Murderous
Posted: Mon 26 September, 2005 Filed under: Reviews(ish), Thoughts 1 Comment »
Over the weekend, as I commented earlier, Herself & I organised and went to a Murder Mystery Party, held in honour of Herself’s mum’s birthday. (Knowing she reads this on occasion, I won’t mention the age…) As part of this, we’d ordered (and received) the Murder in the Wild West pack, which made a lot of the organisation one hell of a lot easier.
There are some very important things to know about these Murder Mystery parties-
- It really does help if everyone gets properly involved, and dresses up “in theme” for them- in this case, everyone did, and it added a whole dimension to the evening
- I don’t know about the others, but “Wild West” is definitely not for the prudish and polite. Some of the humour in it is decidedly adult, and close to the knuckle in places
- It’s best to have one person “extra” to act as host, and organise the other stuff, otherwise it has the potential to be bloody chaotic
- Finally, it’s recommended that there should be large amounts of alcohol on hand
It also helps to have at least one person (and ideally a couple of people) incapable of taking the entire thing seriously, and – in this case at least – adding a bundle of humour as the World’s Campest Indian.(and yes, he’s going to kill me for putting up the photo) The character started off as “lowerwatha”, which was OK – but then a certain person who shall remain nameless (OK, OK, it was me) used the name “‘iyawatha”, with the ‘iya! done very high-pitched and camp. Despite repeated threats of violence against my person (and tackle) Mr. Watha ended up taking this and turning into a high-pitched Camp Indian. Politically correct? Hell, no. Funny as chuff? Oh, most definitely yes.
All in all, the entire evening was highly successful. I haven’t laughed so much in ages – not just at Mr Watha, but also at General Custard’s wig, which was straight off the Monkees, and many other things beside. My ribs hurt in the morning. Of course, the alcohol helped too.
Based on a sample of one, the Murder Mystery sets are bloody good, and we’ll definitely be making use of at least one more, I think.
Grauniad
Posted: Thu 22 September, 2005 Filed under: News, Reviews(ish), Thoughts 4 Comments »On Monday 12th September, the Guardian newspaper changed it’s paper size, reducing from the old broadsheet (AKA the “impossible to read without folding, or laying it on the floor”) to the new “Berliner” size. Still a bit bigger than normal tabloids, I find that the entire thing is a great improvement on the broadsheet, and that feeling was an immediate response, rather than the “oh, it’s new, I don’t like it” response that seemed to come from a lot of people at the time..
A lot of people weren’t impressed with the change – Mike TD wrote a fair and balanced view on the plus and minus points – although the main protests seemed to be the loss of the daily cartoon thing, “Doonesbury”. Frankly, I would have to work really hard in order to care less about things like Doonesbury. Then again, maybe I just don’t “get it” – something I’ve been accused of many times in the past.
Anyway, personally I like the new format. I always found the broadsheet Guardian to be more effort than it was necessarily worth, so I ended up not reading all of it. This was particularly true of the Saturday edition – too much guff, too much hassle. Since the re-size though, I’ve found that I read far more of the paper. It’s easier to handle without needing to have degree-level skills in Origami, and that makes the entire thing a lot more accessible. In short, I like the new size a lot more.
My only question, though, is why resize the Guardian, yet leave the Observer at the full-whack broadsheet size?
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Posted: Mon 8 August, 2005 Filed under: Reviews(ish) 1 Comment »Well, last night we finally got round to seeing “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory“. And loved it.
It sticks pretty closely to the book, the only real addition being that Willy Wonka now has a bit of a backstory showing why/how he became so interested in chocolate, and some of the motivations for it all. Which actually worked pretty well, it has to be said.
There are so many bits that stick in the mind, the squirrels are fantastic, the Oompa Loompa songs had me howling with the way they’re done (and how impressive is it that there’s only one guy playing all the Oompa Loompas?), the TV room referring to 2001:A space odyssey, the sheer beauty and accuracy of the portrayal of the Bucket household, and many others.
A couple of small points jarred, such as constantly referring to chocolate as candy, (the film seems to be set in the UK, but one assumes it needed a couple of points for american audiences to refer to) and the use of a ten-dollar bill for Charlie to buy the chocolate bar, which seemed like an odd piece of continuity error, but these are minor jars, nothing major.
Johnny Depp is fantastic as Wonka, with a role that must have been at least semi-influenced by Michael Jackson. I think that really Tim Burton was the only current director capable of making the entire thing seem as weird, dark and magical as it appeared – he has a vision that seems so in tune with Dahl’s original, always enjoying the multi-layered stories with a slight “adult” tinge while maintaining the child-friendly appeal of the main story.
But all the same, I do think the show-stealers were the squirrels and the Oompa-Loompas…
HP VI
Posted: Thu 21 July, 2005 Filed under: Reviews(ish), Thoughts 1 Comment »Well, I’ve finished Harry Potter and the Penultimate Cash-In. In fairness, it’s not too bad at all – and far better than the awful sack of shite known as Order of the Phoenix.
There’s a fair amount going on throughout the book, and while it’s not rocket-science, I’ll admit there were a couple of bits where I thought “Hmmm, I wonder if what’s happening is…?”. Of course, I was wrong – but at least it made me wonder. More than can be said for …Phoenix.
A couple of twists at the end – and a semi-unexpected development or two – and yes, overall not bad at all.
DVD Memetic thingy
Posted: Sat 11 June, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Reviews(ish), Thoughts 1 Comment »Oh fark, as soon as I get back, Lori has given me a challenge…
- The total number of DVDs, videos, and films I own.
Oooh, that’s not good. First of all – do I include box-sets as one or as the number of discs? I mean, there’s things like Alien Quadrilogy, which is 9 discs on its own. But (I’m upstairs, and can’t be arsed to count ’em precisely) I’ve probably got about 150 DVDs at the moment, although if you count all the discs, it’s probably double that, what with West Wing box sets and the like… - The last film I bought.
Does it have to be a film? Last DVD I bought was West Wing S5 Box Set, which I’ve been amazingly good and not watched yet, due to waiting for S4 to make a re-appearance and get viewed before I break into S5 properly. Which is frustrating.I may even end up just getting a new copy. And then charging the person who’s still got the box set.– UPDATED : Apparently it’s been posted, and is on its way back. - The last film I watched.
Ah, well, on DVD that’d be Chronicles of Riddick. Well, some of it – I hated it, so I didn’t get to the end. On TV? Last Kiss Goodnight. - My favourite five films of all time, ever.
Oooh, tough one. Let’s think… In no particular order…- Aliens
- Ghost Dog:Way of the Samurai
- Blue Juice
- Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
- Tootsie
and finally *hangs head in shame*
- Tag three people and have them blog this.
Chelsea roundup
Posted: Mon 30 May, 2005 Filed under: Photography, Reviews(ish) Leave a comment »Well, some of the photos are now available, along with some more thoughts, on this photo page.
I’m also going to upload more photos to my Flickr stream, but that’s not likely to happen ’til Tuesday. So there.
Chelsea – thoughts
Posted: Sat 28 May, 2005 Filed under: Reviews(ish), Thoughts 3 Comments »Well, we’re back. Knackered, but enjoyed most of the time at Chelsea. In fact – and most people won’t be surprised by this at all – the thing that detracted from the entire thing the most for me can be simply phrased in two words. “Other people”.
It’s been a long time since I’ve had to deal with that many rude and ignorant/obnoxious people all in one space. I’ve been barged, rammed, trodden on, knocked, walked into, and basically just ended up truly fucked off with ignorant arsewipe motherfuckers who’ve decided that they want to see/do something, so that’s what they’ll do, and bollocks to anyone who might get in the way of that. And the number who just stomp across the viewline of someone with a camera at their eye, then sigh and tut when someone else does it to them – well, words fail me. Actually, no they don’t. But people really don’t like to hear the expression “hypocritical fat-arsed tosswagon cunt” in a genteel atmosphere like Chelsea is supposed to have.
Other than that though, I did enjoy the huge majority of the show. The “Best in Show” is over-rated in my opinion, and the Conran-designed “Peace garden” for the Imperial War Museum should’ve been far higher rated than it was. Given the choice, I’d have swapped the two medals. But there we go, that’s a personal perspective.
Over 120 photos were taken, so I’m going to go through them tomorrow before putting together a nice new page with photos and some more thoughts.