Movies

Last night I went along to the Cineworld cinema to meet Michele. We saw a German film called The Counterfeiters, directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky. The film was based on a true story, and is set in Nazi Germany centering on a master counterfeiter, who is also Jewish. He is caught and sentenced to a concentration camp. However, due to his skills at counterfeiting he is forced to work on a project to forge mass amounts of documents and money, in particular millions of US dollars and British pounds, in an attempt to destabilise the economies as well as to provide funds for the German war effort. Although the prisoners working on the counterfeiting operation are treated comparatively well, with soft beds, music records and even a ping-pong table, they can hear the atrocities being perpetrated behind the high wall which seperates them from the rest of the camp. They are faced with the dilemma that if they do good work, then they are helping their enemies, whereas if they don't do good work, they will be killed. It's a very good film, but very dark. After the film Michele and I went and had a quick drink and a chat before heading on our seperate ways.

Back home I saw the film Screamers, directed by Christian Duguay, and based on a short story called "Second Variety" by Philip K. Dick. The film is set in the year 2078 on the planet Sirius 6B, which has been completely devestated by a war between the New Economic Bloc (NEB) and the Alliance over the mining of an extremely rare and valuable mineral. However by now the war has been reduced to just small pockets of military forces wearily struggling to survive. One of the Alliance commanders, realising that they have been more or less abandoned and the war forgotten, decides to set out over the planet's wastelands and ruined cities to make peace with the NEB forces. However, the main danger comes from the Alliances's army of small, underground, blade-wielding robots (nicknamed "Screamers" due to the noise they make when they attack). He soon realises however that the Screamers have upgraded and there are new types virtually indistinguishable from humans. The film wasn't very good, being more or less a typical, low-budget action film, with special-effects ranging from quite good to quite bad.
I also watched a TV version of Dracula, which was first shown last Christmas. It wasn't bad and certainly looked very good, but the novel had been completely altered.

Today I went over to my parent's house for lunch, as usual for a Sunday. We had chunks of chicken and carrots in white wine sauce with peas and a baked potato. The new issues of Fortean Times and Sight and Sound had arrived. Also my mum had got me the book of Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris, which she got very cheap with The Times. It was a nice afternoon.