Movie – Ramsay Family Classics

Functional decline

This week Simone and Charlotte are in Brisbane seeing Simone’s parents and brother and sister in law.
As such Jack and I are reverting to the bachelor lifestyle (when I actually make it home from work with enough time to do anything other than just have dinner and go to bed).

Part of that has involved going out and renting DVDs, a thing which I don’t seem to have had time to do in ages, and since I’m on my own I’m getting some that Simone would not normally want to watch (namely 300 and (strangely) Evan Almighty).

Having watched 300 I was somewhat disappointed. I suppose that so many people had raved about it that perhaps I went into it with expectations. Anyhow, it was pretty to watch, but I already knew the basis of the story (from greek history/mythology), and so there wasn’t much surprise, and I found the voice over really irritating.

Anyway, as a result I suppose that I will no longer be able to perform certain household tasks. Ah well..

Sorkinification

We just went and saw Charlie Wilson’s War, which as written by Aaron Sorkin, the main guy behind the West Wing, and so I should have know that it would be funny, involving and cleverly political.

It was a damn funny piece of movie making (the opening scene has the protagonist sitting naked in a jacuzzi with another guy and 3 naked girls, trying to ask a guy who’s trashed on cocaine to turn the volume up on the TV so he can listen to something that’s just caught his eye) but the more you look at it the more you realise that it uses the humor of the social situations to mask the seriousness of the underlying story and it’s messages, giving them the chance to sneak into your brain while your guard is down.

Turns out it’s about America’s short sightedness (initially not wanting to fight the Russians because they didn’t want to seem too overt in their actions, and then having backed the Afghani’s in driving the Russians out, withdrawing all support and leaving the country to those who would eventually flood America with heroin, and blow up the world trade centers).
And how one man can change things, if only for a little while.

The flourishing of wands

On thursday I went with Simone and two of our friends Margaret and Prue to see the new Harry Potter movie.

It was good, although having recently re-read the book as some light bedtime reading I found it a bit frustrating how much of the good stuff in the book they had to cut in order to fit it into the 2 1/2 hours. This phenomenon is becoming more and more prominent (and, in my opinion, problematic) as they get further and further through the series. Harry is also starting to look disconcertingly old, and perhaps more incongrously, buff for the character he’s supposed to be portraying.

Still, I enjoyed it overall, and it’s only a short while until the next book comes out (with recent suggestions in the media that JKR may not be as averse to writing more Harry Potter books in the future (contrary to her previous assertions that there would only be 7)).

I also saw the other day that they’ve released the companion game for the Order of the Phoenix movie, and one of the flavours it comes in is for the Wii. This is cool, because it would appear that part of the game is that you use the Wiimote as a wand to cast spells. I must say I’m looking forward to wingarduim leviosa’ing stuff, and perhaps even Reducto’ing a few things. 🙂

Bunnies in space

[No, this post is not dealing with the astronautical talents of Hugh and his associates]

This evening I watched Wallace and Grommit: The curse of the were-Rabbit.

Upon seeing the BunVac 6000 in action I was immediately taken by how cool the rabbits looked floating around in the vacuum chamber, and though that rabbits would really be damn cool in outer space.

Should I ever find myself in a position of owning a space station (make that when I own a space station) I think I shall have to test it out.

I also saw a brief thing on TV this evening about a family that was raising an orphaned baby rock Wallaby, who was also very very cute, and I think they’d go quite well up there too…

It’s a jungle out there

Our house’s lawns are begining to look distinctly jungle-ish – almost like something out of Jumanji*, just without the elephants and the homocidal gentleman with a pith helmet and a blunderbuss.

For various reasons we have not had it mowed in about 4 or 5 weeks, and with all the recent rainfall here the grass has somewhat taken off.

Jack of course finds this a wonderful development, as it gives him plenty of cover for sneaking and stalking in (I got to watch him hunt a skink under the house the other day – it was very cute), but as for us humans it tends to be a little irritating as the long grass gets us wet when we leave early in the morning, and offends our sense of tidyness and order.

Still, I suppose that as long as rhinos don’t start stampeding out of it, and we get around to cutting it eventually, it will all be ok.

* I saw the other day that they are releasing a semi-sequel to Jumanji called Zathura: A space adventure, which while not being about any of the original Jumanji characters revolves around the same premise of a game that alters the reality of the players until the game is finished. I can’t decide if I want to see it, but given that I have relatively little time for movies at the moment I will probably wait until it comes out on DVD.

Serenity

As you may or may not have already read, a new movie called Serenity is coming out, based on (and starring most of the original cast – as far as I can tell) the fantastic (and tragically only 1 season long) sci-fi show Firefly.

The trailer looks like it keeps up the old fashioned coolness of the TV show, and I only watched it 4 or 5 times before managing to drag myself away.