Wanted

This trailer for "Wanted", starring James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman, looks excellent. Come on 2008!

Death ... Tell No One

I saw two excellent films this afternoon. The first was a hilarious English black comedy called Death At A Funeral. I almost choked a number of times!

After a ferry to Manly and a walk along the beach, I returned to the Dendy Opera Quays to see a preview of Tell No One, a new French murder mystery.

I recommend both, highly!

The War On Democracy

I went to see John Pilger's new documentary The War On Democracy last night.

Mainly, it just confirmed what I already knew about US foreign policy, the CIA and their interference in the domestic affairs of other countries.

That said, I still came out even more appalled than when I went in.

The saddest thing is that the film is (at least currently) only being screened in Australia and the UK. US citizens don't get to see their government's dirty laundry.

My Best Friend

This evening, I went to see My Best Friend, quite a dark French comedy, starring Daniel Autiel, Dany Boon and Julie Gayet.

It started a little slowly and was somewhat predictable towards the end, but all up I enjoyed it immensely.

Even the fact that I was absolutely drenched from walking up Oxford St in horizontal rain did not dampen my enjoyment!

Speaking Of Young And Pretty

The latest episode of Doctor Who, entitled Blink, features an actress I'd never seen before, but who, at least to this old pervert's eyes, is quite gorgeous.

Her name is Carey Mulligan. It turns out that she's been around for ages; I've just not come across any of her work.

Finally, a reason to see Pride & Prejudice and watch all those episodes of Bleak House!

Food, Blood and Gore

What more could one desire :-)?!

This evening, I had a lovely dinner with my good friends Susan and Matt at Raquel's, which is a great Spanish restaurant on Oxford St.

After dinner, I went off to see Eli Roth's sequel Hostel: Part II. An excellent end to a very enjoyable evening.

I felt the gore was a little tamed down in this one, but it definitely had its moments. Not for the squeamish!

I arrived home to find a couple of e-mails from Susan, containing promised links to some bizarro websites, which I will post about tomorrow.

Where Are My Shades?

I just came home from seeing Sunshine.

There's been a dearth of Sci-Fi recently, so it was nice to discover it was already showing, since I thought the release here wasn't until next week.

It was sufficiently engaging that the "bargain Tuesday" audience was quiet throughout, which was a pleasant surprise.

Go check out the trailer.

"Helvetica" The Film

South By Southwest is an interactive music and film festival held in Austin, Texas each year.

This time around, one of the films on offer was Helvetica, a feature-length documentary about "typography, graphic design and global visual culture". Helvetica is 50 years old this year, hence the celebration.

According to the notes from sxsw ...

The film is an exploration of urban spaces in major cities and the type that inhabits them, and a fluid discussion with renowned designers about their work, the creative process, and the choices and aesthetics behind their use of type.

Colourful Language

I just finished watching Kenny. What an excellent film! If you haven't seen it yet, do yourself a favour and check it out.

It included a colourful phrase I've never heard before ... "As silly as an arseful of smarties". Wonderful.

Here's a trailer.

The Odyssey

Today (well, yesterday, really) was the first of the four that comprise my extra-long Australia Day weekend. If the rest are like this one, I may need another week off to recuperate!

I organised with Susan to bowl our phantom league games for this week in the afternoon. Before that, however, we popped into the Vietnamese restaurant across the road, which was once one of our favourite nosheries. It has since changed hands, but the food is still good.

After bowling ... I was well down on last week's scores, but Susan reduced her handicap considerably ... we went to see The Last King Of Scotland, which is a film about Idi Amin. Not bad, but your life will not be ruined if you happen to miss it.

After that, I had planned to go into the CBD and see a couple of other films, but when I checked the listings, it turned out that nothing I wanted to see was starting at a reasonable hour.

So, I rode the bus all the way to Circular Quay, thinking I might take a ferry to Manly. I missed the ferry by two minutes!

Not to worry ... it was Australia Day, after all. So, I took a stroll down to the Lord Nelson hotel in The Rocks. I was slightly disappointed that they were only serving their beer in plastic cups, but the Old Admiral I had soon made up for it.

I walked back down to George St, to pop into another pub, but they were all so packed that I just couldn't be bothered. When a 432 bus to Birchgrove appeared, on a whim, I jumped on it.

This took me to Balmain, where I alighted and walked down to the Unity Hall Hotel. I had a few schooners of Reschs and started in on the Sydney Morning Herald cryptic. Of course, yesterday being Friday, it was a DA, which resisted me strenuously.

Around 9pm, the horrible muzac that had been assaulting my ears disappeared, being replaced by some live jazz, for which the Unity Hall is famous. One of the musicians was Paul Furniss, an excellent woodwind player who is often involved in gigs with my mate Greg Poppleton.

When they took a break after their second set, I decided it was time to go, because the price of the beers had risen by over 25% since I'd arrived, which I felt was a bit of a rip-off. I strolled up the road, with the intention of grabbing a cab home.

As we know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions :-). I ended up at the Town Hall Hotel.

This was a serious test for my Etymotic ER6i isolating earphones. Fortunately, they were up to the task, very effectively shielding my Leonard Cohen, Lloyd Cole and the Commotions and k.d. lang from the doof doof "music".

I swear the number of damaged ear drums in that room must have been almost as large as the amount of semi-naked, gyrating female flesh!

This caused me such concern that I felt morally(?!) obliged to monitor the situation until the pub closed at 1:00am this morning. It's a good thing they had St Arnau on tap, to sustain me, otherwise I may easily have succumbed.

One down, three to go ...

I'm Certain I've Seen This Film Before !!

After bowling this evening, I raced from Randwick to the George St cinemas, to see the 9:40pm session of Déjà Vu.

This is the best sci-fi flick I've seen in ages. There's not a lot of high tech, other than a huge wall of computer monitors and a big chamber surrounded by what look like electromagnets. It's the idea that's interesting.

I won't say anything else, because I don't want to spoil things. Note that I tend to suspend disbelief when watching these things, because I'd rather enjoy the experience than pick nits.

Suffice it to say that if you don't have a PhD in modern physics, and enjoy a bit of action and an interesting detective story, I reckon you won't be disappointed!

Another Lovely Day

As planned, I spent the day with Paul and Jeanie again yesterday. We started out at the Museum of Contemporary Art, which was very interesting, although I think I still prefer the Art Gallery of NSW.

We then had lunch in The Rocks. In this case, I was luckier than my friends. My Thai Basil Chicken was very nice, if not as spicy as I like, but their Nachos was apparently terrible.

After dining, we spent half an hour at the Customs House Library, where Jeanie and I explained a couple of Aussie words to Paul: flutter, skinful and chunder. A most amusing discussion.

We then caught a ferry to Kissing Point (that being the farthest Jeanie & Paul's tickets would take them). Our plan was to get off there and take a walk around until the same ferry came back from Parramatta about 20 minutes later, we guessed. When we checked the timetable, it turned out the next one that stopped there wasn't for an hour and a half! We had a nice chat, anyway.

We ended the day with dinner at a great Chinese vegetarian restaurant called "Mama Chu's", in Pitt Street.

Jeanie and Paul jumped on a train back home to the Blue Mountains and I went to see The Holiday. I'll save that for another post.

All in all, a wonderful day!

The Black Dahlia

After work today, I went to see Brian De Palma's remake of The Black Dahlia, starring Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank.

While it was quite good as murder mysteries go, the plot seemed somewhat more impenetrable than whichever version I saw years ago. I seem to recall Tony Curtis being in it, but IMDb doesn't agree with me. I'm probably thinking of another film with a vaguely similar plot.

Anyway, I wouldn't say don't go to see this one, but nor would I say don't miss it!