At The Pictures - The Thing

One of the local cineplexes have been doing a season of ‘classic’ films every Tuesday, showing them on cleaned up digital prints. They showed The Thing which is one of those horror films that everyone goes on about. I’d not seen it before so thought “what better way to see it than on the big screen?” and off I went, with only a minor hiccup on the way – the lock to my front door started acting up so I was actually locked inside the house for a short while and couldn’t leave! Got to the cinema just in time really. My 'party' got three of the last 5 or so tickets so we managed to squeeze in to the heaving cinema.

The film itself was great. The opening scene is amazing, and the paranoia of the whole things is just brilliant. It’s the special effects that obviously stand out though. The model work looks a little shonky now I guess, but no more than CGI does after only a couple of years. I loved the inventiveness of the alien’s mutations. Special mention as well to some great lines of dialogue – “I don’t want to spend all winter tied to this fucking couch!” is a classic.

I think the whole concept of showing older films in the cinema is brilliant. More of it please! It’s great to see stuff ‘as intended’. I saw Double Indemnity earlier this year which was great, and year before last I saw It’s A Wonderful Life in the run-up to Christmas. Perfection!

Urgh, I’ve just read that there are plans for some kind of prequel/remake of The Thing to be set in the Norwegian camp. URGH. Why bother?

The Pizza Slice - La Vita

La Vita is a new-ish Pizzeria opposite Cardiff Castle. It used to be Café Europa which was my favourite place in town to have a cup of tea and a sit-down. In between it became Dirty Sue’s Café, which looked really rubbish so I never went in. Anyway, it’s now La Vita and they’ve exposed some of the old stone walling that Dirty Sue decided to cover in boring white plaster board, so they won plus points for that straight away. I opted for the ‘Gianni’ pizza, which is a mozzarella and cherry tomato pizza that’s finished with Parma ham, rocket, and parmesan cheese once it’s done cooking in the oven. Actually I can’t remember now if the Parma ham was cooked in the oven or not, I don’t think it was… whatever, it was really nice. You could tell that the ingredients were good quality, and I think that the simplest pizzas often offer the best results. I sampled a section of my friend’s pepperoni one which was nice and had a good level of heat, and my ladyfriend had some spinnachy pizza which I also sampled and enjoyed. The restaurant doesn’t have a ‘proper’ wood-burning oven so you don’t get that amazing slight charring to the base, but most restaurants don’t have a proper pizza oven anyway so you can’t really complain. The base was good as it was anyway. It’s nice being in family run places as well isn’t it? And the chef man gave us some free limoncello as well, which was nice – the last time I tried limoncello I didn’t really like it, but this was good. Had a little chat with the chef and he seems like a nice chap, the best of luck to them basically.

At The Pictures - District 9

District 9 was... alright I suppose. A film of 2 halves really. I really liked the first section, which is done in a fake documentary style and is sort of like a body-horror of sorts with a bit of conspiracy theory thrown in. But then as the film progresses they ditch the documentary angle and just go for a pretty straight actioner. The effects were really impressive, given the relatively small budget especially, but yes, by the end I did just feel a bit like I was watching someone play a computer game. A lot of fuss has been made that the depiction of the Nigerians was a bit racist, what with them being more-or-less the only black characters in the film and they weren’t really portrayed positively. I’m not sure I agree with that, but I did think it ridiculous that they were subtitled despite the fact they spoke in perfectly clear English.

Nice seeing a film that isn’t based on a book/comic/game/remake/reboot/re-imagining/sequel/prequel/theme park ride/whatever (though it is adapted from the director’s previous short film so umm, what’s my point again?)

Trailers – arrived a little later than planned so only saw two trailers. The first was Sorority Row which is just a generic looking horror/slasher. I guess today’s ‘demographic’ for that sort of thing would only have been about 6 years old when I Know What You Did Last Summer came out. The other trailer was for Whiteout, which is based on a comic and stars Kate Beckinsale. I think it’s about some US Marshall investigating a murder up in Alaska or something. It looked like it could either be ‘not bad’ or ‘utter pants’. Couldn’t quite tell.

Afterthought - The main character in District 9 reminded me a bit of Murray from Flight Of The Conchords.

At The Pictures: Avatar Vs Inglourious Basterds

Had two cinema visits recently. Firstly I went to one of those 16 minute Avatar previews, and at a later date I saw Inglourious Basterds. I guess you could say that both films are about the power of cinema in their own ways, though at least Tarrantino incorporated this into the plot.

I really hope Avatar isn’t “The Future Of Film”. The 3D was kindof fun, though equally distracting. And yes the computer effects are impressive (though to my eyes not much of a step-up from what’s gone before), but the plot seemed a bit lame (Dances With Wolves in Space) and the dialogue was super-clunky. “Come on bitch, show me what you got!” (or something like that) – sounds like it was lifted from a Limp Bizkit song.

Inglourious Basterds was great. It’s the sort of film only Tarantino would have the chutzpah to make; full of little riffs, side-steps, and sleights of hand. Colonel Landa is the best screen-villain since Anton Chigurh from No Country For Old Men. Sherlock Holmes in an SS uniform.

Wasn’t expecting the film to be as funny as it was either. The “it’s a bingo” line from the trailer still had me chuckling, but Brad Pitt usurps it with one word – though I won’t mention it to avoid spoiling any surprises.

Even the bits I was worried about worked; Eli Roth’s dead-eyed ‘Bear Jew’ and Mike Myers’ ridiculous scene-chewing English General.

So yes. It’s good. Possibly his best film since Jackie Brown.

Wisdom Teeth Removal Blog

On Monday I had all my wisdom teeth removed. The bottoms ones had been playing up and growing at funny angles. The top ones were fine but they said I could have them out incase they played up in the future, so I thought 'might as well' and got rid of them as well.

I'd never had general anaesthetic before, and I was a little worried going in, but the staff were great and helped rid me of any fears. I made sure I told them that I gave blood regularly hoping they'd think I was one of the Good Guys and thus treat me well. It didn't take long for the GA to knock me out, it started as a dead arm from the feed in my hand and I guess I was bit giddy from the gas and air stuff I was inhaling. I giggled "my arm's gone a bit dead!" and then I was gone. Felt like 5 minutes had passed and I was waking up, but it had actually been an hour or so, then after a little sit down in the recovery room I was able to go home (though I had to be chapperoned - or however you spell it). I've basically been recovering since then. My face had swollen up a bit, like I was doing an impression of Brando in the Godfather, and my throat had also swollen a bit making talking and eating a bit hard.

Eating's been the worst bit really. I bloody love my food usually, but it's totally killed my appetite, and the only stuff I can eat have been tinned soups (which aren't great really) and I've moved on to semi-solid stuff now - started with a couple dollops of bean chilli and a small omlette, and yesterday I slowly made my way through a bowl of spaghetti in a basic tomato sauce.

The cat's been quite nice to me this week and not attacked my feet as much as usual, which was good of him. He's having his balls off today, so it's his turn for suffering now. Poor sod.

I've not watched any of the films I borrowed from the Blogginator yet, though I did watch the Battlestar Galactica discs he lent me. I'd seen them all before a few years back, but it was nice to have something semi-familliar to half follow as the effects of the GA wore off. I've also been watching Joss Whedon's Firefly which is okay but not brilliant. I guess it's more episodic than I'm used to from TV shows these days, so it feels a bit aimless at times. I'm only halfway through though so it might pick up. I've watched a lot of the latest Rick Stein series through the brilliant iPlayer (which I can now watch via the actual TV) - the food he's been seeing and cooking looks amazing and I'm desperate to have some Vietnamese Pho soup now.

I finished reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods which was pretty good, though I think it diverged from the main plot a bit too much. About a third of the way through Let The Right One In now. It's a bit different to the film. I guess you have more room for depth in a novel, but the ambiguity of the film was one of my favourite things about it.

Today I'm feeling a lot better and I'm playing Spotifriday, catching up on musics I've missed out on. Wild Beasts' newie was quite good - wasn't that fussed to begin with but it grew on me. The Xx have been getting a lot of bloggy-hype recently so I checked them out and didn't really feel it. It's a bit minimal in a nice way, but I doubt I could grow to love it. Now I'm listening to the Gaslight Anthem which is another distillation of Springsteen's America in a nice enough way (though it reminds me a lot more of Sam's Town era Killers than the actual Boss himself). It's not as good as The Hold Steady basically. It's nothing like The Hold Steady really, I don't know why they get compared.

Right, I think I might put civilised clothes on and leave the house in a bit. Got tickets for Avatar Day later so that something.

In Pictures - Playing The Building

In Pictures - Cotswold Wildlife Park