Away We Go

Last night I was listening to a radio play called The Adding Machine that was orignally written by Elmer Rice in 1923. The story revolves around an accountant at a large corporation who has been working there for 25 years, when he is casually replaced by an adding machine. The accountant snaps and kills his boss and several bizarre things happen to him. The play was very surreal but pretty good. It kind of blended horror, comedy, thriller, surrealism and even a kind of love story.

Later on I watched a 2009 film called Bronson, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, on the Movies On Demand service. The film is based on the true story of "Britain's Most Notorious Prisoner" Charles Bronson, real name Michael Peterson (played by Tom Hardy), who was sentenced to prison after the botched robbery of a Post Office in 1974, which yielded a grand total of £26, and has so far spent over 34 years in jail, despite never having killed anyone. About 30 of those years were spent in solitary confinement. Mainly because of his penchant for hostage taking, rooftop protests and basically beating up guards, fellow inmates and anyone else unlucky enough to annoy him. The movie is very stylish, with some pretty surreal scenes, Hardy narrates the story, sometimes in voice-over, and sometimes as Bronson telling his story on stage in front of an enthusiastic audience. The movie also features bizarre animation sequences. The movie is very well-acted by Tom Hardy, who makes Charles Bronson charismatic, funny and absolutely terrifying often all at the same time.

This morning my Mum and I went along to the Vue cinema to see a preview of the film Away We Go, directed by Sam Mendes. The story concerns a thirty something couple (played by John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph) who are expecting their first child and travel around the US and Canada, visiting their various eccentric relatives and friends, and trying to find a place to settle down and raise the child. The movie was really funny, and also quite moving at times. One annoying thing was that the film was advertised to start at half past ten, but it actually started at ten, due to some kind of mix-up. Luckily, due to my Mum always insisting on being early for things, we only missed a few minutes, but it was very annoying all the same. We were all given free tickets for another movie when we left. After the movie we went and had a coffee and a muffin. Then we went back to my parent's house for lunch.

After lunch I went out to PC World with my Dad to have a look around. It was interesting but I didn't buy anything. We got some popcorn for the movie and, although we got the smallest that they had, it was still so big it managed to last pretty much all day.