Jason Bourne

Last night was pretty quiet. I did some reading (I'm currently reading The Fireman by Joe Hill). I also did some writing, and downloaded a Mary Chapin Carpenter album,State of the Heart.

This afternoon I went out and saw Jason Bourne, directed by Paul Greengrass. It's the fifth in the Bourne franchise and the fourth to actually feature the character Jason Bourne (played by Matt Damon). In this movie a hacker investigating secret CIA operations, runs across documents revealing secrets about Bourne's past. Soon Bourne finds himself on a globe trotting quest for the truth, pursued by the CIA and a brutal hired killer. It's a good thriller and pretty exciting. Although I would warn you, it's filmed in this fast cutting, constantly shaking, moving camera, which kind of gave me a headache by the end of it.

Misery

Last night I watched Misery, directed by Rob Reiner, and based on a novel by Stephen King. The movie tells the story of Paul Sheldon (played by James Caan) the best selling author of a series of historical romances, featuring the character Misery. Sheldon has decided to end the series and kill off Misery, so he can work on more literary fiction. After a car accident in the Colorado mountains, a badly injured Sheldon is rescued by nurse Annie Wilkes (played by Kathy Bates), who happens to be his "number one fan". However when she finds out that he has killed off her favourite character, and reads his unpublished manuscript, she is extremely angry, and demands that he brings Misery back, if he wants to live. It's a really good movie, with some great performances, especially from Kathy Bates. The novel was inspired by the highly negative fan reaction that King received for his non-horror fantasy novel The Eyes of the Dragon, and his feeling that he was trapped in the horror genre and unable to get away from it. For the director Rob Reiner, he was best known for comedies and wanted to make more dramatic films. 

Today I went over to my parent's house for lunch, as usual for a Sunday. It was nice, we had some roast chicken, potato croquettes, peas and stuffing, with profiteroles and strawberries for dessert. This evening I was listening to the Just a Story podcast, which was telling the story of the lie detector test, which apparently was initially developed by William Marston, the same guy who created DC comics character Wonder Woman.

Source Code

Last night I started writing the script for Script Frenzy. I got about three and a half pages written. It's a kind of horror, cyberpunk science-fiction script, based on a story idea I've had for years. Later on I watched the 1998 movie Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, directed by Steve Miner. It's the sixth sequel to the original Halloween film, and takes up the story of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) twenty years after the original, where she has a 17 year old son (Josh Hartnett) and is now working as a headteacher at a prestigious boarding school. While the rest of the school are off on a camping trip over Halloween, her son and three of his friends decide to take advantage of having the deserted school to themselves. Obviously before long, Laurie's murderous, invulnerable brother, Michael Myers (Chris Durand) to indulge his favourite hobby of slicing up teenagers, and anyone else he comes across, with large kitchen knives. It's actually a lot better than most of the others in the series. It owes a lot to the Scream series (Scream writer Kevin Williamson performed an uncredited rewrite on this film and acts as executive producer), with the same blend of shocks, jokes and movie references. Today I went out to the movies and saw Source Code, directed by Duncan Jones. The movie stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a US soldier who wakes up on a train with no memory of how he got there. He also doesn't know the woman sitting opposite him (Michelle Monaghan), but she knows him even though she seems to think he is someone else entirely. When he looks in the mirror he sees someone else's reflection staring back at him. Eight minutes after he wakes up, the train is destroyed in a bomb explosion. The soldier wakes up again to discover he is part of an experiment called "Source Code", which allows the participant to relive the last eight minutes of someone else's life. The train was destroyed that morning, and he has to keep going back through those last eight minutes in order to find the bomb and discover the bomber on the crowded train, before the same bomber detonates a nuclear device in downtown Chicago. It was a good movie with a really complex, intriguing plot and some great action and twists. Both of the movies are reviewed over at Permanently Weird.

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.

Daybreakers

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

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

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

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.

The Creeper

Last night I watched an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents called "The Creeper", which was about a blue-collar New York neighbourhood which is plagued by a serial killer, called The Creeper, who targets women who are home alone while their husbands work nights. The story focuses on a woman left alone who spends a nightmarish evening dealing with her unsympathetic husband, sadistic ex-boyfriend, strange janitor and the completely evil woman next door, along with her own increasing paranoia about The Creeper. Despite containing no violence at all it was probably the scariest thing I have ever seen on TV, with a memorable shock ending. It had that feeling that the best episodes of The Twilight Zone had that anything could happen at any time.

It was another pretty quiet day at work. I got in at nine and left at half past five. Back home I had a microwave spaghetti and meatballs ready meal.

Shame the Devil

Last night I finished reading the book Shame the Devil by George Pelecanos, who is probably best known as one of the writers on the TV show The Wire. The book was published in 2000 and tells the story of the botched robbery of a pizza parlour which leaves several people dead, and the robber's return two and a half years later to get revenge on the cop who shot dead his brother. Like all of Pelecanos' books it is set in and around Washington D.C. and deals with themes of violence, betrayal, loyalty, family, friendship and the difficulty of doing the right thing in a violent world, as well as classic American cars, basketball and soul and funk music of the seventies. It's a good book and recommended for fans of crime novels and thrillers. There's a review on Permanently Weird.

It was the start of another week at work today. It was a pretty dull day. On the way home I stopped off and got a mince pie with fries for my dinner.

The Hidden Thing

Last night I saw Scott Pilgrim vs. The World on DVD. I saw the movie last year when it was first out, and I really liked it a lot. The movie was directed by Edgar Wright and based on a series of graphic novels by Bryan Lee O'Malley. Set in Toronto, the film tells the story of 22 year old Scott Pilgrim (played by Michael Cera) who plays in a garage band and is dating 17 year old Knives Chau (Ellen Wong). However,he immediantely becomes infatuated with mysterious American delivery girl Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), but in order to date her he must defeat her seven evil exes. The movie is really stylised with endless references to comic books and video games and so on. I think it's a great movie, with an awesome soundtrack. It's actually one of my favourite movies.

After the movie I watched an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents called "The Hidden Thing", about a man who struggles to remember key details after he witnesses his girlfirend being killed by a hit and run driver.

I was up at five o'clock this morning and in work for seven. The place was absolutely snowed under at work, so it was a really busy day. There was a baguette run though and I had a panini with roast beef, brie, jalapeno peppers and English mustard on it. I left work at three.

The Belfry

Last night I was watching an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents called "The Belfry". It was about a man who is in love with the local teacher and kills the man she is engaged to marry. When this fails to win her affections he goes on the run, but hides in the belfry of the local school, which also doubles as the local church, so he can spy on the woman.

I started writing a new story last night about a group of people who go to a new kind of virtual reality video game, only to esperience some strange after effects. This year I'm going to try to write more and read more, as well as watch more movies.

It was another average day at work. On the way home I bought some milk and the latest issue of Empire magazine, and also a steak pie supper for dinner.

When I got home the DVD of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World had arrived in the mail. So I'll probably be watching that tomorrow.

Bullitt

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

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

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

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

Wrapping Presents

Last night I was watching the first part of the Red Riding trilogy on TV. They are a series of made for TV films based on the crime novels by David Peace. The first episode was based on the novel 1974 and starred Andrew Garfield as a young journalist who is drawn into a web of violence and police corruption when a child goes missing. It also starred Sean Bean, Warren Clarke and Rebecca Hall. It's good but unrelentingly grim and depressing. Not as depressing as the book, though.

Today I went out to the post office to pay a bill and get some more stamps and on the way home I got a sandwich, some sugar and the latest issue of Total Film magazine. This afternoon I spent my time wrapping Christmas presents.

It's my birthday tomorrow and so I probably won't be on much over the next few days because I will be very busy. It should all be good though, hopefully.

If I don't update befire then, Happy Christmas to anyone who is celebrating it.

The Beach of Agnes

Last night I was watching a Timeshift documentary called Nordic Noir: The Story of Scandinavian Crime Fiction which was very interesting, about the recent popularity of Scandinavian crime and thriller novels after the success of the Steig Larsson books and Henning Mankell's Wallander books.

I was also watching the 2008 documentary The Beaches of Agnes, directed by Agnes Varda. The film basically tells the story of Varda's life as she travels to the various places where she lived and uses performance art, art installations, archive footage, still photographs and extracts form her movies to tell her stories, including her time in Hollywood where she shot the first test footage of Harrison Ford (who the studios rejected saying that he had no future in the film industry), her involvement in the sixties counterculture and friendships with Andy Warhol, Jean-Luc Godard and Jim Morrison among others. It was pretty interesting.

Today I went out to the German Christmas market to meet Mom. We started off at the art gallery and had a coffee and chocolate cupcake. Then we walked around for a bit and had a bratwurst sausage with sauerkraut and mustard and ketchup with a cup of mulled wine, which was nice. I bought an ankh pendent and also a couple of candles, just to make my home smell a bit nicer.

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.

Extra Holiday

Last night was pretty quiet. I lisened to the second part of The Honourable Schoolboy on CD, read and played Assassin's Creed II for an hour or so.

Today was another fairly dull day at work. In the afternoon we had to go up to a meeting that lasted for nearly an hour. The meeting itself was pretty much pointless. One good thing is that I have an extra day added to my holiday! Instead of having to be in work on the 30th and 31st December, I only have to be in on the 31st. It seems there was a mix up in the processing.

Decorating

Last night I had a shot on my new games. Bayonetta seems like a fun shooting and beat-up game and Assassin's Creed II looks like it will be a really good game, with an interesting storyline. I also listened to the first part of The Honourable Schoolboy CD. The story is set after the British Secret Service has been ravaged by a traitor and spymaster George Smiley has been set in charge of repairing the damage, when he discovers that his arch-enemy, a Soviet spymaster code-named Karla is being financed by a Hong Kong gangster. In order to expose the link, Smiley sends a disreputable journalist and sometime spy into the Hong Kong underworld to investigate. It is pretty good. I also watched an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents about an alcoholic woman who wakes up in hospital with a badly injured hand and a bad hangover and tries to remember how she got there.

This morning my Dad called round and we went to the Gyle shopping centre. I had a cheese scone and a mocha coffee at the food court and then we went our seperate ways. I got a couple of books: Shoedog by George Pelecanos and Shame the Devil by George Pelecanos. Pelecanos is a crime author who sets all his books in and around Washington DC, he also had a lot of attention for writing several episodes of The Wire TV series.

We went along to my parent's house where the latest issue of Fortean Times had arrived. The main story this month concerned the idea that ancient mythology and religion could be explained by alien encounters. It was an idea that was very popular for awhile in the 1970s. We had roast chicken, stuffing, peas and diced roast potatoes in garlic butter for lunch followed by apple pie, which was really nice. In the afternoon I helped my Mom decorate their Christmas tree.

I'm planning on decorating my Christmas tree this evening.

Rashomon

Last night I watched some of the 1999 version of The Haunting, directed by Jan De Bont, and based on the novel The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. It was previously filmed in 1963. The storyline basically involves a group of people (Catherine Zeta Jones, Lili Taylor and Owen Wilson) being brought into the manison of Hill House to ostensibly take part in research into insomnia. However, the professor in charge (Liam Neeson) really intends to conduct research into fear, with the help of various fake scares. However, it turns out that Hill House may be genuinely haunted. Both the book and the earlier film were known for the ambiguous and subtle nature of the scares, however the later film basically throws out any subtlety or ambiguity with a flood of over the top production design and CGI ghost effects. Interestingly, the film was originally intended as a collaboration between Steven Spielberg (as director) and Stephen King (as screenwriter) but the project was abandoned due to "creative differences".

Today I went out and got some groceries for the week. When I came home I watched the 1950 movie Rashomon, directed by Akira Kurosawa, on DVD. The film is based on the short stories "Rashomon" and "In a Bamboo Grove" by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. The film is set in 12th Century Japan and opens with three men sheltering from a heavy storm in the ruins of Rashomon Gate. They pass the time discussing a court case which two of them had been involved in, in which a notorious bandit (played by Toshiro Mifune) is accused of brutally assaulting a samurai and his wife, resulting in the death of the samurai. As four different people give four contradictory accounts of the crime, the nature of memory, truth and lies, fact and fiction and even good and evil come into question. The movie is one of the acknowledged classics of world cinema and has been referenced endlessly, including once in an episode of The Simpsons (Marge: "C'mon Homer, you liked Rashomon". Homer: "Well, that's not how I remember it".)

I'm intending on just having a fairly quiet day in today.

Following

Last night I was listening to another radio adaptation of a 1959 episode of The Twilight Zone called "Time Enough at Last", in which a bank clerk never has enough time to do his reading until a new type of H-bomb is detonated in his city, while he is taking his lunch break in the bank's vault, and soon finds himself with enough time to do all the reading he wants. It was probably one of the best known episodes of the TV series. I also listened to an episode of Classic Tales of Horror called "My Own True Ghost Story" by Rudyard Kipling about an Englishman who spends a terrifying night in a haunted bungalow in India.

Later on last night I watched the 1998 film Following, directed by Christopher Nolan. The film is a really low budget, black and white thriller set in London about an unemployed would-be writer (Jeremy Theobald) whose main interest in life is following random people around without their knowledge. Until one day he meets a charismatic burglar (Alex Haw) who plays psychological games with his victims, and finds himself drawn into a dark and dangerous world. The movie was shot in London over the weekends and is probably best known as the debut of Christopher Nolan, who has since gone on to be a major Hollywood director (with films such as Memento, Insomnia, Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight and the up coming Inception). The movie has a very complex flashback structure and is kind of too tricksy for it's own good at times and a lot of the acting is enthusiastic to put it mildly, but it is still worth watching.

Today I went out to the city centre and got some wrapping paper for my dad's birthday present (it's his birthday on Tuesday) and I got the second season of True Blood on DVD and a book called Human Is? by Philip K. Dick, it's a selection of his short fiction and includes the stories that inspired the films Total Recall, Screamers, Paycheck and the up coming film The Adjustment Bureau.

Red Riding

Over the past few days I read Nineteen Eighty and Nineteen Eighty-Three by David Peace, the final two volumes in the "Red Riding" series of dark crime thrillers. In Nineteen Eighty the Yorkshire Ripper killings continue and the police are heavily criticised for failing to stop the murders and honest cop Peter Hunter is assigned to look over the investigation and basically police the police. However Hunter soon finds that he has lifted the lid on a world of horrific violence and police corruption and before long his investigation threatens to destory him and everyone he loves. In Nineteen Eighty-Three three seperate plot lines, linked by the investigation into a missing girl, bring the series to a bleak and brutal conclusion. Read seperately the books don't really make much sense, although I thought Nineteen Eighty was the best in the series, which actually has a more conventional plot-line and a more sympathetic narrator. It's been a very good and very well-written series but the problem is that it is so unrelentingly gloomy and violent.

Last night I listened to the second part of a radio adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie, and also an episode of The Price of Fear in which Vincent Price introduced the story of a writer who decides to spend a night locked in to a wax museum's Chamber of Horrors in order to get inspiration, however next morning he has mysteriously died of fright.

Later on I listened to a radio adaptation of a 1964 episode of The Twilight Zone called "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" based on a story by Charles Beaumont, about a future society in which at the age of nineteen everyone is forced to undergo a form of plastic surgery in which their face and body is changed to one of a series of templates, and so everyone looks and acts exactly the same. It was a good story and worked really well on the radio.

It was another really dull and ordinary day at work again today and I was glad to get back home.