Alice in Wonderland

Last night was really quiet and I spent most of the time reading and watching episodes of South Park on TV.

This morning I went along to the supermarket to get my groceries for the week, and then I headed up to the movies. I had originally intended to see Clash of the Titans, but the cinema web-site listed the wrong time and so I decided to see Alice in Wonderland instead. I had three quarters of an hour before the movie started and so I stopped off and had a bottle of Budweiser beer before I went in to the film. I saw the 3D version of Alice in Wonderland, directed by Tim Burton, and I really liked it. The movie isn't really as much based on the books by Lewis Carroll as it is inspired by them. The film is set 13 years after Alice's original adventures in Wonderland, and concerns the now 19 year old Alice (Mia Wasikowska), who believes her previous adventures were just a dream, tumbling back down into Wonderland to find the place held in a grip of terror by the evil Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter). The film was visually really amazing, especially in the 3D version, and it has a lot of very amusing performances, especially Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. I can imagine the movie annoying a lot of Lewis Carroll purists, who might be annoyed that many aspects of the film owe a lot more to Burton than they do to Carroll, but personally I really enjoyed it.

Avatar

Last night was pretty quiet, and I spent quite awhile watching TV and reading Good Omens.

This morning I headed up to the Cineworld cinema and saw the new James Cameron film Avatar in 3D. The movie is set in the year 2154 on the planet Pandora, a wild jungle planet inhabited by a race of ten foot tall blue skinned humanoids called the Na'vi. Humans have arrived on Pandora to mine the planet for a valuable mineral and have made contact with the Na'vi through the use of artificially created Na'vi known as "Avatars" which are remotely controlled by humans linking up their brains with the the Avatar. An ex-marine (Sam Worthington) is selected to control an Avatar, and before long becomes fascinated by them and their world, however the human intentions towards the Na'vi are not peaceful. The movie is a stunning peice of work with some genuinely beautiful visuals and is a really interesting science-fiction film. It definitely has to be seen at the cinema though and definitely in 3D, if possible.

I got home at around four o'clock.

Greatest Ever 3-D Moments

I got to 36,015 words on my NaNoWriMo novel last night. I've decided to call it Vampire City.

Last night I was watching a show called The Greatest Ever 3-D Moments, which was quite fun. There's a TV channel that's been running a special 3-D week all this previous week, and you can get special 3-D glasses from one of the supermarkets to watch it. The show was fun but I think 3-D works a lot better at the cinema. My TV isn't small but it isn't exactly big and so the 3-D looks more like you're watching a puppet theatre than anything else. It looks basically like a cute novelty. Also the new 3-D films at the movies have much better glasses than the cardboard ones with blue and red lenses (which are quite uncomfortable to wear with normal glasses).

I was also watching a 1960s episode of Doctor Who called "The Krotons", in which the Doctor (played by Patrick Troughton) and his friends arrive on an alien planet where the humanoid inhabitants are ruled over by a race of crystalline aliens called the Krotons, who live in a large machine The Krotons teach the planet's inhabitants and every so often select the two best students to go into their machine where they are never seen again. The story was good, but the Krotons themselves looked hilarious, because the costumes kept wobbling and the lower half was like a long skirt and they could only move in shuffling baby-steps, also one of them had a very strong Birmingham accent.

I went along to my parent's house today for lunch as usual. We had a kind of beef stew for lunch with mashed potato and mushrooms. After lunch we walked in to the Modern Art Gallery, but only really had time to check out the gift shop before heading back.