weekend of super-cleaning

I'm going to do loads of cleaning this weekend.

The main one to do is the car - it's been months seen I cleaned my car. It needs a total going over - inside and out. The problem has been the weather - you can't really clean your car when the temperature is constantly sub-zero.

When it's not been sub-zero it's been raining, which is actually the big risk this weekend - the forecasts don't seem to be able to decide on if it's going to rain or not. The only thing they seem to have been agreeing on is that it won't be sub-zero temperatures (those return later next week :(), so that's all I'm banking on.

I've sort-of started writing again. I don't want to curse it, but I've started on a script. Well, also generally I’ve got my juices flowing a bit, but mainly I’ve started a script for my most-developed idea, Man in the Loop.

It actually occurred to me that what I've always wanted to try to write is TV stuff. Now the slight thing that makes me worry a bit here is that I've been reading "Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale" (which is awesome - I'll go into more detail when I finish it) and I'm worried I'm doing this simply because I like the book.

However, the other side to it is that when I started writing I did actually want to write telly, but sort of got distracted, I guess, into trying to do novels.

Dunno, we'll have to see if I don't just flake out again.

I've been doing a bit of scanning over the week, trying to get back up to date. The shows I've watched are:

• Tentai Senshi Sunred (Astro Fighter Sunred) was quite good. I didn't have a clue what to expect going into it, but it turned out to be a parody comedy type show. The parody is quite wide-ranging, but the most humorous aspect is that the hero is actually a bit of a jerk, whereas the evil villains are actually quite nice. The animation is a little crude, but deliberately so - think inspired by South Park.
• Tales of the Abyss was just about bearable. It's a fantasy job and it's adapted from an RPG. It was quite pretty and nicely animated, but the problem was in the story-telling - it was crammed full of info dumps and expositional speeches which were totally dull. I'm guessing it livens up later, but the poor story telling (and the general generic nature of the show) annoyed me so much I can't be arsed to even think about finding out.

That basically means I'm now almost up-to-date with the new January shows. There are some odds and sods left, about the only major ones being the Gonzo shows that were made available legally via Crunchyroll and Bost and I've started one of those – Blassreiter.

Speaking of Bost, it looks like it's died a death, without any new shows added in, well, years. Which is a real shame as I liked the Bost service. It's certainly way, way better than Crunchyroll, which I've decided is an abomination of a site.

final destination 3

This was on over the weekend and since I was a bit knackered on Sunday, as I've mentioned, I gave it a watch.

I was quite surprised actually. I mean, it's not really brilliant, as such, but it was certainly more entertaining than I thought it was going to be.

Unlike the second one which is more of a direct sequel, in a way this was almost a complete re-hash of the first Final Destination. But generally all three have essentially followed the same format.

One of the characters gets a premonition of his and a group of his friend's deaths (usually it's a bizarre set of events that leads up to the disaster). He then panics and as a result they get out of the way when the disaster does indeed happen and loads of people die.

After that, the people who survived start to die, but crucially they do so in the order they did in the original disaster. As such, the one who foresaw the deaths works out that "Death" is out to get them. This is how it explains the bizarre accidents that caused both the original disaster, as well as the subsequent deaths.

Essentially that doesn't really matter - what the Final Destination films are really about are the bizarre deaths, which are often quite brutal and fairly violent and gory. Often they're quite darkly humorous as well and on that front 3 delivers in spades and that's why I enjoyed it.

As a film it's quite poor, but as a "watch the good-looking kids get butchered" way to spend 90-minutes it's quite entertaining.

On thing that did annoy me was that there was a whole thing about a bunch of photos that were predicting the kid's deaths. To me, this seemed un-necessarily complicated and a bit abstract for the film, tbh.

magicians

This week's rental DVD was magicians.

It stars David Mitchell and Robert Webb, who are a double act. They've had their own show on BBC, which I have to admit was a little disappointing, but they're also the stars of Peep Show on Channel 4, which is one of the best sitcoms ever.

Mitchell and Webb don't write Peep Show, but Magicians was written by the people who do. It was also directed by a guy who used to be a Magician (in fact, I think the premise for the film was his idea). It also had Jessica Stevenson in it (off of Spaced), who actually probably gave the best performance.

If I'm honest, however, the film was a little disappointing. Trouble is I've kinda been thinking through as to why and I can't work it out. I think it was more about a combination of little things, rather than anything major.

For one thing it didn't really seem to actually have a stance on magicians themselves. Whilst that sort of thing is clearly just a backdrop to the story (stories are always about characters) it still came across as being partly appreciating magicians and partly thinking they're sados.

Another problem was that the jokes seemed a bit thin. Whilst you expect movies to be more focused on a core plot than perhaps a TV sitcom can get away with, doing so to the detriment of the gags seems like a bad idea.

I also found it difficult to like or, indeed, sympathise with any of the characters. In the peep show, I can understand Mitchell and Webb's characters as people, even when they behave despicably. Here they both just seemed like people I didn't really care about.

There wasn't enough establishing them as people for me to care about - just a montage of photos over the credits and a single scene where they chop a woman's head off. Why does this make me care about them? I didn't really care about her.

That last one is actually a pretty big one and may be the core story.

It certainly carries over into my frustration over David Mitchell's character and Jessica Stevenson - their relationship is all over the place and it actually got a little annoying (and confusing, to be honest).

Lastly is a bit of an odd one - it sort of seems like it's trying to be a parody of The Prestige. Unfortunately it only does the in a half-arsed way, plus The Prestige is a brilliant film and doesn't really deserve any sort of parodying.

yesterday's meeting

I was away all day yesterday for a work meeting. It wasn't the most productive. I thought I'd laid quite a good groundwork for a suggestion I made, but when it came down to it the customer didn't really seem at all keen.

I was told to give it a go, but as a 'redo' so that she could compare it to the existing one. So I've now got to do that, but I think I need to make it somewhat funky so that it's more impressive than I would otherwise have done and so wins the point.

Anyway I was a bit disheartened by that result to the meeting, so I was edging towards a bad mood. Then, when I was driving home the traffic was horrendous.

A while back some signs went up saying that they were going to be some roadwork's at the traffic lights that are just down the road from me. When the date came the workmen appeared, but the roadwork's actually seemed fairly minor.

However, I now suspect that was due to the extremely cold weather and they've only now started properly.

It's an absolute nightmare - they've turned the normal lights off and put temporary ones it. But of course the temporary ones have a completely different timing to the normal ones so that traffic quickly backs up and I got trapped in it yesterday.

I've had a look on multimap as I've always know there are some rat-run type minor roads that connect the main roads. I think I've identified an alternative route.

It kinda depends on the queue not reaching biblical proportions - if it spills all the way back on the A31 there's little I can do - but otherwise I should be able to muddle my way through.

This last weekend was a bit of an odd one. I sort of dashed around on Friday and Saturday like a blue-arsed fly. I was trying to get stuff done so I clear the decks and spend all Sunday scanning staff but I think I actually burnt myself out a bit so I only did a bit of scanning (well, it was a fair bit, but not quite what I'd planned).

Anyway, I watched some of the last stuff from the October '08 season:

• Hakushaku to Yosei (Earl and Fairy) was, if I'm honest, dull. It's sort of set in England from around the Edwardian or Victorian era somewhere, though only nominally - loads of it is inaccurate/fictionalised. It's also clearly aimed at girls with a pretty boy male lead who the girl is falling in love with but he's a bit of a bad boy rogue type... blah, blah, dull.
• Inazuma Eleven was okay, I guess. It's a kid's show and as those sorts of things go it was reasonable enough. It was sort of about a football (soccer) team, but it was quickly apparent this was more fantasy than actual football.
• Mouryou no Hako was really good. It was a bit on the weird side - there seems to be a lot of hidden mystery and quite a complex plot, but then those are never bad things :).

There are only one or two more shows to go, which is quite good timing as the half-season January '09 shows are just starting to get fansubbed.

Interestingly, though, quite a few appear to be now featuring on Crunchyroll. I have mixed feelings about that, as I'm not a fan of the crunchyroll site, but it's good to see that it's starting to happen.