A Trip to the Moon

I managed to get out sharp today, which made a nice change. It used to be that you could leave work pretty much when you wanted, but these days if you get the rare chance to leave early you have to take it.

I went to the supermarket on the way home to get my groceries for next week.

I saw the 1902 movie A Trip to the Moon on DVD. It's the earliest narrative film and the first known science-fiction film. It's about a group of guys who travel to the moon by being shot out of a giant cannon. When they are there, they are attacked by strange alien creatures, which fortunately enough, explode if you give them a light push or tap. It's one of the most important films ever made, and the famous image of the Man in the Moon with the space capsule in his eye, is legendary. It is slightly dated now, and special effects have advanced a little in 114 years, but it is worth watching

The Adjustment Bureau

Last night I was watching a movie on television called Book of Blood, directed by John Hamilton. It's based on two short stories by Clive Barker ("The Book of Blood" and "On Jerusalem Street") which were the frame story for Clive Barker's six volume Books of Blood short story collection. The film is set in Edinburgh and concerns a professor of parapsychology (Sophie Ward) who is investigating a house that is supposed to be haunted and has been the scene of several violent deaths. With the aid of a supposedly psychic student (Jonas Armstrong), she sets out to investigate. It turns out that the house is an intersection on the highways of the dead, and that they don't take kindly to what they percieve as mockery and before long the experiment spirals violently out of control. The movie is actually pretty dull. It follows the plot of the Clive Barker stories fairly closely, but there isn't enough there for a feature length movie, so it's fairly obvious that they were trying to pad out the run time. Also the stories are fine in print, wehre they are like the frame for a collection of short stories, but on their own they don't work as well. The movie was obviously made on a very low-budget, and is shot so murkily it's difficult to see what is going on at times, and there are some really bad computer special effects. Also the opening scenes give away a lot of what happens in the end.

Today I headed out to the Cineworld cinema to see The Adjustment Bureau, directed by George Nolfi, and very loosely based on the short story "Adjustment Team" by Philip K. Dick. It's about a New York political candidate (Matt Damon) who falls for a ballerina (Emily Blunt). However, it turns out they were never intended to fall in love, and a sinister organisation known as the Adjustment Bureau, who control and manipulate the course of individual lives and human destiny according to a pre-determined plan, are determined to keep them apart. It was as much a romance movie as it was a science-fiction fantasy thriller, but it never really managed to blend the different genres together. It's still quite enjoyable in places though, and Matt Damon and Emily Blunt are very good in it. Both of the movies are reviewed over at Permanently Weird.

I stopped off for some groceries on my way home. I have to say that I am really not a fan of romantic movies. Some I like, though (some of my favourite movies are Before Sunrise, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Juno and Garden State). I have never really experienced romance myself, and it never really seems to make a lot of sense to me, and I have ruled out dating and romance and whatever until I've emigrated and become successful.

I've ordered the first couple of volumes of the graphic novel series Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo. I've wanted to read them for years, since I first saw the movie in 1994, but the books were very expensive but I found out they were available on Amazon and so decided to get a couple of them.

All sympathies and best wishes, of course, to the people in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami.

Blake's Seventh Seal

Last night I was watching an episode of How TV Ruined Your Life, hosted by writer, comedian and TV critic Charlie Brooker. This episode was about technology and how TV had influenced people's views on it. It had a lot of clips from old TV shows, particularly some weird ones from the fifties which basically said that by the 1990s everyone would be living on the Moon with their own personal robot servant. It also had a few clips from a 1970s British show called Blakes 7, which Brooker described as being so downbeat it was as if the "lenses were crafted from frozen widow's tears". I've seen a lot of Blakes 7 and it was a good show and it was pretty much usual adventures in outer space with mosters, aliens, and so on. Part of what was interesting about the show was the unremitting bleakness of it all. The main characters pretty much spent all their time arguing and fighting with other and being alternately insulted and patronised by a super-computer that looked like a glass box full of old Christmas tree lights. It was a little like if Ingmar Bergman had directed Star Wars and it's still kind of notorious for ending the series with all the main characters being killed. The show continued with clips of David Hasselhoff flirting with his car in Knight Rider and clips form a show about text messaging, which seemed to be all the fun of watching a lot of people texting, i.e. not any fun at all.

I also started writing a new thing last night It's basically set on another planet and the idea is that it's going to be a really big thing from when people first arrive and start settling down there to the establishment of it's own kind of civilisation.

It was another quiet day at work. However one good thing was that I did get a lot of praise for the way I'd been working. The boss said that my work has been "excellent", which was really nice to hear.

True Grit

Last night I was modtly reading my new comic-books. I really liked all of them. I'll have to buy some boxes or something to put them in so they don't get damaged or faded or anything.

Today I went out to the Cineworld cinema and saw the new movie of True Grit, written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. The film is set in Arkansas in 1878 and tells the story of a fourteen year old girl (played by Hailee Steinfeld) whose father was murdered. She decides to hire a US Marshall to help her track down her father's killer. She selects a grizzled old drunk called Rueben "Rooster" Cogburn (played by Jeff Bridges), who has a reputation for being the most ruthless Marshall around and who the girl believes has "true grit". I really enjoyed it. It was a really fun Western. I remember the older version with John Wayne. I've not seen it in years but I remember really liking it. This one is slightly more intense and violent then the earlier movie, but it is still good.

After the movie I went and had a bottle of beer and a plate of fish and French fries with peas which was nice.

Then I went back to the movies and saw Paul, directed by Greg Mottola. The movie involves two British science-fiction fans (played by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost) who are on holiday at the San Diego Comic-Con and decide to make a road-trip across the US, visiting famous UFO crash sites. Along the way they meet a wise-cracking, foul-mouthed alien named Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen), who is on the run from the Government. Soon the three of them are being chased across the US by a trio of "Men in Black"-style agents (headed by Jason Bateman). It is a really fun movie, full of references to science-fiction films and TV shows. It's aimed very much at science-fiction fans, but there is enough there to appeal to broader audiences. I thought it was really funny. Both of them are reviewed over at Permanently Weird. I've got a card for the Cineworld so I can basically see any number of movies as and when I like without paying at the box-office.

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.

Return of the Fly

Last night was pretty quiet. I watched some of the movie Mary Shelley's Frankenstein which starred Kenneth Branagh as Frankenstein and Robert De Niro as the Creature. I remember watching it when it first came out in 1994. It's not a bad movie but kind of overblown. It's not as good as the Boris Karloff ones.

Today I went out to get my groceries for the week and in the afternoon I was watching the 1959 movie Return of the Fly. In the movie, the son of the scientist from the original movie decides to resume his father's experiments, despite the objections of his uncle (played by Vincent Price). Of course, before long there is another fly-monster on the loose. It wasn't really very good, but it does have it's moments (such as a part-human part-guinea-pig creature). It's reviewed over at Permanently Weird.

Awfully Good TV

Last night I was watching a show called Awfully Good TV, it was kind of a comedy show about TV shows which are "so bad that they become good". Some of the clips were really funny, but some of them were kind of unfair such as the ones laughing at the special effects in old episodes of Doctor Who and Star Trek. Of course special effects are far better now than they were in the 1960s and 70s, so it's a pretty unfair criticism.

I was back at work today and it was a pretty dull day, as it usually is. I guess it's back to reality now. At least it's a short week though.

The Sea Devils

Last night I was watching a six part Doctor Who story from 1972 called "The Sea Devils" which starred Jon Pertwee as the third Doctor and involved intelligent undersea reptiles who used to be the dominant species on Earth but went into hibernation millions of years ago to avoid a cataclysm that never came and then wake up to find humanity the dominant species on Earth and start to sabotage shipping in order to reclaim the Earth. It was quite a good story. One of the more action oriented ones.

I had been drinking quite a bit of cider during the evening, but wasn't in any way drunk. However when I woke up this morning I had kind of an annoying headache. I decided to stay in today, and watched some TV. At the moment I'm watching the Ralph Bakshi directed 1978 animated version of Lord of the Rings, based on the J.R.R. Tolkien novel (Tolkien was born on this day in 1892, by the way). The animation isn't great, but there are some interesting effects. It uses a lot of a technique called rotoscoping where a scene is shot in live action and then painted over to animate it. Also the film only covers half the story. They originally intended to make two films but the second was never made.

Tomorrow is the final day of the vacation so I'll probably go out and do something then.

There is sad news that the actor Pete Postlethwaite died of cancer yesterday at the age of 64.

The Blood of a Poet

Last night I watched Inception on DVD. I had seen it before when it was first released. It is a really good movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ellen Page about a group of criminals who enter people's dreams to steal information.

I also finished reading the graphic novel Local by Brian Wood and illustrated by Ryan Kelly. It's a series of twelve stories set in twelve locations throughout North America and linked by the recurring character of Megan, a young woman who drifts around from place to place and job to job. It is really good. It's kind of a coming of age story and is really quite powerful. Each location is integral to the story, becoming like another character. The locations featured are: Portland, Oregon; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Richmond, Virginia; Missoula, Montana; Halifax, Nova Scotia; Brooklyn, New York; Tempe, Arizona; Wicker Park, Chicago; Norman, Oklahoma; Austin, Texas; Toronto, Ontario and Vermont.

Today I stayed in. This afternoon I saw The Blood of a Poet, directed by Jean Cocteau. It is a really surreal film in which a painter is startled when the mouth of a painting comes to life and erases it, only to find the mouth appearing on the palm of his hand. On the advice of a talking statue, he enters a mirror and finds himself in the "Hotel of Lunatic Desire", a bizarre dreamlike corridor where gravity doesn't apply. It gets stranger from there. It's reviewed at Permanently Weird.

Birthday and Christmas 2010

On Thursday it was my 32nd birthday. I went along to my parent's house and in the evening we had a Chinese meal. For my birthday I got the graphic novel Batman: Year One by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli, the graphic novel Local by Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly, the novel Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, the DVDs of Inception and Alfred Hitchcock Presents season two.

I stayed with my parents over the Christmas period. On Christmas Eve we didn't really do much at all. We did the traditional Christmas thing of watching Carols From Kings which is like an annual carol service from King's College Cambridge, which my Mum loves. We watch it every year. Later on I was watching the Peep Show night. A whole evening of programming devoted to the show.

On Christmas Day the heating stopped working, which was difficult because the temperature was below freezing. We had to get small heaters out to keep the place fairly warm. I got a graphic novel called The Comical Tragedy or Tragical Comedy of Mr. Punch by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, a book called Live & Work in Canada by Frances Lemon, a DVD of An Idiot Abroad, the game Gods of War III for the PlayStation 3, a 2011 paper diary, an issue of SFX magazine and some chocolate and candy. My parents seemed to be happy with their presents. Their neighbours came through in the late morning and had a drink. They were there for about an hour. We had the traditional Christmas dinner of turkey, rolled up bacon, cocktail sausages, peas with onions, brussels srpouts, roast poatoes and stuffing. It was really good. Later on we watched the Christmas Doctor Who special.

I went back home today after lunch.

I really hope that everyone had a great Christmas!

Fahrenheit 451

Last night I was watching a French movie from 1947 called Quai des Orfevres, directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, in which a cynical police inspector investigates a nightclub singer and her piano player husband about the murder of a sleazy producer. It was pretty good.

Today I was watching the 1966 movie Fahrenheit 451, directed by Francois Truffaut and based on the novel by Ray Bradbury about a future world in which reading is illegal and all books are banned. In the story, firemen are paid to find and burn illicit stashes of reading material. It was pretty interesting. Both of them are reviewed over at Permanently Weird.

Today is the start of my Christmas break and, although I have to work one day on New Year's Eve, I'm not properly back at work until 5th January.

Watchmen

Last night I was watching the 2009 movie Watchmen, directed by Zack Snyder, and based on the 1987 comic book written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. The film is set in an alternate 1985 America where Richard Nixon in his third term as President, the United States is on the verge of nuclear war with the Soviet Union and costumed heroes have been public knowledge since the 1940s. However, the costumed heroes have been illegal since the 1970s and most have retired. However, when the cynical and violent Comedian (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is murdered, the psychotic Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), one of the few "heroes" still to be active, guesses that someone is out to kill costumed heroes and sets out to warn the rest of his old comrades. The movie is very stylish and very faithful to the comic book series. Although, due to bad experiences with the previous films of his work (which include From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and V for Vendetta), Alan Moore, who had for a long time said that Watchmen was unfilmable, refused any participation in the project, refusing to be credited on screen and he also didn't accept any of the money he was owed for the film. I really liked the movie and I really don't see how they could have made it any more faithful to the original material.

It was another really dull and average day at work.

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! :)

An Electric Ant

Last night was really quiet. I finished reading Human Is?: A Philip K. Dick Reader by Philip K. Dick. The final three stories I read in it were "An Electric Ant" in which a man is shocked to discover he is in fact a robot and, when he discovers that his reality is artificially generated, decides to experiment with his own perception of reality. That was followed by "A Little Something for Us Tempunauts" in which the USA's first time travellers arrive in the future a few days after they supposedly died returning to their own time. The final story was "The Pre-persons" in which children up to the age of 12 can be legally executed.

I was also watching a few epsiodes of Blake's 7 on DVD. Blake's 7 was a British science-fiction TV show which ran for 52 episodes over four seasons from 1977 to 1980. It was kind of a blend of Star Trek and Star Wars and concerned a rag-tag group of bickering revolutionaries and criminals who travel around space in a derelict alien spacecraft fighting against the totalitarian Galactic Federation. These days the show is often made fun of due to the often really bad (by modern standards) special effects and production values. However, the show was usually well-written and clever. It was also a lot grittier and bleaker than most science-fiction shows with a strong vein of dark humour.

Today I went out and got some postcards to send to a friend and I also got a CD called Dirty House Blues by Lightnin' Hopkins and a book called The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami. on my way home I stopped off in a bar and had a couple of drinks and read my book.

It's been a good weekend mostly, but it has been marred by the fact that I've been feeling really kind of depressed recently about the fact that I really am a complete loser (mainly the facts that I am kind of stupid, I'm ugly, I've never really had a girlfriend and I have never achieved anything). It does happen fairly frequently.

Oh, To Be a Blobel!

Last night I was reading a few more short stories by Philip K. Dick. The first one was called "The Days of Perky Pat" and is set in the Los Angeles of the future after Earth has been devestated by nuclear war and the few survivors (or "flukers" as they call themselves)live in protective bunkers living off packages of food and equipment dropped off by "careboys" on Mars. The survivors spend pretty much their entire time playing an elaborate game using a Barbie-type doll called Perky Pat which serves to help the time pass and indulge in an idealised vision of their old lives.
The second story was called "Oh, To Be a Blobel!" which is set eleven years after a war between Earth and an alien race known as the Blobels (which are basically like giant amoebas) and tells the story of a one-time Earth spy who during the war was surgically disguised as a Blobel and now, although he has apparently regained his human form, he keeps reverting to the Blobel form at least once a day, and whenever he is under stress.
The third story was "We Can Remember It For You, Wholesale", which told the story of Douglas Quail a small, meek clerk whose one main ambition in life is to visit Mars. He decides to visit a company called Rekal Incorporated, which specialises in implanting false memories, and buys himself a package which will make him believe he has visited Mars as a secret agent. However when the technicians implant the fake memories they are shocked when they uncover a set of previously erased memories and learn that Quail's dreams about Mars were not just dreams. This story was loosely adapted as the 1990 film Total Recall, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was originally planned to be adapted by David Cronenberg in the 1980s who wrote a script that was very closely based on the story but the producers told him: "This is wrong, you're making the Philip K. Dick version". To which Cronenberg replied: "Well, isn't that what we're supposed to be doing?" And the producers said: "Oh, no. We want to make Raiders of the Lost Ark go to Mars!" I really thought it was a pity they changed the twist ending to the story.

Today I went out and got a Father's Day card for my Dad and the book The Sigma Protocol by Robert Ludlum as a Father's Day present. For myself I got Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk and "Yipee Ki-Yay, Moviegoer!" Writings on Bruce Willis, Badass Cinema and Other Important Topics by Vern. Vern is an on-line film critic who writes for the famous Ain't It Cool News.com website and the book is a selection of reviews and essays about movies and so on. I also got season two of Blake's 7 on DVD so that should be really good.

The Mold of Yancy

Last night I was reading a Philip K. Dick short story called "The Mold of Yancy" in which a group of cops from Earth travel to a colony on Callisto, one of the moons of Jupiter, which they believe has all the hallmarks of a totalitarian state, despite having no visible form of torture or oppression. However, every aspect of life on the colony is saturated by their biggest TV star, a man named John Yancy, who seems to have an opinion of every subject. It was a pretty good story.

It was another fairly quiet day at work, pretty much the same as usual really. When I got back I had some microwaved hoi san duck and noodles which were quite nice.

Blade Runner

Last night I was watching the 1982 movie Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott and based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. The film is set in Los Angeles in the year 2019, where most of the human race have moved away to "Off-World" colonies, where they are given their own android slave (known as "replicants"). The most advanced of these replicants is the "Nexus-6" model which are virtually identical to humans aside from their lack of emotions, however it is believed that in time they would develop their own emotional responses, and to safeguard against this each replicant is given a built-in lifespan of only four years. Rick Deckard (played by Harrison Ford) is a "blade runner", a cop who specialises in killing ("retiring") escaped replicants, and is given the job of tracking down a group of escaped Nexus-6 replicants, led by the charismatic but violent Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), but soon finds himself having increasing doubts about who is human and who isn't. The film is one of the most influential science-fiction films ever made, with it's spectacular sets and production design virtually transforming the look of science-fiction throughout for the past thirty years. The film exists in about seven different versions. The one that I saw was the 2007 "Final Cut".

I was also reading a few of the Philip K. Dick short stories. The ones I read were "The Father-Thing" (about a boy who discovers that his father has been replaced by a vicious alien duplicate), "Foster, You're Dead!" (in which a boy worries about his family's refusal to buy a nuclear fallout shelter - which was a really big issue in the 1950s when the story was written) and "Human Is" (in which a cruel and selfish husband returns home from a trip to space as an alien duplicate, and his wife decides she prefers the alien).

It was the start of another week at work and it went fairly quietly as usual. The Film Festival starts next week so that should be a pretty busy time.

I've been listening to a radio show recently called My Teenage Diary in which comedians select entries from their teenage diaries. It is pretty interesting. As I wrote a few days ago, I read my old diaries a lot and sometimes they are really interesting. Although I was really boring as a teenager when the most exciting thing that happened was watching episodes of The Twilight Zone and Quantum Leap. I'm not any more interesting today, of course. I never really went wild and did crazy things when I was young, and I always regret that. I always think I missed out.

Adjustment Team

Last night was pretty uneventful. I read a Philip K. Dick short story called "Paycheck" about a man who has just finished a two year contract with a company. However the contract has a strange clause in which the man has to agree to having the previous two years wiped from his memory. Also, instead of a paycheck, he discovers that he has sent himself a bizarre collection of random objects such as ticket stubs, a length of wire, a bit of cloth and half a poker chip. All of which turn out to be unexpectedly useful when he finds himself hounded by the police who are investigating the company. It was a good story, which was turned into a film in 2003 directed by John Woo and starring Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman. Dick stated that the story was about how there are times when small and seemingly unimportant objects can sometimes be worth far more than might be apparent.

This morning I read another short story from Philip K. Dick called "Adjustment Team" which was about a normal man who, due to a mistake, finds himself arriving at his office at the same time that it is being operated on by a sinister organisation who re-write reality itself. It's being made into an upcoming film called The Adjustment Bureau starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt.

One thing you could never accuse Philip K. Dick of was laziness, in his 53 years he wrote approximately 121 short stories and published 44 novels. Nine of his works have already been adapted as films and there are about five more on the way.

Today has been fairly quiet. I've not been out at all. I was getting a DVD down from the top of my shelves and about twenty of them fell down on the floor, so that was kind of an emergency, but despite some minor damage to the packaging of one or two, they seemed to be okay. I had an "American platter" for lunch which I got yesterday, it consists of potato skins filled with cheese and bacon, sticky barbecue chicken pieces, pork ribs, mushrooms in breadcrumbs and a pot of garlic and mayonnaise sauce, so that was really nice.

The Variable Man

Last night was fairly quiet. I watched a couple of episodes of The Ricky Gervais Show which were really funny, and saw a show called Top of the Pops 2: Country Jukebox which was an hour of country music which I really liked.

I went along to my parent's house today, instead of the usual Sunday, because they are both busy tomorrow. It was good, we managed to get some groceries for the week. We had some sushi for lunch and in the afternoon sat in the garden, because the weather was so good. I read a Philip K. Dick story from 1953 called "The Variable Man" which was set in the future where Earth is at war with aliens but, due to the fact that humans are using computers to predict the statistical likelihood of victory before they attack, there have been no shots fired. However, when the scientists develop a new type of advanced bomb which tips the statistics in favour of humanity. However a new element is added when a time travel experiment accidentally brings forward a man from the early 20th century which adds an unforeseen variable into the equation and rendering the machines unable to calculate the statistics.

This evening I saw a really good episode of Doctor Who in which the Doctor (Matt Smith) and Amy (Karen Gillan) encounter an invisible alien stalking Vincent Van Gogh (Tony Curran). I really like Van Gogh and I went to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and saw the "Starry Night" exhibition while it was there.

I was re-reading some of my old diaries and journals last night, including one from 1993 which kind of felt strange to read. I was 14 in 1993 and, to be honest, despite the fact that I got to work instead of school, not much has really changed.

The Preserving Machine

Last night I read a truly bizarre Philip K. Dick story called "The Preserving Machine" about an academic who is worried about the fate of music in the event of global war, and so designs a machine that turns sheet music into living creatures but of course it all goes wrong.

I also watched the final two episodes of the second season of True Blood which was a great end to a really awesome season. I'm really looking forward to seeing the third season.

I went along to work today, but I only stayed in for six hours so that was pretty good. Getting to leave early. Also it is good that it's the weekend now.