Busy Not Blogging

The overextension’s been kicking in, plus I’ve been doing the social life thing.

A couple of films worth mentioning, although lord knows i’m well behind the times on catching movies as quickly as I should. Capote was great. A quiet, simply filmed piece designed as a frame for Philip Seymour Hoffman’s deservedly Oscar-winning performance. It’s un-nerving just how accurate the portrayal is, although one has to wonder how his performance would be viewed if he tried putting those mannerisms onto a ficticious character. Truth is clearly stranger than fiction.

I also enjoyed Brick, again a simple piece with an incredibly good central performance from Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Definately a film that’s polarising opinion, it’s use of noirish hoodlum speak coming out of high school students either captivating or irritating the fuck out of audiences. There were a couple of walkouts at the screening I went to.

However, I thought it worked really well, and felt like street argot rather than something forced on the characters as a conceit. I can see Californian high school kids talking like that.

Music news. I missed the Foo Fighter’s Hyde Park gig (drat) but managed to get into the Apollo Victoria for the acoustic set earlier in the week, which was utterly splendid. An eight-piece version of the band (actually 9 at one point, as head roadie Joe Beebe popped up for a solo on “Virginia Moon”) crused through a set including a lot of stuff from the second disc of “In Your Honour” along with some oldies, and a hammering solo blast of “Best Of You” from the Grohlster. A top, top night. One big fat hug of a gig.

OVEREXTENSION: A BEGINNER’S GUIDE

So, I’m writing a feature film, which I’ll be co-directing in October. I’m blogging about it, too. That first draft needs to be done by the 15th.
Also, I’m working on a documentary project with my mate Dominic, with some shooting to be done at the end of the month. In Manchester.
And of course, a full schedule at work, including the long awaited refurbishment of the suite and general massive changes in working practices.
And I’ve got a cold of extiction event level proportions.

Still, it’s better than being bored, eh?


Made it to the local Vue for a screening of X-Men: The Last Stand. The response has been kind of ho hum in the press, and TLC was under-impressed. I thought in a lot of ways it was the best of the trilogy. It was certainly the truest to the spirit of the books, and wasn’t ashamed to raid ideas from them. There were elements of stories from Chris Claremont, Grant Morrison and Joss Whedon in there, and this is A Good Thing. Also, the battle scenes finally felt right, properly epic, graceful and fun. Again, a good thing.

In general, I picked up a lot of that elegaic sense of loss and sacrifice that’s so much a part of the X-Men mythos, and I’d have been more honked off about the deaths of three of the main characters, if not for the knowledge that in the X-Men NO-ONE EVER STAYS DEAD. How many burials has Scott Summers endured for his flame-haired wife now? Four? For me, this really pins into the work Joss is doing on “Astonishing X-Men” at the moment, playing with the idea of being unable to grieve over the loss of a loved one and move on… because she keeps coming back.

To be honest, this one was more for the fans, with a ton of little injokes and references (Danger Room! Sentinals! squeeee!) that kept me happily geeked out for 2 hours 10.

Oh, and Clare griped about Dark Phoenix looking a little too much like dark Willow, from Buffy.
Fair point, but Chris Claremont was there first…

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