Drive

Last night I saw the movie Drive, directed by Nicholas Winding Refn.  It stars Ryan Gosling as a mechanic and part-time movie stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway driver, who finds himself having to protect a young mother (Carey Mulligan) from the Mob.  It was  a pretty good movie.  I reviewed it here: http://permanentlyweird.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/drive.html

Making Time

Last night was pretty quiet. I was reading my new comic books and I watched some of the movie Scream. I really liked Scream. It's basically about a masked killer slaughtering teenagers, but it had a lot of jokes and comments about horror movies in general, which seemed to influence pretty much every horror movie for the next ten years. The fourth movie in the series is coming out this month. It was a another quiet day at work. I was in work for about nine hours today to make up some time, but I managed to get in early so I still managed to leave earlier than I would otherwise have done. Tomorrow I am planning on getting in to work really early so I can leave at lunchtime and get a birthday present for my brother.

The Seventh Seal

Last night I watched the 1957 Swedish film The Seventh Seal, directed by Ingmar Bergman, on TV. The film is set in medieval Sweden ravaged by the Black Death (bubonic plague) and concerns a knight, Antonius Block (played by Max von Sydow), and his cynical squire (Gunnar Bjornstrand) who have just returned home from the Crusades. On the shore Block meets Death (Bength Ekerot) who tells him that his time is up. However Block, who has become disillusioned following his experiences and is tormented by religious doubts, does not want to die until he has found some kind of meaning to life and so he challenges Death to a game of Chess while he searches for answers to his questions. It's a very powerful film and one of the classics of world cinema. It's reviewed over at Permanently Weird. Today I got in to work at around half past eight and was there for six hours. There was a baguette run today and I had a panini with roast beef, cajun chicken, brie, savoury cheese, jalapeno peppers, English mustard and onion. After work I went up to the comic book store and got issues of Spawn, Batman and Robin, Northlanders, Fables Are Forever, Hellboy, The Unwritten, Red Robin, Daken: Dark Wolverine, Batman: Arkham and The Li'l Depressed Boy (which is a really good series, very similar to the Scott Pilgrim comics). I got home at around four.

Dentist Appointment

Last night was pretty quiet. I wrote some more of my Script Frenzy script and read some of my new comic-books. This morning I went along to a dentist appointment. It was just a routine check-up. I have one about twice a year. I went to work after the dentist and it was another fairly quiet and dull day. There was an hour long meeting in the afternoon, and I was kind of glad when I got home. I read something on the internet about the script for a live action version of Akira, I have a horrible feeling it's genuine, but I really hope that it is fake. Based on what I read the script is absolutely terrible. They are pretty much changing everything about the story, and basically making it a conventional action movie.

(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.

Psycho

Last night I was watching the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock movie Psycho. The movie tells the story of a real estate secretary, Marion Crane (played by Janet Leigh), who steals $40,000 from her employer and sets off to drive from Phoenix, Arizona to California to meet her boyfriend. On the way she stops off at the remote Bates Motel and meets the shy, slightly odd owner and manager Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) who tells her that he lives with his elderly mother in the creepy old house overlooking the motel. Marion decides to relax by having a shower before bed, however that proves to be a big mistake when Mother pays a visit... It's a really good movie, and is probably one of the most famous and influential ever made. It's been imitated, parodied, spoofed, remade, discussed and commented upon endlessly since it's release, but it is still powerful and striking and also at times very funny. It's reviewed over at Permanently Weird.

I had a pretty quiet day today. I went out and got some milk and a couple of magazines (a TV listings magazine and a copy of Total Film). I also saw a bit of a 1994 comedy called Airheads, directed by Michael Lehman, about a bunch of metalheads who hold a radio station hostage in order to get their band's single on the air. It really does not seem like such a long time since 1994 when that kind of music was so popular. It was pretty funny, even if it seems pretty dated now.

The African Queen

Last night was pretty quiet. I was reading my new comic-books that I bought yesterday afternoon. One that was interesting that I had got kind of at random was Li'l Depressed Boy, about a human-sized living ragdoll who behaves like a kind of teenage hipster and his attempts to date a kind of punk girl (all the other characters in the book are human, and the act that the main character is a living ragdoll is never commented on and seems to be seen as neither unusual or surprising). The humour and style is very similar to the Scott Pilgrim books.

Today I had a quiet morning, and in the afternoon I went out to see a re-release of the 1951 movie The African Queen, directed by John Huston. The film is set in German East Africa in 1914, at the outbreak of the First World War, and involves an English missionary (played by Katherine Hepburn) whose brother died after a German raid on the village where they were working. The very prim and proper missionary teams up with a tough, rough-and-ready captain (played by Humphrey Bogart), who captains a small run-down boat called the "African Queen". She demands that they sail down a long and extremely dangerous river in order to sabotage an enemy gunboat. It's a really fun film and very entertaining. It was one of my Gran's favourite movies. She pretty much loved anything to do with Humphrey Bogart. The movie is reviewed over at Permanently Weird.

The national census forms came this evening, so I filled them out on the internet. It saves time that way.

Dental Institute

Last night I went out with my parents to Pizza Express. To start with I had garlic bread with mozarella cheese, and then I had a Four Seasons pizza (a pizza with a different topping on each quarter: mushrooms, pepperoni, plain cheese and tomato, and anchovies and capers), and for dessert I had a Chocolate Glory gelato (basically ice-cream covered with chocolate sauce and squares of chocolate fudge cake). It was really nice.

Back home I watched an episode of How TV Ruined Your Life which this week dealt with "Knowledge" and discussed how TV dealt with news and factual programming, from the early days of the TV news (when it was just still images, occasional diagrams and voice-over narration, because the powers that be felt like film footage and announcers would trivialise current events) and very soberly presented academic documentaries to the current docu-soaps and celebrity presenters and flashy rolling news, that try to make it really exciting and dynamic. It also managed to take in the moralising on 80s kid's cartoon shows like He-Man and Thundercats, and a bizarre "mocumentary" from 1992 called GhostWatch which was basically a fictional horror drama for Halloween about a haunted house, but was presented as a non-fiction documentary hosted by well-known presenters. People at the time didn't realise it was make-believe and were genuinely terrified and angry about the show. Seen today it's pretty much a forerunner of The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity. The episode itself managed to be genuinely informative and also extremely funny.

Later on I watched a documentary called The Return of A Clockwork Orange, which was made in 2000 to commemorate the re-release of A Clockwork Orange in Britain. Stanley Kubrick, who directed A Clockwork Orange, withdrew the film from Britain and it was not available to view legally in Britain until after Kubrick's death in 1999. The movie was incredibly controversial in Britain when it was first released due to the violence. For three decades it was the most high-profile banned movie in Britain and was trotted out in endless magazine and newspaper articles, documentaries and so on about violent movies. It's now readily available in Britain though and is frequently shown in TV there. I remember a few months after Kubrick's death I arranged a tribute evening in the Student Union at college and me and another guy promoted and showed The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and A Clockwork Orange. By the time the last movie came on it was literally standing room only. The place was packed out. That was a great night.

Today I went up to the Dental Institute. The bus broke down on the way, so I had to run up to the Institute and then I got lost in the building, but I maanged to get there in the nick of time. In the end they were running late anyway so it didn't really matter. I had my right wisdom tooth taken out in November 2009 and this was basically a review appointment to see how it had been in the meantime and whether I needed my other tooth taken out. In the end the extraction had completely healed up and the other wisdom tooth, while coming in at an angle wasn't causing any trouble to the tooth in front. For now at least I don't need it taken out. The dentist who was dealing with me was this really cute Spanish woman which helped.

I went along to the comic-book store afterwards and got: Lil Depressed Boy issues 1 and 2, Batman Incorporated issue 3, Batman and Robin issue 20, Fables are Forever issue 2, Spawn issue 204, X23 issue 7, Spider-Man issue 155, iZombie issue 11 and Venom issue 1.

Pancakes

Last night was pretty quiet. I was watchng some TV and reading. I fell asleep on my couch while watchng the movie All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, which for what I saw was an okay horror movie, but for some reason I wasjust feeling really tired.

Today my Dad came to collect me and take me over to my parent's house. The new issue of Sight and Sound magazine had arrived, which this month had a big feature article about the latest Woody Allen movie. I'm often surprised about how prolific Woody Allen is, considering that he releases at least one film a year. For lunch we had some sausage cassarole and some pancakes (diue to it being Pancake Day on Tuesday). I really like pancakes but I very rarely have them, so it was really nice.

After lunch I had a walk to a supermarket with my Mum and I got a DVD set of the complete Monty Python's Flying Circus TV series, which was in the sales. That should be really interesting to watch. Monty Python seems to be one of those shows where you don't often get to see the full episodes, more isolated clips and edited compilations.

The Human Centipede

Last night I was watching an episode of Spaced on TV, which I really enjoyed. Later on I watched a frankly bizarre 2010 Dutch horror movie on TV called The Human Centipede (First Sequence), directed by Tom Six. It's basically about two American tourists in Germany who find themselves at the house of a demented surgeon who plans to surgically attach three people together to form a "human centipede". Despite the horrific premise, it really isn't a particularly gruesome movie. Pretty much all of the horror is in the concept and the resulting creation, and it all loses it's impact long before the movie is over. Although there are some pretty good suspenseful and scary scenes. It's reviewed over at Permanently Weird.

I got to bed at about half past five last night and was awake at eleven this morning. The gas bill came today, and it was a lot, so that was pretty annoying. I went along to get my groceries for the coming week, which were four microwave ready meals, some bread, some potato chips, some flavoured milk, some chocolate and a bottle of wine, along with a TV listings magazine.

Back home I had some lunch and watched a couple of episode of The Big Bang Theory.

Poltergeist

Last night I was watching the 1982 movie Poltergeist, directed by Tobe Hooper. It's set in a fairly bland, but pleasant, Californian suburb, and centers around the seemingly average Freeling family: an estate agent (Craig T. Nelson), his wife (JoBeth Williams), and their three children (Dominique Dunne, Oliver Robins and Heather O'Rourke). However, the youngest daughter seems to see strange things in the static of the family's TV sets. Before long, the family are being tormented by a barrage of supernatural forces, that whisk the youngest daughter away into another dimension through a portal in her closet. It's basically a ghost train ride of a movie. It's fun, entertaining and has a few good chills and thrills in it. Although Tobe Hooper (director of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) is credited as director, the film was co-written, co-produced and many believe co-directed by Steven Spielberg. Certainly Spielberg's influence is everywhere in the movie. Even if he didn't actually direct it certainly it is a Steven Spielberg movie. The movie is reviewed over at Permanently Weird.

It was a fairly average and quiet day at work, but I was pretty busy. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be in work for about seven in the morning and hopefully be able to do a six hour day and then head up to the comic-book store. Then I'll be off work for all of next week.

Natural Born Killers

Last night I was watching the 1994 movie Natural Born Killers, directed by Oliver Stone and based on a story by Quentin Tarantino. The movie deals with a couple of serial killers, Mickey and Mallory Knox (played by Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis) who go on a three week killing spree through the southern USA leaving fifty-two people dead, until they are caught and arrested. With the pair now a media sensation and international cult heroes, Mickey is approached in jail by sleazy TV producer Wayne Gale (Robert Downey, Jr.) to do a live on-air interview in prison. The movie throws pretty much everything at the screen with the film stock changing (seemingly at random), constant switches from colour to black-and-white, tinted scenes, weird filters, bizarre camera angles, on-screen captions, distorted images, stock footage, strange back projection, frenzied editing and even sequences shot like a 1950s sitcom. It was hugely controversial in it's day, and was a big sensation. The first time I saw it it gave me a massive headache, but I have seen it many times now, partly because, once you get used to the style it's one of those things where you see something different every time. There is a lot in it that is really good, and a lot that is absolutely terrible. I thought it was way too weird in places and I'm not a big fan of the second half of the film, once they get inside the jail, but there are great bits in it, although you do have to be in the right mood for it. It did seem to annoy a lot of people when it came out. I sometimes wonder whether Oliver Stone is on a personal mission to irritate as many groups of people as possible. Although it seems to have been a long time since there was a really controversial Oliver Stone movie. Still, there's time for him yet.

Today I went out with my Dad to the Ocean Terminal shopping centre. We had something to eat at the Costa Coffe there (I had a chocolate muffin and a mocha coffee) before we went to look at our own things. I got some books in a three for two offer: Money by Martin Amis, True Grit by Charles Portis and A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin, the first volume of a fantasy series which I don't think has been finished yet.

After that we went to my parent's house. The new issue of Fortean Times (the Journal of Strange Phenomena) had arrived in the mail so that was pretty good to read. We had spicy fajitas for lunch.

That's another thing that is quite interesting about the Oscars that I just thought about: The look on the faces of the people who don't win, trying to smile for the cameras but so obviously fuming that they lost. It's kind of cruel in a way the way they keep the cameras on the faces of the losers. I won't be watching it tonight, because it is on too late, but it will be interesting to learn the results tomorrow.

Rio Bravo

Last night I was watching the 1959 movie Rio Bravo, directed by Howard Hawks, on TV. The movie is set in a small Texan border town during the Old West and involved a murderer who is locked up in the town jail by the local sheriff (played by John Wayne), who has to keep the killer locked up and out of trouble for at least a week until a US Marshall can show up and take him, away. Meanwhile the killer's wealthy brother has employed a large gang of ruthless hired killers to bust him out of jail, while all the sheriff has to help him is the town drunk (played by Dean Martin), a garrolous trigger-happy old jailer (Walter Brennan) and a young gunslinger (Ricky Nelson). It's a really good Western, which was very influential on future action movies. It's got some good, witty dialogue and some great action scenes. Also, if you're a fan, Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson sing a couple of songs. It's reviewed over at Permanently Weird.

Watching it I really thought about my Gran, who died about four years ago, and I don't know if she ever saw it, although I assume she did because she loved movies and watched a lot of them, but this would probably have been one of her favourite movies, due to it being a Western and having John Wayne and Dean Martin in it. I remember watching a lot of the old Westerns when I was down at her place or when she came up here.

Today I had another day off work and went up to the comic book store, where I did get a lot of stuff: Batman: Conspiracy (which was basically a one-off compendium of a three part story from the '90s in which Batman investigates a series of bizarre ritual murders which leads him into a sinister and pervasive conspiracy), Detective Comics Classics (which had three bizarre Batman stories from the '60s and '70s, including one in which Robin and Batgirl had to fight the ghost of Benedict Arnold who had teamed up with the Devil), X23 issues 4 to 6 (which I've never read before and I kind of got on impulse), American Vampire issue 12, Dracula: The Company of Monsters issue 7, X-Men: Legacy issue 245 (which seems to be starting a big new storyline), Scalped issue 46, Detective Comics issue 874, Spawn issue 203, Ultimate Spider-Man issue 154, Morning Glories issue 7 (which I got because I'd heard a lot of really good stuff about it on the internet) and The New York Five issue 2 (which has had an interesting story so far and is by the author and artist responsible for one of my favourite graphic novels, Local). I also got a graphic novel called John Constantine, Hellblazer: The Fear Machine written by Jamie Delano, with art by Mark Buckingham, Richard Piers Rayner, Mike Hoffman and Alfredo Alcala. On my way home I stopped off and had a quick drink. I just figured that I'm having a few days off, it's like a short holiday so I might as well treat myself by splurging money on comics! Besides I'm very happy with what I got. When I got back home I had some microwaved chicken chow mein for my dinner which was really nice.

Tomorrow I'm off work as well and I think I might go along to the movies.

Meh

Last night was yet another quiet one. Mostly I was watching TV and reading. There really wasn't much on that was worth watching.

It was a really dull day at work today. It's not really been a great week so far, but I should be going out to the movies on Friday night anyway, with the Vampire/Zombie/Horror Group to see Carrie, which should be good.

The Faculty

Last night I went up to the Vampire/Zombie/Horror Group. The movie that we saw was a 1998 movie called The Faculty, directed by Robert Rodriguez and written by Kevin Williamson (who wrote Scream and Scream 2 and created the TV series Dawson's Creek). It stars Josh Hartnett, Elijah Wood, Jordana Brewster, Robert Patrick and Famke Janssen and is about a group of Ohio teenagers who discover that the staff and most of the students of their high school have been infected by mind controlling alien parasites. It's a pretty good movie. I remember watching it when it was first released. The group itself was really good. We had a few drinks afterwards and I got home at around two in the morning.

Today has been fairly quiet. I stayed in most of the time. Aside from going out to get some groceries for the coming week.

Youth in Revolt

Last night I was watching the 2009 movie Youth in Revolt, directed by Miguel Artega. The movie stars Michael Cera as a quiet, likeable, Californian nerd who is completely unsucessful with women, until he creates an alternate "bad-boy" persona for himself to win over the girl of his dreams (Portia Doubleday). At first I found it irritatingly quirky, but after a while I actually got won over by the movie and ended up enjoying it. I thought it was fun. It's very much a typical Michael Cera film in many ways. The movie is reviewed over at Permanently Weird.

My cold is still hanging in there. I hope it's gone by Friday. Otherwise, it was another fairly quiet and dull day at work. I left at about quarter past six this evening.

More Stuff

Last night was fairly quiet. I spent most of the time watching TV and reading my book.

Today was the start of another week at work, and it was fairly quiet. As usual. There seems to be quite a few people off today. There must be something going round.

I was on the Meetup.com site and joined a group called "Vampires, Zombies and Horror Movies/Literature". Which I thought might be quite fun.

Pattern Recognition

Last night I was watching the 2005 movie Sin City directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller with "Special Guest Director" Quentin Tarantino. The movie is based on a series of graphic novels by Frank Miller and tells four connected stories set in a violent city. It's all hugely stylised film-noir shot in black and white with occasional flashes of colour. It is a really good movie.

I went along to my parent's house today for lunch and in the afternoon I finished reading the novel Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. The book was published in 2003 and tells the story of Cayce Pollard, a woman who has a bizarre allergy to certain corporate logos and symbols and who earns money by testing the effectiveness of company's new logos. She is hired by an advertising agency to investigate the origin of a series of strangely addictive film clips which are being released onto the internet. It is a really good book and very well written.

Both Sin City and Pattern Recognition are reviewed on Permanently Weird.

Black Swan

I was up at five today and was into work at seven. I was working a half day and left at about eleven. I went up to the Cineworld cinema and saw Black Swan, directed by Darren Aronofsky. The film stars Natalie Portman as Nina, a devoted and innocent young ballerina, who is determined to win the lead role of the Swan Queen in the company's production of "Swan Lake". However, while she is perfect for the part of the sweet, innocent and virginal White Swan, Nina is less well suited for the part of the evil twin, the seductive, cruel, manipulative Black Swan. In order to win the role of a lifetime, Nina has to delve into the darkest parts of her own nature. It's a very dark, and very powerful film. The movie is reviewed at Permanently Weird.

I stopped off at the comic books store and bought Spawn issue 201, Scalped issue 45, New York Five issue 1, Hellblazer issue 275, Fables issue 101, American Vampire issue 11 and Detective Comics issue 873.