Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Kat's birthday weekend away.

Well, what a weekend! Oscar had his summer range launch on Thursday night, which he had been working on for over a month. I had taken Friday and Monday off, as I knew Thursday would be big and it also meant I could stay away with Kat for an extra day.

The launch was great, Kat and Nugget came to that and left at a respectful time so they would be able to get up the next day, pick Darryl and Steve up from the AirPort and make it down to Wilsons Prom. I however did not.

After a trashy event and then going out, I was in no state to get up in time, then I went to another Fashion show, so I missed all the rides down to the Prom. Oscar offered me the use of his car so I invited him down. Saturday afternoon when we woke up, we jumped in the car and took off towards the Prom, armed only with a zoomed out Google Map's map.

I think that a WhereIs map would have been better as Google Maps are notorious for sending you the wrong way down a one way street. Combine that with the blonde nature of Oscar and Myself and we had a recipe for distraction.

It took us 6 hours to do a 2 hour trip. We missed freeway turn offs, took the long way round and then passed where we were supposed to be and drove all the way through to the point of Wilsons Prom.

We finally made it to the house at about 8. We even drove straight past Steve who was waiting outside the house waving to us.

The place was fantastic the front was all glass and offered amazing sea views. Pip and Phil cooked an amazing meal with a Mango salad and a Duck salad... hmmm



We spent the next day exploring the Prom, then crashed on the couch for idol with a couple of drinks we passed out (as per normal) on the couch.

The drive back wasn't quite as long but we did miss quite a few of the off ramps again...

Happy birthday Kat... x

Monday, November 12, 2007

Blockbuster dissapointment

Now I have been wanting to see Spiderman 3 and Transformers for a while now, especially with all the hype behind them.

I liked the previous Spiderman movies and Transformers were a childhood favourite of mine; I thought I was in for a treat when I hired them.

When we were hiring them I bumped into Hamish, a workmate, who was hiring something a little more 'high brow' and less commercial. I joked about the tackiness of our choices but I didn't care, I thought I was going to enjoy them.

Now the special effects in both movies were outstanding, and I'm sure that if I had seen them on the big screen they would have been fantastic. But special effects alone don't make a movie.

Spiderman: Now the story line was okay and very cliché. I knew there would be some soppy saccharine love storylines between Peter Parker and MJ, but at some stages I thought I was going to vomit. The villains kept appearing, it was like the whole cast was nearly against him at one stage.

The piece de la resistance which put the final nail in the coffin was the script. An average story line, with a terrible script that created tacky meaningless interactions between the characters totally overshadowed the special effects and made a hard to watch 3 hour monster! Now I do like to watch mindless crap, more often than not; so it’s a shock that I can look back at this and think it was 3 hours of my life I’ll never get back.

Transformers: I am a fan of SciFi or as my flatmates call it Mark TV, so I had very high hopes.

I remember when I first saw Independence Day many years ago, it was one of the first movies where aliens came to earth and started wreaking havoc blowing up the world’s most famous monuments. It was a movie where when the stakes were down the American people got together, stood up against the invaders, fought back and won. The movie shocked you with the destruction of Big Ben and the White House as the aliens demonstrated their awesome power and then welled up the emotion of pride as the human race showed their resilience when pushed into a corner.

I guess I’m trying to say that I’d seen it all before. This was another movie with a mediocre story line and a terrible script, loosely modelled off previously successful hits. I understand that this movie had to be appropriate for younger viewers to see, but so does The Simpsons and they manage to produce a clever and simple script week after week. Sickening feel good scenes with love scenes which made me glad I’m gay topped off what I classify as another disappointing waste of time.

It was definitely one of the worse nights on the couch I’ve had in a long time, it’s made me think that maybe I don’t appreciate the commercial blockbusters as much as I had thought.

And maybe they should start paying the writers more, well the ones that didn’t write these scripts. Check out Batman Returns, that was an incredibly well written movie.