My Motley Meanderings

I just found this brilliant Princess Bride/Star Wars mashup via a post on BoingBoing. If you haven't seen Princess Bride (one of my favourite films ever!), don't watch it because it will spoil a key scene for you. ( Read more... )

I've just watched a movie morris1000 lent to me called Hear My Song. It made me very happy. Not just because it features the protagonist and his best mate driving around Ireland in a Morris Minor Traveller, and not even because the protagonist's girlfriend is played by the gorgeous Tara Fitzgerald, who we get to see rather a lot of in one scene. It is simply a really good film that I'm surprised I had never heard of before.

The plot revolves around a failing theatre promoter and his attempts to book Josef Locke, an Irish singer who was very popular here in the 1950s but was forced to flee back to Ireland after failing to pay his taxes. Locke really existed and some of the back-story is based on reality - my mum actually saw him perform under the pseudonym "Mr X" (but was it really him? :). It is funny, light-hearted, romantic, eccentric, and touching without straying into the territory of the formulaic Hollywood rom-com. Highly recommended.

Unfortunately, what it isn't is easily available on DVD in this country. Inexplicably it appears to have only been released in Germany. The disc has the English soundtrack on it but it defaults to the dubbed soundtrack and the menus are all in German. If you do manage to lay your mitts on an imported copy, the trick to getting it to play in English is to select "Sprachen Ton" then "Englische Fassung Stereo" then "Film Fortfahren." If you are unable to get hold of an imported DVD, I couldn't possibly advocate typing something like "Hear My Song" and "torrent" into Google.

On Saturday I drove down to Stratford upon Avon. I saw several traffic jams and accidents on the way, luckily all heading the other way to me. I went straight to the Youth Hostel, oddly having more difficulty finding it than the first time I stayed there (I think the problem was that the address says Alveston but it's not actually in the village). I grabbed a bit of lunch, then set off walking to Stratford (about four miles from the hostel). I'd gone about 2.5 miles when I realised I had forgotten the piece of paper with my theatre booking reference number on it, so I walked all the way back to the car to get it. Having wasted a lot of time already I thought I would drive into town instead, which I did, only to find that it was incredibly busy and there was nowhere suitable to park. The car parks were all full, short-stay, due to lock up early (before the end of the play), or some combination of the three. So I drove back to the hostel and did what in hindsight I should have done to begin with: caught a bus into town from the stop across the road.

Upon finally reaching Stratford, the first thing I did was to locate the cinema and buy a ticket for Iron Man. I had some time to kill before the showing so I went and got an ice cream from a street seller, then wandered around gawking at the huge number of tourists and shops selling Shakespeare-related tat (what must it be like to live and work in a tourist town?). The film was fairly good, only spoiled slightly by the very uncomfortable seat and the inane running commentary from the people sat behind me. I'm not sure it was worth sitting through the very long end credits to see the brief post-credits scene everyone has been raving about though.

Next I walked down to the theatre to pick up my ticket, only to discover that I had somehow lost the bit of paper with my booking reference on it (the one I went back to the car for earlier), probably when I took it out of my pocket in the cinema to double-check the start time. Luckily the box office let me have my ticket anyway after taking my name and swiping my credit card. It was after dinnertime by this point so I went off to find food and ended up in a fish and chip shop near the river before returning to the theatre in time for the play.

The play was a performance of The Taming of the Shrew by The Royal Shakespeare Company at The Courtyard Theatre. It was really very good; easier to follow than Henry V (the last play I saw there) and surprisingly funny. The star of the show was the brilliant Michelle Gomez as Kate (the shrew). The other actor I recognised was William Beck as Grumio. The most confusing aspect of the play was the framing device. A drunk passes out in the street and a noblewoman finds him and decides to play a practical joke by making him think he is a lord. One of the things she does is to arrange for a play to be performed for his benefit - which turns out to be the 'real' play. After a few scenes the fake lord in the outer play suddenly starts playing one of the main characters (also a lord) in the inner play. The main subject matter of the play is pretty controversial now but I think they handled it rather well. I like the theatre (though I didn't get as good a view from the seat I was in this time), the acting was polished, and the scenery and costumes were impressive. I would highly recommend going to see it, but it appears that I went to the last show and they are starting on A Midsummer Night's Dream this week. ETA: They are doing A Midsummer Night's Dream and A Merchant of Venice for the next few weeks but Taming of the Shrew returns on Tuesday the 27th.

I walked back to the hostel afterwards. The room I was in this time didn't have the noisy wooden bunks but I still seemed to sleep very lightly and woke up frequently. When it reached 6:30AM I decided to get up and have a shower before breakfast. The Stratford hostel is one of those where breakfast is included in the price (you don't get a choice about this unfortunately). Afterwards I made some sandwiches for lunch and headed off to Kenilworth Castle where people from the Morris Minor Owners' Club web forum had agreed to meet up.

I arrived before they had even opened the car park so I had to go away and park in the village for half an hour before returning. The rally seemed to go fairly well. Three travellers and two saloons turned up, plus three more people in modern cars. There was a mediaeval reenactment event going on at the castle which was rather interesting. One of the things I saw was a demonstration of mediaeval court dancing, most of which looked very dull, but they also threw in a country dance that I recognised from having done it at a ceilidh recently (albeit at about twice the speed with five times as many couples in the circle). After Kenilworth Castle we left in convoy to drive around the area but it was a bit of a shambles as we got split up two or three times. We visited an unusual windmill on a hilltop, then a very old church, before finishing up at the JLH Morris Minor garage to have a look at the customised cars they are working on.

The bank holiday Monday I mostly spent catching up with little bits and pieces of things and not getting very much of note done. I am making good progress with my route plans for the AIR and we may have picked up another participant.

Inspired by a question from emmzzi, I just took the parents to see Stardust. It was a bit tricky to find a cinema within a reasonable driving distance that was still showing it, but it was well worth the effort. What a brilliant film! Quite possibly the best one I've seen this year. It's a sort of romantic fantasy adventure tale with a fair bit of comedy thrown in too (it compares favourably to The Princess Bride). Kids of all ages will love it and there's plenty there for adults too. Claire Danes as the Fallen Star is absolutely wonderful. If you haven't seen it in the cinema yet, better hurry because the run has almost finished.

That isn't The Fellowship of the Ring? How will that work then?

http://www.thehobbitblog.com/?p=41

These two complementary movies tell the story of the battle of Iwo Jima near the end of WWII; the first from the perspective of the American attackers and the second from that of the Japanese defenders. Flags of Our Fathers focusses on the soldiers who were pictured in the infamous photo of the US flag being raised on mount Suribachi, in particular what happened to the survivors when they were called home, proclaimed heroes, and made to tour around the country selling war bonds. I don't think it quite works - it feels about 45 minutes too long, and the plot is related as a confusing jumble of flashbacks. Letters from Iwo Jima, on the other hand, is a much stronger story (though I'm unable to attest to its historical accuracy), which is further enhanced by already having seen the earlier movie. Both are downbeat (some might say depressing) portrayals of the horrors of war. The first is an explicit denouncement of jingoistic flag-waving; the latter manages to put a human face on the Japanese soldiers, many of whom were conscripted and had no choice other than to fight or commit suicide.

I've just watched The Fountain on DVD. It's cleverly written and the camerawork is hauntingly beautiful. Rachel Weisz and Hugh Jackman both do a fantastic job as lead actors.

The story is made up of three interwoven time periods. In the first, Tomas (Jackman) is a conquistador sent on a quest by Queen Isabella (Weisz) to the new world to find the tree of life. In the near future, Tommy is a medical researcher on a quest to find a cure for cancer before his wife Izzy is killed by an aggressive brain tumour. Izzy is working on a novel called The Fountain that describes the events of the first time stream, but she is unable to write the final chapter. In the far future, Jackman's character is on a far stranger quest that I won't spoil for you...

I think the title should have been something different - The Tree has been used several times before, but The Road to Awe would have been appropriate.

I really want to see the movie mentioned in today's XKCD.

Talk Like Yoda Day it is. Released 27 years ago today, Empire Strikes Back was. Speak funny you must, yes...

The Internets are very quiet this morning, so here for your amusement I bring you the Morris Minor subplot from Bad Taste:



I've cut out all the gory bits and swearing so it should be safe to show to your visiting grandkids or whatever. The background music is rather disjoint because I've had to cut out big sections between the scenes, but it still makes up a surprisingly coherent little story.

In case you haven't heard of it before (though I suspect most people reading my LJ probably already own a copy), Bad Taste is a great comedy-horror-scifi movie, and the first creation of Peter Jackson who is now rightly famous as the director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. If you like comedy horror with plenty of blood and guts thrown in, I can highly recommend you track down the full movie (it was released on DVD a few years ago - try Amazon). It was filmed on a shoestring budget in New Zealand in the mid-eighties. Apparently the Moggy belonged to a friend's wife, and they'd accidentally torn the bumper off while trying to tow a too-heavy trailer, hence why it came off so easily when the alien grabbed it.

I'm (re)watching the James Bond movies as research for BC:2007 and, mostly for my own benefit, am writing some notes about each one.

Bond movie no. 5: You Only Live Twice, released 1967. The screenplay was written by Roald Dahl.

( Notes, with spoilers, after the cut. )

I'm (re)watching the James Bond movies as research for BC:2007 and, mostly for my own benefit, am writing some notes about each one.

Bond movie no. 4: Thunderball, released 1965.

( Notes, with spoilers, after the cut. )

I was amazed to discover that the skyhook thing Bond and Domino used at the end of the movie actually existed: see this Wikipedia article. That is so cool. I want to try it!

I'm (re)watching the James Bond movies as research for BC:2007 and, mostly for my own benefit, am writing some notes about each one.

Bond movie no. 3: Goldfinger, released 1964. This film spawned two persistent myths that were debunked by MythBusters: that somebody whose skin is covered completely by gold paint will die of "skin suffocation" and that firing a gun through the window of an aircraft at altitude will cause explosive decompression that will suck out anybody who isn't strapped down and cause the plane to crash.

( Notes, with spoilers, after the cut. )

I'm (re)watching the James Bond movies as research for BC:2007 and, mostly for my own benefit, am writing some notes about each one.

Bond movie no. 2: From Russia with Love, released 1963.

( Notes, with spoilers, after the cut. )

I'm planning to (re)watch one or two James Bond movies a month as research for BC:2007 and, mostly for my own benefit, will be writing a few brief notes about each one.

Bond Movie no. 1: Dr No, released 1962. My Dad says he has fond memories of watching it in the cinema when it first came out. He must have been about 14 at the time.

( Notes, with spoilers, after the cut. )

I've just been to the cinema to see Serenity. Best! Film! Evar! Maybe. Go see it and judge for yourself. Joss Whedon has managed to achieve what people thought couldn't be done: a science fiction movie with a fantastic story as well as riveting action and special effects. That seems to have confused the hell out of the film critics, who just don't understand it. I read a review recently which only gave it three out of five and complained that it ripped off Star Wars and Blake's 7. Even if that was true (there are a few parallels) I fail to see how that is a bad thing. Star Wars had brilliant action and Blakes 7 had great stories. Serenity has both.

Beg, borrow, or steal the Firefly DVDs and watch them first though - you'll get a lot more out of Serenity if you already know the characters and the back story.