Another Philip K Dick Movie

Now, last night I finally got around to watching 'A Scanner Darkly' - a movie based on a Philip K Dick novel with Keanu Reeves and Robert Downey Junior that was done in a cartoony style. Overall it was quite good, although I don't think I'd go out of my way to watch it again. It seemed to meander around for the majority of the film with not much in the way of plot driving it forward - the only thing that saved it from the off button was the rather excellent banter between the three lead characters - particularly Downey, who was superb - although he mumbled a lot! Then it picked up with the last quarter with a couple of twists.

I'm not sure what the benefit of the cartoon style was. It would have been just as good a movie if they'd filmed it in a traditional style. At first I assumed that they'd done it to keep costs down - you can get away with ropey lighting, dodgy sets and even crappier acting if you're cartoonizing them. This theory only stood up if the cartooning process was some sort of cheap automated one, though.

Turns out they hand-drew each frame on top of the filmed frame and it took about 50 people 18 months to complete. So overall the costs would have been about the same. So the only reason for the style was to...er... make it look a bit different from other movies and maybe draw in a few curious punters to a movie that probably wouldn't attract that many viewers. I don't think it added anything, although it was kinda pretty.

UK COINAGE

I've had a growing pile of small denomination coins on my desk for quite some time now. There's about a pound in coppers and a bunch of 5p's. Not quite enough to retire on, but enough to buy a cup of tea from the canteen in an emergency!

This pile has taken many forms. At one point is was a pound-high tower of coppery glory. This proved unstable, however and kept falling down every time I opened or closed my drawers or if someone walked past, or beathed a bit heavily.So the pile underwent a transformation and became two perfect squares of coppers - one of pennies and the other of 2p's. The 5p's stayed where they were. Then they were merged into a pretty hexagonal(ish) pattern. It was all lovely and very artistic.

This morning, a colleague wandered over to my desk. It was very early, so there weren't many people around. As we discussed important stuff (and things), she started to rearrange the coins on my desk. I don't want to ruin the surprise, but a very interesting pattern began to take shape, and it suddenly became very, very important that we complete it. We had to scavenge a few more coins from colleagues, but eventually we managed it. And it's truly glorious!

Here it is in it fabulous gloriousness! Click on the image for a bigger version!

Movies Wot I Saw

So me 'n Dr Karen and Stead went to see Spiderman 3 on Friday. What a disappointment. After setting the bar so high on the previous two movies, you'd think that having the same team on board for the third installment would have ensured a similarly fantastic movie. Not the case apparently. Instead we were treated to a rubbish plot, one or two admittedly spectacular fight scenes, too many bad guys and way to much whining from Mary Jane Watson about how Peter Parker doesn't understand her and how do you think that makes her feeeeeel? And an unnatural preoccupation with wanting to talk about their relationship. It was quite watchable, but should have been 50 times better!

On the other hand, I saw Children of Men last night - a British movie which was about Clive Owen running around in flip-flops trying to save a pregnant foreign girl from some very bad people. This presented a very scary vision of the future in which everybody (except the pregnant foreign girl) is infertile and the British goverment has decided to deport all of the foriegners (including the pregnant foreign girl). Except that by 'deport' they seem to mean 'chuck 'em in a nasty commune in Bexhill'. Lots of exciting drama and one really amazing set piece near the end that's a fantastic technical acheivement as well as being very very cool.

Once you've seen it, CoM will go down in your memory as 'That Movie With Clive Owen In Flip-Flops'. Although at one point, he loses one of them, so for a bit it's 'That Movie With Clive Owen In A Flip-Flop'. It also sports one of the slowest car chases I've ever seen! Weeeeeeeeeee!

This is not a post about loo roll!

I caught Dr Karen reading a thread about the number of sheets of loo roll that one uses after doing a Number Two on another forum last night. She suggested that it was just the sort of whacky and distasteful subject that I might start a thread about.

I would just like to clarify that I do not intend to start such a thread and I certainly do not intend to share with the general interweb populace that my average Number Twos loo roll usage is about 9 sheets.

Thank you.

Sir Patrick Moore

I think you'll all agree that Sir Patrick is very cool. Far cooler than he has any right to be, given that he's older than Yoda and bigger than a double decker bus!

So when he goes on record with such statements as: "The trouble is the BBC now is run by women and it shows soap operas, cooking, quizzes, kitchen-sink plays." or "I used to watch Doctor Who and Star Trek, but they went PC - making women commanders, that kind of thing. I stopped watching." or saying that he would "rather be dead in a ditch" than appear on Celebrity Big Brother; one cannot help but sit up and take notice!

Whether or not I agree with his views, he is now officially one of my heroes for his stand against political correctness! Yay!

And TV is mostly pants nowadays. So he has a point there!

The comments for this story are pretty entertaining as well. I quote for your amusement:

"i belive patrick more is being sexiest..."

"Hear, Hear, Sir Patrick. Two channels that's what we need. I look forward to watching programmes on Broadcasting By Clarkson!"

"Patrick Moore and Boris Johnson should run the country!"