Jim Carrey shamelessly hams it up. If you are not a fan of Jim Carrey you may find this performance annoying but I certainly enjoyed it. Remarkably the child actors are not annoying. There is an all star cast full of many recognisable actors and actresses although some are in very minor parts (Dustin Hoffman makes a brief appearance).
The art is fabulous, the painted backdrops very convincingly create the quirky looking world of Lemony Snicket. Even the end credits are beautifully animated. I suspect that these people have worked with Tim Burton in the past.
This is great for a childrens movie and reasonably entertaining for adults. Parents might want to be careful if their children are very young or easily scared but as someone who devoured every Roald Dahl books I could get my hands on, I am very glad to see childrens stories with a bit of menace in them. I'd give it 4/5 and I think this is a film I will enjoy watching over again in years to come.
Neal Stephenson
Last week I read both Snow Crash and Diamond Age. Despite being extremely pessimistic about cyberpunk stories I enjoyed Snow Crash and thought it was quite clever but I think I would have enjoyed it more if I were able to read it in half that time (like I used to be able to). Diamond Age ended abruptly which was annoying and unsatisfying but I enjoyed it in quite a different way from Snow Crash because The Young Ladies Illustrated Primer (as Diamond Age is also known) felt more like a modern fairytale and was much easier to read and the story not burdened with as half as much jargon and technobabble.
Chrismas Day
The predictions came true and there was a light snowfall on Christmas Day (which didn't stick). Although there was not enough snow to win any bets at the bookies, I still think it of it as the first White Christmas we've had in years.
An Irish Breakfast never seemed to me like the best idea after a night of Guinness so I ate an ordinary breakfast (cereal, toast and tea) and put aside some sausages and bacon for an early lunch. Christmas dinner is at 4 o'clock in theory but going without lunch, waiting until I am starving and then eating massive amounts of food all in one sitting has never really appealed to me. I had also planned promised myself (since two years previously) I would run the GOAL Mile and I knew I'd feel better with several smaller meals.
The GOAL Mile involves making a small donation to charity and then seeing how long it takes you to run a mile, four laps around the running track at University College Dublin on Christmas morning with a group of runners setting off every 25 minutes. I never quite got around to doing any training during the year as I had hoped but I'm not too unfit thanks to regular cycling and other incidental excercise. The previous night while I was under the affluence of incahol the sceptics didn't I was likely to run the mile in under ten minutes. As we started running it began to snow, as I ran my hands became heavier and heavier like great big clubs. I was glad to be wearing a tracksuit and an extra shirt unlike my older brother who had decided to run in shorts. I managed to complete the mile in eight minutes thirty-seven seconds. Brian, my older more athletic brother beat his previous time of over six minutes with a time of five minutes thirty five. Although I am unlikely to ever run a four minute mile and even six minute mile seems a long way off, I think that with a little practice and milder weather it shouldn't be too difficult to get my time under eight minutes. I set a challenge for myself and I completed it. It was very satisfying and I'm glad I did it, it was a good way to start the day and at the same time raise money for charity.
Guessing the contents of presents before unwrapping them is always fun. My younger brother had mentioned that he had gotten me something he was sure I'd like and had left me wondering all week what it was. I had it my hands and gave it a shake, thought about it a moment and then calmly stated "LEGO". The sound suggested the pieces were small and light, more like LEGO technic than big blocks, so having shaken the package some more and considered my brothers assumption that I would like it, I again calmly stated "Star Wars LEGO". My younger brother was unimpressed but I was well pleased to open it and discover I had guessed correctly. I greatly enjoyed spending many hours (too many) building the lego R2-D2 but mysteriously had more than a few leftover peices when I was done.
(Lots more ordinary Christmas activities happened which I may fill in later when I'm less busy. Or maybe not.)
Blade: Trinity
Lacked soul, bloody awful.
I liked the preview two Blade films but this was dire, it was painful. The whole film clunks along from one stupid piece of dialog to the next. This is movie is so bad that Irish reviewers will probably say it is savage or brutual and some smart-ass will put that as a quote on the box to mislead British people into watching it (those little Irish colloquialisms have been exploited in the past).
Blade Trinity is as unfunny as Jessica Biel is hot.
Blade Trinity is as stupid as Jessica Biel is sexy.
There is an unrevealing shower scene with Jessica Biel in it, confirming that this film is aimed at squarely teenage boys as if the incessant pointless profanity and the stupid casting of wrestler Triple H. hadn't already made it obvious enough. And Van Wilder Vampire Slayer?
What the hell where the casting people thinking? Were they even thinking? There was some really obtrusive product placement for portable
mp3 music players from a certain fruit
company which only added to how truly awful and obnoxious this film was.
When I say this film is not funny I mean that only laughs you will get out of this film will be from laughing at how bad it is, I wasn't the only one laughing. (Resident Evil 2 was bad but still better than this.)
Merchant of Venice.
Might have better to have been called the Moneylender of Venice as Al
Pacino dominates as Shylock. I usually enjoy Shakespeare and this was no
exception. In comparison to a full stage play this was relatively short
but it still seemed very long compared to the averge film. I had a few
good laughs at some of the British actors some of whom were a very surprising bit of casting. There was some gratuitous nudity - the prostitutes of Venice showing off their wares - but it was brief and
their was no real violence. If this were a modern film it would be a
romantic story combining with a courtroom drama.
Certainly there was plenty going on and it really held my attention the whole time.
Good if you
like this sort of thing (Shakespeare), but I'm not sure it was good
enough to reach a
wider audience.
I let my mother cut my hair. (Yes I am twenty-four years old and still living at home. Sigh!) It actually turned out okay as she resisted the temptation to give me the hair cut she wanted and instead only cut off a little around the edges as requested. I am now marginally less scruffy looking.
Ugh. Christmas Shopping. The highlight of traipsing around crowded shops carrying heaving bags was when I saw a hot blonde I thought I recognised and to my surprise she winked at me and flashed a naughty little smile. I was very pleasantly surprised and caught off gaurd I panicked a little as I couldn't remember her name and so instead of stopping and talking I kept on walking. A few minutes later I was eventually able to recall the name of the lovely Aisling but it was too late. Oh well, with any luck I'll bump into her on campus when term restarts.
Thank Poland! Software patents will not be crippling Europeans just yet.
Over the past few weeks I've done quite a few things but not written about them here.
I went to hear Senator John McCain speak at Trinity College Dublin as a guest of the University Philosophical Society. I rejoined the University Trampolining Club. I met beautiful people and made friends with strangers. I went ice-skating. I watched the Duellists, the Wraith, and probably a few other films I cannot recall right now. I'm also helping choose the Splash screen for version 2.2 of the GNU Image Manipulation Program.
Grand Old Party
Last year Republican and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich came and spoke to the University Philosophical Society (the Phil for short). Mr. Gingrich was a consumate politician, well spoken and very slick and able to quickly respond to any comments off the cuff.
The crowd was much bigger for Senator John Mc. Cain easily filling the Ed Burke lecture theatre (the largest in Trinity) but unfortunately his prewritten introductory speech was fairly dry, I don't imagine he had the opportunity to rehearse it much. Although not entirely his fault I admit I was falling asleep during this part of his address (I had run straight from a Trampolining session and hadn't eaten in hours) but things got much better when it came to questions and answers from an interviewer and the audience. I'd have to say I think Newt Gingrich was a slightly better speaker but what struck me as remarkable about John Mc Cain was that unlike most politicians he was hardly evasive at all and actually answered the questions asked (wherease Mr Gingrich was very evasive).
This was particulary note-worthy because just the previous week our own Taoiseach Bertie Ahern* had spoken at the Phil but shamefully absconded without allowing any opportunity for questions and answers. Protests had been considered but the more pragmatic approach of actively engaging in dicussion was chosen instead so quite a few people were furious to be so rudely ignored and the event exploited as a photo opportunity.
While most guests are in a hurry to dodge questions McCain actually requested that the questions and answer session continue and go over time.
Aside from being refreshingly forthright about his opinions Senator McCain also managed to be funny and although I believe he was reusing an old joke (from the Tonight Show with Jay Leno I was told) they were at least new to us.
As a prisoner of war I was kept in the dark and fed on scraps. Why would I want to do that again?Mr. Colm Green listed some of the slanders that the Bush campaign team had thrown at Senator McCain during the 2000 presidentail race and asked which of these insults was it that convinced him to help campaign for Bush in 2004? Always the pragmatic polician Senator McCain didn't provide the Bush baiting the audience had been hoping for. He replied that he thought the candidates were very similar and that his voting record shows he agrees with Bush more often than he agrees with Kerry and that he considered Bush was the better candidate. He also made it clear that despite his disagreements that he did agree with Bush on many issues and that he would be doing his constituents a disservice if he were to still hold a grudge about the 2000 presidential campaign.
the response of Senator John McCain when asked if he would ever consider becoming Vice President.
Trampolining
Trampolining is a lot of fun and harder than it looks. It also happens to be one of the few activities that fits in with my timetable. When I'm not feeling sore and a little overstreched in muscles I hardly knew I had, I am feeling a lot healthier as a result of the extra exercise and I have gotten to know a good crowd of new people (although some of them worry me, like Karl the Christmas Decoration Kleptomaniac). As the group now has three Alans there is a threat of my getting a dubious nickname.
The group went ice skating last night, as the temporary ice rink was nearby to where I live I went along to watch. As I had thought the tickets were all prebooked I didn't expect to get the chance to go skating (and I'm permanently penniless at the moment anyway). In a wonderful gesture of Christmas spirit a women who had hurt her back and was unable to go skating with the rest of her office party very generously gave me her ticket and I was out in the ice like a flash.
Thursday was the Phil Christmas party and Kathleen twisted my arm and convinced me to enjoy the free booze and chocolate biscuits. There were lots of young and beautiful people there, with all the new fresh faces I was momentarily reminded of my age and the realisation how Trinity was in many ways completely different from when I started but in others still very much the same.
This Slashdot discussion about literacy in coporate America furthers the point that time saved by sloppy writing is far outweighed by the how it wastes other peoples time.
Odds are I've made many grammar, spelling and punctuation errors in this message. That's Moens Law of Corrections for you.
New HTML Parser: The long-awaited libxml2 based HTML parser code is live. It needs further work but already handles most markup better than the original parser.
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