When Marnie Was There

I stayed in today, mainly because I had a cold. The new issues of Fortean Times andSight and Sound arrived in the mail.

I half watched a movie called Killer: A Journal of Murder which stars James Woods as a serial killer in prison, who strikes up a strange friendship with a guard who encourages him to write his autobiography.

I also saw When Marnie Was There, an animated Japanese film about a girl who is sent to the country for her health, who becomes fascinated by a mysterious girl who lives in a run-down mansion. It's a good movie. I reviewed it here:http://permanentlyweird.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/when-marnie-was-there.html

Blair Witch Project

After work I picked up a copy of SFX magazine, which was celebrating the return ofRed Dwarf.

I also watched The Blair Witch Project, which I remember seeing on it's first release in 1999. It's lost a lot of it's impact since then, with so many found footage horror movies around. I reviewed it here: http://www.permanentlyweird.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/the-blair-witch-project.html

Missing Issue

Last night was pretty quiet. I still had a really bad cold and pretty much slept for most of the time.

This morning I was feeling a bit better, although the cold still hasn't gone away. My Dad called around for me this morning and we went along to the Gyle shopping centre. We had some coffee and I had a cheese scone and a mocha coffee, then split up to look around on our own. I got a couple of books: Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson and The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac.

After that we went to my parent's house where the latest issues of Fortean Times and Sight and Sound. Actually the previous issue of Sight and Sound never came so I've e-mailed them to get them to send another copy.

The Runaways

This morning my Dad came to collect me and we went to the Gyle shopping centre. I had a scone and a mocha in the coffee section and then we split up to look at our own things. I got a book called The Hell of It All by Charlie Brooker, which is a collection of TV reviews. Charlie Brooker is a TV reviewer and general commentator and does various TV shows where he discusses TV, video games and the news and he hosts a comedy panel shows, and has written a couple of other books. I think he's really clever and funny. I also got a CD called American Anthems which is a collection of American rock anthems from the 1980s mostly. I happen to like that kind of music.

Then we went over to my parent's house. The latest issue of Fortean Times had arrived, which this month featured an article on the possibility of a giant serpent living in Sweden and an article exploring the background to the Peid Piper of Hamelin myth. The new issue of Sight and Sound also arrived, featuring this month a centenary tribute to director Akira Kurosawa. In the afternoon my Mum and I went out for a bit of a walk.

In the evening I went up to the Cineworld cinema to see the movie The Runaways, directed by Floria Sigismondi. The movie is set in the mid 1970s and tells the story of the all-girl rock band The Runaways, focusing mainly on lead singer Cherie Currie (played by Dakota Fanning) and guitarist Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart). The movie is pretty much a typical rock movie biography, but it's a lot of fun with a great soundtrack, and a cool, punky seventies feel to it. It also features great performances from Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart. Personally I really like Joan Jett, her version of "Crimson and Clover" is one of my favourite songs, but the movie only really deals with the early part of her career.

Burn After Reading

Last night I was watching the 2003 film House of 1000 Corpses, directed by Rob Zombie, on DVD. As the name probably hints, it is a horror film in which a group of twenty-somethings travel through America researching odd local legends and unusual attractions in order to write a book. When they stop off at Captain Spaulding's Museum of Monsters and Madmen, run by a creepy individual in a clown costume, they become intrigued by the local legend of a sadistic doctor, and decide to go to the site where he was hanged. However, they get lost and soon run in to the murderous Firefly family. It's a deliberate throwback to the 1970s style of gritty, graphic horror films, and is pretty gruesome and full of bizarre imagery. The film features appearances from a number of cult actors, and also a couple of actors who went on to bigger and better things, such as Rainn Wilson who went on to star in the US version of The Office.

I had to be up pretty early this morning because I was going to see a preview of Burn After Reading with my mum. My parents came round to collect me at around quarter to ten, but when we got to the cinema we realised that mum had made a mistake with the times: instead of it being ten o'clock for a ten-thirty start, it was ten-thirty for an eleven o'clock start. So we went and found a coffee shop and had a drink before heading over to the cinema.

Burn After Reading is the latest film from the Coen Brothers (Joel and Ethan). It's a kind of spy comedy. Basically, Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) resigns from the CIA, much to the horror of his doctor wife (Tilda Swinton) who is having an affair with another Government agent (George Clooney). Osbourne decides to write his memoirs, while his wife decides to get a divorce and records all the details of the household finances on the same computer disc that Osbourne is usuing to save his book. However the disc is lost at a gym and found by the employees who immediately think it is all top secret spy stuff and two of the employess (Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt) decide they can use it to get some money. The film has a pretty involved plot and is often extremely funny. It might not be the best of the Coen Brothers film but it is well worth watching, because it works really well as both a thriller and a comedy.

After the film we went back to my parent's house and I picked up the latest copies of Sight and Sound and Fortean Times ("The Journal of Strange Phenomena"), and some free Alfred Hitchcock DVDs that my parents had ordered for me from The Times. Later on we had some tacos for lunch. In the afternoon my parents were busy with the wiring under the house (they are planning a large scale decorating project in their house over the next few months or so).

Magazines

Today was yet another fairly uneventful day. On my way in to work I bought the latest issues of Radio Times and Total Film, which featured a double-sided poster advertising The Dark Knight and Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Work was really quit today, as it almost always is on a Friday, and, as usual, by afternoon there was barely anyone around. I had a sore throat all day as well. I got back home at around half past five.

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.

This Is Spinal Tap

Last night I was watching the film This Is Spinal Tap on DVD. The film is a spoof documentary directed by Rob Reiner, who also stars as director Marti DiBergi, making a documentary, or, if you will, "rockumentary", about fading British heavy metal band Spinal Tap, previously acclaimed as "one of England's loudest bands", on a come-back tour of the USA to promote their new album "Smell the Glove". The film follows the band on their tour, as they confront their dwindling popularity, strained relationships within the band and the various problems of life on tour, while giving interviews about such things as the mysterious fatal accidents which kill off their drummers. Their are a lot of very funny scenes in it, such as the amplifier which goes up to eleven, and the undersized set for their "Stonehenge" concert. Apparently the film was only a very modest success when it was released in cinemas in 1984, but it became quite a big cult film on video, and is often classed as one of the funniest films ever made in magazine polls, and is apparently very popular with real-life bands on tour.

I left work early today, because one of the crucial computer systems was down. I'd already done the financial side of the work and checked it, and it was all ready to finish this afternoon, but I just have to leave it until Monday. I waited for the system to come back on, but there was nothing to do all afternoon. We all just played 'Tetris' on the computers and did the crosswords in the papers. On the way home I stopped off and bought the latest issue of Empire magazine.

At least it means that Monday should be an easy day, hopefully, because half the work will already be done.