on my 'to read' list....

No, you probably won't appreciate it, but what the hell.... looks like a fun book, it is apparently the original with a few insertions to the text to add zombie fun....

Departures...

Saw a great movie just before I left Sing Sing. Okuribito (Departures) won an Oscar for best foreign film this year. Its a really beautiful film about a guy who moves back to his home town and answers a misprinted job advert and lands a job as a Nokanshi, someone who prepares the body and puts it into a coffin (in front of the family). The beauty of the film is just how elegantly and sensitively they convey the profession. I was entranced by the elaborate ritual every time it was performed. The acting is superb and the observations on how the younger generation of Japanese are moving away from the country and its traditions is well done.

Whole bunch-a-movies...

13.5 hour flight, video on demand, desire not to sleep, limited tolerance for serious films. Watched:
1. Shin ge jeon (Divine Weapon)- Korean historical film, armies, gunpowder, romance
2. Body of Lies - not bad spy/war on terror movie
3. Max Payne - half baked action movie based on a much better (old) computer game
4. Yojimbo (The Bodyguard) - Fun Kurosawa movie, all swords and samuris...
5. City of Ember - Beautiful kids movie, full of cool machienry and design
6. Pilot episode of 'Burn Notice' - Excellent comedy tv series. Kind of like Nip/Tuck but with a spy stuck in Miami...

Think I've exhausted most of the trivial films on the way here, might have to watch some serious ones on the way back... damn

Working class colonialism...

Finally managed to haul my ass to Colbar this weekend. Its kind of an English bar... kind of. Its stuck completely in the middle of nowhere, off Portsdown Road. The whole road is full of black and white houses and feels very colonial and sleepy. The 'bar' is more of a shed serving English Ales and simple food, mainly English (fish and chips, bangers and mash) but also some chinese and india food. V.cheap food. An impressive array of Fullers beers (I'd never heard of Old Bob until now). Kind of cool to be sitting around rickety tables drinking ale on a tropical evening...

clocking in...

This is sooo sooo cool...
(its a clock)
(from here)

Places I'd love to inhabit...

This place looks wonderful, would probably make a great secret headquarters.....
(more pictures here)

The tedious case of Benjamin Button...

Against my better judgement I went to see The Curious case of Benjamin Button last night. My initial feeling was 'that's 3 hours of my life I'm not getting back'....

ok, I'm sure that technically it was very very clever... Brad looks very old, Brad looks a bit younger, Brad looks like Brad, Brad looks like a teenager etc....

I'm assuming that the fools who reviewed the movie were so amazed by what can be done with makeup and computers that they forgot that the movie was tedious and THREE HOURS LONG.

Ok, so Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swindon were both pretty good. But the whole film still felt like Forrest Gump... a 3 hour long Forrest Gump....which occasionally wanted to be Amelie. (and failed pretty badly).

It didn't help that while Brad did try acting pretty well, the writers had decided that not only did Benjamin curiosuly get younger instead of older but that he was also dumber than Forrest... leaving Brad alternating between looking at people charmingly and slowly drawling a line of romantic pseudo-philosophy.

And seriously, it was three hours long, and felt like four.... By the time BB was a teenager I just wanted him to dye. Especially as the story was intercut with his wife+daughter many years later (tragically being hit by huricane Katrina). I guess this kind of hit a nerve because the need to have flashbacks to the present was what really pissed me off about 'Saving Private Ryan' and 'Schnindlers List'. Admitidly this time it added a whole extra (if very predictably) layer to the movie (he is, unsurprisingly, her father).

Movie critics should be drowned in their own popcorn and I want my money back....

Had a geeky macho moment at the Cu Chi tunnels. So many different guns, so much fun to be had...
(come on... when do you ever get to do this in real life)

M60 machine gun (Weapon of the American oppressor)












AK47 (weapon of the righteous freedom fighters)














The aftermath (no I didn't shoot all of these)

Wow...

(thanks Owen)

Obamaday

I like this tribute to the obama-mantra..... (via BB)