(500) Days of Summer

Last night I was watching a TV movie called Christopher and His Kind which starred Matt Smith (the current Doctor in Doctor Who) as novelist Christopher Isherwood and it was about Isherwood's experiences as a gay Englishman in 1930s Berlin, as the Nazis come to power. It was quite an interesting show. I've never read any of Isherwood's books but I still thought it was good.

Today I decided to stay in. I watched a movie this afternoon called (500) Days of Summer, directed by Marc Webb. The film stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a greetings card designer, who meets and falls in love with a co-worker (Zooey Deschanel). The movie is told in a non-linear style, moving back and forth in time during the five hundred days of their relationship from the joy and exuberance of the early days if the relationship to the bitterness and heartbreak of the end. It was a good film actually. It's reviewed over at Permanently Weird.

As I've said before I'm not a huge fan of romance movies usually, and I know nothing about relationships as I've never really been in one and realistically have little to no chance of ever being in one.

Pump Up the Volume

Last night I watched some of the 1990 film Pump Up the Volume, directed by Allan Moyle. The film stars Christian Slater as a shy, largely ignored high-school student, who has just recently moved into town. However, at night he hosts a pirate radio show from his bedroom which becomes a smash hit among the students, due to his anarchic, confrontational style but is widely hated by the faculty and parents. It is a good movie, with a really great soundtrack including Leonard Cohen and the Cowboy Junkies. However, watching it now it looks really dated. I think the internet and podcasts have effectively killed off traditional pirate radio stations.

After that I was watching an episode of Peep Show which I had seen several times before but was still funny. During it I felt really tired all of a sudden and came close to falling asleep on my couch, but I didn't.

It was another fairly quiet day at work, and I got back around half past six.

Daybreakers

Last night I watched the 2009 movie Daybreakers, which starred Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe and Sam Neill and was about a near future world where most of the population has become a vampire and the human race is practically extinct, forcing the vampires to come up with a solution before they lose their source of food. It wasn't bad and it had some pretty good action scenes in it.

I also watched They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, a 1969 Sydney Pollack film set in the 1930s about a dance marathon where dancers are forced to carry on for weeks in the hope of winning a cash prize. It was a pretty good movie and very intense. They are both reviewed over at Permanently Weird.

I have a really bad cold today, so the only time that I went out was to get my groceries for the week. In the afternoon I listened to a radio adaptation of The Big Sleep based on the Raymond Chandler novel.

Bullitt

Last night I watched a one-off horror drama on TV called Whistle and I'll Come to You which starred John Hurt as an elderly man who has just put his wife in a nursing home and gone on holiday alone to a quiet seaside hotel. After discovering a wedding ring on the beach he finds himself haunted by increasingly disturbing supernatural occurances. The story was loosely based on a short story by M.R. James (called "Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad"). In the original story the main character is an unmarried middle-aged academic who finds an old whistle on the beach and blows it, and then finds himself tormented by ghostly occurances. Also the original story was actually quite scary, but the new TV version cut out the scary bits. It was okay in places, and it had some good sequences, but just not enough. Mostly it was kind of a disappointment.

I also watched the last in the current series of Peep Show, which was kind of a New Year special.

Today I was watching the 1968 movie Bullitt, directed by Peter Yates. Set in San Francisco, it stars Steve McQueen as police lieutenant Frank Bullitt who is assigned to safeguard a witness from the Mob, on the request of a sleazy politician (played by Robert Vaughn). The movie hasn't really aged well and the pace kind of sags in places, but it does feature Steve McQueen in probably his most iconic role, and a cool jazzy score from Lalo Schifrin (which has probably been played at every wine bar and cocktail party for the past 40 years) and also one of the most famous and influential car chases ever seen on film. All that, and the presence of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Robert Vaughn, pretty much makes it a compendium of sixties cool. It's reviewed over at Permanently Weird.

Tomorrow I am pretty much going to have to be up at half past five in order to get into work early so I can leave as early as possible. It's New Year's Eve so it's likely to be a really busy couple of days. To be honest I am not looking forward to going to work tomorrow at all. I love New Year, but to be honest I feel like I'll be doing well to make it to midnight without passing out.Anyway, Happy New Year!

Goya's Ghosts

Last night I was watching a movie from 2006 called Goya's Ghosts, directed by Milos Forman. The movie opens in Spain in 1792 where the Inquisition are investigating the works of successful painter Francisco Goya (played by Stellan Skarsgard). However, one of Goya's models, Ines (played by Natalie Portman) is arrested by the Inquisition and "put to The Question" (tortured). In order to release her, Goya is forced to make a deal with hypocritical Inquisitor, Lorenzo (played by Javier Bardem). Although the historical setting of the movie is fairly authentic, the plot is entirely fictional. The movie is visually very lavish and very well-made. Apparently it had pretty bad reviews when it was released but I really liked it, and Natalie Portman looked great. It reminded me in many ways of Forman's earlier film Quills, in that they both feature an iconoclastic and controversial artist (in the case of Quills it was the Marquis de Sade), both of them semi in love with a young muse, and struggling against a hyprocritical authority figure. Personally I preferred Quills.

It was another really dull day at work, and as usual I was really glad to get back home this evening.

Mr. Nice

It was another really dull day at work, and not a particularly good one. It was one of those days where I just couldn't wait to get away.

When I left work I went up to the Cineworld cinema to see my next Film Festival movie which was Mr. Nice, directed by Bernard Rose and based on the autobiographical book by Howard Marks. The film opens with Marks (played by Rhys Ifans) taking his first experiemnts with drugs in the early 1960s at Oxford University and follows his eventful life as he becomes a notorious marijuana smuggler and sometime spy. The movie was often very funny and packed with incident, although due to the nature of it being a biographical film, there wasn't really a proper storyline just a succession of incidents. It was very stylishly made and unusually, instead of using captions to denote the passage of time from the early 1960s until the mid 1990s, the look of the movie changes to mirror the look of movies that were being made at the time the action is set. I've never read the book, although I have heard that it's very good. I'll have to check it out now I've seen the film.

At the screening were the actors Rhys Ifans and David Thewlis along with the director, Bernard Rose (who directed Candyman among many others), and also Howard Marks himself, who has become a real cult figure following the huge success of the book and often goes on speaking tours and which made for the unusual experience of watching a film biography of someone and knowing that the film's subject is there in person. The four did an entertaining question and answer session with the audience afterwards. Thewlis mentioned that he was genuinely worried that the person he played, a violent killer, was still on the loose and was unlikely to be particularly thrilled with the movie. Apparently Thewlis had been warned that he "might receive death threats... but not to take them seriously".

Shadows

Last night I saw the 1959 film Shadows, directed by John Cassavetes. The film concerns three African-American siblings: Ben (Ben Carruthers), Leila (Leila Goldoni) and Hugh (Hugh Hurd) who live in New York City. Hugh is a talented jazz musician who is constantly frustrated by the fact that he has to earn money playing show tunes in sleazy bars and introducing strippers, Ben wants to be a cool, hipster writer but spends most of his time drinking and hanging out with his friends, while Leila is involved in a troubled inter-racial relationship. The film is one of the most influential films of the American independent cinema. Cassavetes started out as an actor, and is probably best known as Mia Farrow's husband in Rosemary's Baby. He wanted to play real characters dealing with real situations and was unhappy with what was on offer in Hollywood movies. However, Cassavetes realised that if no-one else was making the movies he wanted to be involved in then he would have to do it himself. Cassavetes ran an acting school and company who he used as actors for his film, which he raised the $40,000 budget for partly by issuing appeals to the public for donations on national radio. Shadows was made first in 1957 and was completely improvised by the cast, but was apparently so bad that few people sat through the whole thing, and so Cassavetes remade it in 1959 with the same cast and using a lot of footage from the original, but it was technically more proficient and was largely scripted (depsite a title at the end claiming the film was an improvisation). The film has a very loose plot and it is funny, interesting and spontaneous. The soundtrack features famous jazz musician Charles Mingus.

It was another very ordinary and dull day at work. When I got home I microwaved some lamb rogan josh for dinner and listened to a reading of "The Haunted Doll's House" by M.R. James in which a man buys a valuable antique doll's house at a surprisingly low price. Late that night however, he discovers that the doll's house has a disturbing and gruesome secret.

Cloverfield

Last night I was watching the 2007 film Cloverfield, directed by Matt Reeves, on television. The film, which is set in New York City, opens with a group of friends celebrating one of their number (Michael Stahl-Davies) who is about to move to Japan. However, the party is interrupted when a giant monster goes on the rampage through the city, and the guest of honour is faced with a dangerous journey through the devestated city to rescue his ex-girlfriend (Odette Yustman). The whole film is made to look like it's been shot by one of the party guests on a camcorder (a little like the style of The Blair Witch Project), and it is pretty effective. The storyline of the giant monster on the rampage is as old as the hills, but it's usually told from the point of view of the scientists and military trying to learn about the monster and destroy it, while this film is told from the point of view of one of the fleeing millions. It is pretty tense and genuinely exciitng. The monster itself was pretty impressive.

After that I watched another movie called La Antena, a 2007 Argentinine film, directed by Esteban Sapir. The movie (the title of which translates as "The Aerial") is set in an unnamed city which is dominated by media tycoon "Mister TV" (Alejandro Urdapilleta) who has stolen the voice of everyone in the city, except for a singer known as "The Voice" (Florencia Raggi) and her eyeless son (Jonathan Sandor). The movie is shot in the style of a silent movie with no sound at all except for the music and two characters who very rarely speak. The dialogue and most of the sound effects appear as imaginatively designed captions. It's all extremely stylised and deeply surreal, including a man who constantly has a TV screen in front of his face showing an enlarged mouth, and the city's police chief who always wears a rat suit. If you can imagine a mix of David Lynch, Tim Burton, The Mighty Boosh and the 1927 German film Metropolis, than that is pretty much what the movie is like.

It was another pretty busy day at work today and fairly dull. However I am off work tomorrow so it's going to be a three day weekend which should be good.

Black Rain

Last night I was watching a 1989 movie called Black Rain, directed by Ridley Scott. The film tells the story of two tough New York cops (played by Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia) who are given the job of escorting a powerful Japanese gangster back to Osaka in order to hand him over to the Japanese authorities. However, the gangster escapes and the two cops are reluctantly forced to join forces with the Japanese police in order to locate the gangster. The film was okay. It was very stylish and visually it was absolutely stunning, however the storyline was kind of weak in places and Michael Douglas' character was just annoying.

I read a pretty creepy horror story called "The Children of Monte Rosa" by Reggie Oliver, which was set in Portugal in 1964 where an English family are on holiday and strike up an acquaintance with a sinister old couple of English ex-patriates who invite them back to their palatial mansion, however when the family's young son decides to explore the grounds he comes across some shocking secrets. It was a pretty good one.

I went out early this morning to meet my Mum in order to sort out a couple of things, and we went and had breakfast. I had some pancakes with maple syrup and a coffee. Then I went out and got an audio CD called Spine Chillers, which collected five short radio dramas based on ghost stories by M.R. James. M.R. James was a very well known English ghost story writer whose day job was as a professor of history and antiquities at Cambridge and Eton Universities. Apparently his habit was to throw parties where his friends and students would gather at his home and drink and he would tell them all his own ghost stories. It was only later that people encouraged him to write them down and sell them. Many of the stories revolve around timid, middle-aged academics who would sicover some kind of buried ancient secret only to find that they are invariably guarded by some kind of malevolent supernatural force. I also got a CD of the three part radio adaptation of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold based on the novel by John le Carre.

Suspiria

Last night I was watching the 1977 film Suspiria, directed by Dario Argento. The movie tells the story of a young American woman who goes to a ballet school in Germany, where she quickly learns that gruesome and bizarre events are underway. Like many Argento films the storyline is almost non-existant, and pretty much just serves as a thread on which Argento hangs his trademark elaborate and gruesomely violent set-pieces. The movie has a really distinctive look, full of strange overbright colours and scenes flooded in red, green and blue light. It also has a memorable shrieking score by Italian rock band Goblin.

This morning I went along to the Ocean Terminal shopping centre with Dad. We started off at Costa Coffee for a coffee and a muffin and then had a look around the mall. After that we went back to my parent's house. The latest issues of Sight and Sound and Fortean Times had arrived during the week. The travel agent telephoned to confirm some details about my holiday, and I listened to the third and final part of the radio adaptation of The Honourable Schoolboy.

Witchfinder General

Last night I was watching the 1968 movie Witchfinder General, directed by Michael Reeves, which starred Vincent Price as the historical figure Matthew Hopkins, who during the English Civil War went around the countryside and, calling himself "The Witchfinder General", was paid by villagers to basically torture and execute anyone accused of witchcraft. The film, which is set in 1645, involves a Parliamentarian soldier on a mission of vengeance after Hopkins attacks his fiance and kills her father. The film is not particularly accurate, historically, but it is very good. The movie is really gruesome, particularly by the standards of the time. When it was released in America it was re-named The Conqueror Worm to tie it in with the Roger Corman movies based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Although this movie has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Poe.

After that I saw a 1962 Ingmar Bergman film called Through a Glass Darkly. It is about a family living on a small Swedish island, the daughter of which is slowly growing insane, the father is guilty about the fact that he is more curious than anything to see how his daughter's condition progresses, and her husband and brother look on powerless to do anything. The film is really bleak and very powerful.

I went to the shops today and bought a CD of That Mitchell and Webb Sound: Series Four and the CD of the recent radio drama of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Then I went along to the travel agent to get more details about my holiday.

On my way home I stopped off at the supermarket for my groceries for the week and got an issue of Uncut magazine which was running a special feature about the band Joy Division.

Thrillers

Last night was really quiet and I spent most of the time just watching TV. I watched a couple of episodes of 24 on DVD which is a show which I think is a lot of fun, with Kiefer Sutherland running around trying to save America without even taking time to stop for a sandwich.

Today I went out to my parent's house as usual for a Sunday and had my lunch. I was also listening to the second of a three part radio adaptation of The Honourable Schoolboy, based on the spy thriller by John le Carre, which was pretty good.

I was kind of comparing Kiefer Sutherland's Jack Baurer in 24 to Alec Guiness's George Smiley in the BBC adaptations of the John le Carre books. Jack Bauer would probably have been shot at four times, crashed at least two cars, ran through most of Los Angeles and been captured at least once, before George Smiley got through his first hour of sitting and staring glumly into the middle distance. They are both good television oin their own ways, they're just completely different.

Repulsion

Last night I was watching the 1965 film Repulsion, directed by Roman Polanski. The film stars Catherine Deneuve as a young Belgian beautician who lives in her sister's flat in London. When her sister goes on holiday to Italy with her boyfriend, the beautician is left alone in the flat and before long starts to become increasingly paranoid and experiences bizarre hallucinations. It's a pretty good film, which in it's time was very controversial and is still pretty disturbing even today.

I was out fairly sharp today and went along to the Cineworld cinema to see the movie Precious, directed by Lee Daniels, and based on the novel Push by Sapphire. The film is set in Harlem, New York City in 1987 and tells the story of a pregnant 16 year old girl, Claireece "Precious" Jones (played by Gabourey Sidibe) who lives a horrific life, suffering abuse and bullying. She escapes from her grim reality by indulging in elaborate fantasies of stardom. Suspended from school she attends an "altenative" school, where for the first time people start to take a genuine interest in her. It is a very good film and very harrowing. The acting is very good.

The Final Problem

Yesterday evening I was half-watching the movie Twilight, directed by Catherine Hardwicke, and based on the novel by Stephanie Meyer. The movie is about a teenage girl (played by Kristen Stewart) who moves to a small town in Washington, where she falls for a local guy (Robert Pattinson) who happens to be a 108 year old vampire. The movie was hugely popular and so were the books. Despite being a vampire story it's much more of a teen romance than a horror film, and the vampires have very little to do with pretty much any other interpretation of them (Meyer has said that she knew nothing about vampire stories when she started writing the books). I've never read any of the books but I thought the film was okay, though not great.

Later on at night I was listening to an episode of Weird Tales, which is a short series of one off radio horror plays inspired by the stories of H.P. Lovecraft. They are all original stories, not adaptations of Lovecraft's stories, but they deal with similar themes. In this story a man who has recently lost his job moves with his wife and daughter to a new house, however there are strange smells around the building and the constant sounds of rats scratching in the walls, and the house's last occupant vanished under mysterious circumstances. It was a pretty good story.

I also listened to a radio adaptation of a Sherlock Holmes story. This episode was called "The Final Problem" based on a short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In this episode Sherlock Holmes is on the verge of making the biggest case of his career against Professor Moriarty, the most dangerous criminal in London, however it's three days before Moriarty can be arrested, and so Homes and Watson set off on a journey across Europe with their deadly enemy in hot pursuit. It was a really good story. Conan Doyle had apparently got fed up of writing the Sherlock Holmes stories, because he thought they were distracting him from writing more "serious" literature, and so he intended this to be the last of them (hence the title) but, due to popular demand, he was more or less forced to write more.

It was another very dull day at the office, but apparently they are going to increse the heating slightly. My writing has been going pretty slowly recently, basically I'm kind of stuck with the story and don't really know how to move on with it. It feels like pretty much everything has already been done.

The Crooked Man

Last night I was listening to another radio adaptation of a Sherlock Holmes story called "The Crooked Man", based on the short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In this story Sherlock Holmes is assigned to investigate the case of a woman who is accused of murdering her husband, but uncovers a dark story of jealosy and treachery stretching back over thirty years. It was a really good story.

It was another very quiet and dull day at work. There was a petition going around the office to try and get them to put up the heating.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the film of The Wolf-Man when it come out. I do find it interesting just how popular vampires are at the moment. In recent years it just seems like they've really taken off.

Soul Circus

Last night I was listening to a radio adaptation of a Sherlock Holmes story called "The Boscombe Valley Mystery" based on the story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In this story a young man is accused of murdering his own father, but Sherlock Holmes believes that he is innocent, and determines to track down the real killer. It was a really good story, and one of the earliest of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

I also finished reading the novel Soul Circus by George Pelecanos. It's a crime novel, set in Washington DC, where private investigator Derek Strange is determined to protect a particularly violent drug dealer from getting the death penalty, not because Strange believes that he is innocent but because he doesn't believe in capital punishment, however as the tril progresses so does the tensions between rival street gangs. Added to that, Strange and his partner Terry Quinn discover that one of their clients has brutally murdered the woman that he paid them to find. It's a really good, tense and gritty novel, full of action, witty dialogue and laced with dark humour. Pelecanos wrote scripts for the TV series The Wire, and definitely if you like the show (which is awesome) then you should like the novel.

Later on I watched the 1992 movie Bram Stoker's Dracula, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. In 1897 a young English lawyer (played by Keanu Reeves) heads to the remote Castle Dracula in Transylvania to oversee a property purchase by the mysterious Count Dracula (Gary Oldman) who is planning to move to England. However while in the castle the lawyer discovers that Dracula is a vampire, a dead creature that has existed for hundreds of years feeding on human blood, and that Dracula has set his sights on the lawyer's fiancee (Winona Ryder) believing her to be the reincarnation of his long-dead wife. Despite some major changes the film is relatively faithful to the book. Visually it's very impressive and stylish and filled with visual tricks, for example in one scene where a character has to step through a doorway, they actually had to step over the doorway backwards and then it was played in reverse ro give it added strangeness.

It was another very quiet day at work and pretty dull. I left at five and got a suasage supper on my way home, which was quite nice.

Endless Nights

Last night I was listening to another of the Sherlock Holmes stories on the radio. This one was called "The Retired Colourman", based on the 1926 short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and told the story of a retired art supply dealer who enlists the aid of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson when his younger wife runs off with another man, taking a large amount of his money with them. However Holmes soon suspects that the truth is far more sinister. A 'colourman', by the way, is an old term for a man who makes or sells paint. It wasn't one of the best of them, but it was pretty good. That's the last in the series, apparently. I wish I could find those Sherlock Holmes tapes that I used to have, but I think they've gone, and I've never been able to find them either in the shops or online. It often seems to be the case that you don't even look at something for years, and then as soon as you've thrown it out you suddenly realise you want it again.

I did some more of my writing and then I watched some of the sixth season of Red Dwarf on DVD, which was really funny.

Today I went out and had a look at the shops. I got the soundtrack CD of True Blood, the movie Antichrist on DVD and the graphic novel of The Sandman: Endless Nights by Neil Gaiman. That's me got the complete set of The Sandman now! I went along to American Express to get some information about my planned holiday, but it looks like the flights will be too expensive so I might have to rethink it.

Guards! Guards!

Last night I was listening to a radio adaptation of a Sherlock Holmes story called "The Three Gables" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In this story a woman is offered a large amount of money to sell her house to a wealthy buyer who also wants all of her personal possessions. When the woman refuses the would-be buyer starts to use threats and intimidation to force her to sell, and so she hires Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson to investigate. It was quite a good story.

Following that I listened to the first of a six part radio adaptation of Guards! Guards!, based on the novel by Terry Pratchett. It was one of the Discworld series of comedy fantasy stories and concerned the inept City Guards who, worried that they have become little more than a joke, decide to summon up a dragon to terrorise the populace so they can banish it and become heroes. It was very funny.

I did some more writing last night and it seems to be going quite well so far.

It was another dull day at work, and I was feeling kind of tense all day. At least it's the weekend now, anyway.

Radio

I got in pretty late last night after the movie. I listened to a couple of episodes of the radio series of Sherlock Holmes while I was on the computer, they were really good productions and very faithful to the original stories. I managed to write about four hundred words of my new story last night, which wasn't much but I was quite happy about doing it.

It was another very ordinary day at work, and it was one of those days that just seemed to go on forever. I got home at around six.

Samaritan

Last night was pretty quiet. I finished reading the book Samaritan by Richard Price. The book is set in a tough inner-city area of New Jersey in the present day, and tells the story of Ray Mitchell, who grew up in the tough housing projects but now in his forties he is a moderately successful screenwriter on a popular TV show. Returning to the projects and with an almost coompulsive urge to do good, he decides to take a creative writing class at the local high school. However one night he is brutally beaten in his apartment and hospitalised. The only cop who is in any way interested in the case is Nerese "Tweetie" Ammons, who grew up with Ray and owes him a favour from when they were children. However Ray knows who attacked him but for some reason refuses to give a name or help in any way and Tweetie becomes determined to find the truth. It was a pretty interesting book which moves between the events leading up to the attack and the events after the attack. It's well-written, interesting and witty, however the ending is kind of spoiled when it becomes a bit preachy, but mostly it is worth reading.

Today I went to the shops to get a new battery installed in my watch, which stopped working on Christmas Eve. I also got a DVD set called Box of the Dead, which collects all five of the Dead films written and directed by George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead and Diary of the Dead). I also got a couple of desk calendars one of which I was planning to put up at home and the other of which I was planning on putting up in my office at work. The calendars were called The Book-Lovers Calendar 2010 and Urban Dictionary Calendar 2010. Heading back I stopped off at Burger King and had a Whopper Meal (basically a Whopper hamburger, large fries and a large coke).

Today is really the last day of the holidays. Work starts up properly tomorrow and this evening I'll be taking down my Christmas decorations and putting them all away in storage. It's always kind of sad, but there's not really much you can do about it. One good thing is that I do have about three weeks worth of holiday days to use up before the end of March, which means that I should have another two week holiday coming up in the next three months.