Thursday, June 18, 2009

Ruby Wednesday

In six days time, next Wednesday, my parents will celebrate their Ruby Wedding Anniversary. It absolutely blows my mind that such a thing is happening. Not because they have a horrible marriage and it's a miracle they stayed together. Quite the opposite. My mind is more blown by the fact I'm old enough for their to be such a landmark in my parents lives. Wait that sounds selfish.

Anyway, as they retired and moved to Spain in 1995, I am flying out on Sunday to spend 5 days with them to mark the occasion. Five days of hanging out with the parents in 95 degrees sunny sunshine, lounging around their pool drinking cocktails. I canNOT wait. For their gift, I got them a red iPod Nano. See, they're often making long car journeys and love to listen audiobooks when they're on said journeys (at least once a year, they drive over to the UK which takes several days). So I got the iPod and an in car adaptor for them so they no longer have to juggle a bazillion CDs in the car, they can just load up as much music and books as they want and away they go. I got it engraved and I set it up last night, naming it Ruby and loading a compilation album of songs from 1969 on there for them.

My flight is on Sunday at the ungodly hour of 6:25am. Gross. I have an insane plan on how to get to the airport on time for that. Once it's all done and I'm back in dear old Blighty, I'll update fully with pictures and a proper explanation of the plan (if it works. If it's a disaster, I'll pretend it never happened).

Thursday, June 11, 2009

There is no Salvation

I'm not sure why I let myself get caught up in the hoopla for the release of Terminator Salvation. Somehow, during all the promotional activities for it, the trailers, the posters, the leaked Christian Bale rant, I managed to overlook one crucial factor: McG. He's an absolutely atrocious director, with a reverse Midas touch. So why, WHY did I ever fool myself into thinking that his take on Terminator would be any good?

It's not. It's not gouge my eyes out terrible like his Charlie's Angels movies, but it is not terribly good either. It isn't interesting to look at as it's all so flat and dull, nor was it interesting to watch. There were obvious clumsy edits where scenes had been removed wholesale too, and the whole thing did feel truncated, especially at the rushed and fumbled ending. McG doesn't bother to give us anything even approaching character development, presumably thinking that as the two main characters have featured in earlier installments, it wasn't necessary. Wrong-o. Anton Yelchin as a teenage Kyle Reese does a bang up job with the flimsy material he's given though. Christian Bale is very good too, of course. Sam Worthington struggles as Marcus Wright, wrestling with the accent as well as with a character that demands a subtlety and nuance that McG is incapable of extracting out of anybody.

Speaking of Marcus Wright, I have a question. In the film itself, it goes to great lengths to conceal his true identity and much ballyhoo is made around its eventual reveal. So why, then, is the same reveal in the trailer? Who the fuck authorised that? Having not really succeeded in telling the story very well, McG gives up not long after said reveal and the film collapses into a mess of incoherence and head scratching events that he doesn't bother to explain. The appearance of a naked Arnie-bot with Action Man genitalia was just one of those moments. A truly thundering disappointment in what has been, for the most part, a summer of disappointments. Sigh.

Monday, June 01, 2009

Naked Farmer for June 2009

I realise that I say this every month but I really can't believe how fast this year is going, nor that I have lost such interest in my life and thus in this blog. I'm attempting to bring back my joie de vivre though, so watch this space.