yawn

I've been so tired most of this week.

For some reason, on Sunday I got very little sleep. I've no real idea why - I just didn't feel very tired and so didn't sleep. But then on Monday I must admit I didn't feel bad as such - mentally a big sluggish, maybe, but not too bad.

However, Monday night I had a terrible nights sleep. I felt really hot for some reason, even though it wasn't really hot weather. Then at about 3:30am something woke me up - I haven't a clue what - and I struggled to get back to sleep.

It's really tough for me at this time of year (close to the Summer Solstice - the longest day of the year) as it almost doesn't get dark. I mean, it gets dark as in it's not light, but it's not dark in the same way it is in the middle of winter. Add to that potential moonlight and it makes it difficult for me to sleep.

I'm kinda weird in that I need for it to be silent and dark when I try to go to sleep. I'm a big fan of earplugs for that reason, but I've also tried sleep masks and those just don't work. What I've had to do in my current lodgings is fasten black bin bags to the curtains with safety pins, because it has white curtains. White curtains are almost useless at blocking out light.

Anyway, Tuesday the lack of sleep really caught up with me. I had some important work to do and I really struggled to get it done as my mind just kept drifting away.

Even in the evening I really struggled to even make my dinner. It was like some Herculean effort just to do a baked potato :/. I certainly wasn't in the mood to continue with scanning stuff. Oh - dunno if I mentioned that the new Japanese mags did turn up, on Monday. That makes two whole months worth of mags to scan, plus the next Megami turns up next week, I believe.

So, anyway, Tuesday night I was hopping that my body would just say "enough is enough" and I'd be out like a light. Well that kinda happened - I got off quickly, but, then the most bizarre thing happened.

In the middle of the night, with an almighty crash, one of my posters fell of the wall, waking me up. I know - how totally random is that? I did get back to sleep quite quickly, but still it meant I was fairly knackered still on Wednesday.

However, I did manage to summon up the willpower to do some scanning on Wednesday and Thursday evenings. I only got through the first animedia and a bit of the first newtype though, so still loads to do. I also watched the following:

Higepiyo was bonkers. This is bonkers in a good way - a mildly deranged comedy, rather than a shouty madcap one. I have to admit there were some patchiness though - episode 3 raised hardly a smile from me, whereas 4 had me belly-laughing towards the end. But overall it's a series I'd buy, I think - especially as it's a series of shorts, so even the duff eps wouldn't drag.

Queen's Blade. The first episode featured the Worst Translation Evar. It was so bad it was almost like watching it without subtitles as it made little sense. However, eps 2 and 3 were better translated and I have to say I didn't it was all that bad.

I'd seen a lot of people proclaiming it as the worst thing ever, but these people are idiots. I've mentioned before I don't understood the almost militant prudishness that seems to be quite prevalent in modern anime fans. It's like the very idea of sex offends them.

Not that there's any sex in Queens Blade (well, not in the first 3 eps anyway) but there are lots of exposed nipples and a general cheesecake pervasiveness. But what can you expect, it's inspired by an erotic fighting game where the aim is to get the girls naked. And it's not like it isn't quite self aware - they know what they're doing and they're having fun with it. The result isn't exactly ground-breaking, but it isn't the worst thing evar either.

Y'know it's been a bit weird lately as there's been shed loads for me to blog about, but I'm also kinda aware my posts are becoming giganto-huge. For example, there's BB10 stuff and the whole F1 shenanigans which I've hardly mentioned.

double whammy

Ha ha: here's a surprise - more film reviews!

Told you I was bored and lazy over the weekend, didn't I?

So here's a double whammy of film reviews on consecutive days, and in more ways that one as this is about two films.

devil's advocate

First up is Devil's advocate.

This starred Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino and I was surprised at how good it was.

I've never really rated Reeves as an actor - he's always seemed very wooden to me - but his performance here was actually pretty good. His accent, which is supposed to be deep south, is rubbish and slips all over the place, but otherwise he's kinda convincing.

The basic plot - as the name suggests - is that Reeves ends up as the lawyer to the Devil. This is sort of a twist, I guess, but it's not the film's proper twist. It has two of those and the first is the most successful.

Not wanting to spoiler too much, but the final twist is one of those that a lot of people hate, although to be fair it also leaves us with a sort of anti-twist at the very end to counter that, but still it wasn't a particularly good way to resolve it.

So yeah, I wasn't expecting much but it was actually pretty good.

insomnia

The second film was the reverse - I was expecting a lot, but it kinda failed to deliver.

The basic problem was I didn't really buy into the insomnia thing. The idea was that Pacino's character goes up north to Alaska to help solve a murder (this in itself seems a bit odd, but setting it aside). When you get sufficiently far up North you get that weird effect where the sun never sets.

The idea then was that Pacino can't sleep because of all this bright light. Well, okay, I'm not that much of a luddite that I can't poke out some hidden meanings - the real reason for the continued insomnia after the first night is guilt.

"What I didn't buy into was Pacino's character's attempts to solve he problem.

First off, he's in a hotel that apparently doesn't have any curtains. That has to be a major clanger - no curtains at all so far up North? Nah. Also, they would have had proper black-out curtains that let no light through.

Then he tries to solve it by putting brown tape over the windows. Only he leaves some cracks... but then doesn't cover them over. He also only puts one layer on.

For some super-genius crime-solving cop, he's being a bit dumb here, but okay. What else?

Oh yeah, he doesn't go and get any sleeping pills. Surely even Alaska has pharmacies selling sleeping pills - even just the natural herbal ones.

He also doesn't buy one of those face masks. He also doesn't try getting so hammered he passes out.

Now as I say, the real thing is the guilt, but it's like if he'd still stayed awake having tried that stuff I'd have bought it. Not trying any of it just makes him seem dumb and hence the whole film (being based on how smart he is) falls apart.

hancock

Y'know, generally I write these film reviews some time in advance. Generally speaking, I watch my rental DVD over the weekend and then on Monday one of the first things I do after writing Monday's blog is write the film review.

Partly this is because it helps the fresher it is in my mind and partly it helps me to know I have at least one pre-written thing for the blog should things get hectic. Occasionally, however, I struggle to write the review and things get a bit more condensed.

That's basically what's happened here. I'm a little unsure quite what to say. You may have noticed I often try to include non-sequitors in my reviews. Points that seem random but then generally come back to have some relevant meaning.

Clearly the opening of this review is just such a non-sequitor bit (actually I was going to go on about what Hancock means and how we use John Doe more in this country, but everyone knows all that by now, right?). I'm kinda doubting it will come around to mean anything, though.

The trouble I've been having is I have quite mixed feelings about Hancock.

While I was watching the film I quite enjoyed it. Or at the least the first half was enjoyable. The idea of a superhero that's a self-hating bum is intrigued. A hero who tries to help people but either makes a bit of a mess of it or causes untold damage that's not really necessary is a great hook.

The idea of a PR man who comes in to improve the hero's image is a clever satire and the idea that the noble hero falls in love with another man's wife is also very intriguing.

The problem is that things go distinctly pear-shaped in the second half. The problem is that they kinda back themselves into some corners, story wise, that then need explaining away.

The next bit is very spoiler-heavy, btw, so you may want to stop reading.

So basically one of the problems is that the PR man is a genuinely nice guy. He has this campaign all about big companies helping people out - social responsibility and all that.

How the hell he became a P.R. guy and he keeps his job, I've no idea. But the knock on effect is that it makes Hancock seem like a real piece of shit.

When he's making a balls up of everything and beaming mean you still kinda like him from a lovable grouch / unfortunate looser / misunderstood hero point of view. When he's putting the moves on another man's wife - a nice, decent man who has also helped Hancock - he's just a shit.

So they resolve this with a really great twist - she (Mary) has superhero powers too. Only that's not the resolution, the resolution is that somehow Hancock and her are a matched pair (eh?) who are kinda fated to be together (er, okay...) and are drawn to each other (hmmm...).

And it makes it a bit rubbish - who really believes in fated loves? There needed to be something more substantial - something tangible for why he and her start to fall in love. The twist wouldn't have seemed so random then.

This "lack of evidence" is also a problem when Hancock is in jail. It's one thing to have a news report saying crime is up; it would have been another to show us more of this. Yes, there's the bank robbery, but an escalating crime wave needed more back up than this one incident and a news report.

Also again, the 'evidence' is a bit wobbly in some other stuff too - Hancock and Mary cancel each other out (huh?) when they get close. Oh, but it's meant to happen slowly and it happens quickly here - I mean, why bother even adding that as it just makes it seem even more random :/.

Also the idea that they've both been around for thousands of years is just not sensible. They try to say they're angels, but the powers they display aren't exactly very angelic.

You see what I mean? Why I struggled to write it?

It didn't really even work as a parody of the bizarre stuff that happens in comic books.

I've a bucket-load of criticisms of the film, but I equally keep coming back to the fact that while I was sat there watching it I enjoyed it a great deal.

The gags are good, the performances are good and the effects are some of the best I've seen, but the logical flaws in the plot undermined a lot of that.

holiday 4 - odds and sods

So this is the odds and sods round-up for the holiday.

The weather was hot. Very hot. Think as hot as it gets in the UK and this was only May, so I can't guess what it's like in mid-summer.

I got the crap burnt out of me - the holiday was a couple of weeks ago and I'm still peeling. Indeed, I stopped peeling and then started again, presumably as more damaged layers of skin made their way to the surface :/.

Unfortunately, all the weather forecasts I'd looked at beforehand hinted there may be rain, so I'd not really packed exclusively for HOT weather - I even had a jumper! But this also meant I didn't think about sun cream.

But what made the temperature worse was the humid. It was horribly oppressive. As part of the Kangaroo system you can get the track stats and on the Saturday it said it was over 70% humidity. The tour guide said he'd never known anything like it and he goes every year.

Overall, it was too much for me. Sun lovers would have been in their element I'm sure, but I find heat like that unpleasant.

I've no idea how the French road system works. Bizarrely it appeared that when the pedestrian lights turned green cars could still turn into that road. This seemed very dangerous as it put cars and pedestrians in direct conflict.

But the French clearly ignore all of the traffic signals and rules of the road anyway (how very French of them!).

It does seem to mean that horns become an integral part of the French way of driving. It was driving me and my Dad bonkers all the horn beeping. In England someone would have thumped them for honking their horns all the time.

However, what really took me surprise (and in contrast to this) was how nice everyone was. As an example, when we were examining the trams to see how they worked an old lady wandered over and, in very good English, explained it all to us.

When I was at school I did GCSE French. Languages and their intricacies are a long way from my comfort zone, but I did okay in the end. Obviously, being basically a trip to France, this potentially meant I'd need to exercise my French and those GCSEs were getting on for half a lifetime ago now.

Still I was impressed with how much I remembered. Although I was more impressed with how much English was generally spoken. I guess part of this is that Nice and the like are big holiday towns so they get a lot of tourists.

We also used the French rail system. My impression is a bit of a mixed bag.

One of the things that's very obvious is that they have lots of people on the platforms - ticket attendants, help, guards, etc. On British platforms you're lucky to see anyone who works their.

But as such, rather than have automated announcements, you're supposed to ask them. On British platforms there's regular, automated announcements and a far better board system. A classic example was when we went to Cannes our proper train pulled in on a different platform and there were no announcements at all!

However, the service is a lot cheaper (it's massively subsidised) and what you get is better. There are loads of stops and loads of different types of service - fast ones and stopping. Also they have these double-decker trains so there's loads more seating and it was mostly nice, new stuff.

Plus, the commy bastards had a bloody strike while we were there. And it appeared to be a strike that was essentially about nothing in particular.

So yeah - mixed bag.

I'll hopefully be posting pics later - I'm focused more on clearing this scanning backlog at the moment, so it may be next week. Oh and the Japanese mags did turn up yesterday. Signs would indicate the courier did have problems, but I'm not sure why, as the addresses on the packages were definitely correct :/.

lazy days

Odd sort of weekend. I struggled a bit to motivate myself to do anything - this is easily evidenced by the fact that I'd watched all of the week's TV I'd recorded by Saturday afternoon. Indeed, I actually watched a couple of films I'd recorded.

However, on the tail end of Sunday I did manage to get a bit of scanning done. It was nothing excessive - just last month's megami, but it's a start. Oh and I forgot to mention - I'm a bit worried about the other mags (Newtype, animedia and animage) for this month.

They were apparently posted on the 9th and it's now the 15th. Whilst that isn't a long time you may remember I normally get the mags so fast I'm amazed at the speed, but it's getting on for a week now. But most worrying of all I got a phonecall from an unregistered number on Friday. Unfortunately, I was actually on another call for work (some idiot blathering on for ages) so I couldn't take it.

This is not a good sign because it's happened before - I've had a call from the courier basically saying "they've poxed up the address - can I confirm the actual address?". If I've missed a similar call this month I won't be best pleased.

Anyway, did some scanning, so I watched some anime too:

K-ON! was so moe it was almost painful. Unlike many I've never really had any beef with moe so I'm not actually complaining there, it's just so blatant that that's what it's all about it was kinda like a punch to the gut of cuteness.

Not that the show is bad or anything - I found myself laughing at the funny bits and going "dawww" at the "dawww" bits - although the band angle is a bit of a mixed bag. I mean it's interesting, but it comes across as massively unrealistic - the girls with no experience seem to pick up their instruments and basically be as good as the one with years of experience.

I have to admit I found Basquash! a bit disappointing. The idea of giant basket-ball playing mecha seems great, but I dunno, overall the show seemed missing something.

Maybe it's because I was expecting certain things and then those things weren't there, but instead the things that were there were rather cliche. That's best explained with some examples. I though the mecha were going to transform - the main one is shown as having a cab that looks like a car. Now I guess that's actually because it's an improvised machine, but still transforming mecha would have been cooler.

Also, there a girl love interest and in a flashback that made me cringe the boy realises (wait for it) they knew each other as kids and promised to get married. Now there's something that you don't see every day - oh no, wait, yes you do.

I dunno, the pace also didn't help. I watched three eps and it only just felt like it was getting going.

I think I'll give it the benefit of the doubt, tough - perhaps it's one that grows on you. Plus the action scenes were great and the artistry is fantastic.