August has been a slow blogging month. Not sure why - as usual I’ve got a lot of nothing in particular to be verbose about. It’s more of a “can’t be arsed” phase. My Blog Reading has also fallen victim to that. So, dear diary, what have I been doing? Well, I have been…

Watching films
I saw “Hellboy 2: The Golden Army” a couple of weeks ago. I had the inside scoop, the skinny, the low-down and could have reported about it off the record and on the QT but I failed to do so. Now it’s out. Is it worth seeing? Yes. It’s visually stunning and very impressive stuff. Having said that, it’s not great and possibly not even as good as the first one. For sure I enjoyed it while I watched it and it made me laugh and thrilled me in all the right places but it didn’t seem right. There was something amiss and I still can’t put my finger on it a couple of weeks later.

“Wall-E”, on the other hand, was excellent. Yes it’s a little heavy handed with the environmental message but it’s still a very good film and very enjoyable. I liked it a lot and can’t wait for the DVD. The only downside to that evening was going to another cinema that has a bar and restaurant to find that they were showing Fight Club in a screening that was being introduced by Chuck Palahniuk. That would have been excellent. Still, I saw the man himself, downing a large glass of red wine before being ushered off the premises. I wanted to ask him to hit me as hard as he could but to be fair, he’s not very big and I would have paggered him. I probably would have done to. You know, to destroy something beautiful and all that.

“The Third of The Night” is a very obscure 1970’s polish film about Poland under Nazi rule. It’s by the same bloke who directed Possession which I talked about a couple of months ago (CBA2L). It’s quite surreal and beautiful in it’s own way. It’s also more than a little harrowing in parts. Which, for a film set in WW2 Poland is hardly suprising I suppose.

“Planet Terror” - the second part of the Tarantino/Rodriguez Grindhouse collaboration - was very entertaining. I liked it much more than Death Proof which was a bit dull. Extremely over the top, very tongue in cheek and full of ridiculously spurty blood squibs.

“Smokin’ Aces” was an amusing diversion. Unfortunatley, it was meant to be a convoluted story full of interesting plot twists but it wasn’t really. Not when you watch something like Usual Suspects or Memento. To be honest, the story was highly predictable owing to the fact that a subplot was introduced that they spent a lot of time on which meant that it was obviously quite significant and the only way it could pan out was, as it happens, exactly as it panned out. On the other hand, guessing who was going to make it through to the end was quite fun. Not great, but entertaining.

I taught my son how to play video games a week and a half ago. He went from not being able to use a mouse to being able to switch the PC on, select the correct user logon, open up My Computer and launch the CD inside of 7 days. Not bad for a 2.5 year old. His mother, on the other hand, is no longer talking to me as he now keeps asking to play it all the time. I’m wondering whether he’ll appreciate a Wii for christmas but I also have a suspiscion that buying one could end in divorce.

My contract in this far-away city has been renewed for, potentially, another 6 months. Mainly because I’m now leading a project to redesign a shitty system. If I leave, it won’t get done. Keeps me in a job but unfortunately also keeps me away from home. My daughter is 4 months old and I’ve hardly seen her. At the end of this, she’ll be nearly a year old, probably walking and I’ll have missed it all. I try not to think about it too much. On the other hand, I’m moving to a 2-bed flat so that they can all come up and stay and we won’t all be sleeping in the same bed.

Dieting is going quite well. Writing, not so much. I provided a lot of feedback on one script (by a lot, I mean I was in danger of really pissing off Andy C by being extremely brutal about his first draft. On the other hand, I hope that in return, he’ll do the same for me. I also hope I can be detached enough from my own writing to be able to critique it as much.)

My request for a story/script for a short film turned up one volunteer in guise of none of other than Mr D4D himself. The September 15th deadline I suggested might be pushing it a little though. Still, if it gets done before end of September but doesn’t get into the film fest, you might all be able to get to see it earlier than you would otherwise, you lucky, lucky people you.

So, how have you all been? And what shall I write about next?