2009, Week 3

It's been a pretty miserable week, weather wise. Not cold, but all snowy, sleety and, erm, wety. And because of this most of my free time this week was spent watching movies, still getting scared by Dead Space and catching up on series 1 of The Wire. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Jen's been away in weekend in sunny Birmingham with Becky, which has meant I got the rare opportunity to do what I want all weekend, which is mostly watching movies, playing Dead Space and watching TV. (This of course is meant to be a hilarious wry juxtaposition on the previous paragraph, as I am in no way 'under the thumb', but I didn't know how to make it work and/or funny. If anything it shows how tragically dull my life is. boo).

Most of the weekend was spent round Scott and John's, doing the above. Scott's installed a wood burner in his house, which has led to a fun new game: Will it Burn. The first thing John said when I walked in on Saturday was 'does it smell of cat piss in here?'* which is pretty odd considering they don't have a cat. Maybe they've been burning cats. I think that's taking Will it Burn too far. Let's face it, you're not gonna get much heat out of cat.

I've managed to watch a few films this weekend, three (Eden Lake, Pineapple Express & Death Race) consecutively.

Eden Lake was enjoyable yet predictable. It's basically a run-of-the-mill 'yokels chasing tourists round a forest' type film, but with hoodies instead of yokels. I think the idea of using hoodies is inspired, because it does make the scenario slightly more believable. Most of the kids clearly didn't want to be torturing and killing people, but due to peer pressure and escalation they are forced into it. Unfortunately we managed to write the film's entire plot within the first five minutes, with a selection of endings. The film makers went with what we dubbed 'the comedy/ironic' ending, which was a tad disappointing.

This said, it was a well made film, and managed to drive us up the wall, which i'm pretty sure was intentional. The closing shot was especially effective at leaving the viewer feeling empty and frustrated, ruing over the futileness of it all. I also think it's hilarious that a movie about feral kids and their ignorant piece of shit scum parents was given 5 stars from the Daily Mail.

Pineapple Express didn't improve too much the second time round. I'll admit that It has its moments, but there's long stretches with no real laughs, let alone belly laughs. It does have a great line when Rogan is worried that when his girlfriend goes to college she will "start listening to Godspeed You! Black Emperor and The Shins and become a lesbian". I like The Shins, so maybe I should give Godspeed and Lesbianism a go.

Death Race was far better then expected, violent, stupid and there was plenty of live action stunts. Yet, I can't think of more then a sentence to say about it. Unexpectedly, out of the three movies, I probably enjoyed it the most.

I also watched 'Les Diaboliques', which i'll talk about more in a Blog/Rant I want to try and write this week. Finally, I saw the last half of Rocky 5. I've never seen a Rocky film before but it appears that they are morality tales, where the moral is that the only way of getting respect from your wife, child, coach, fans and enemy is to beat the shite out of said enemy in a parking lot. The priest cheering Rocky on when he was hospitalising some young ruffian was hilarious.

I began playing Continuous Number Plate Spotting (CNPS for short) a few weeks back, and I'm currently up to 11. I think this fact is a clear indicator of how bored I am driving to work and back. Nether the less, I'm going to make it 999. It may mean weekends touring the country's car parks but at least it's a hobby. And it's better then train-spotting, they can spot trains in any arbitrary order, where's the fun in that? Losers.

All in all, a pretty dull week so congrats if you've read this far. One more thing, I've finally paid up the outstanding balance on Glastonbury, so Jen has no escape now.

* They were burning wood that they think a cat may of peed on, which I spun for comedy value. Hilarious!