--Why are there so many non-French people in the Foreign Legion? (courtesy of Jen)
Andy, going through his movie collection: Green Card?
Jen: Is that about golf?
Drewsy: Mr Tourette's Syndrome.
Kempy: Tourette's? Isn't that a kind of sweet? Or was that Nicorette?
--They've put me on antibiotics, but the thing is I take a probiotic drink every morning. Won't the two cancel each other out? (Courtesy of New Girl)
Renting a DVD whilst at their parents then, instead of taking it back to the shop, carrying it 166 miles back to the Concrete Kingdom of Swindon, incurring £7.50 in late payment fees. (Courtesy of, well, me)
Broke the 80k mark. Yay!
It's trite really. Clueless moved from high school to college. Another Female Empowerment Movie. What saves this film is Reese Witherspoon, and I never thought I'd say that. The character of Elle is instantly annoying -- I wanted to drop-kick that rat of hers straight off the nearest sorority building -- yet somehow, Witherspoon manages to make us actually like and root for her. This is really saying something when she's working with a script that only sporadically displays anything resembling moments of emotional depth or comedic inspiration.
Not bad.
I spent the weekend walking the dog and practicing my weapons drills in the garden. Pretty cool, pretty relaxed. My parents bought me steak for tea as a thank you, which was neat.
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On Sunday I was possessed by a story. The idea has been floating around my head for a year or so, but this weekend it suddenly demanded to be written. I hate it when this happens. I was walking into Salcs at the time and couldn't think of anything else, all the way there and all the way back. It took me over to the extent that I blanked a couple of people I should really have spoken with.
So that's my next project. I don't like to be influenced by stories in such a fashion -- stories shouldn't be allowed to bully you into letting them jump the queue -- but I know that if I don't write it, then I'll forget all of the good things I thought of on the walk back from town.
Introduced full-contact to rugby training on Friday evening. Discovered that my body is weak and my fitness is not as good as I had imagined.
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Leaving-do season continued on Friday night with drinks for the Portugese guy. Went to Wrongs with the usual suspects {Andy and Jen, the French girl, the Irish girl, Shameful and The Girl I See on the Stairs}. Went on to the Apartment, paying far too much on the door for what only turned out to be about 90 minutes of clubbage.
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Sometime on Friday night Andy drunkenly invited a few of the others to dinner at our place, so on Saturday we entertained. I say we; the night actually involved Andy doing all of the cooking and Jen fetching the beer[1]. More brenniven followed [entry] and this prompted the return of drunken twister.
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Had a random conversation with a friend, who tried to convince me that there was a lake within a five minute walk of my house. 'Nonsense,' said I, 'I've been living in this house for 10 months, and in the Concrete Kingdom of Swindon for three years. If there was a lake anywhere round here, I surely would have fallen into it before now.'
Nevertheless, he was adamant, so I set out exploring on Sunday. To my surprise, I found one. Now, to call it a lake is being slightly generous, but the discovery has raised the "Bodies of Water Near to my House" count to 1, so I'm not complaning.
On making the discovery, I spent the afternoon in the park, sitting in the sunshine and reading. It still has a long way to go, but the Concrete Kingdom took a step towards the positive this weekend.
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[1] I'd feel bad for my laziness, but Andy loves doing the cooking, and Jen loves fetching beer :) I did a damn fine job of sitting on the sofa, though.
"The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one," he said.
Amazingly this film is still showing at the local cineworld (it having been released eight and a half weeks ago on July 1st). We thought we'd missed our chance to see it on the big screen, but obviously not. Couple of us went along for an early showing last night. Pretty glad I did now because, as you'd expect from such summer blockbuster fare, it's stunning to look at in a way that getting it out on DVD just wouldn't do it justice.
Aside from the fx, it's a pretty good film. Dakota Fanning and Tom Cruise give good performances (Fanning frequently the better, although her screams do sometimes make you wish that you had a martian death-ray handy). Tim Robbins is also good. Whilst it's true that there are plotholes big enough to walk an alien tripod through, there is nothing there that detracts too much from the enjoyment of the story.
You can argue that the ending still sucks (it's one of the things that Spielberg hasn't changed from the original novel), but you have to consider that this isn't really a story about alien invasion. It's a story about Cruise's character learning to grow up and fulfill his responsibilities as a father, set against an alien invasion. In that story the manner in which the aliens are defeated isn't important, just the fact that it happens in time for Cruise's character to grow and for Spielberg to force in his customary schmaltzy ending.
From a cast of 22 . . .
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