David Lynch

Last night I saw the final couple of episodes of Quatermass and the Pit. It was very good. The story concerns the discovery of an alien spaceship buried for millions of years, which it turns out was reponsible for the unusually high amounts of so-called paranormal activity in the local area. It was made in 1959, and by today's standards its quite slow with a minimum of special effects, but it has a witty and genuinely gripping script, and great performances. It was also very influential. In fact Stephen King's novel The Tommyknockers bears a very strong resemblance to the show.

I also watched a movie called An American Haunting, directed by Courtney Solomon. The story is based on the famous American story of the Bell Witch. The film is mostly set in a small rural community in 1818 where the Bell family are tormented by an unseen force, which they believe is the result of a curse placed on them by a local witch. The film stars Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek, with Rachel Hurd-Wood as the eldest daughter and the principal focus of the hauntings. It wasn't too bad, with some quite suspenseful scenes.

Today at work we all had to pack away all the stuff on our desks into crates for the desk move at the weekend. It took ages. I've been sitting at that desk for about fourteen months now, and it's quite amazing how much rubbish accumulates. Of course, Monday will probably be absolute chaos.

This evening I went up to the Queen's Hall to see filmmaker David Lynch and 1960s folk singer Donovan Leitch. David Lynch was there mainly to answer audience questions, which were mostly about his Transcendental Meditation, it was all interesting though, and there were some interesting comments about his films, although he was very reluctant to discuss his film of Dune (an experience Lynch described as "a three-year nightmare"). After Lynch, Donovan Leitch came on and sang some of his hits (such as "Mellow Yellow", "Catch the Wind", "Colours", "Hurdy-Gurdy Man" and "The Universal Soldier"). It was a good evening.