Category: Miscellany 2002

The Lord of The Rings

There are, perhaps predictably, few surprises in this second film. However, it remains a stunning piece of cinema and one that I will certainly see again and again.

Being New Year’s Eve I decided to hide away from some excessive partying and see Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers in central London.

The second cinematic instalment starts more-or-less at the point we left of with Frodo dreaming of Gandalf’s fall. I began by thinking we were in for a decent length of re-worked footage from the first film but, of course, I was wrong.

If you haven’t seen the first film and haven’t read the books you will need to do one of them before seeing this film for no concession is made to explain the previous tale. Thus, we must accept that the Fellowship is now split into three and we have three stories.

Frodo and Sam’s tale gets darker as the film progresses as Frodo comes under the influence of the ring. They are joined by Gollum which is a superb character despite being a computer-generated image.

The second group of Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas go in search of Merry and Pippin only to find themselves rushing to the aid of King Theoden of Rohan and featuring some amazing battles sequences. Merry and Pippin themselves find the company of the Ents whose role seems to have been played down in the film. The Ents are my favourite characters from the books and I had been waiting to see if they could be brought to life convincingly on the screen. Peter Jackson has done an amazing job on them and I was only saddened that they didn’t appear more.

There are, perhaps predictably, few surprises in this second film. There is little to discover in the central characters and, with perhaps the exception of Gollum, very little seems to be learnt about newer characters. However, it remains a stunning piece of cinema and one that I will certainly see again and again.

The Guardian has a summary of the main players. Other reviews can be found at Empire Online and Teletext.

Die Another Day

Bond has been around for 40 years. Is he sill up to it?

Die Another Day film poster

I saw the new James Bond film today. Apparently, Bond is 40 – which means the formula has been around for a while. Die Another Day is as cheesy as many a Bond, yet it remains an entertaining cinema experience. I’m sure, however, that it won’t be voted a classic. It’s less secret-agent more agent-detective and the Bond-girls are now more MI5-partners (or more accurately NSA-partners). There are some fantastic scenes on the ice (using The Eden Project as a backdrop) and gadgets galore. If I had any complaints about the film it would be the quality of some of the effects which is, to say the least, not up to standard. [Official Site]

Give Us Our Daily Blog

As I started redeveloping this site, it became apparent that I wanted to link to my collection of daily blog reads, and this became the place to keep them.

In common with any page of links, many of the pages noted below have long since moved, closed or ceased to be updated in any regular way. Facebook and Twitter have meant that some of those I used to read have moved on to the next way to communicate their thoughts. I keep this here as a nice reminder of the early days of blogging! I’ve tried to link to archived versions of many of the sites.

As I started redeveloping this site, it became apparent that I wanted to link to my collection of daily blog reads, and this became the place to keep them.

The first, almost daily, read is Jase Wells. I guess I have been something of an invisible online stalker of this site for years. I have watched it move, change and develop since sometime in 1994, when I first came across it. It still remains one of the best personal homepages on the web – and I am very pleased to see that he has turned it into a blog.

Next on the list is Tom Coates’ plasticbag.org– which must be one of the best around and, if I am honest, I miss it if he doesn’t post. You will find notsosoft linked from there, which, I think, contains some of the best writing on the web.

trabaca,posterboy,eric and contrasts.net provide additional regular reading from the US, while Adam’s photoblog provides stunning pictures on a regular basis.overyourhead is a UK take, while prolific is based in Amsterdam.Haddock blogs is a collection of well-known UK internet names.

Of course, blogsphere is represented well by Metafilter, which I try to check out most days.

Others of note include Nick Denton and Brendan O’Neill for opinions;Scott Andrew,Ben Hammersley and Jason Kottke for web-related stuff and Stuart Towns for his travelogue.

Finally, if you’re not interested in reading the ramblings of people you may never have heard of, then click along to Will Wheaton’s blog, which is a fascinating take on the world of celebrity.

Donnie Darko

The Guardian asked, “Is it a horror film?” A black comic parable of Generation X angst? A teen drama with a psycho edge? If not, what the hell is it?

Possibly the strangest and most compelling film I have seen all year, and it hasn’t had a great deal of coverage. Donnie Darko’s website is very weird, and I am not sure you’ll get much from that.Tom, on the other hand, raves about it. You can read more reviews here or at The Guardian. I can’t explain it. Go see it.

Inspirational Eden

Tim Smit provides insight into the group vision that resulted in one of the more successful Millennium projects – Eden.

Tim Smit provides insight into the group vision that resulted in one of the more successful Millennium projects – Eden. And the fact that it is the work of a committed “group” of people is not lost on the reader. Smit regularly repeats the mantra that Eden was only developed thanks to the work of a wide range of individuals, from contractors to councils, and not forgetting the plant-men.

If you want to understand some details behind the way such projects are developed, then this is a book you should read. When the project was floundering, while all the funding partners came together, Tim Smit was there, and he relives it in the book. Sometimes you wonder how it all came together.

On the other hand, if you are a plant-lover, gardener or horticulturalist, then this is also a book you should read. Smit tells the fascinating story of the development of the biome concepts and the plants they chose to grow. More importantly, he discusses the relationship between man and the natural surroundings we inhabit, debating our fragile relationship with a range of environments along the way.

However, what you take from this book is a mixture of all of the above. Landscaping, plant husbandry and environmental considerations sit alongside planning, funding, road building and visitor education projects. It’s one man’s personal account rather than a definitive history, and the cast of characters seems endless and, sometimes, confusing. However, the determination and vision that drove the project; the commitment and enthusiasm of all the people; and the role Eden believes it should be playing on the world stage are all presented in an accessible, very readable account of what seems to have been a long but successful process. If this book doesn’t inspire you to aim higher and better, then nothing will.

Buy Eden at Amazon.co.uk

Hope I Haven’t Missed Your Birthday

My trusted Palm Vx– from which sprang the Listen To Musak blog (why just write stuff for my own reading when I can bore everybody else?) – contains many useful freeware/shareware and fully paid-up pieces of software that didn’t come pre-installed. The most useful is DateMate. DateMate is a simple little program that stores birthdays, anniversaries, and events, and can populate the Palm Date Book with updated information so that I can always recall how old somebody is and how many years they have been married. If you own a Palm, I would wholeheartedly recommend you look at it.

Sadly, however, I have done two silly things in the past months:

  • First, I changed my synchronisation settings in Outlook so all birth dates and anniversaries were removed from my Date Book. This is OK, as DateMate will retain the backup, and all I had to do was re-enter them, but…
  • Secondly, I updated DateMate and forgot to read the update instructions, so I have updated to a later version that won’t accept my registration number. As a result, I can’t export a list of all the entries to make re-entry easier. So now I have to upgrade, and I am not sure it’s 100% necessary.

Ah well, maybe it would be easier to maintain a paper diary but it wouldn’t be as much fun, would it?

Wasted Weekends

I feel very strange things about this Monday morning. You see I didn’t do any of the things I wish I had done over the last weekend.

I feel very strange about this Monday morning. You see I didn’t do any of the things I wish I had done over the last weekend. I had great plans to spend the time decorating the exterior of my house before the windows fall out due to the winter rains and frosts. Then I thought I might finally finish clearing the back garden so that some form of order is visible (again, before the winter frosts come). No. I couldn’t do any of this because I went to sleep.

Instead of going out late at night drinking after seeing Taboo on Friday night, PY and I came home because I was exhausted (I don’t think anybody else really wanted a long drinking session either, but that is not the point). I slept late, got up, had breakfast and started a few general household chores. Then I thought I would have forty winks. Unfortunately, I slept until 5pm and then realised that Saturday was gone. A whole weekend had then to be squashed into Sunday (where I stayed in bed late again), and I wasn’t very enthusiastic. I also had to have a late-Sunday brunch-style event in Notting Hill with some friends over from Australia. That was great (and seeing people who live outside London always makes me crave space and forget the advantages of this great city), but I can’t believe I didn’t do much around the house. I had such great plans.

So, that’s why I am now somewhat deflated. The weekend – which I look forward to like every other office-bound individual – turned out to be a letdown. And now I’m facing another full working week before I get some time off. To cap it all, I will then have to do all last week’s little jobs, as well as any new ones I come up with. I hate days like this and weekends like that! And I resent the fact that it is all my fault.

Everything Taboo

I thought Taboo was fantastic, so I wrote a review.

Taboo The Musical

I went to see Boy George’s Taboo last Friday and have been contemplating the blog entry ever since. I have to say that I thought that it was fabulous and I want to see it again (I even ordered the soundtrack last night!). It’s a fictional account of a lot of real people, but most of the plot must be based on Boy George’s own life story, as I recognised many of the characters and plot lines from his book Take It Like A Man. Obviously, he is a key (though not the central) character. I would thoroughly recommend this to anybody visiting London, regardless of the way you feel about Boy George. It’s a strange time capsule of a musical, and his songs are great – although several of them are old (some of which are taken from the underrated album Cheapness and Beauty, which I regard as one of the best of all time). The story is tender, the performances top-rate, and the whole thing is laugh-out-loud funny (especially Julian Clary).Lastmiunte.com often has cut-price tickets a few days before a show. Go see it. Often.

I also posted a review to the gay boy musical fan group at Yahoo! This is what I wrote:

I thought Taboo was fantastic – and I wasn’t sure what to really expect. I think I had envisaged it as something akin to Closer To Heaven, but it wasn’t really like that at all. I loved the fact that The Venue is quite small and quite intimate, which made you feel closer to the stage (and the audience bits help) and, of course, it brought memories flooding back (although I was watching events in the early ’80s from the safety of the north).

I am a big fan of Boy George’s more recent albums – Cheapness and Beauty is one of my all-time favourites. When I heard some of the songs were being reworked for the show, I was worried. Luckily, few have been re-penned, and those that have been re-done are still as good as they are on the CD (although different). I was stunned by how much the mannerisms of the Boy George character seem to be like the Boy George we see on TV, etc. It was a remarkable performance. Duncan Bennett as Billy was superb (was he really in the band Point Break? I don’t remember him), as well as being some appealing eye candy. It was a thoroughly entertaining night out, and I would recommend it to anybody.

Julian Clary was superb and, of course, looked stunning in those Leigh costumes. I would be interested to see how other people play the part, as he put his own stamp on it without it seeming to be too Julian Clary.

I’ve ordered the CD – the cheapest I could find it was £10.99 at Play247– although it was on back order, I noticed tonight that they have posted it to me. I’m sure the CD doesn’t do the show justice (they rarely do), but I hope it will be brilliant anyway! Lastminute.com always seems to have discounts on top-price tickets. I bought the cheaper seats directly from the box office and, to be honest, I think my view was as good as anybody with the more expensive ones (the theatre isn’t really large enough for it to make a difference). However, Lastminute’s discount seats are even cheaper, and I shall certainly be going again.


[Links: BBC News – George breaks 80s Taboo|BBC News – Matt Lucas’s comic extremes|Guardian – We were so naughty|I Love the 80s]

Why did you steal 40,000 hotel coat hangers?

How much room do you need for 40,000 coat hangers?

Judge: I think Mr Chrysler is running rings round you already. I would try a new line of attack if I were you.

A most extraordinary trial is going on in the High Court at the moment, in which a man named Chrysler is accused of stealing more than 40,000 coat hangers from hotels around the world: Independent

I think this is the most brilliant thing!

Working Late (again)

Working. I want to work, that’s for sure, but I am not sure what I want to do for a living. My job is OK and pays well, but it’s hardly the most stimulating career, and what’s more, I was in the office until almost 9pm. 9pm on a Friday night. Somehow, I don’t think this is right:

  • I don’t think it’s right for me to work so many extra hours. It’s not the first night this week, by a long shot. I do get paid reasonably well, but I want to work to live, not live to work.
  • I do not think this is right for my relationship. I am so exhausted by the time I get home that all I do is eat and sleep. This is not much of a life, really.
  • I do not think this is right for my health. Lengthy hours mean stress and a desire to get home (and I am sure that leads to mistakes somewhere along the line). I need to eat (decent food) at a decent hour and not (fast food) at some late hour before I fall asleep on the sofa or crawl to bed.
  • I’m not even sure it’s right for the company that employs me. I’m sure that by putting this much pressure on me, they are not getting the best out of me.
  • And above all, it’s not right for my spirit. It depresses me to spend so long working. I know I am lucky to have a reasonably paying career, but if this is all life is, then I am not sure I want it. The career, that is; I do want the life!

But at last, the weekend! Time to recharge.

Our Country Friends

Country or town?

How many of us who live amidst an urban sprawl would rather be living in the countryside? I suspect it’s a conversation that keeps the wine bars of large parts of London alive. The quest for a quieter, simpler life is something many people search for. Indeed, it is something I have thought of many times. Move all my worldly goods to the South West and see what happens. In truth, at this moment in my life, I don’t actually want to do it. Sometimes, however, I wish I could lose the congestion and stresses of inner-city (or, in my case, suburban) living.

And why am I asking myself these questions? Well, last Sunday was the day The Countryside Alliance marched through London. I avoided the centre of town for most of the day, but I did enjoy a lunch at Wandsworth Common. I sat at most of the tables surrounding us, where groups of people who, quite evidently, had been on some part of the march. What intrigued me was why so many of them had taken a train out of central London to Wandsworth Common.

Of course PY, who seems to have a greater understanding of many of these things than I, claimed that many of those people sat there on Sunday afternoon were in fact local residents but they had been marching for the countryside cause – “Liberty and Livelihood”. Upon reflection, I think he was right. Many of them may have other houses in the country, perhaps even own large amounts of land. But what struck me most was a simple economics. If all the money they spent in the restaurants of Wandsworth Common each Sunday was spent in the countryside then rural communities would be booming. Not only that, but if they all went and lived outside the city and enjoyed the life they were marching to protect on a daily basis (rather than at weekends), then they would free up a great deal of housing stock in urban areas. Thus, the countryside benefits (it’s full of people spending money and supporting the “lifestyle”) and those of us wishing to remain (for the time being) city dwellers would also benefit from less ridiculous housing costs. Doesn’t everybody win? (Well, I know there is the matter of jobs, schools and other infrastructure etc. but you have to admit it’s starting point, if not wholly thought through. And more importantly it’s plainly hypocritical to march for something you don’t actively – economically – support).

For a more interesting read on tweed in the town, see here.

Nike 10K

I want to pass comment on the fact that PY, my significant other/partner/general love of my life, ran the Nike 10K Run London event yesterday in a time which beat his run last year. I was nearly in tears when he crossed the line – isn’t that sad?

The event itself did not seem as well organised as last year. We waited at Wimbledon because there weren’t enough shuttle buses. The transportation problems caused a delay at the start and, I imagine, a good number of competitors missed their allotted start time. The atmosphere was not as good as last year either. In Kew Gardens, with half the number of competitors, last year’s race felt more intimate and fun. This year, Richmond Park felt spread out and didn’t seem to have as many things for non-runners to do amid the throng.

Tired

Another night of entertaining on Old Compton Street

Bet you’re thinking, not another entry about food. My office (more or less) took an American colleague out for dinner again last night and, again, on Old Compton Street. Pizza. Huge pizzas (I haven’t had such a big pizza in London for some time), bigger than any plates the restaurant had available. Many office-type things to speak of, but I will reserve judgement on the evening for another time (how mysterious).

So now I am dog-tired. I have been entertaining or being entertained all week. I have to arrange theatre trips for tonight and other things for the rest of the weekend. It’s very strange, as I haven’t felt this physically exhausted in months. I feel really drained, but I couldn’t sleep any longer than I did. My brain was awake, and I got to the point where lying in bed hurts more than the thought of getting up pains me. Maybe it’s an age thing.

The Full Monty

I saw The Full Monty at The Prince of Wales Theatre, London, last night. I have to admit it was much better than I expected. The central story you’d recognise from the film is there, but it’s adapted for the stage and set in Buffalo, New York.

In particular, the introduction of some new characters (the excellent Lynda Baron as Jeanette and the lovely Julian Essex-Spurrier as Keno, a professional male stripper) helps the story along well. The songs were strong, and I shall be looking forward to getting the CD. In my opinion,Ben Richards (Jerry) was excellent as the show’s main character, which is useful, as he seems to carry most of the show. The rest of the cast were great: Paul Keating made Ethan into an amusing character, adding a slapstick dimension to the humour, and David Ganly carried Dave’s insecurities and vulnerabilities well.

Without taking anything away from the show, I would have liked to see it set in the UK, and the main narrative driver (Jerry’s need for money to keep seeing his son) was somewhat unbelievable (even for a West End musical). However, if you fancy an evening in a theatre that is 70% groups of women (although it didn’t seem overly hen-nighty), then I would thoroughly recommend it.