today I feel like I've come "down" off of the high and feel a bit listless :/.
box
This was one where I got so lost in my own ideas I confused the crap out of myself.
Basically, the idea was sort of a riff on Hellraiser. If you're not familiar with Hellraiser, basically there's a puzzle box in it that, if you solve it it opens a doorway to hell. However, being Clive Barker, it's a bit more twisted, but I won't spoiler it.
Anyway, my box wasn't a puzzle box or anything, it was essentially just a symbolic thing. This was partly where I managed to confuse myself. It was partly that people just had a desire to possess the box (a la the ring in the Lord of the Rings, I guess) but also it kinda granted wishes.
But I wasn't sure if you had to gain the box in order to have your wish granted or if you got the box having had your wish granted. But either way possession of the box then brought disaster via the granted wish. So a bit like the classic Monkey's Paw story - granted wishes are bad, in essence.
Anyway, the structure was also a horrible minefield. The idea was it was effectively going to be a series of short stories. One was set back in medieval sword and sorcery type times. It was about a knight who was delivering a warning message or something - basically he had to get to a castle.
His wish revolved around being in love with the Queen and killing the King. It never really got much further than that.
The second story was about a detective with a death-wish. It was something to do with a bunch of drug dealers who had the box. Quite what his wish was and that side of it never really coalesced as I didn't get that far.
Lastly was something to do with an "average Jo" type. See there was basically going to be some witch or demon or something that, I dunno, tempted people or she was the one granting their wishes or something.
The end was that she got her comeuppance - Jo resisted the temptation of having his wish fulfilled and instead killed or something.
I dunno. As you can see it got a bit complicated and I realised I just didn't really know what I was doing. Even the basic idea of what the box did never really solidified into anything.
It's weird - yesterday I was totally "up" and full of energy. Today I feel like I've come "down" off of the high and feel a bit listless :/.
box
This was one where I got so lost in my own ideas I confused the crap out of myself.
Basically, the idea was sort of a riff on Hellraiser. If you're not familiar with Hellraiser, basically there's a puzzle box in it that, if you solve it it opens a doorway to hell. However, being Clive Barker, it's a bit more twisted, but I won't spoiler it.
Anyway, my box wasn't a puzzle box or anything, it was essentially just a symbolic thing. This was partly where I managed to confuse myself. It was partly that people just had a desire to possess the box (a la the ring in the Lord of the Rings, I guess) but also it kinda granted wishes.
But I wasn't sure if you had to gain the box in order to have your wish granted or if you got the box having had your wish granted. But either way possession of the box then brought disaster via the granted wish. So a bit like the classic Monkey's Paw story - granted wishes are bad, in essence.
Anyway, the structure was also a horrible minefield. The idea was it was effectively going to be a series of short stories. One was set back in medieval sword and sorcery type times. It was about a knight who was delivering a warning message or something - basically he had to get to a castle.
His wish revolved around being in love with the Queen and killing the King. It never really got much further than that.
The second story was about a detective with a death-wish. It was something to do with a bunch of drug dealers who had the box. Quite what his wish was and that side of it never really coalesced as I didn't get that far.
Lastly was something to do with an "average Jo" type. See there was basically going to be some witch or demon or something that, I dunno, tempted people or she was the one granting their wishes or something.
The end was that she got her comeuppance - Jo resisted the temptation of having his wish fulfilled and instead killed or something.
I dunno. As you can see it got a bit complicated and I realised I just didn't really know what I was doing. Even the basic idea of what the box did never really solidified into anything.
Wednesday, 18 February 2009
the number 23
This weekend's DVD rental was The Number 23, starring Jim Carrey.
To be brutally frank from the get-go, it was a total waste of the hour-and-a-half it took to watch.
And to be fair it started quite well. Well, I say that - the very opening titles were too reminiscent of Seven, which is a truly brilliant suspense thriller, whereas this is just not.
Anyway, after the credits the beginning of the story works quite well. Carrey's growing obsession with the book he acquires and the number 23 works. You can sort of see where he's coming from and it works on a basic level. Although even here there are some problems - the whole dog issue especially is never really explained or followed up on properly.
Also, the entire plot seems to revolve around a massive co-incidence. I think this was sort of intentional, but it's not really very well solved. There would have been so many better ways of achieving the same effect.
The real problems kicked in about half-way through. These mainly revolved around what I can only describe as plot-holes.
Just as a simple example, Carrey's gets told to take the day off (for medical type reasons) fairly early on and this is where his obsession really starts to grow. Fine, that's okay. But then by two-thirds of the way through he doesn't appear to be going to his job at all. And yet he never calls in sick. And no-one calls him up or pops around to see if he's ill (we're talking friendly small town setting here, I believe). And his wife and son never mention it to him - they mention the obsession but there's no "why the hell aren't you at work?".
As I say, that's just a simple example - some of the plot-holes you could fit an entire motel through (that makes sense as a pun if you've seen the film).
Let's see, what else was wrong?
Well, Carrey's performance wasn't great. I like Jim Carrey as a comic actor - I think he's very funny. He also did a great performance in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, so he can do dramatic. It's just here, I dunno, the pitch was wrong - the character started out quite jolly and as the madness ensued it seemed like he couldn't quite throw that off. I kept expecting him to turn to camera and make a silly face.
But really the biggest problem was the ending of the film.
I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to say that I was expecting one of two things, given it's about "23". Either it would turn out that yes, in fact 23 is an important number or there really was a conspiracy or some explanation that validated it. Or it would turn out that Carrey was totally bonkers.
The actual end was somewhere in between - both were sort of true, and yet at the same time neither was.
This was wholly unsatisfactory on just about every level. It didn't even have the good graces to set us up with some sort of doubt/question or undermine itself. It was just sort of a bit lame.
To be brutally frank from the get-go, it was a total waste of the hour-and-a-half it took to watch.
And to be fair it started quite well. Well, I say that - the very opening titles were too reminiscent of Seven, which is a truly brilliant suspense thriller, whereas this is just not.
Anyway, after the credits the beginning of the story works quite well. Carrey's growing obsession with the book he acquires and the number 23 works. You can sort of see where he's coming from and it works on a basic level. Although even here there are some problems - the whole dog issue especially is never really explained or followed up on properly.
Also, the entire plot seems to revolve around a massive co-incidence. I think this was sort of intentional, but it's not really very well solved. There would have been so many better ways of achieving the same effect.
The real problems kicked in about half-way through. These mainly revolved around what I can only describe as plot-holes.
Just as a simple example, Carrey's gets told to take the day off (for medical type reasons) fairly early on and this is where his obsession really starts to grow. Fine, that's okay. But then by two-thirds of the way through he doesn't appear to be going to his job at all. And yet he never calls in sick. And no-one calls him up or pops around to see if he's ill (we're talking friendly small town setting here, I believe). And his wife and son never mention it to him - they mention the obsession but there's no "why the hell aren't you at work?".
As I say, that's just a simple example - some of the plot-holes you could fit an entire motel through (that makes sense as a pun if you've seen the film).
Let's see, what else was wrong?
Well, Carrey's performance wasn't great. I like Jim Carrey as a comic actor - I think he's very funny. He also did a great performance in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, so he can do dramatic. It's just here, I dunno, the pitch was wrong - the character started out quite jolly and as the madness ensued it seemed like he couldn't quite throw that off. I kept expecting him to turn to camera and make a silly face.
But really the biggest problem was the ending of the film.
I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to say that I was expecting one of two things, given it's about "23". Either it would turn out that yes, in fact 23 is an important number or there really was a conspiracy or some explanation that validated it. Or it would turn out that Carrey was totally bonkers.
The actual end was somewhere in between - both were sort of true, and yet at the same time neither was.
This was wholly unsatisfactory on just about every level. It didn't even have the good graces to set us up with some sort of doubt/question or undermine itself. It was just sort of a bit lame.
Tuesday, 17 February 2009
making money
I finished reading Making Money this weekend.
It's an excellent read - I wouldn't want what I'm about to say undermine that. It's genuinely very funny in places, and it has a good portion of Pratchett's usual wry observations on life, the universe and everything.
The only real problem I had with it was that the actual plot seemed a little thin, somehow.
The book is the second featuring Moist Von Lipwig. As well as having a great name, Moist is a great character - very entertaining and intriguing - and unfortunately I've a bit of a feeling that Pratchett got too wrapped up in this great character to the detriment of the actual plot.
Let's put it this was - Going Postal, the first with Moist, was probably one of the best Discworld books for a while. It kinda restored my faith in Pratchett as I'd be growing a little disillusioned by him focusing too much on the city watch and Sam Vimes in particular. Not that I don't love Vimes and the watch, it was just getting to the stage where the discworld books were almost becoming like a "whodunit" series.
There's nothing wrong with those, I must add, it's just that they were a bit samey, where really the Discworld thrives when it's exploring the new.
Anyway, Going Postal was all about Moist reinvigorating the Ankh-Morpork Postal service. But one of the key things about it was that the Post Office had a whole raft of different problems. Most had to solve all these, as well as him introducing all sorts of clever new ideas (this is what I mean about where the discworld thrives - the ideas are new to the discworld, but are already familiar to us and so give Terry a chance to be anything from ironic, through clever all the way up to outright critical).
The fundamental principle in all stories is that they are about change. Now as well as the changes in the post office itself, Moist went through a change. I won't spoiler it if you don't know, but lets just say he grew into his new life.
The problem with Making Money then is that these two things are a little lacking. Moist doesn't really change. I mean, he acquires a new job and goes through a load of scrapes but as a person he pretty much comes out at the end fundamentally the same as when he went in.
Also, he doesn't really change the whole banking world very much. His only real thing is the introduction of paper money. I mean, there's other stuff which I don't want to spoiler, but really the paper money was about it. Whereas in Going Postal there were loads.
Plus the bank in question isn't really in trouble as such where the post office really was. I mean it's hinted that the Ankh-Morpork banks aren't doing well, but not in any real tangible way like the Post Office.
But as I say, don't take it that I didn't enjoy the book - I really did, it's just some bits felt a little flimsy was all.
I've also started on Pratchett's The Wee Free Men. This is actually a children's book set on the Discworld. I'd not read any of Pratchett's children's books, but a while back I read A Hatful of Sky (which is the sequel) and really enjoyed it, so I though I'd pick this up. Plus there's a further sequel, Wintersmith.
I'm fair racing through the wee free men. Partly I guess that's because it's a children's book and is therefore both shorter and a little easier to read, but also it's an interesting reflection on how if a book is enjoyable you read it quicker.
I mention this because a while back I encountered another one of those books that really turned me off reading. The book in question was The Dark Apostle (or something like that). It's set in the Warhammer 40K world and it's really a chore to read.
The plot' okay, but the execution of it is really poor - it does everything you're not supposed to do in writing (like telling not showing - all that stuff). Now that's okay you may think - rules are there to be broken, but let's just put it this way: you need to know what the rules are before you break them.
I've still not finished actually - I'm kinda wondering if I shouldn't just e-bay it and save myself the grief.
It's an excellent read - I wouldn't want what I'm about to say undermine that. It's genuinely very funny in places, and it has a good portion of Pratchett's usual wry observations on life, the universe and everything.
The only real problem I had with it was that the actual plot seemed a little thin, somehow.
The book is the second featuring Moist Von Lipwig. As well as having a great name, Moist is a great character - very entertaining and intriguing - and unfortunately I've a bit of a feeling that Pratchett got too wrapped up in this great character to the detriment of the actual plot.
Let's put it this was - Going Postal, the first with Moist, was probably one of the best Discworld books for a while. It kinda restored my faith in Pratchett as I'd be growing a little disillusioned by him focusing too much on the city watch and Sam Vimes in particular. Not that I don't love Vimes and the watch, it was just getting to the stage where the discworld books were almost becoming like a "whodunit" series.
There's nothing wrong with those, I must add, it's just that they were a bit samey, where really the Discworld thrives when it's exploring the new.
Anyway, Going Postal was all about Moist reinvigorating the Ankh-Morpork Postal service. But one of the key things about it was that the Post Office had a whole raft of different problems. Most had to solve all these, as well as him introducing all sorts of clever new ideas (this is what I mean about where the discworld thrives - the ideas are new to the discworld, but are already familiar to us and so give Terry a chance to be anything from ironic, through clever all the way up to outright critical).
The fundamental principle in all stories is that they are about change. Now as well as the changes in the post office itself, Moist went through a change. I won't spoiler it if you don't know, but lets just say he grew into his new life.
The problem with Making Money then is that these two things are a little lacking. Moist doesn't really change. I mean, he acquires a new job and goes through a load of scrapes but as a person he pretty much comes out at the end fundamentally the same as when he went in.
Also, he doesn't really change the whole banking world very much. His only real thing is the introduction of paper money. I mean, there's other stuff which I don't want to spoiler, but really the paper money was about it. Whereas in Going Postal there were loads.
Plus the bank in question isn't really in trouble as such where the post office really was. I mean it's hinted that the Ankh-Morpork banks aren't doing well, but not in any real tangible way like the Post Office.
But as I say, don't take it that I didn't enjoy the book - I really did, it's just some bits felt a little flimsy was all.
I've also started on Pratchett's The Wee Free Men. This is actually a children's book set on the Discworld. I'd not read any of Pratchett's children's books, but a while back I read A Hatful of Sky (which is the sequel) and really enjoyed it, so I though I'd pick this up. Plus there's a further sequel, Wintersmith.
I'm fair racing through the wee free men. Partly I guess that's because it's a children's book and is therefore both shorter and a little easier to read, but also it's an interesting reflection on how if a book is enjoyable you read it quicker.
I mention this because a while back I encountered another one of those books that really turned me off reading. The book in question was The Dark Apostle (or something like that). It's set in the Warhammer 40K world and it's really a chore to read.
The plot' okay, but the execution of it is really poor - it does everything you're not supposed to do in writing (like telling not showing - all that stuff). Now that's okay you may think - rules are there to be broken, but let's just put it this way: you need to know what the rules are before you break them.
I've still not finished actually - I'm kinda wondering if I shouldn't just e-bay it and save myself the grief.
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