MaW’s Blog

I went to the cinema today and saw Inside Man, a sort of cerebral/psychological thriller about the perfect bank robbery. Films these days are promoted by who’s in them more than anything else, so I’ll mention that it stars Denzel Washington and Clive Owen (who is excellent) and Jodie Foster, who gets less screen time than her high-profile billing might suggest, but her character is nonetheless instrumental to the plot, and is also the major hook for a possible sequel.

I’m not going to say too much about the plot as it would spoil it, but suffice it to say that Clive Owen leads a gang who hold up a bank, Denzel Washington is the hostage negotiator who has to resolve the situation, and Jodie Foster gets involved when things start getting really interesting. Not really what I was expecting — much better than I was expecting. It’s definitely worth seeing if you’re at a loose end, or at least putting on your Lovefilm list when the DVD is out.

Just watch the language if you don’t like swearing — it contains quite a lot of it, although in a manner which appears to be quite fitting with the characters, setting and events.

So, um, I should post something. Here’s some words, assembled in some sort of order which may or may not turn out to be comprehensible. If it is, don’t expect it to also be interesting.

• Futurama is coming back to TV with 26 new episodes! Woohoo!
• I need to learn treble recorder after taking grade 4 descant. Descant is simply too small and squeaky.
• I need to write! Lots and lots and lots and lots…
• Pearl barley makes awesome casseroles. Obviously throw in, say, some lamb neck and lamb stock and onions, sage and rosemary as well. Dry pearl barley is unlikely to be nice, even if you have cooked it for 2 hours in the oven at 190 degrees on that scale that begins with a C.
• I’ve got the RP bug again. Bye bye time…
• I got a patch accepted for OpenTTD. Nothing special, but it’s always nice

The TV series, that is.

1. In the USA during the Second World War, approximately 5% of the population were Nazi agents, well-organised and in constant contact with Germany.
2. Said agents had little difficulty travelling back and forth between the USA and Germany.
3. All such agents have excellent American accents, but very poor German ones.
4. A person sitting in a transparent aeroplane is impossible to see while in flight, for some reason.

Why are they called memes? Is it this cultural genes thing? If so, what has it got to do with the blogosphere? Anyway, saw this on Planet GNOME, so I’m going to do it because I need to write a new entry.

Not that this is going to be a real entry — an update on actual happenings might follow at some point when I know what’s going on myself.

So here we go:

Four jobs I’ve had in my life:
* Seed packer
* Shop assistant
* Office dogsbody
* Software engineer

Four films I can watch over and over:
* The Slipper And The Rose
* Monty Python And The Holy Grail
* Lola Rennt
* Contact

Four TV programmes I love to watch:
* Futurama
* The Simpsons
* Firefly
* Doctor Who

Four places I’ve been on holiday:
* Berchtesgarden, Germany
* Lidköping, Sweden
* Cumbria, England
* Blair Atholl, Scotland

Four websites I visit daily:
* PoliceSpecials.com
* Giant in the Playground Games (the home of the Order of the Stick)
* BBC News
* Wikipedia (English version)

Four places I would rather be right now:
* On a beach in Norfolk
* Somewhere with an ADSL line that isn’t a hall of residence
* The passenger seat of a police car
* In the bath

Okay so I missed off the last bit, because I’m not trying to pass this on to anybody. I’m just bored!

Last night I went to see “Wallace and Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit”, the first feature-length film starring the fantastic Plasticine duo. Not the dynamic duo, I doubt anybody’s successfully managed to model tights in Plasticine, and Wallace and Gromit are completely free of campiness.

I’m not going to write too much about the film, because at some point I’m going to reveal things which should not be revealed except through the act of watching the film instead. Let me instead say that the film is absolutely brilliant and should therefore be watched immediately, by as many people as possible. Serenity should also, but Wallace and Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit (and that’s just a brilliant title) will appeal to a great many more people.

Get to the cinema now.