Meme-jacked from Karen; memes may be stupid, but they can be good fun (although I haven't heard the songs yet, so I may be saying otherwise by the end of the post).
Got no iPod, so with WinAmp at full steam, let's see what answers a random shuffle (of everything on the computer) gives to the following questions:
Got no iPod, so with WinAmp at full steam, let's see what answers a random shuffle (of everything on the computer) gives to the following questions:
Not really in the mood for big reviews (and beginning to realise that I tend to say only good things about most films, which will get very dull very quickly), but I watched a number of new [to me] films over the weekend. The number being 4.
For a Few Dollars More was a good way to spend the bulk of a Saturday afternoon, having seen A Fistful of Dollars the previous week. Likewise, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was a good way of spending a Sunday afternoon.
Saturday evening was carefully whiled away enjoying the first half of a Michael Caine double bill that my Mother sent on to me (having got it free in the Mail on Sunday), namely The Eagle has Landed.. The second half of that double bill had been The Fourth Protocol, which I watched last week and thought I'd told you about, but since it seems not, I'll find a few words.
Not such a good plan for a Sunday evening was JFK, since I realised partway through I had a pencilled-in plan to meet some people online, and had to come back to it a couple of hours later. Although it's Monday, so clearly I survived, and can even remember a little of what went on in the film.
Spoilers for all follow.
For a Few Dollars More was a good way to spend the bulk of a Saturday afternoon, having seen A Fistful of Dollars the previous week. Likewise, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was a good way of spending a Sunday afternoon.
Saturday evening was carefully whiled away enjoying the first half of a Michael Caine double bill that my Mother sent on to me (having got it free in the Mail on Sunday), namely The Eagle has Landed.. The second half of that double bill had been The Fourth Protocol, which I watched last week and thought I'd told you about, but since it seems not, I'll find a few words.
Not such a good plan for a Sunday evening was JFK, since I realised partway through I had a pencilled-in plan to meet some people online, and had to come back to it a couple of hours later. Although it's Monday, so clearly I survived, and can even remember a little of what went on in the film.
Spoilers for all follow.
This morning, I was awoken by a text message. One of my friends had - ridiculously early in the morning - decided to remind me that it was Talk like a Pirate day.
I forgot, until I noticed Pete telling people about it. Check out the website, it's a good laugh (although not all that different to last year's, if I remember rightly).
I forgot, until I noticed Pete telling people about it. Check out the website, it's a good laugh (although not all that different to last year's, if I remember rightly).
So, once again, people with nothing better to do threaten to bring the country to a halt with 'strike action' aimed at voicing their discontent over the price of fuel. I wish people would stop calling it a strike, since I'm sure these people don't have a union and I doubt there has been any fair balloting, but still. Although to be fair, provided they're not physically preventing people from working, I suppose it's fair enough, in the same way that my sympathy for genuine strike action runs out the moment workers start bringing about unreasonable inconvenience or danger to the public.
But I digress. The point was that after all the warnings and the panic, only a handful of protesters turned out, and nothing much got stopped at all. So the petrol stations were fine, right?
Wrong.
But I digress. The point was that after all the warnings and the panic, only a handful of protesters turned out, and nothing much got stopped at all. So the petrol stations were fine, right?
Wrong.
While I don't want to start an argument about A-lists, a couple of things are coming off my blogroll (because they don't fit with the others, which are blogs I tend to follow day to day), but are still places I want to recommend to you. Jedi Owl has some wonderful Star Wars chain e-mail survey pieces, but the rest of the blog I don't really seem to have a lot in common with (which is surprising, considering how much of a Star Wars fan I am myself). The blog of GWB is tragically funny (tragic in the same way as the real thing; a success on the part of the author) but I forget to check it and it hasn't updated for a while anyway. Doctor No Last Name has gone 404 (as I suspect those anonymous personal blogs are perhaps prone to), which is a shame. It's also a neat trick, considering that it's actually a 'server not found' error, and yet they've served it anyway and returned 'page not found'.
Some of those may come back later, or particular pages might go into the linkroll (if I decide to start a rolling one, alongside or instead of my underused existing one which was intended to keep links in place), but for the time being, they aren't blogs I regularly read, so they aren't staying on the blogroll.
The Stalker is staying there, even though the link is dead at time of writing. I hope it will be back soon, since it's his fault I'm here (and he should be made to pay...).
Kidding. Really need some daft emoticons here. Maybe I'll go and steal the ones from my phpBB board.
Some of those may come back later, or particular pages might go into the linkroll (if I decide to start a rolling one, alongside or instead of my underused existing one which was intended to keep links in place), but for the time being, they aren't blogs I regularly read, so they aren't staying on the blogroll.
The Stalker is staying there, even though the link is dead at time of writing. I hope it will be back soon, since it's his fault I'm here (and he should be made to pay...).
Kidding. Really need some daft emoticons here. Maybe I'll go and steal the ones from my phpBB board.
As an update to this, I'm popping up briefly to say that I've now seen another 2 of the films, on top of Alien which I emboldened a couple of weeks ago. I'm not going to repost the list (yet; I have updated the original post though), but I think I've now seen about 37 of the IMDb's Top 100 films, having this weekend watched The Princess Bride and 12 Angry Men (reviews in other posts).
Tomorrow I'm going to print a copy of my list, since my mate down the pub (who keeps mentioning classic films and being shocked that I haven't seen them) has said that if I show it to him he'll start a campaign of lending me whichever ones he has, until such time as I'm as close as he can get me to having finished it. Which is nice of him.
At this rate I'm going to need a '100 films' category, like the Stalker's...
Edit: Have just noticed that The Princess Bride is now #115 in IMDb's Top 250. I should note, for accuracy, that I'm not trying to watch the current Top 100, merely the one that I stole from the Stalker and posted here
Tomorrow I'm going to print a copy of my list, since my mate down the pub (who keeps mentioning classic films and being shocked that I haven't seen them) has said that if I show it to him he'll start a campaign of lending me whichever ones he has, until such time as I'm as close as he can get me to having finished it. Which is nice of him.
At this rate I'm going to need a '100 films' category, like the Stalker's...
Edit: Have just noticed that The Princess Bride is now #115 in IMDb's Top 250. I should note, for accuracy, that I'm not trying to watch the current Top 100, merely the one that I stole from the Stalker and posted here
I'll be honest, I was expecting The Last Samurai to be bad. I mean, really bad. And I was pleasantly surprised. I tend to love films in general, but even accounting for that, this is a good one.
Spoilers follow. Some day I'll start being more consistent about whether I include spoilers, whether I warn about them, and how much I say before the 'Read More'.
Spoilers follow. Some day I'll start being more consistent about whether I include spoilers, whether I warn about them, and how much I say before the 'Read More'.
People have been telling me to see The Princess Bride for years. About 3 years, I suppose - before that I'd never heard of it - but since then a number of people have been most emphatic. Which is why when I found it in Virgin's 4 for £20 yesterday, I bought it.
No spoilers, I'm just using the More link to save some space.
No spoilers, I'm just using the More link to save some space.
And so ends a wonderfully successful weekend of home cinema-going. Alone, alas, but one day I'll get my house tidy enough to entertain (and if I'm to entertain more than one person at a time, get some more furniture, and perhaps a bigger place to put it in). In particular, it's put a significant dent in my need to catch up on the Internet Movie Database top 100 (I'll make a new post to update my effort on that front within a day or two, and once the Stalker is back online I'll link to his post that got me started), by fitting two of them into one week.
So, although it didn't begin with 12 Angry Men, my reviews will. It's absolutely brilliant. Ironically, no spoilers follow.
So, although it didn't begin with 12 Angry Men, my reviews will. It's absolutely brilliant. Ironically, no spoilers follow.
Incidentally, while stumbling around looking for some of the stuff for the last post, I guessed a duff URL and found the best HTTP 404 message yet: dead link.
Update [2007-07-13]: They broke it...
Update [2007-07-13]: They broke it...
Those of you who've been following the 'Trial Expires in n Days' posts will know that for some time now, I've been doing many things other than working on the remix of NIN's Only that I decided to work on once I found that the source loops were available online.
So, given that I'm clearly not going to do any more work on it, and they say that creative work is never finished, only abandoned, here is the semi-final abandonment of the Only remix that I'm referring to as Imaginative Masochism, for reasons that should be fairly obvious once you can get inside my head.
So, given that I'm clearly not going to do any more work on it, and they say that creative work is never finished, only abandoned, here is the semi-final abandonment of the Only remix that I'm referring to as Imaginative Masochism, for reasons that should be fairly obvious once you can get inside my head.
I don't know why I'm suddenly thinking about this now (actually, come to think about it, I do, but you don't want that story) but there were a couple of things about the annual A-Level results debate that bugged me, when the results came out two or three weeks ago.
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