One of the fellows I live with is a huge fan of Blondie. I've realised since moving here just how winner Blondie is. I've realised that pretty much every good song I couldn't put a band name to was actually a Blondie song.
He has also got me more into Chris Isaak. When I moved here I thought it would be great to be able to introduce him to all of my sweet music. That hasn't happened at all. Just another one of the many ways in which life at L'Arche happens opposite to how you expect.
J: When we go to Hobart, I'm going to take my boyfriend Brian for a walk in the pusher.
R: A pram?!? He must be tiny.
J: Yep. He's a small one.
R: I suppose that must be very practical.
J: Yep.
Old Tom and I went to see Quantum of Solace on Wednesday in our few mutually spare hours. I was expecting a lot and my enthusiasm hadn't been dented by the reviews I'd read. I loved the first one. Casino Royale was my favourite ever Bond and one of my favourite films. I figured that with the same sweet director and same Daniel Craig, it would have to be great.
It wasn't great unfortunately. It was good and fun, but not great. The final hotel scene was all silly. The whole film was messy and badly edited. Or perhaps I'm just getting too old for these microsecond cuts during fight scenes. I found it very hard to work out what was happening in the big scenes. If I thought they were trying to save money by not really showing us what was going that would be OK. But I somehow doubt that was the issue.
The Bond girls were pretty average. Although nice to have one who's handy with a gun.
The DC-3 was real good though. And there were a few other good bits too.
I've just managed to get through our whole stash of extraordinary incident report forms in a couple of days.
Apparently, riding a motorcycle now makes you impotent. If you're 50 years or older and ride a motorcycle you are basically guaranteed to have erectile problems (93%). I find the statistics pretty unlikely, but even if they're true I reckon it's more likely that men who've lost interest in sex go out an buy themselves motorcycles to keep themselves entertained.
Tonight I lost one of the core members. Only for an hour, but things did get slightly tense. Three of us spent the hour searching around the preferred local getaway park. We searched on foot, by car and by bike. I eventually called the police and they were very helpful.
Fortunately, as it turned out the hiding place wasn't as far as we'd feared. It was actually behind a tree in the corner of the backyard. It served as a mighty fine hiding place for an hour, thanks to a neatly camouflaged dressing gown. I felt silly and called the police back to tell them she was actually at home. Dear dear.
I bought Portishead's new album Third yesterday. It's into Rhythmbox and I am already enjoying it. Very different to the other ones, but still very much Portishead. Beth Gibbons is a ripper beauty.
By car: 15 minutes
By bicycle: 30 minutes
By bus: 85 minutes
Estimates assuming fluent traffic conditions.
I'm reading an article in The Australian titled "Economists pessimistic about growth forecast". So effectively their pessimistic of their own optimism. And it would seem more worried about the forecast for growth than about actual growth. Economic punditry is starting to feel like a profession running out of purpose.
Going to see the best-reviewed film ever. Cinema empty.
Update: It's not only the best-reviewed film. It's also the best.
Is it possible the bougie footpaths are actually finished? I feel more
cosmopolitan already.
I've spent a bit of time with the iPhone now, and I am surprised at just how crap all the mobile versions of sites are. Specifically sites like movie times and transport times. Yourmovies doesn't really have a mobile site and it's normal site is a beast. Yahoo is too heavy and difficult to use and it's mobile version is too anemic.
But Yourtime is good. Quick and straight-forward and you can bookmark all different handy spots. It does TV guide as well, although that's not quite as easy.
This is one of my favourite restaurants in the city.
I thought Body of Lies was pretty silly. I reckon pretty much everything was wrong with this film except possibly for the bits with shooting. I love Leonardo DiCaprio, and I can cope with Russell Crowe (despite his terrible American accent), but this film was pretty bad. I thought it might be a bit of a smart film. I figured there'd be some actual lies in it. I did forget that Ridley Scott was directing it. He is totally winner, but only when he's getting people shot or alien-eviscerated. I don't think politics is his strong point.
Normally I don't hold this kind of film up to very exacting standards. The Kingdom is a very similar sort of film, which I enjoyed much, much more. The Kingdom wasn't any less silly perhaps, but neither did it take itself so seriously. Body of Lies was all about grit (Hollywood trademark grit), but it couldn't follow through with plot or characters of any substance.
Russell Crowe's character was unimaginably incompetent. I could have coped with a smart person failing so consistently because they were doing a stupid job. I think that's largely true. But watching a profounding stupid CIA strawman fall over again and again got kind of dumb. Americans are arrogant sure, but not that arrogant. The professionalism of its spies will probably lead to a noble hatred of the Middle East, but Russell Crowe's redneck oblivion and small-town disdain was totally over the top.
There were other annoying things. Why was a 30-something year-old fellow running the CIA office in Amman? Why was the head of that office pursuing some poor, random lass he meets in a clinic? Why did this apparently clever fellow not even consider the possibility that the poor, random lass would be used to threaten him? Why did Leonardo try to betray the poor Karimi fellow, when no good could come of it either way? Why was giving money to the poor Karimi fellow's mother to manipulate him thought so amazingly clever, when surely all his friends would notice and assume he'd been bought? There was this whole "THIS is the way it's done here" atmosphere, so it wasn't a new tactic. And the whole Leonardo character was stupid as well. He was a total and utter arsehole, but then they had touching romantic moments with his poor squeeze and her little brothers. That isn't to say nasty sorts aren't capable of moments of romance, but it felt like the film itself wanted him to be some sort of hero. And he so wasn't.
0.135 seconds
