The Tripods

Last night I wrote some more of my script and watched another episode of Blake's 7 on DVD. The episode that I was watching was one which I got on video back in 1994, and I could remember absolutely nothing about it. It's really weird how memory works, because there some TV shows that I've not seen since the 80s and yet I still have very vivid memories of them. I remember this show from the mid eighties called The Tripods which was about aliens in giant machines which controlled people's minds with these weird glowing machines implanted into their skulls. I just remember thinking the Tripod machines themselves were really cool and, when I was a kid, the mind control machines really freaked me out.

It was another really dull and quiet day at work, but one good thing is that I have managed to get tomorrow and Monday off on annual week. Yay! Four day weekend! :)

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence

Last night I was watching TV and caught a bit of the end of Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino's debut film from 1992 about the violent aftermath of a botched jewellery store heist. When it was released in the US it was pretty successful for a moderately low budget gangster movie, but in Europe and the UK it was a massive hit. In Britain especially it was hugely controversial and there was a lot of attention given to the level of violence in the film, although it was released during one of the periodic media panics in Britain about violence in movies. It played constantly in some cinemas for about two years, because it was unavailable on video until 1995. I only saw about quarter of an hour of it last night, but I have seen it before countless times and it really brought me back in my mind to 1995 when Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction were the ultimate in cool, must-see movies, and I was 16 and was just finishing my hated high-school time. That was also the year that I was really getting into movies and I saw a lot of different types of films in that year because 1995 was the year they marked the "Century of Cinema". I've often thought if I could go back to any period in my life it would probably be 1999 when I was in 20 years old, in college, I'd really started writing poetry for the first time and I felt genuinely optimistic about the future for probably the first time in my life. It didn't last.

Later on I was watching a Japanese animated movie from 2004 called Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, written and directed by Mamoru Oshii, and based on the "manga" (comic-book) by Shirow Masamune. The film is set in the year 2032 where the few remaining humans co-exist uneasily with robots, androids and cyborgs. When a series of "gynoids" (female androids), who are being used for sex, kill eight people and then destroy themselves, a cyborg detective and his human partner are assigned to investigate. Visually the movie is spectacular, mixing 2D and 3D computer animation. It's a pretty good movie, blending action, spectacle and philosophy pretty well.

It was my last day on the training course today, but I managed to leave early and got a kebab on my way home.

Memories of "Casino"

Last night I was watching an episode of The Twilight Zone from 1959, about a stressed out executive who returns to his old home town and finds himself transported back in time and meets his family and himself as an eleven year old. I also watched one of the first Doctor Who episodes from 1963, it was the first story to feature the Daleks (the show's most popular adversary). It's really interesting going back to the earliest epsiodes of shows that you like and seeing how they begin. It often takes awhile to get everything worked out in a series. It's interesting that Doctor Who was originally conceived as an educational series to teach kids about history, and most of the stories were not intended science-fiction elements aside from the central premise of time-travelling, however they would put in the odd trip to the future and other planets for a bit of variety. However it soon became apparent that viewers much preferred the science-fiction stories to the historical ones and they were quickly phased out after a few years.

I also watched a documentary about the true story behind the Martin Scorsese film Casino. It was really interesting although I knew a lot of it already because I had read the Nicholas Pileggi book that the film was based on. I remember watching the film with my Gran and in one scene where Joe Pesci's character had comitted a brutal murder and was going on a swear-laden rant, my Gran piped up with: "Eee, Joe, you don't want to be using language like that. You'll get your mouth washed out with soap and water." Bad language was the only thing that ever really bothered my Gran. I remember she was once complaining about something she had seen on TV and I said to her that I thought she liked her murder stories, and Gran replied: "Oh, I love my murders, but only the nice ones." I asked her what exactly a nice murder was, and she thought for a bit before replying: "Well, one where no-one uses any bad language."

I had a really bad night's sleep last night and I was absolutely stuffed up with the cold this morning. The whole day was freezing cold and there was a very thick mist. It was really cold at work as well, where there was hardly anyone in.

Old Memories

Last night was really quiet. I was looking through some old boxes that I hadn't looked through for some years and found some quite interesting stuff in them, including some old photographs, some books (mainly the Anne Rice vampire books), and a microcassette recorder I have which is probably now broken beyond any hope of repair. It was really interesting to see them. I was also writing some more of the background to the NaNoWriMo story. I was trying to work out the ceremonial and kind of religious traditions of the vampires in the story. There is really only a few days until it officially starts.

Today was yet another quiet and dull day at work.

Reading Memories

Last night I got home kind of too late to really do much, except watch The Wire.

Today I once again got into work early, pausing on my way in to renew my bus pass for another month. It was another pretty quiet day, and I left the office at around five o'clock.

I had a microwave chicken jalfrezi curry with pilau rice for my dinner and it was really nice.

It's been another fairly uneventful day. I was thinking of the first books I read. I always remember my Mum reading the CS Lewis Narnia books to me when I was five. Strangely enough even though it was so long ago I can still remember them really clearly and I can remember my Mum reading them really clearly even today. The first sizeable novel that I read myself was The Hobbit by JRR Tolkein when I was about nine. I think it's one of the things about fantasy is that aside from any other kind of genre it opens up the imagination.

Hard Candy

Last night I was watching a 2006 movie called Hard Candy, directed by David Slade, about a photographer (played by Patrick Wilson) who has been flirting with a teenage girl (Ellen Page) on the internet. However when he meets her the roles of predator and prey are quickly reversed. It's a really disturbing and pretty intense film, taking place almost entirely in the photographer's large house. It is also very well-acted, with mostly only the two characters on-screen throughout the whole movie.

After the movie I was playing Sonic the Hedgehog (on the Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection) before heading to bed. That is still a really good game even after nearly twenty years. The graphics are still good even today and most importantly the gameplay more than holds up. I remember the games we used to have for our old Amstrad computer. Some of them I still think would be great to play again. Then again like I was saying a few days ago, nostalgia can really play tricks on you. Like movies and TV shows which I thought were absolutely awesome when I was a younger but now just don't work at all for me.

It was another quiet day at work, at pretty dull. At around the middle of the morning there was a procession of taxi cabs passing the office all decorated with bright balloons and coloured paper and streamers and so forth, all honking their horns and playing music and stuff through loudspeakers. It's something that the taxi company does every year of taking disabled kids out for the day to the beach. It always attracts a lot of attention in the office where people are just always ready for any kind of distraction.

Red Dwarf

Last night was pretty quiet. I was watching an episode of Red Dwarf, which was pretty funny. Red Dwarf is a British science-fiction sit-com that was quite popular throughout the 1990s. I'd seen it several times before, but it was still pretty entertaining. It was an episode from the sixth season in which the unpleasant Rimmer (Chris Barrie) leaves the rest of the crew trapped on a desintegrating spaceship with a killer robot by running off in the only remaining escape pod. However, he pays the price when he winds up stranded on a remote uninhabited planet, which Rimmer populates with clones of himself who proceed to torment him.

It was another quiet day at work today. I stopped off on my way in to buy the latest copy of Radio Times, which I bought on the way in because I needed some change for the vending machines. I had a phone call from my friend Joe this afternoon asking me if I wanted to go out with him and his brother, Sean, tomorrow evening. Apparently it's the birthday of someone Joe used to work with at a pizza restaurant, where Joe worked part-time a few months ago, and Sean and myself have been invited to tag along. Except for Joe and his brother I don't know anyone who is going, but I am definitely into the idea of going along. I've barely been out much at all the past few months. Going out at night has always been something I've been extremely nervous about, but a couple of years ago I started hanging out with people more and going out, but since I was mugged last November I was really put off going out. Also after a great deal of unpleasantness about six months ago, I really pretty much stopped going out at all. I am extremely nervous because I am seriously out of the habit of socialising, and hanging out. However, I shall attempt it again and hopefully there won't be any drama and I'll get home in one piece.

I had been planning to get some takeout fish and chips for my dinner this evening, but I decided to save my money for tomorrow, and just had a microwave lasagne when I got home.

Bring Back... Star Wars

Last night I was watching a documentary called Bring Back... Star Wars in which a guy travelled around trying to meet the cast of the original Star Wars trilogy, interviewing them about the films and inviting them to a special reunion. They managed to get a hold of a fair amount of the cast, except for Mark Hamill (who, according to the show, wanted nothing more to do with the Star Wars films) and Harrison Ford. There were some interesting anecdotes in the show, such as the fact that Anthony Daniels (C3-PO) and Kenny Baker (R2-D2) apparently couldn't stand each other. I was one of the people who grew up with those films. Return of the Jedi was one of the first films I ever saw at a cinema at age four. I remember seeing Anthony Daniels in person a few years ago promoting an exhibition of props and artwork from the Star Wars movies.

It was another dull and quiet day at work. There was hardly anyone in today because it was a public holiday.

I'm still transcribing my old journals and diaries onto the computer. It's the first time I read a lot of the stuff since I wrote it and it is really strange to read a lot of it. Interestingly, it tends to be all the little, piontless, dull things, that I always thought was really stupid to write down which ends up meaning the most in a way, because you tend to remember most of the really big things that happen to you, but it's the little, seemingly unimportant, things that make up life, really. That's what I think, at any rate.

The Wackness

After work today I went up to the Cineworld cinema to meet my Mum. The film we saw was The Wackness, directed by Jonathan Levine. The film is set in New York City over the summer of 1994 and tells the story of High School graduate Luke Shapiro (played by Josh Peck) who is enjoying, more or less (mostly less), his last summer before heading off for college. He spends most of his time wandering around the city selling marijuana from a battered old ice-cream cart, which not only allows him to make money, but also to get away from his constantly bickering arents and their increasingly perilous financial situation. His only friend is his psychiatrist Dr. Squires (Ben Kingsley), an ageing ex-hippy, who allows Luke to pay for his sessions with bags of weed. However, even this precarious friendship is threatened by Luke's infatuation with Squires' step-daughter Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby). It was a fun movie. It was one of those kind of typically quirky indie rites of passage films about people trying to find connection with people and find some kind of place in the world. Of course, for some people that takes a lot longer than others. I was fifteen in 1994, it still doesn't feel like that long ago. You always hear about the things that people have done by the time they reach such-and-such an age, half of which I've never done and I'm almost thirty already, which is a fact that has been bothering me throughout the past year, which I know probably sounds odd, but I really do feel like life is slipping away, which I know is a topic that I keep coming back to again and again so it probably gets pretty dull, but whatever. I think part of the reason why I like those kinds of movies about people trying to find connection and find some kind of place in the world is because I can really relate to it, like I said earlier, it takes some people a very long time to find themselves, as it were, if they ever do. Also I was a real late starter anyway, which I suppose is what comes of spending most of your teenage years and early twenties watching videos, which I have pretty much gone back to doing now.

I was watching a TV show called Room 101, a comedy chat show in which various celebrities talk about stuff that they hate in the hope of persuading the host to "banish" the items into Room 101 (named after the room which contains the "worst thing in the world" in George Orwell's novel 1984) and the guy was trying to get rid of silent comedy films, which was illustarted with a clip of Charlie Chaplin. I do find silent comedy films funny quite often, but they do seem to be easier to admire rather than really like these days. Of course tastes change really quickly, especially in comedy.

Quiet Day

Last night was pretty quiet. Today was my third day on the training course at work. As a result I managed to leave work at about five to three. On my way home I went and had a couple of drinks at a bar, which I had always kind of meant to try but never really got round to, despite it being only a couple of blocks from my home.

It was interesting watching The X-Files movie yesterday. I can remember it when it first started. I used to watch ot all the time and I can remember when it became a really big thing in around 1995, because that was a really important time in my life (it was the year I left high school - which I hated - and started college - which I liked). It's hard to believe it was as long ago as that. Something which has really been bugging me for the past few years is the feeling that I'm running out of time. I'm going to be thirty in December which (as my friend Alice said) is my "scary age". I mean Orson Welles was twenty-five when he made Citizen Kane, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain were younger than me when they died. The thing is that when there are things that I want to do, I'm so convinced of my own failure that I don't actually go for them, and I hate myself for feeling that way, which does not help my self-esteem, so it beomes like a circle. Also due to my lack of self-confidence and shyness, not to mention my ugliness and weird voice (in my head I sound like Malcolm McDowell, in reality I sound like someone gargling soup) I have no luck with women, which makes me feel more bitter and depressed. Also I am kind of an idiot (I have done more than a few dumb things in my time).

Actually the whole of that previous paragraph is kind of stupid, I just can't think of anything to post about.

Stanley Kubrick

Last night I was watching a True Stories documentary called Stanley Kubrick's Boxes. Apparently Stanley Kubrick kept almost everything related to his professional life in cardboard boxes, of which there were thousands all over his estate. The documentary was made by film-maker Job Ronson, who was contacted by the Kubrick family and allowed access to the boxes (one of the few people who were). The documentary details some of the things hidden in the boxes and interviews some of the people referred to in the documents about their memories of Kubrick. There are thousands of pictures of random doorways and gates, and apartment and shop interiors shot over a year in preperation for Eyes Wide Shut, actors Malcolm McDowell and Warren Clarke modelling a wide variety of hats in order to find the perfect hat for A Clockwork Orange, memos asking there to be no less than three melons in the Kubrick house at any one time and requesting the exact barometric pressure in London at a particular date and time, every fan letter Kubrick ever received meticulously filed by location and labelled by Kubrick himself under three categories: "Positive", "Negative" and "Crank", Kubrick's vast collection of stationary, and footage of him on the set of Full Metal Jacket argueing about the amount of tea-breaks the crew could take and tellig the actors how to march, as well as a touching acceptance speech for an award that Kubrick filmed only a few months before his death where he describes film-making as being like: "writing War and Peace in a dodgem car". Among many other things.
The people interviewed all seemed to have very affectionate memories of Kubrick who came across as a very shy, quiet and extremely intelligent man who did have a healthy sense of humour about his perfectionism.
I can still remember when I heard about Kubrick's death in March 1999: I had just come back from the movies where I had been to see The Roaring Twenties and the first thing my mum said to me when I returned was that Stanley Kubrick had died.

I tend to collect stationary myself. There's a particular kind of large hard-back notebook that I like and I have boxes full of them, some have stuff written in them, but most haven't. I like to stock up in case they stop making them. I also try and stock up on pens, because I'm always losing them or they're running out.

The documentary was followed by a very early short documentary film by Kubrick from 1951 called Day of the Fight which followed a boxer over the day of a big fight. Despite the film only being twenty minutes long, they still had to interrupt it in the middle for five minutes of adverts, which I was pretty annoyed about because it did spoil it a bit.

It was a fairly average day at work, as usual. The pay dispute goes on apace with the latest offer being rejected by the Union.

An Animated Life

Last night I was watching the first couple of episodes of an old Doctor Who story from the 1970s called "The Masque of Mandragora", it was pretty good, but I had to video the last couple of episodes because it was pretty late at night when it started.

When I left home this morning I ran into an old friend named Vince, who happens to live in my building. I've known him since I was a kid because we were both really into science-fiction. I don't see him much these days, but I sometimes run into him at the movies. I got into work at around nine. It was another fairly dull day. The pay dispute seems to be hotting up, as it does usually at least once or twice a year, and there is a Union meeting tomorrow morning.

After work I went along to the Cineworld cinema to see the latest Film Festival event, which wasn't a film, but a talk by the special-effects artist Ray Harryhausen who worked on sixteen films including The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts, One Million Years B.C. and Clash of the Titans. He worked mainly in designing and creating creatures in stop-motion animation, which basically involves making a model, taking a still frame shot, moving it a tiny bit and taking another shot, moving it a tiny bit more and taking another frame and so on so that when it's all put together it looks like movement, the process would have to be done twenty-four times to make one second of animation. The show was really entertaining and Harryhausen (who will be 88 years old in a few days time) was interesting and engaging. The host was author Tony Dalton who collaborated with Harryhausen on some books. The show was illustrated with many clips from the films and also some of the original models that were used. Afterwards Harryhausen and Dalton were signing copies if their books, so I got one called Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life and got it signed. The book is a beautiful hardbacked book filled with behind the scenes photos, film stills and movie posters.

A lot of the films I could remember really well from watching them as a kid when they seemed to be on television all the time. they were really good, and the special effects are still impressive even today. There's something about the physical model effects that the more modern digital animation just doesn't seem to have.

Feed

Last night I was watching the film Feed, directed by Brett Leonard, which was about a violent police detective who investigates a serial killer who basically "feeds" his victims to death, and broadcasts it over the internet. It's a pretty gruesome film, and it's probably not a good idea to eat while you watch it. Although it's pretty weird, violent and grotesque, there is a lot of quite dark humour in it and it was certainly quite fast paced.

My parents had come home from their holiday in Maderia and when they phoned they said that they had met my old chemistry teacher from high school. I never really got along with my chemistry teacher at school, it wasn't a subject that I was good at.

The Film Festival starts today, but the first film for me is after work tomorrow.

The Bourne Supremacy

Last night I was watching The Bourne Supremacy, directed by Paul Greengrass, on DVD. Loosely based on the Robert Ludlum novel, the film takes up shortly after the end of the first film, The Bourne Identity. Ex-assassin Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) is attempting to live a normal, quiet life in Goa, India, with his girlfriend Marie (Franka Portente), while still trying to regain his memory. However, after an espionage operation in Berlin goes horribly wrong, Bourne is framed, and, with assassins and agents on his tail, he finds himself forced to return to his old life. It's a really fast-moving, and complex thriller, even more so than the first one. I thought it was really good.

It was the start of another week at work, it was a fairly quiet and dull day, pretty much the same as usual.

I read on the internet that someone has recently discovered behind the scenes footage from the filming of Clive Barker's film Nightbreed, which contains some of the scenes that were cut from the film. Nightbreed was cut by about half an hour by the studios, in order to make it a more commercial horror film, much to Barker's disappointment. Apparently he is hoping to one day find the missing footage so he can release a "director's cut" of the film. I remember reading the novel the film was based on, Cabal, when I was about twelve and was laid up for about a month with a broken leg. I really liked that book. I even got it autographed. I remember when I was off, and couldn't leave the house for about a month, and I more or less had to lie there most of the time, watching TV and reading, because I had my entire leg in a cast. I quite enjoyed it actually, despite the pain. I remember watching Nightbreed as soon as it came out on video.

Another Really Quiet Workday

Today was another really quiet and fairly dull day at work, as it usually is. I left shortly after five and went straight home, stopping off along the way to buy some milk and a copy of Radio Times. It's weird because a lot of the time I can't remember anything at all about work when I get home. Everything else I can remember perfectly fine though.

At least it will be the weekend soon, anyway. I should be going out with my dad tomorrow after work, for something to eat. Thinking about Stanley Kubrick yesterday when I was writing about A Clockwork Orange made me remember about when I first saw 2001: A Space Odyssey when I was about eight years old. I was really into science-fiction at the time and I had thought that it was going to be an action film about a killer computer, and of course it's nothing like that. I really got fascinated by it because it was like nothing I'd ever really seen before. It really showed that there was more to films then I had ever guessed. I really had absolutely no idea what was going on, but I have never forgotten the experience of watching it. Apparently, on the set Kubrick provided the voice of the crazy computer himself.

Movies and TV

Yesterday evening I watched the film Final Destination 3. In the Final Destination films a group of teenagers narrowly escape certain death in an accident, due to one of the group having a premonition. Shortly afterwards they all start to die off in elaborate accidents. In this one they narrowly escape a rollercoaster crash, and also the main character (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead) manages to find cryptic clues to what her friend's accidents will be in the photographs she takes just before the rollercoaster. The problem is that all three of the films are more or less the same, the film's main draw being the elaborate and gruesome death scenes.

I also saw part of a show called Lucas and Walliams' Perfect Night In which was basically about the ideal evening's viewing for comedians Matt Lucas and David Walliams (who do a comedy show called Little Britain). In one part they were discussing the shows they weren't allowed to watch as kids, and I started thinking about the shows my parents wouldn't let me watch when I was young. I remember when I was about eleven or so I really wanted to watch the show Twin Peaks, but my mum would never let me watch it. Or when they'd show any of the Dennis Potter plays, which my mum loved, but they were very controversial because they were quite explicit, and there was no way my parents would let us watch them when we were kids.

After that I saw Stand By Me which was a really good film, based on a Stephen King novella, about a group of kids in an American small town in the 1950s who go out looking for a dead body. Despite being a Stephen King film it is definitely not a horror film. It is a great film though.

Today was quiet, and very dull at work. There was barely anyone in the office because it was a bank holiday.