Seven: great film from a long line of thrillers in this genre.the film has: Silence Of The Lambs, The Abominable DR. Phibes, all those gritty New York distopia storys including Batman. It doesn’t matter that the story wasn’t desperately original, it was however, so well executed…
Besides: it’s damned cold tonight, -3°C and dropping. I am though, warm, acclimatised and well fed. Hope the car’s service doesn’t sting too much next week.
Schools’ are out: and I feel less daunted by christmas this year, can’t remember last time it seemed this way. Something that hasn’t changed is the winder holiday is certainly ruined by Christmas, but not letting that happen from now on. this Whisky tastes fine (Iona, from the Tobermoray distillery).
From yesterday: a very feint one

Poorly computer (again gasp): On Windows 2000, the System32system file is corrupt, meaning no bootup. I don’t know how this happens, but last night Kaspersky raised the alarm and offered to delete some infected files. It will be a few days until I can SFC file checker from the boot-up floppy discs. Last time I tried that technique, however, it failed- no repair worked.
What a pain, it’s all the time setting up the OS that’s at risk, no important files are in danger though. Just time- a precious commodity at this end of term.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas: Film about the son of a Concentration Camp commandant. I don’t mind giving key elements of the plot because the film is so bad that I urge you to avoid it. The kid is bored in the house where the Camp’s commandant is posted, he climes out and makes friends with a Jewish kid over the electric fence. Eventually he digs in to try to find the Jewish kid’s father, and ends up in a gas chamber himself. Sentimental, absurd and twee.
Red sky in the morning; you know the rest.

Watched a borrowed DVD last night that turned out to be a pirate copy. This one was filmed in a cinema, you could hear people coughing and sometimes talking. The little parasite must have been sitting near the back with the videocam, because the bassy loud bits drowned out any clarity so that quite a few passages of dialogue were difficult to follow  There was a hollow loss of mid-range sounds that is common in cinemas, but the colour was off key too. At first I considered that the film was shot in a nostalgic desaturated colour-space, with added grain.
Cinemas frequently show videos pleading for people to avoid pirate videos, but I don’t think they need to bother. What I saw last night wasn’t really a proper film, certainly nothing that could compete with the product that film producers are trying to sell. I don’t see any reason to buy a disks from a pirate dealer because the genuine DVDs are don’t cost much anyway.

New game: Far Cry 2, driving around in the African savannah.
Real life, cycling around Warwickshire for 65 miles. One of them makes you fit

The writer was Russian, you’d never guess.

Paris, Je T’aime: utterly charming film, a series of short stories with the obvious backdrop. Some were more french in flavour, some less so.
Overall, they reflected the multinational city in a set of moving, sometimes tragic set pieces. A beautiful film.

Coen Brothers: Fargo– I’m seeing a pattern now, the landscape is different in this film, but its role is the same. This one is funnier than the last one (No country for Old men).
I’m tired and don’t really know why; well, I do but can’t confide. There is someone out there.
The iPod collection is growing rapidly with generous loans from Peter. The gadget has developed a dominantly melancholic mood; that’s my iPod!
Somebody Loves You

New film to add to the top ten: The Reader: based on the Bernard Schlink book. I’m left so stunned that I can’t really make much of a post here. With a background of Germany dealing with it’s recent history, the relationship is however, inseparable from that background so it is not really a background at all. Their story looks at an impossible relationship that spans a whole lifetime.
In fact I have just deleted most of this post because it is best to meet this film with no fore-knowledge. Go and see it, just as an incentive– there are no car chases, no shooting so special effects.