As things stand Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire is the seventh best animated movie of the year, the fourth best documentary, the second best independent film, and the second best foreign language film. Even funnier than all of those is Rupert Grint as the second best supporting actor. *g*
Aside from that, Serenity is currently in the top 10 for best picture, funniest movie, most entertaining, and best action movie. Nathan Fillion and Summer Glau are in the top 10 for best actor and actress, Adam Baldwin is for best supporting actor, and of course Joss Whedon is for best director.
Harry Potter & Narnia The Christmas spirit is completely eluding my family this year. We don't even have a tree or any decorations or anything, and probably won't have. I still really enjoy seeing lots of other people's windows all lit up though, even if we don't make the effort ourselves.
I've got back into reading BtVS and ANGEL novels lately. I find the ANGEL novels to be very consistent in having well written and interesting stories, and the characterisation is usually spot-on. The BtVS ones are less consistent, but some authors create some awesome stories. I was pleased to realise that there was an early BtVS novel by Christopher Golden that I haven't yet read (Sins Of The Father), so I'm looking forward to making a start on that. I've mentioned this elsewhere, but I'm really surprised by how few people who watch the shows also read the novels. Especially now with the shows off air, I'd really have thought that lots of fans would have started to discover the novels to get their Buffyverse fix, but it really doesn't seem so. One problem with them is their lack of being canonical, and I know that shouldn't effect my enjoyment of them at all, but I can't help but be bothered that none of the things I'm reading about ever got acknowledged on the show, and sometimes eventually get contradicted. I've heard that Star Wars novels are all canonical and that George Lucas has to give approval to each one. It's a shame the same thing never happened with Joss' works, so that the books would be a true companion to the show rather than stories that exist to some extent outside of it. Still, the majority of them are well worth reading, I've found.
I saw Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire last week (weeks after everyone else saw it, I know), and found it to be by far the best Harry Potter movie ever. I enjoyed the first one a lot, and found the second one to be a step down, but then that is exactly how I found the first two books as well. The third book was miles and miles ahead of the first two, and yet the movie felt off to me and I didn't enjoy it as much as I had the first.
This one really worked for me though. I was so worried given that it was the same length as the previous movies, and yet the book was twice as long, that the massive cuts that would have to be made would have gutted the story entirely and left it barely comprehensible, but I think they did a remarkable job to cut things in a way to make the movie really work, flow well, and still cover the main and best parts of the book. Of course, a lot of things I had liked in the book had to be cut, but then I can still re-read the book whenever I want. The movies have a different job to do than the books, and I thought this was close to the very best they could do with the movie.
The only down side for me was some of the acting, but that's sort of inevitable, since when casting 11 year olds you can never tell if they are going to become good actors or not. The Phelps brothers and Rupert Grint were the worst offenders in my opinion, though it could just be my dislike of Ron's character that is clouding my opinions in Grint's case. And though I really like Emma Watson, she does seem to be trying too hard and so often ends up over-emphasising, well, the vast majority of her lines. It worked fine in the first couple of movies, because Years 7 and 8 pupils do often talk like that, but by the time people reach Year 10 they have stopped it. I think they really struck it gold with Daniel Radcliffe though, who has turned into a very good actor, and really does an amazing job carrying an entire movie on his shoulders and keeping his performances credible. The one other thing that doesn't quite work for me is Michael Gambon's Dumbledore. I can't complain too much because it can't be easy taking the place of a beloved actor who passed away, and had really made the role his own, but Gambon's Dumbledore so often sounds so harsh in comparison, and I find it quite jarring.
Those problems were not enough to drag the movie down much though. It'll probably end up being one of my top 20 movies of the year, and I definitely think it's the best Potter movie ever. I'll eagerly await the next movie, even knowing that they'll have to cut even more of that. Order Of The Phoenix is also my favourite of the books so far (though I know a lot of people consider it their least favourite, and even Rowling thinks it's too long, but I disagree with all of them :D), so I'll be even more eager to see it done well. I'll be confident if Mike Newell directs it though, after the excellent job he did with this movie.
I also saw The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobr, and found that to also be an excellent adaptation of the book. The friends who I saw the movie with were making fun of it from start to finish and didn't enjoy it even a little bit, and I guess the story (both the book and the movie) is a little simplistic, but I still think it's a lot of fun and don't really see why my friends disliked it as much as they did. Again, the child acting wasn't perfect (but unless there are four Dakota Fannings in the world, including two male ones, it's never going to be), though I really liked Anna Popplewell as Susan. The biggest problem was that Lucy's character is so young that any dialogue she has is going to seem incredibly simplistic, and I guess that can get a little tiresome after a while.
Still, the books is such a great work of imagination, and the movie was so completely faithful to it, that it's kind of hard not to like. The voice work was all really good, and stopped the talking animals from seeming in any way cheesy or silly. C.S. Lewis had said that he never wanted to see the Narnia books turned into movies or TV shows, but that was before all the recent technological advancements. I think he would have been very happy with how the movie turned out, and how Aslan came across. He was sufficiently powerful as a visual image, and Liam Neeson gave him the sort of authority and majesty that he has in the books. Best of all for me was Tilda Swinton as the White Witch. She played the role to perfection, bringing true coldness to the role during the majority of the movie, but also being completely vicious and evil during the battle scenes especially.
Overall I thought it was just a really good movie, and a really good adaptation of a book that a lot of people hold dear. The hype was out of control of course, though anything politically/religiously motivated is going to be like that. I wasn't even going to mention those elements, because I think the books and the movie work whether you're religious or not - you can take from the story what you want to take from it. Even if all the "the movie is propaganda" arguments are true, it doesn't really matter, since propaganda can still be art in my opinion, and in any case, I don't think this movie is like that at all. The themes are noticeable of course, especially if you are aware of them already, but it's nowhere near so obvious that it can't be appreciated as a story in its own right. It certainly didn't hamper my enjoyment of the movie at all.
I don't have as much to say about it as many do, and I didn't love it like many do, because I have no real emotional connection to the story. I didn't read the book until I was 20, so I never gave a single thought to Narnia as a child, I never grew up imagining it, so the movie simply had no way of working for me in the way it works for so many others. I enjoyed it a lot, but I don't really *care* about it, which is a shame I think, since it's so imaginative that it would be a really great think for a child to grow up imagining. In that way I'd put it around the same level with Charlie And The Chocolate Factory - a wonderfully created movie, that looks and sounds amazing, but which it isn't possible to *truly* appreciate unless you have some pre-existing connection to the stories that date back to your childhood.
Ok, this entry is getting long so I'll end it here. Except to mention that I really love Madonna's new song. The best she's released since probably her Ray Of Light days in my opinion. I guess it's impossible to go wrong when you use that awesome Abba sample, but still, she makes great use of it. I'm really looking forward to hearing her album now.
Doom Ok, so I didn't manage to do the updating every day thing. I'm really enjoying being back on LiveJournal though, so I'm not going to slip back out of it, and won't need to force myself to update every day to make sure of that. I've been really tired lately, and still am today to be honest. Partly it's the result of a messed up sleep pattern, but I also seem to be needing more sleep per night than I'm happy with.
I saw Doom last night. I'm a massive wrestling fan now, but back in 1997-1999 (before my BtVS obsession) I was *really* obsessed with it, and since those days I've been a huge fan of The Rock. Not only do I think he's incredibly talented, but I've really enjoyed his performances in the movies he's been in (even when the movies themselves have not been very good) and do think he's a genuinely good and charismatic actor. I really want his movies to do well, and I really want them to be good. So I badly wanted Doom to be a good movie. Don't get me wrong, I had no delusions of it being a potential Academy Award winner or anything, but just being great fun would have done.
Unfortunately, I think the movie took itself too seriously at times, because it wasted pretty much the entire first half of the movie with exposition. It was never a movie anyone was going to get incredibly invested in, and no one would have cared had they not explained everything in detail - we just wanted to see The Rock shooting the heck out of things and cracking funny one-liners. He was barely given any character at all in this though, and not nearly enough one liners. The other characters in the movie were all caricatures as well, and some of the performances were weak. Rosamund Pike, who I really liked as Jane in Pride And Prejudice, was especially poor. But really the acting wouldn't have mattered at all had there just been lots of fast-paced action from beginning to end, and it's a real shame there wasn't.
There was nothing especially awful about the movie - no cringe worthy moments, nothing embarrassingly stupid, it was just far too boring for far too much of the time. There was a pretty cool scene towards the end where the camera takes the look of a first person shooter, but I think the director put more thought into that one scene than into the rest of the movie combined. Really disappointing movie, and a lot less fun than it should have been. The Rock is capable of so much more, though I hear he's signed onto same lame PG Disney family movie next, so it seems that intelligent script choosing is not one of his talents.
I've seen some other movies too, better ones, but I'm way too tired to write any more now. I need sleep.
Flightplan I've been planning on seeing loads of movies in the cinema lately, but the wasting days includes not getting to the cinema when I should. Some movies I had wanted to see have gone from cinemas now, unfortunately. I'm especially disappointed to have missed Saw 2. The first one was so excellent, and I have heard that the sequel was really good too. I'll see it soon on DVD, but you really can't beat seeing movies in the cinema.
The only movie I've watched in the cinema in the last couple of weeks is Flightplan, which I really enjoyed. The psychological thriller in the claustrophobic and restrictive setting of the airplane was obviously very Hitchcock-esque, though it wasn't anything at all like Hitchcock's own 'person goes missing, no one remembers her; was she even there in the first place?' movie The Lady Vanishes. Jodie Foster was superb in it, showing such a level of desperation and anxiety that it was entirely believable whether she had actually lost her daughter or was imagining it as a coping method after recently losing her husband. Another strength of the movie is the way that Jodie Foster, and as a result the viewer, mistrust certain characters at different times throughout the movie, so until it's revealed you are kept guessing as to what is actually going on. The build up in this movie is really, really good.
Red Eye, another thriller set on a plane, and a movie I had absolutely loved for the first hour or so, descended into a complete farce for the last 20 minutes or so. Flightplan never becomes silly or ridiculous like Red Eye did, and it also stays enjoyable until the very end, but the weakness of the movie is again the payoff. The build up was so strong, with seemingly so many small pieces of a puzzle given to us as clues, and it would have been nice to have had an ending that really delivered on the build up and tied everything together. As it is, certain threads that were dangled in front of us during the movie turn out to be nothing, and when you think too hard and try to put everything together given the context of what is actually going on, the plot falls apart and has holes everywhere, with many questions remaining unanswered. Re-watching the movie would be significantly less enjoyable than watching it the first time was, because knowing what is really going on, there are things that don't make sense and don't fit.
Still, for a gripping, exciting hour and a half at the movies, I highly recommend it. It's not a movie that will stand up to repeated viewings, and obviously won't go down as one of the best movies of the year, but it's still great fun from beginning to end.
Hopefully I'll be seeing The Constant Gardener and the new Harry Potter, both of which I am incredibly excited to see!
TV stuff. Just some brief thoughts on the new TV season. (No spoilers for anything at all.)
New Shows: Commander In Chief is my favourite new drama of the year. I'm finding Geena Davies slightly annoying, but Donald Sutherland as Templeton is terrific, and there was just no way I wasn't going to love a drama with a political setting. It's nowhere near as good as The West Wing's early season, and probably still slightly inferior to the current West Wing, but still really good. I loved the first episode of Reunion, and the premise is terrific, but it went very bad very quickly. Neither Supernatural nor Bones inspired me to watch past the first episode, though I'll give Bones another go some time because I feel guilty giving up a show that has a BtVS actor in a starring role. My favourite of all was Head Cases, of which I loved the first two episodes, and had high hopes for it becoming one of my favourite shows as the season continued. Of course, it got cancelled after just two episodes. I just don't get American audiences sometimes. I despise the networks for cancelling the shows, but they wouldn't cancel shows if millions and millions of people were watching them. I really wish mainstream taste was more in sync with my own.
Comedy wise, I absolutely love Everybody Hates Chris, and I really enjoy My Name Is Earl, but I gave up on How I Met Your Mother and Kitchen Confidential after a few episodes. I feel guilty about that too, for obvious reasons, but I laughed so few times watching them that it just wasn't worth it. The latter was especially disappointing because I really do think Nicholas Brendon is an enormously underrated and under-appreciated actor, and it would have been nice to see him in a show where he could really show how good his comedic timing is, but I guess it wasn't to be.
Returning Shows: Veronica Mars is having an even better season this time, which is saying something. Episodes 1 and 3 were terrific. 2, 4 and 5 were mediocre, I thought, but since then the series has kicked into gear and the last run of episodes have been really high quality. Alias is having its weakest season yet I think, though it's still incredibly disappointing to hear that this season will be the last. I'm enjoying Rachel Nicholls in it, though it's a sad reminder that another really superb show, The Inside, was cancelled after so few episodes. Lost is another show that I thought had an excellent pilot, then had some mediocre episodes towards the start of the season, but has had a strong run of episodes. It's still doing some things that annoy me (like not answering loads of the unanswered questions it has posed over the past season and a half!), but I'm still looking forward to each new episode. I think Smallville is having its best start to a season yet, where as The Amazing Race is definitely having its worst season. I'm sure they realise that this family thing was a mistake (I had high hopes for it, but clearly that was foolish of me!)
I really watch way too many TV shows.
My top 5 shows of the year so far:
1) Veronica Mars 2) Smallville 3) Everybody Hates Chris 4) Lost 5) The West Wing
I just found out that if you cancel SkyPlus, you can't even watch the shows you've already recorded. That sucks! We cancelled Sky because it just wasn't worth spending such an enormous amount of money when we only watched a few shows on there. It has stopped me from catching up with the first season of Desperate Housewives which I had been watching on E4 (until I get an external hard drive and can start downloading seasons again), I have to wait a few days to watch wrestling, and I can no longer watch Without A Trace since unfortunately that doesn't seem to be a popular show among downloaders so I never see full season releases online, and I'm over a season behind. But other than that, the effect is small. Proving that spending £50 a month on it was not good value. At all.
I really hope Sky get some strong competition so that they'll have to lower prices!
*waves* I guess yet another attempt to get back into LiveJournal fell away. I'm sorry to have lost touch with everyone, I really have missed everyone. I really don't know why I'm so bad at it, but I really am just awful. Both in real life and online, I'm just the worst person in the world for keeping in touch. If I could change one thing about myself, that would be it. Of course, I said all this 11 months ago and completely failed (I got worse if anything) in my objective to change it. I know this is is the latest of far too many failed attempts to get back to using LiveJournal, but I'm hoping this time will be the successful one!
This time I'm not going to even attempt a big catch-up post or anything like that because it leaves me thinking that I have a lot to write, as if to make up for all the months I've not posted, and it makes LiveJournal seem like a chore. Besides, there's not a tonne to catch up with - my life is at pretty much exactly the same place it was at the last time I posted, which is both a good and a bad thing. On the good side, things are still going great with Stacey, and my trips to visit her are the highlights of my life. I have good friends, a good family, I have pretty much all the material things I need, so I'm not in a constant state of wanting much more than I have, and so on; I'm fairly satisfied. On the down side, I'm still in a state of frustration and confusion as to what I want to do with my career. I'm starting to get some ideas, but they of course have me worried as to whether they will be the right moves for me, and so on. Plus I feel as if I'm putting off growing up - still living with my parents, not being independent or self-sufficient, and obviously that has to change but I worry that I'll struggle and find it difficult when I do. Overall, I'm in exactly the same place I was a year ago, which I'm neither depressed nor enthusiastic about.
I'm going to try and post something every day this month, nothing big probably, but I really want to get back into the habit of writing, and setting myself targets for that sounds like it might help.
So what should I talk about in this entry? What did I do today? Umm. Planned on waking up at 9.30am, hoping to go to the cinema and watch a few movies. Slept through my alarm and woke up at 2pm, getting 13 hours of sleep. (What a waste of 5 hours! I only need 8 hours of sleep not to be exhausted the next day.) Watched the latest Veronica Mars, the latest Lost, the first episode of Sports Night (great stuff, I don't know why I waited so long to check this out since I really love Aaron Sorkin's writing), and a WWE Smackdown special that was completely classless and exploited a wrestler's recent death to advance a current storyline and try to make wrestling seem as if it can appeal to non-wrestling fans (it can't). Lost 36 pence playing poker with my 11 and 12 year old brothers. And that's about it. An entire day pretty much gone.
Much as I complain about how much I hate the lack of free time when I have a full time job, there is something about being out of work that just stops me from accomplishing anything. Aside from two months I did work 9-5, this has been my pattern for the year; wasting way too many days doing next to nothing. I really need to get a job soon! Otherwise I just know I'm not going to break out of this slump of not doing anything all day, taking much longer to do things than I should, waking up at ridiculously late times, and so on. I need a job to give my days some structure. The money would be nice too.
Ok, I'm going to leave it at that today. Writing LiveJournal posts after not writing for ages is so hard! So much so that it really should stop me from going ages without writing. :)
2004 This will be my last post of 2004 catch-up, and though obviously two posts can't completely sum up an entire year, these are pretty much the main things that went on in my life in 2004.
Life
By far the best and most significant thing in my life is that I'm in a relationship with Stacey who I met at the Beta, started IMing with in January, started to fall for straight away, and met for the first time in June. I've since visited her again in November-December, and the times when I'm with her are the best in my life. While it's really hard having to be apart from her for so many months of the year, it's completely worth it. She's a wonderful person and a wonderful girlfriend, and I'm very happy and grateful to be with her. :)
On the less good side, I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do with my life. I don't know what career I want to follow, whether I want to do a masters or not, etc. There's something frustrating at being content with what I have at the moment (living at home with the family, not paying rent, working temp work for a couple of months at a time, and spending the money I earn on traveling) all the while knowing that it's not going to be sustainable in the long term. 2004 was definitely a year full of early-twenties uncertainty, and I see that continuing.
School
I graduated university with a 2i, which I was pleased with, and which unsurprisingly has led to nothing. All the jobs I've done so far I could have done with A-levels, or even just GCSEs, and considering I made no friends at all in university (I've not kept in touch with any of the people I used to hang out with there), I'll definitely look back at it as an experience that could and should have been a hundred times better. Still, the degree might come in handy some day down the line, I hope it will. I'd hate three entire years to be wasted.
Travelling
I travelled to America on my own twice, in June to visit Stacey (bawston48) and faithx5, which was a really excellent trip, and it was so great to spend time with people in real life that I'd got to know and like so much online, and then again in November to visit Stacey, which was of course another wonderful trip that I wish didn't have to end. It was so great being able to see some of America (politics aside, it's a country I really love, and hope to move to some day), and Jandy and Stacey were both great at showing me lots of awesome places and restaurants in their cities. :) (Though this is slightly biased since I ate out in restaurants in the States where as I don't do that back home, the food in America is sooo much better than the food back home!) I've visited Massachussetts, Missouri, Maine, Rhode Island and New Hampshire (taking my list of states visited up to 6, with Florida where I went on a family holiday to in 2002), and I can't wait to visit more states and cities in future trips to America. I really wish I'd taken more pictures the times I was there!
In those two trips some of the highlights were: watching my first baseball game in Rhode Island, taking a tour of Fenway Park, watching Meet Me In St. Louis in the outside theatre in St. Louis, going to the Gateway Arch, Six Flags St. Louis, the New England Aquarium (and seeing experiencing The Polar Express in IMAX 3-D), the science centres in Boston and in St. Louis, the audio tour of Boston and the great view from the 50th floor of the Prudential tower, riding the Swan Boats in the Boston public garden, and trips to Ipswich, Salem, Portsmouth, Kennebunkport, Rockport and Cambridge. Ok, I want to be back in America, like, now!
In September my friend Stephen decided he wanted to spend his 22nd Birthday in Amsterdam, so me and a few friends travelled there with him in the morning, spend the day there, and then came home in the night. It's a really interesting city, and such a massive change in culture. There is of course an enormously seedy side to the city, and just walking along the red light district and seeing prostitutes in the windows trying to lure people in, and sex shops all over the place, live sex shows, the sex museum (which really was just a massive porn collection, with no museum-ish like stuff about the history of sexual practices or anything. Hmph. Or so I've heard.) etc. But it's actually a really beautiful city, the architecture is really interesting, the canals were pretty, and the layout of the streets was neat (though made it sooo easy to get lost, I'd never have survived there on my own!) I love seeing new cities and experiencing different cultures. For a one-day trip where we didn't even stay a night, I think it was a really good experience.
Work
After graduating uni, traveling to the States, and coming back, I waited a couple of months and started to do some of the conveyor belt work at a factory that I'd done before, but this time I utterly despised it. There was a new boss there that I hated, and the days dragged a hundred times more than they used to, and I was wishing constantly that I'd get let out early and it never happened. I quit/got fired within 6 days, and am sooo glad I did! That taught me that if I'm not enjoying a job I won't be willing to keep doing it.
I started a 9-5 office job for the first time after quitting the factory job, and it was great. For one, I was in an office with four guys, two of which were school friends of mine (that's how I got the job.) Also, the work was supposedly a busy call centre job, but the calls hardly ever came in, so we'd just be able to sit around the office chatting, reading, playing Lemmings on the PC, and just answering the sporadic calls when they came in. After 5 weeks they realised that we were being paid to do essentially nothing, so the other four guys were let go and I was kept on to do menial tasks like filing and sorting and opening mail and data inputting. It was tolerable for a while, since I was able to listen to my personal CD player while doing most of those tasks, but it was still mind-numbingly dull. I stuck with that for 3 weeks, but a combination of the dullness, an upcoming trip to America, and a workmate that was driving me insane, led me to quit that job. It was nice to get my first experience of an office job/call centre though.
2004 was one of the better years I've had, and I'm hoping that 2005 will be better still. :) Ok, that should pretty much do it. I'll hopefully get started on commenting later!
I can't believe I've just gone an entire year and hardly updated this at all. 2004 went so quickly! Overall I'll look back at it as an excellent year, but there were some not so good things too - the biggest of which was probably how many people I lost touch with for no reason other than my own awfulness at keeping in touch with people. Even if I just updated livejournal a couple of times a month, I'd at least have still been in touch with people. The losing in touch thing has been most prevalent with livejournal friends because there are so many people on here that I've really missed posting with, and yet for some reason I wasn't able to shake off the losing touch thing all year. I think I probably promised myself every week that I'd update livejournal and try to get back in touch with people, and yet it just never happened. This has happened with some of my friends in real life as well. Not calling or emailing people back, and in no time I'm suddenly not sure what's going on in their lives, I've not seen them in ages, and yet I still don't make that call or email that I should. I apologise to everyone who I've lost touch with this year, all the emails I've not returned, "happy birthday"s I've not said, etc. I really hope I'll be able to change this about myself this year, and making this entry now seems to be the best way to ensure that I do. :)
I think it's pretty obvious what my main new year's resolution was! I actually did plan on updating on New Year's Day and then trying to update every day of this month, but after having stayed down a friend's house on New Year's Eve and then helped him and some other friends move into a house together on the 1st, I stayed over their new house on that day and couldn't get online at all. Having got back home it still managed to take me a couple of days to make an entry! *sigh*
I like looking back at journal entries to sort of re-live moments in my life, to see what I was feeling at certain times, etc. and it's a shame that I don't have LiveJournal entries to do that with from last year. I really enjoyed reading stevefarrell's Year in Review, so I think I'll do the same. Seems as good a way as any that I'll be able to remember what I was listening to, watching, etc. :)
The Year In Film
I started the year with a really massive movie addiction, where I was watching 2-4 films every day (86 films in January, 62 in February), but these sorts of numbers trailed off massively as the year went on. When I started my first 9-5 office job, I saw only 15 movies in the entire 2 months I worked there (September and October.) For some reason I developed a lack of motivation for watching movies as the year progressed, especially going to the cinema to watch them. The days of 4-cinema-movies-in-a-day disappeared completely, and I ended up with my lowest total of movies seen in the cinema in 4 years (62.) (I have way too many movie lists, and way too many statistics about my movie watching, I can see that it's a bit overly obsessive and yet I never fail to enjoy making them!)
I loved some of the movies I saw, I hated a few (but not that many), but there were tonnes and tonnes that I was pretty much indifferent to. There are a *lot* of bland movies being made.
Actually... come to think of it, I'll make a seperate post with my favourite, least favourite movies of the year. :)
The Year In Music
Getting my own PC and broadband connection in August (I had previously been using my brother's) allowed me to download loads and loads of MP3s. Starting the office job in September which included a 30 minute drive there and back (due to traffic, it was actually not that far from me) gave me a chance to make CD-RWs of some of my downloaded albums and listen to them on the way to work. Some were great, some were good enough but forgettable, and some sucked. Most significant was Bruce Springsteen, who I have not stopped listening to since. Having listened extensively to all of his studio albums, I can safely rate him as one of my 3 favourite artists of all time (along with Metallica and R.E.M.)
When it comes to live music I seem to see lots of it only every other year. In 2001 I went to the Reading festival and various other gigs. In 2002 I saw next to no live music. In 2003 I also went to Reading and a bunch of other gigs. Last year I was back to seeing next to nothing. I went to a couple of gigs in small local venues - The Crimea (who had a song off their album, White Russian Galaxy, played in the pilot episode of Wonderfalls (it was such a great shock hearing that song playing!)) were the better of the two, but Mountain Men Anonymous were also excellent.
Chart wise, while I usually try and download all the week's new chart entries so that I can keep up to date with what music is being released (I despise the radio - it always has either obnoxious DJs or commercials or both, plus it gets very repetitive and ignored a lot of good music that gets released in favour of over-playing crap), I failed to do that entirely this year, so there are tonnes of chart songs that I won't have heard. From what I have heard - I surprisingly like some of the bigger selling songs of the year. Eric Prydz' Call On Me is one of the better dance songs I've heard in a while, Mario Winans' I Don't Want To Know was good, The Streets' Dry Your Eyes, even Eamon's I Don't Want You Back grew on me (though I utterly despised the 'rebuttal'.) Of course, I would still rate the vast majority of the chart songs I heard as rubbish, but still.
Having tried to work out what my 5 favourite 2004 albums have been, I realised how many albums I didn't *love* all the way through, but loved one or two tracks on it. These are some of the albums I considered as being some of my favourites, and some of the songs I particularly like off them, but that I ruled out because there are too many tracks on them that I've not really listened to enough/didn't make a strong enough impression:
Thursday - War All The Time - (War All The Time, This Song Brought To You By A Falling Bomb) Vanessa Carlton - Harmonium - (Who's To Say) The Used - In Love And Death - (All That I've Got, Take It Away) Chevelle - This Type Of Thinking (Could Do Us In) - (The Clincher, Another Know It All) Katie Melua - Call Off The Search - (Call Off The Search, The Closest Thing To Crazy) Avril Lavigne - Under My Skin - (Forgotten, Nobody's Home) Snow Patrol - Final Straw (Grazed Knees, Run) The Killers - Hot Fuss (Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine, Smile Like You Mean It, Mr Brightside) Embrace - Out Of Nothing (Ashes, Gravity)
I really enjoyed listening to all of those albums, though I'm not ready to call any of them truly great albums. In some of their cases I'm sure it's because I've not listened to them enough times to truly appreciate them yet. I can only think of four albums from 2004 that I've loved from start to finish and that are still excellent with every listen, and they are:
The Crimea - Tragedy Rocks Incubus - A Crow Left Of The Murder R.E.M. - Around The Sun Jimmy Eat World - Futures
I'm definitely not ready to make a Top 5 list of the year yet though, when some of the albums I've listened to need further listening, and some albums need listening to for the first time (I've still not heard the albums by Eminem, The Rapture, Keane, Franz Ferdinand, U2, and a bunch of others.)
The Year In TV
I started to slightly lose my interest in ANGEL towards the end of the season, and I'm still waiting to watch the final three episodes. It never got to the point where I didn't enjoy the episodes (like what happened in season 7 of BtVS), but I did stop eagerly awaiting new episodes, downloading them the moment they became available online, etc. I'm still very sad that the show got cancelled, and I really miss the Buffyverse world being on TV, but the obsession I had with the shows definitely faded into a more natural appreciation and enjoyment. The West Wing - I think the fifth season was pretty disappointing, but I feel that the sixth season has been excellent so far. I downloaded the 6th season episodes over the past couple of weeks, and as soon as I watched one I immediately had to watch the next, and so on. I've loved every single episode. It even motivated me to download all of Season 3 and the first half of Season 4, neither of which I had previously watched. Such an absolutely brilliant show, and I can't wait for the next episodes! The O.C. - I still absolutely love this show. Towards the start of the year, and the middle/end of the season I stopped downloading the episodes for some reason, but they were all showing on TV in November-December so I caught up on it all, finishing the first season, and realised what I'd been missing. That of course led me to start downloading the second season, and while I think it was touch and go for a moment (previous favourite characters becoming dislikeable), I think it's got back to it's former self in the last few episodes, and I again can't wait for the next ones! Lost - I'm not sure why it was only in December that I truly got the urge to download loads of TV shows, but as a product of my very temporary TV downloading addiction, and having watched all of The O.C. and The West Wing, I started downloading this show, and I'm really enjoying it! The latest 2 or 3 episodes have been especially awesome, and bode well for the rest of the season. A show with a really interesting premise, and that has got better and better with almost every episode as the season has progressed - chalk this up as another one I can't wait to see the next episodes of! The Amazing Race - Reality TV at its absolute best - tonnes of fun, a good amount of drama, and I love that there are teams I root for and teams I despise... it's like a cross between reality tv and sports. I only got into this show towards the very end of the year, so I've missed the first 5 seasons, but I'm glad I've finally got into it! The Daily Show - Every episode I watched when I was in the states made me more annoyed that we don't get this show in the UK. I started downloading episodes towards the end of the year, but still, if we get Fox News we should at least get the comedy show that does a better job of presenting news than an entire news station does!
The Year In Books
I read 41 books in 2004, which is a fair amount by my standards. One of the highlights of those were the Harry Potter series which I had never previously read, but that I absolutely loved, more so with every book, and have me eagerly awaiting the next installment. I really didn't think I'd love them quite so much, but the last three books especially made me realise just what all the fuss has been about all these years and how much I'd been missing out on. Along with those, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is the best book I read all year - absolutely superb. I really enjoyed the other two Dan Brown books I read too, Angels and Demons and Digital Fortress. Other authors I've read for the first time this year and really enjoyed are John Grisham, Lawrence Block and Agatha Christie. On a non-fiction note, I absolutely loved Al Franken's Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them, and feel that 2004 would have been a much, much better year had most Americans read that book.
I'm going to cut this entry short now (partly because I want it posted before the day ends!). There is more I want to talk about, though I think this is probably enough babble for one post. :) I really hope I follow this entry up with more entries in the following days. I'm really determined to.
I'm sorry once again for having lost touch, I've really missed everyone. I'm looking forward to getting back to reading entries and posting with you all again. :)
Happy New Year to everyone! I hope 2005 is a really happy year for you all. :)
*guilty smile* I'm posting now because faithx5 is forcing me to. She hit me twice to make me post. Honestly! :D
I really am sorry for my massive LiveJournal absence of this year. I really miss reading everyone's posts, and I know I keep saying this, but I really do mean to get back to reading, commenting, posting, etc., and just... well, it hasn't happened (obviously :))
What are we supposed to write in these LJ post things again? *g*
Ok. At the moment I'm on a just over two week trip in America. I had a fantastic 8 days in Boston with bawston48 (who rocks soooooo much!), and am now in St. Louis until Monday, when I'll be going back to Boston, where I'll stay for a few days before flying back to Wales on July 1st. I sooooo wish I could stay out here for much longer. I'm having such a great time. :)
Hanging out with Jandy (who totally rocks for letting me stay with her, (and just totally rocks in general)) is a lot of fun. We went to Six Flags on Wednesday, which was awesome. This park is a lot better than any of the British theme parks I've been to, it had more rollercoasters, the queues weren't too bad, and it was just generally a really cool place. Of course, it was also great going to a theme park with Jandy. Who, by the way, is a heck of a lot braver than I am. I was really scared going on a bunch of the rides, where as Jandy was totally not nervous about any of them.
Going to the arch (which is amazing) was along the same lines. Going up the trams to the top of the arch frightened the life out of me, they were creaking and everything!! It's not at all unmanly of me that I was clinging to the seat and cringing for the entire 4 minute ascent. *cough* And then looking down on St. Louis, while extremely cool, was also very scary for me. But the trams up and down the arch were definitely the scariest.
Luckily, Jandy has been completely supportive of all my fears, and has reassured me of my safety at every occasion. "They don't lose too many people on here". Yup. Very reassuring. :D
I'm trying hard to keep this post really short, I just can't seem to stop myself from babbling. Plus it's been a really busy trip (my friends rock for taking me to lots of places :)), so I'd be able to go on and on and on. I'll do that when I get back home I think. :)
And I've really lost the hang of this LJ posting thing. I need help. :D
"You type stuff in the white box and then press "update journal" at the bottom." Thank you Jandy. :D
I have soooo much more I want to babble about, but I feel guilty for drawing this out so long. Also, kaymyth is here at the moment, who is also very cool. Plus I feel guilty about taking so long about this, even though Kaymyth has just assured me that it's ok for me to go on for another chapter or two if I need to. Hee! See? I'm practically being ordered to keep babbling. *g* I swear, Jandy and Kaymyth are such slave-drivers. :D
It's so strange that I've been friends for over a year with them and yet this week is the first time I've met them, and likely the only time I'll be able to spend with them for ages. It's sad. I wish I lived in America. :)
I'll babble a lot more about this trip when I get back, I expect, so I will finish up for now. I'll just say that I've really loved my time here in America so far, and Bawston, faithx5 and Kaymyth are all fantastic. :)
And now Jandy and Kaymyth are mocking my babbling tendencies. I'll stop. :D
I will post more when I get back home though. Honestly. :)
Yay again! Checked my email, and had an email from Kaisa telling me to go to the Bronze. I have a yay day! :D This has sooo made my day!
And thank you all so much for the happy birthday wishes! I'm sorry it took me so long to thank you all. I was out all Wednesday, once I got home my drunk typing was embarrassing and not for public viewing trust me *g* and then Thursday I spent the entire day recovering from the day before and didn't feel up to, well, anything. But yeah, seeing all those messages made what was already a really good day even better. I really appreciate it, thank you. :)
Wednesday was fantastic. My best birthday ever, for sure. :) From the very first minute of turning 21 it was a wonderful day. :) In the afternoon, me and my friends met up at 1pm, drank until 12 midnight (so we fell two hours short of our 13-hour drinking target, but I was pleased with the 11 hours *g*). Between us we went through just about every cocktail that the bar did, and my brother and friends (who all soooo rock) bought all of my drinks, which made it all even better. :) My brother did a lot of drunken freestyle rapping (him and my friends are all becoming rap fans!) which was hilarious, though I'm sure most of the drunken highlights would have happened in the last couple of hours of the night. Of which I can remember absolutely nothing. *g* I've been that drunk only once before, and am absolutely determined to get that drunk never again, because the next-day-hangover was torture from the first minute to the last, but I think it was worth it for my 21st. But never again. *resolve face*
There were seven of us in the end, one of whom I'd not seen in almost a year and half, and only two people who said they'd be there weren't able to make it (calming my paranoid fear that everyone wouldn't be able to make it!), so that was nice.
We were all such typical students for the first couple of hours of the day! *g* Sitting in a pub having a two hour discussion about free will, determinism, God, politics, etc. etc. and my brother looking at us as if we're all insane. Rhys and Glyn don't believe in truth, or in right or wrong, even in time (!), or... pretty much anything. I was reduced to a few "it just is" or "there just is" answers, which Glyn took as a victory of course. :D I love those sort of discussions we all have. There always seems to be the right blend of interestingness and humour. And my friends really crack me up. :)
I'll stop babbling now, but my friends rock. :)
Thursday was... not so good. Joint worst hangover I've ever had. And it lasted the entire day. Still, my friends pointed out, and I did see their point, that feeling so completely awful on the second day of being 21 should make me feel like I celebrated my 21st properly. And it kind of did. :)
Thankfully, I'd completely recovered by this morning, though I am still behind on my sleep and almost stayed in bed instead of going to uni... but just almost, thank goodness. :) I love my French philosophy course so much. We've studied Sartre and Camus so far, and they're both so interesting. Plus the lecturer is really good. Week off uni next week (next week is going to be good *g*), which I'm really looking forward to. Among other things, it's going to give me a chance to get some essays done. I've still not done the essays that I failed to do during my essay hell a few months ago, so I'm an absolute mile behind, but I am determined to get at least a little caught up. For some of the essays, especially my omniscient God/free will one, I have some stuff gathered and all I need to do is sit down and write it. For the Nietzsche essays (yes, I now have two Nietzsche essays to do), I have nothing at all gathered and haven't even got a clue what I want to write about. Still, that's the plan for next week.
On a totally different note, I've got soooo into detective novels and TV shows again recently. It all started with bawston48 recommending The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd to me (which I still haven't been able to track down in either of my local libraries, but hopefully will get to read soon!) which reminded me how much I used to enjoy detective shows on TV. I've watched more Columbo and Poirot shows and movies in the past couple of weeks than I have other movies. Peter Falk rocks sooo much as Columbo, I just love every single second he's on screen. I've missed watching him, and am so glad I've got back into it again. The same can be said for David Suchet's Poirot. I haven't seen any other actors playing Poirot (though I do have a couple of movies SkyPlus-ed that have them), but after having finally read an Agatha Christie Poirot novel, I realised just how absolutely brilliantly Suchet translates him to the screen. Yup, detective fiction, in print and on screen, is going to become my new obsession for a little while. :)
I've seen so much positive reaction to the latest ANGEL episode. I really can't wait to see it. Have finally downloaded it, so shall watch that tomorrow I think. I've sort of lost my ANGEL fandom completely it seems. I absolutely adored Smile Time of course, but I haven't even watched the episode that came before it! Not sure why this has happened, since the quality of the show this season has been, for the most part, excellent.
I didn't get my Fantasy Angel questions in on time for the latest round. That's really disappointing, since I've really been enjoying playing it, and to get a 0 for a week is a shame (and after I'd been doing alright as well! *g*)
I've caught up with some commenting in LiveJournal today, though I do still have some catching up to do. I'm glad to have got back into LiveJournaling, I've missed it. :)
I'd really better get to bed now since I have to be up in less than six hours for work. *sigh*
Bored... This will be fairly random and pointless, I'm just updating because I haven't in a while, and I'm bored.
I started back work on the weekend. Not the end of the world: we only worked six hours per day instead of eight, and considering how easy the work is, I shouldn't be complaining. I even got 250 pages through Agatha Christie's The ABC Murders while I was working (fabulous book... and the large print edition made it easier for me to read while working, I'll get some more Agatha Christie large print from the library today I think), which is nice. But, I'll complain anyway. Even just those six hours a day leaves me feeling completely worn out for the rest of the day, and I end up needing more sleep than I would on days where I don't work.
I'm so glad I finally have a CD player in the car. I was finally able to have a good listen to the Stone Roses compilation thestage made me, and I am officially converted. Wonderful, wonderful music.
I think I might be losing my movie obsession a little. For the past few days I've had opportunities to just sit down and watch movies, and haven't done so. There is a side to me that wants to watch them just to cross them off the IMDB 250 list or add them to my movies-per-year list (Yes, I'm a total list addict), but can't seem to motivate myself to watch the movie itself. As a result, I spent all day yesterday on MSN chatting to tonnes of school friends. It was nice, and relaxing, and I hadn't done that for a while. Plus it gave me a chance to organise a day and night out tomorrow.
It's my 21st tomorrow. I was a bit worried that my procrastination and ever-decreasing organisation skills was going to result in me spending the day not doing anything, and just staying online (as I did for my 19th and 20th birthdays) but thanks to yesterday I finally managed to get something organised and there should be a decent sized group of us going out tomorrow. My friends have taken up the practice of dropping coins into the pints of whoevers birthday it is and forcing them to down them. It's things like this that make me glad to be an alcopop drinker. *g* We're meeting at 1pm, and are aiming to be out until at least 2am. I am going to be so dead. :)
As an early birthday present my parents got me a digital camera, but, somehow, I suck at taking pictures. Some of them have come out alright, but usually they seem to come out way too dark, even though the flash is on automatic and does actually flash.
I've taken one picture of Charl II, but I suck so badly at Photoshop that I can't even figure out how to make an image smaller. Like, I try and just drag the outline of the picture inwards (if that makes sense), but it ends up going over the image instead of compressing it. I know this is really basic and I have no excuse for not knowing what to do, but... help? :)
Also, they fly through batteries really badly. And I have a battery recharger here somewhere, but I can't find it. I also have about 20 rechargable batteries here somewhere that I needed for the high school gameboy Tetris league that I ran a few years ago, but can't find any of them either.
Snoop has learned how to open doors. He seriously needs to start shutting them after him. *g*
I'm glad for the lecturer's strikes in university, and I support them, but wow, they've really put me in a lazy mood. Missing two out of my four days of uni (and I'm especially grateful that they're striking tomorrow because it means my birthday is free of class. Because I'd have turned up if there was class of course. *g*) has made me feel reluctant to turn up at all this week. If Friday's lectures weren't so interesting I'd probably take the week off.
I need to go into town now. I really, really can't be bothered. I just feel like sitting around all day and doing nothing. Of course, that way lies having no batteries for my digital camera, and not returning library books on time and running up fines. It's days like these that have caused me to run up so much bother with that sort of thing in the past. I've spent way too much on library fines, allowed way too many movies to go from the cinema before seeing them, and missed soooo many lectures and seminars because of a "can't be bothered" feeling that I so frequently get. I won't let that happen today, but still, I wish I woke up every single day feeling motivated and energetic. :)
I live in South Wales, I've had 3 holidays to Devon and Cornwall, I've seen Leeds United play a couple of times in Yorkshire, I've been to Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham, London, Hampshire, and Oxford as a result of Bronzer meets. I had a trip to Blackpool when I was young. A holiday in Essex. I had a school trip to Portsmouth, also when I was young. And another school trip to Llangrannog. And thats it. That map is terribly incomplete. And I *really* need to add Scotland to it sometime soon.
(Edited tonnes of times to keep correcting it. :) )
Our new kitten, Charl II is evil. So much more mean than Charl I was, and with much sharper claws. I have too many scratches all over my hands and arms. I wish he'd be more nice. :)
I saw 86 movies in January, I've seen 10 this month so far. Most of them have been really good, JFK was my absolute favourite, Sorority Boys was probably my least favourite.
I've read four books so far, and am currently about halfway through the first Harry Potter book: really enjoying it. Of course, I've seen the movies, so it's not like I'm discovering this story for the first time or anything, but it's still wonderful.
I've not done any of the essays I'm supposed to write, and I really need to start. I've received one of the essays I did last year back and got a 2:1 for it. It was my least favourite of the essays I wrote, and I have no intention of following up on it or writing my exam essay on it unless I absolutely have to, so I was pleased with the mark that I got. Undoubtedly, the essays I had a better time writing will come back with far worse grades. *g*
Started a couple of new modules in uni. Aristotle's Social and Political thought: not bad at all, and once I finally get around to getting The Politics I should be able to write an essay for easily enough. Plus there are only 5 lectures and 5 seminars, so it's only added one hour to my week instead of two, though that one hour is on Tuesdays, when I didn't used to have any classes, so that is a bit of a pain. The other new module is French Philosophy, which I really enjoyed the first lecture for, and have already chosen an essay title that I'd enjoy writing about. It's a shame that Rhys didn't take this one, considering he has read tonnes of Sartre and Camus, while I have read none.
I've got into next to no music this year so far, and I've not been downloading the weekly Top 40 for a good few months now. I did hear Simon And Garfunkel's Sound Of Silence in The Graduate though, and have not been able to stop listening to it since. Plus there's Sesame Street. :)
I really want Mailbox Movies to send me the final two DVD disks of 24 Season 2 before Season 3 starts on Sky on February 12th, but I'm not hopeful. This is going to result in my TiVo space being taken by programmes I may have to wait months to watch.
I've heard great things about the 100th episode of ANGEL. I'll watch that as soon as I've posted this.
I think that's about it. A couple of opinionated polls to post first.
I want to babble about movies later, because it's been too long since I have, but I need to see the new ANGEL first. Hope it's as good as people are saying!
P.S. I think the lack of practice has harmed my typing. It took me over 10 edits to sort out all the HTML on this post.
Also, I just heard on the radio that someone bet £13,000 on Spurs to beat Man City last night at half time, while Spurs were 3-0 up. The odds were 1-25. He would have won very little, Man City ended up coming from behind to win 4-3, and he ended up losing £13k. Shocking. Some other lucky git bet some money on Man City to win at half time, with crazy odds, and won himself thousands and thousands. Fortune favours the brave? :)
ALSO Last time I swear, how do I make it so that the mood:happy, below, shows a smiley face. Or a mood:sad showing a sad face, and so on, like a lot of other LiveJournals seem to have?
The year so far. I've gone close to three weeks without an update, so that "update more frequently" New Year's Resolution? Pretty much failed miserably. Did anyone miss me? *g*
This year has been terrific for me so far. I'm surprised at how happy I've been. I've watched lots of movies, read books, spent time with friends, been to a Bronzer meet, and spent a lot of time chatting (which is the biggest cause of my happiness, I'd say.) Of course, I have neglected a few things: such as LiveJournal. Not only have I not been updating myself, but I've only been skim-scrolling my friends list, rather than reading everything properly. (Probably obvious from my not commenting on people's entries.) I apologise to everyone about that, and I plan on changing that straight away. Dropping a movie a day to keep up better with what's going on in my friends' lives seems well worth it. *g*
This weekend was really, really good. I've babbled almost endlessly below, not really worth reading unless you consider paragraph upon paragraph about train journeys a big hoot. I just wanted to get a little diary of the weekend written down for my own benefit.
Anyway, I think I'm getting more comfortable at Bronzer meets. Sometimes I'm a little nervous and worried about whether I'm being too quiet, whether I'm being to silly, etc., etc. but this weekend felt more like spending time with friends I've known my whole life, and not once did I worry about whether I was being quiet or how I was coming across. I really wish I was one of those people that remembers quotes and stuff, because I remember laughing and giggling a lot over the weekend, but can't for the life of me remember any of the things that made me laugh. Anyway, I want more Bronzer meets. They should be at least monthly. *g*
I have tonnes of movie discussion to catch up with, since I've not updated this all year and yet I've watched 54 movies this month already. Don't worry, I have no intention of talking about all of them. *g*
I'll say this much now though, in case I go on another extended absence. JFK is the best movie ever. Oliver Stone is the best director ever.
Rocky sucks.
(Not, you know, The Rock... who rocks (not a word bawston48!!! :p) but the movie.)
I really despise the preview feature that LiveJournal has. What good is a preview that doesn't show up half of the HTML properly? The preview function at the Beta was one of my favourite things about the place. Thank goodness for faithx5's idea of posting entries as private entries before making them public. That is going to be a life saver. :)
I did the Dante's Inferno test again recently. Probably of all the online quizzes, this is the one I liked most.
My level has actually gone up, but I've dropped down from having all extremely high and high ratings to having a bunch of medium and low ratings. Have I honestly become so much less evil? I don't like it. I liked having such a high evil rating. *eg*
1: A movie. 2: A book. 3: A musical artist. 4: An LJ user on your friends' list who isn't on mine.
Don't worry about the last one if you don't want to, since I'm too scared to friend people on livejournal before they friend me, in case they don't like me, but I'd really appreciate recommendations in the first 3 categories from everyone. If you want to, of course. :)
I may update more later or tomorrow. I hope I will. This isn't going to be a particularly effective diary for me to look back over my year, week, etc. if I'm only updating once every blue moon. My other new year's resolution, to start playing the lottery I need to at least *play* the lottery so that my 'when I win the lottery...' claims can have some basis in possibility, I've not done either. I shouldn't have made resolutions. I never keep them. :)
I think I've got to the point where writing up LiveJournal entries has become chore-like. I feel like I have an obligation to myself to keep them, if only to be able to look back over my life (in a way) in years' time, and to get down at least my immediate reaction to the movies I watch and books I read, since I don't want to forget what I think about movies (like I have about many I've seen before.) But, I've been meaning to type out an entry since before Christmas Day, and I keep putting it off. I think part of the reason is the size of the entries. Obviously, typing out a 1000+ word entry is going to take me a heck of a lot longer than if I just updated every day with smaller entries. So I think this might be the last of my massive livejournal entries. Whether I stick to this or not is another matter. But I don't want something I like as much as LiveJournal to be something I put on par with essays as something I *have* to do, rather than something I want to do. I enjoy writing them, but it take me ages to get started on them. I think this year I'll update more regularly with much smaller posts. That's the plan anyway. We'll see how it goes.
I've been totally unable in this entry to put my finger on exactly why it was great. It was one of those days that just felt right, where everything went right and nothing went wrong, I guess. See, I'm still babbling now... does anyone else get this thing where if you're writing about a certain subject, you can't quite find the right words to express what you're thinking, so you just keep babbling and babbling, not necessarily deliberately, because you haven't been able to express yourself properly? I get this all the time, and it's one of the biggest reasons why I go on and on so much.
On Christmas Eve I watched The Remains Of The Day. This is the first time I have ever watched a movie based on a book I've read (and similarly, I've not read a book based on a movie) so this is the very first time I'm able to get a feeling for the differences between the two mediums. It's fitting, I think, that my first movie-based-on-a-book-that-I've-read experience should be one based on my absolute favourite book of all time.
Anyway, The Remains Of The Day is a terrific movie as well. Anthony Hopkins does a truly amazing job as Stevens, the English butler whose life has been characterised by putting duty ahead of everything else, a misguided loyalty to his former employer, and a refusal to accept or express his own romantic feelings for Miss Kenton (a superb performance from Emma Thompson.) It's a melancholy story: Stevens' denial of his own feelings result in him not having a happy life with the woman that he loves, but a wasted life of doing a brilliant job as butler for a man that, in the end, didn't deserve the respect or loyalty that he received. It's heartbreaking, but is so filled with humour and charm, and sends such an uplifting message telling you to seize the day, to admit and express your feelings for the person you love, that it's a really powerful and lovely story, despite all the loneliness of the characters.
This is very possibly the best unrequited love story I have ever seen. One of the key scenes was Miss Kenton catching Stevens reading a novel, his refusal to allow her to see what it is, and his almost-squirming in embarrassment (though, still keeping a perfectly straight face of course, because he's Stevens) as he tries to conceal what he's reading, and it turning out to be nothing more than a romantic novel. The whole love story was summed up in that scene. Stevens repression of his own feelings. Ditto that for the scene where she puts some flowers in Stevens room to brighten the room up, and he refuses them because he wants to keep distractions to a minimum. His refusal to allow Miss Kenton to brighten up his life because of his desire to be one hundred per cent committed to doing a perfect job as butler. So sad.
The movie is absolutely full of little touches like that, and add to that an entire background plot about the build-up to the Second World War, and a hundred other things I've not mentioned, and this is one of the best movies of all time.
I think I understand what people meant when they've told me that books are better than movies. Because as great as this movie was, it still wasn't as good as the book. The movie had absolutely perfect performances from everyone, and it didn't have a single flaw. It was a perfect movie. Yet it still didn't quite touch me to the extent that the book did, or run me through so many emotions.
Still, if you've never seen the movie, I can't encourage you enough to check this one out. Truly superb.
I've seen an absolute tonne of movies over Christmas. Going through the double-sized TV guide had me choosing about 5 movies every single day that I wanted to watch. Naturally, I didn't get anywhere close to that, but I did still watch a fair few.
Having loved Once Upon A Time In Mexico, I watched the first two parts of Robert Rodriguez' trilogy, El Mariachi and Desperado. The latter, I loved. It looked great, had lots of good gun fighting, cool weapons, brilliant Mexican music as the score, and moved really quickly. I didn't enjoy the former anywhere near as much. Not only did it lack the score music that Desperado had, but I thought the directing was really bad. There was a whole lot of slow-motion, fast motion, weird edits, etc. that had the effect of taking me out of the movie a little. Sometimes that sort of thing can make a movie work a lot better, and help the pace of it. For this, it just felt over-directed to me, as if he was trying out different techniques for the sake of it, not because they were needed to tell the story. Also, the movie really highlighted just how much Antonio Banderas brings to the lead role, since the guy who played El Mariachi in this one didn't have the same screen presence or charisma. Perhaps that's best, since this showed his origins, before he was heroic in any way, and perhaps with an actor of Banderas' presence it would have been difficult to buy him as an innocent bystander brought into something way over his head. The movie has the novelty value of being made for less than £10,000, and of course Rodriguez deserves loads of credit for that. I just didn't think it was a great movie. Of the three, I definitely think Once Upon A Time In Mexico is the best, since it has all the great things that Desperado has, plus Johnny Depp. But they've all been interesting.
One of the best movies I saw over Christmas was the Pride And Prejudice starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, aired as a six part mini-series. This was another of those movies that was completely perfect. There wasn't a single element of it that could have been improved on. It had so much warmth, and charm, and humour, and the performances from ever single member of the cast were so good that it felt completely real. I felt connected to the characters, and cared about them, in a way I rarely do with even my favourite movies. Colin Firth was awesome, as he is in everything, but it was Jennifer Ehle that really grabbed me. I hadn't seen her in anything before and a quick look at her page on IMDB shows that she hasn't been in a whole lot of movies, but she was amazing. One of those truly captivating performances where you feel everything that her character feels. She was great, and the whole movie was great.
I've seen Goodfellas finally! I've been told for about four years that I really need to see this movie, both my my real life friends and then by mrcrain, and it didn't disappoint. One thing that always strikes me about gangster movies is how likeable and sympathetic the characters seem to be, when in reality they should not be. None of these characters are good people, and yet there's a certain glamour and coolness to them that makes us like them. The same is true of the characters, and this movie shows this from the very first part of Ray Liotta's narration, they see the gangster life as being a glamourous and powerful one, and even when they become one, they think there's a lot of honour and respect in it, but in the end there is none of the honour they think there is, it's all about money, and their lives are all meaningless to each other. Plus, they almost always end up dead or in prison. Joe Pesci's Tommy was particularly nasty and horrible (like, *really*), but cracked me up so much that it was almost impossible not to like him ("I'm funny how? Funny like a clown? I amuse you? I make you laugh? I'm here to F'ing amuse you?" - that whole scene was one of the best I've ever seen in a movie.) The whole movie was just fantastic though. The narration, the direction, and three truly outstanding performances from Liotta, De Niro and Pesci make this one of my favourite gangster movies of all time, if not my absolute favourite.
I think that Stanley Kubrick is the most overrated director of all time. I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey over Christmas, and while it was interesting, some of the shots were quite breathtaking, and the use of classical music was really good, the storytelling was just about as bad as it gets. It's a pity, because the movie has a message, and things that are probably worth thinking about, but the story was so badly told (the pacing was just terrible, the characters didn't develop and made no impression whatsoever, the plot wasn't engaging) that I really couldn't care. It's a pity, because I really did want to like this. Movies that do something completely different, and challenge you to think instead of just sitting back and relaxing, are something that appeal to me in principle. And stuff like using Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra and how the ideas in Nietzsche's book of the same name ran through the movie, from the very beginning with the apes. But none of that mattered when I got so bored that I was constantly checking the time to see how much longer the film would be on for. Add to this my dislike for all the other movies of his that I've seen. I hated Eyes Wide Shut, thought A Clockwork Orange was pretty weak, especially for the first hour or so, and consider The Shining to be completely boring, unscary and overrated (plus I really didn't think Jack Nicholson was any good in it.) Since then, I have seen Full Metal Jacket, which I did absolutely love. The first half especially, because R. Lee Ermey was just outstanding and really cracked me up. This was a movie that managed to explore the message of dehumanisation in the army, but managed to be thoroughly entertaining as well - it had that balance to it that 2001 didn't. Still, having seen five of his movies, and liked only one of them, I think it's fair to say I'm not a Kubrick fan at all.
Some of the other movies I've seen include Double Indemnity (which absolutely blew me away, and is, I think, my new favourite black and white film - staggeringly good), Bonnie And Clyde (which I loved), Rebel Without A Cause (which I didn't like *at all*, and I really hated James Dean in it - but the movie seems to be praised by most people that watch it - if anyone can tell me what's so good about it, I'd appreciate it), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (which was alright - had some good songs in it, but was a bit... strange, for my liking), The Adventures Of Robin Hood (they do these adventure movies a lot better now, but this was still great, and it was interesting to see the origins of this sort of movie, and a good blend of action and humour as far back as 1938) and Boyz N The Hood (really great movie, but as any movie that deals seriously with black-on-black murder in American inner-cities is going to be, was depressing and upsetting as well.)
I didn't got to the cinema nearly enough last month. Just seen a couple of movies there in the last few weeks. The Return Of The King which I liked a lot more than I thought I would, and after an hour and a half finally cared about these characters for the first time in the entire trilogy, and Peter Pan, which I liked well enough, though it was a bit... I guess childish, for my liking. Though I did watch it with Alun, and watching a movie is always fun with him making comments like "do you think we're gonna get to see Tinkerbell's boobs?" all the way through. :) Fine, I'm easily amused. *g*
New Year's Eve was really good. It wasn't a wild, partying New Year's Eve or anything of the sort, but I still really enjoyed myself. We went to a club in Bedwas, which is where I used to live for about 10 years... so it was weird bumping into my uncles, my old neighbours, my dad, etc. There were 8 of us in all, which was fairly impressive considering it was all organised last minute. The most fun conversations me and my friends ever have are ones where we look back over our school days (I say it as if it was more than just a few years ago!) and talk about all the things we did back then. The vast majority of last night's conversation was spent doing that, and I think we were all laughing for pretty much the entire night (even the couple of people who were with us that hadn't gone to our school and didn't know any of us except one were laughing.) Despite being someone who can't help but constantly look back over the past, and I do at times wonder about whether I've been wasting my life, me and my friends all have an almost infinite supply of memories from our school days that will keep us entertained for the rest of our lives. Half the stuff that was brought up I'd almost forgotten, and it's great having my memory refreshed with that sort of thing. Plus when people I don't know well and are meeting for the first time are laughing at stories of me and others during high school, it always makes me feel good. Conversations like that also serve as a pretty good reminder about how much fun I've actually had in my life, which I don't always appreciate.
Either way. I remained totally sober, my brother was getting bored because he couldn't drink (since he was driving), and so he drove me and him home shortly after midnight. But I ended the year happy, and with my friends. A good end to a good year. :)
happy