29 Nov 2008
Posted in Fillums, Reviews at 3:07 pm by alby
Hurrah! Fillums were watched last night.
We had the usual group round for fire, fillums and pizza. And a good evening was had.
We have a stack of dvds still to watch and we decided that people should pick their first 2 preferred ones and the most popular were chosen.
First up was “Innocence“. A mightily creepy little thing about a school full of young girls. At first there are no adults, just girls with a hierarchy based on age. We follow Iris from when she arrives (bizarrely in a locked coffin) and is then shown around a bit. There are restrictions such as not being allowed to leave the grounds. One or two of the girls do try, one dies and another just disappears.
The school seems to be there to teach these girls two things. The main one is dancing. There are ballet classes for all of the students. The other subject is biology.
Every night the elder girls all go away from the house and aren’t allowed to say why. Young Iris follows one day and we see things get a bit more disturbing.
We finish by following one of the girls as she graduates out of the school.
This movie was really very creepy. Loads of symbolism, quite a lot of discomforting images (one girl enjoying tasting blood rather too much, plenty of long damp tunnels, another girl being “chosen” to be removed from the school by the dodgy headmistress in a sort of talent and beauty contest, and the final image is of one girl standing opposite one of the first boys we see, in a fountain with a huge frothy plume of spurting water between them).
One comment I made at the end was “I wonder if this was made by a primary school teacher” as one of the teachers says to the graduater “You’ll soon forget us” with the sound of bitterness in her voice. And then someone else chimed in with “I wonder if it was made by a paedophile“.
It was a good fillum but not what you’d call “fun”.
And I knew I’d seen the ballet teacher somewhere before.
So after creepy and just a bit “wrong” we moved onto good old ghost story territory with “Ghost Game“.
This one is about a reality show that’s a cross between Survivor, Ghostwatch and Derren Brown’s Seance. This kids have to survive in a creepy old PoW camp, that was host to one of the worst wartime atrocities, without bolting in terror. The rather obvious twist in the fillum is that the ghosts are real rather than imagined or dreamt up tricks by the crew.
There’s no real sub-plot to note just a traditional “who will survive?” game to play as you watch. Will it be the fat girl (”She’s too fat to die”), how about the cynical one who is trying to prove it’s all a set-up, or possibly the cheeky lad who’s trying to get off with the model?
It was good and scary. Job done.
And it has to be said that these 2 brought the average quality back up to somewhere near “good”. We’ve seen some shockingly poor movies in recent sessions and these were a marked change.
Well done them.
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21 Oct 2008
Posted in Reviews at 5:40 pm by alby
Telly has been interesting recently. More specifically BBC4 has been.
They’ve had a few interesting shows on lately; the best being “The Story of Maths”. Great history programme even if you’re not a mathmetician.
Anyway they’ve got a game show. It’s unbelievable but ’tis true.
It goes by the name “Only Connect” and is utterly riveting for all the wrong reasons.
The main thing is that it’s somewhat (read “spectacularly”) up its own fundament.
Example 1: The name of the thing comes from the epigraph to EM Forster’s 1910 novel Howards End.
Example 2: Each game has a board from which the teams pick a tile. In most shows this board would be numbered. So that the team may ask for question 1 or 5 or whatever. In this game the tiles are all given greek letters. “We’ll try epsilon please”. Ugh.
Example 3: On failing to get the next number in the following list “23, 57, 1113,____” the team said “OMG we iz so dummzazzez”(or words to that effect) when being told the answer was “1719″ because “it’s all about prime numbers ain’t it”. And they meant it.
Victoria Coren hosts, I’m sure only for the cash, although she did also do “Balderdash and Piffle” the amazing self-criticizing game show.
But despite all its shortcomings it is actually a game show where you have to think. It’s not purely about knowing random stuff but using what you know and being made to think about context as well as pure recall.
Beeb 4 had a Have Your Say page and there are some magic missives:
“Fabulous. Really enjoying Only Connect. An intelligent, engaging and actually difficult game show.”
“I found this programme stimulating. Intelligent, challenging questions and Victoria Coren’s presentation is just right. It does not need audience or gimmicks; we have enough of this type of quiz show. It stands well on its own. Ignore the negative comments, this is good television.”
“Diamond amidst dross. One of very few quiz shows that does not dumb down. Only Connect and Victoria Coren palliate the pain of the ever-increasing TV License.” (this one is improved immeasurably by the knowledge that the writer is one “Hercules van Tonder”)
But there are some naysayers too:
“I turned over thinking this was a joke show - but it’s on again this week. Amazing. Why has Ms Coren risked her promising career for this drivel? It’s not as clever as it would like to think it is, as even the contestants couldn’t get the correct answers. One for the turkey drawer, me thinks.”
“Having seen the first episode, I have to express my incredulity that there will be a second. Pretentious subject matter delivered in an antiseptic package, rounded off by Victoria Coren fighting a losing battle with the autocue. Put this in the drawer with Eldorado and Brighton Belles.”
“That was scarily like the fictitious, and awful, Numberwang invented by Mitchell and Webb. Was it supposed to be funny?”
I like a good debate.
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14 Oct 2008
Posted in Juggling, People, Reviews, Travel at 9:02 pm by alby
I do like Germany. I’ve just been away to Heidelberg (or its environs) for a few days.
I’d hoped to have an old pal but calls and messages weren’t returned and address changed ages ago from what I know. Very sad.
A swift note on flying again. I’ve recently said that I hate the whole process. But this time I went with a proper airline. Not a cattle train thing but one where they give you a seat number. There was far less hassle, no pushing, a chance to pick your seat, “free” drinks and food. Just a stack load more civilised.
Having said that the airport at Frankfurt is majorly weird. I got off the plane and followed the signs to passport control and baggage reclaim. After an age of walking I went through some doors and seemed to be outside of the secure bit. There were people waiting for travellers, the shops were all around; but I’d still not seen a pass control or baggage place. Eventually I found a passport control desk. Through that to more shops and more people milling around as if they were non-flyers. Very odd indeed.
I was met at Heidelberg Hbf by young Mini and her mum. The train was 6 minutes late, so much for German trains being wonderful. Tsk.
They laughed at me for saying that German trains should be on time. They stared with amazement when I told them that UK trains must be more than 15 mins late to be counted as “late” in the figures. I still think they win.
Their home is rather nice and like all family homes the action all takes place in the kitchen. My bed was in another building in a little outhouse where the girls had a room each and a living room space for both of them. I was in that bit. Comfy and warm.
On Wednesday afternoon Tamali was away and Helena had to study so I was with Mini who I think would be the first to say that she is not the most confident English speaker. She managed marvellously well though. We had a good hour or two chatting about stuff in poor german (on my part) and adequate English (from her).
Later on in the evening we headed out for food in a restaurant called “Fody’s” which involved a minor trip over a river. The food was excellent german stuff but the place was odd. There were 3 bits to it. Outside was too cold so we didn’t sit there. There was a tent which was quiet but allowed smoking so smelt a bit. Inside was warm and comfy but they had awful music on. We chose to sit inside on the basis that bad music isn’t as bad as smoke wafting our way.
Another oddity was that dogs were allowed in the place. There were a few dogs hanging around under tables. I’ve never seen that anywhere else.
But the highlight was that Jules and Lisa joined us for food. Lovely group of folk, lovely food. Rather a good evening.
Oh apart from “the phone call”. As the group were all here we phoned Clurb and Pee. Clurb gave me my “5 things to do”. She did this by telling Jules who gave a running commentary to the table. Unfortunately one of them involved me taking notice of “Mini’s rack”. Jules didn’t know what this was so kept asking me. My discomfort told them that something was naughty. Tsk.
Thursday was a quiet one. The girls had gone to school early so I slept in til late. Loads of reading done. A couple of supermarket trips followed in the afternoon. And that was about it until the evening.
Helena had an English test to do on Friday and she asked me to chat through the work to be tested. After that we had a long chat about politics, the environment, the economy, religion and more. She held her own admirably and if she failed that test then I’m impressed by how advanced their tests are. Very impressed.
I also briefly had a play on the net. Couldn’t get through to clurb.net. Odd but prolly nothing beyond the server having a spasm. And so to bed.
Oh my phone’s ringing. It’s Pee telling me that clurb.net has vanished. Hmm. Swift return to the web to see that the registration of the domain had lapsed and they’d not bothered to send me an email to tell me.
A slightly nervous time trying to fix it but it seemed to work, eventually.
The following day was the start of the Herxheim convention. Tamali was working in the morning and the girls were at school so I didn’t do a lot until 11 when I was handed the car keys and told “do something!”
Car loaded and we were off. Firstly to pick up Jules and then to Herxheim.
On the way we were passed by a juggler’s car. Not only that but it turned out to be Jules’ mum.
We were there a few hours before it started so we could help out setting up. I didn’t get to do a lot at first. I’m not sure whether they wanted to spare me hassle (as I’m a guest) or that they just didn’t want to chat to someone who may not understand. Of course they may just have assumed I’d be useless at anything they wanted. You decide!
When people started to show up Lisa bounded up to tell me that Thomas! had arrived and that Clurb would have been excited to hear this. After a couple of hours of starting I think I recognised about 2 people (including Thomas!)
But then Helena introduces me to quite a lovely bloke with a guitar. He’s called Jurgen and has an interesting story of performing, drugs, alcohol and dropping out. He’s now trying to build a full on eco-life with sustainable everything. I had a great time chatting for a good few hours.
A little later Lisa introduces me to a guy called Gerhard. She’s grinning a bit and then tells us that we know each other. We’re both blank at this but then she calls me MonkeyJuggler and him Palmcron. We both go “Ohhh!” and then start passing. Another grand person to meet. Was fun teaching him 7 club 3 count and 4 count too.
I was up late that night. I spent my time chatting to Tamali, Helena, Lisa and a pair of fellows called Andreas and Kristian. More nice folk.
I went to bed on a borrowed fake thermarest. The most amazing thing about this was that the air squashed away from where the weight was. In practice this meant that I was sleeping with little cushioning between my body and the floor but my feet were on the biggest bulge of air. Very odd indeed.
So a bad night’s sleep and up early.
There wasn’t much going on in the morning so I headed out to see the town. A rather nice place, bizarrely twinned with a place in Rwanda. And also with Ilfracombe!
Once back I did some juggling. Unheard of.
And watched people.
There was an acro workshop that had the bizarrest warm up of running at people then leaping and slapping hands. Then crawling and going through people’s legs. Then they started “swimming” on each other. Very odd behaviour.
Oh yes and part of the warm up included full lumbar flexion and then twisting whilst fully flexed. Note to acro workshop leaders - this is not such a great idea. This movement is the one that is most likely to put someone’s back out. Don’t do it.
Then the show was getting set up. It wasn’t a full on gala-show. Helena called it an “open show” to me and then giggled.
After the show came more passing and then to bed.
Jules showed me to my room (she had the key) and then sat and chatted for hours. Very nice way to end the day.
And I really managed to sleep well. Thankfully I’d set my phone’s alarm, otherwise I’m not sure I’d have made it to the train.
Hugs to everyone and then to the station with Jules.
Met a guy called Jan there and managed a half hour conversation in German. Woot.
And that was it. Home now and really wanting to go back.
Work just isn’t as fun.
Pics here.
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04 Oct 2008
Posted in Juggling, Reviews at 11:33 pm by alby
Saturday hosted the first of the Manchester conventions I’ve ever attended.
Pete had spent the previously evening calling it the Manky convention (when he wasn’t feeding himself pear cider, Bulgarian meat and some sort of euro sausage). I thought it was just twee nicknamage but it appears not.
The venue was really very small. It seemed about 2/3rds the size of the Ladywood hall but that might be my dodgy memory talking. And anyway if you’ve been to one you’ve prolly been to the other anyway so you already know the relative sizes. I’ll stop talking about this now.
There weren’t huge numbers of folk there when we arrived but we had gone early. But then huge numbers just never showed. But it did mean there was enough space for us to play.
Me and Clurb got back into the passing thing. First juggling together since EJC way back in August. But it seemed to work ok. Looking at our schedule of sessions at the uni though, it seems that decent practice (to the extent of being able to show off on stage) doesn’t look awfy likely.
So between bouts of passing we managed time chatting. Hi to Lorri, Andy and Nigel whom I talked to more than I ever have before. I got my legs sat on by Dr Helen. We did a cryptic crossword in a little group. Suzanne and DB were as lovely to chat to as ever as well.
And then the games. Oh and raffle. My 2 least fave things that regularly happen at conventions. But in this case from start to finish the games and raffle took up a grand total of 19 minutes.
Around 5ish to 6ish the passengers decided they wanted to eat. So off to curry with P, C, DB and Suz. And a lovely place it was too.
And that was that. A pleasant way to spend a day.
Apart from the mildly horrific drive back along windy roads whilst it heaved down with rain. Great fun.
Pics here.
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15 Sep 2008
Posted in Reviews at 7:20 pm by alby
Me, P and D ended up at teh circus over the weekend. The new Moscow State show was on in Leicester, with all new acts “never before seen in Western Europe”. And they also advertised the “World’s number 1 juggler”.
Cool! I didn’t know Gatto had changed nationality and was now touring minor cities in the UK.
For some reason Clurb was not keen to go so we left her grumbling at home instead.
Anyway we got there pretty much bang on time, straight in to ok seats.
The show kicked off with a pretty cheesy show of all the cast. There was an MC but he wasn’t very annoying despite the red tailcoat. He also didn’t walk at any point I remember. He just scooted around on his unicycle (he did juggle 5 “candles” whilst on it at one point). It wasn’t looking good as some bored looking performers limply did a minor bit of their act in turn.
But then the acrobats came on to do the first act. Cue whoops and “woo”s from most of the audience. And they were excellent. Lots of classic flips and twists and more. A good start.
There were 2 repeating acts. First were 2 clowns. One in civvies, the other in toned down makeup but still with the huge shoes and silly trousers (oh how we chuckle at silly trousers). But they were good too. Nice little skits which did make the crowd laugh. Falling down trouser stuff and boxing gloves to the groin went down very well with the under 12s.
The other was a stage magician who was, well, ok. Just. One or two of his bits were awfy obvious to anyone who’s seen any magic tricks explained. Nearly as bad as the disappearing man from “Aluminum”.
But then other stuff was quite nifty and slick despite us knowing how it was done (pretty much every trick). The best bit was when he got an assistant who was the spit of the Cheeky Girls to hide in a small box and then stabbed it rather a lot. Lembit must have been holding his breath.
Other acts included a weird crossbow act. I thought it would involve apples on heads a lot but that only happened at the end. There was another acro bit which involved a tiny girl being hurled around by butch russians. A flying trapeze segment notable for the flyers smacking into the tent at one end of their swing and a female “flyer” whose only jobs seemed to be a: eye candy, and b: hooking the free trapeze (after someone had “flown”) to get it ready for the next guy to fly. She didn’t even dismount in an exciting way.
And juggling? There was a good bounce guy. Very snazzy sci-fi theme and a bit of bouncy prop (a metal foldy thing that he bounced balls on and uses springs to kick balls up from the edges of the base) that seemed to not work as often as it did. He was sound enough but nowhere near the top 10 jugglers I’ve ever seen. Still he did finish with a 9 ball cascade (bounced). But hardly the “World’s number 1 juggler”.
Oh and there was a unicyclist (not sure if it was the MC in a different costume) who did some quite hard ultimate wheel shenanigens.
The show as a whole was pretty darn good. The skills and presentation these guys and girls had were nifty. The live music wasn’t awful. There weren’t too many desperately cheesy moments (clown picking on a bald man, listless russian girls dancing and clapping whilst patently hating every moment of it).
Definitely recommended (but get one of their half price vouchers - they’ll be in chippies and corner shops galore).
Have fun.
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28 Aug 2008
Posted in Reviews at 11:58 pm by alby
Well this evening’s entertainment was an eye-opener and no mistake.
Tom had managed to finagle a couple of free seats to see “Aluminum“[sic]. In the end me, Tom, P&C went. Tom’s freebies came from a guy called Matt who turned up with 6 free tickets and 2 companions so we had to buy ourselves 1 ticket. Cue Tom using his student discount.
The show should really have been at the Palladium but as this was Nottingham it was not to be.
We had no idea what to expect really. We’d been lead to believe it was “a bit like Stomp“. Other descriptions mentioned circus arts, illusion and performance. So without a clear definition we went in a bit blind. Magic - just how shows should be. So we steeled ourselves and headed in.
We ended up in the 3rd row of the stalls. And I was right in the middle. Top seat!
The set up was a few ducts dangling from the roof and loads of smaller ducts coiled up on the floor.
It started with some people in weird silver flight attendant style mode telling us not to smoke, drink, eat ore use our phones. And they set the mood as dark and foreboding - lots of low rumbling noise and industrial sounds going on.
Then the dangling ducts started bouncing up and down a bit and throwing themselves around. At the same time it was like the floor came alive and the tangle of smaller ducts started pushing itself off the stage. This bit was cool and slightly spooky. I couldn’t see exactly what was going on and having inanimate objects just pushing themselves out into the world made for an intriguing start.
This was looking good.
Then a piece of fat duct came out (clearly with a performer inside) and another, slightly narrower tube came on as well. These two then “got to know each other” with a bit of mildly pornographic dancing (well the most pornographic dancing 2 tubes can do) and then headed off stage. Shortly to be replaced by a tiny version, clearly the baby, inching its way across stage front. This led to a bizarre piece of puppetry and singing and dance which just seemed wrong to me.
The gloomy and worrying soundtrack vanished into a mess of Bohemian Rhapsody and various classical pieces all mashed up together. The puppetry wasn’t that hot either, poor considering they only had to manipulate a couple of tubes.
And the mood was gone and they never really got it back.
But there were some perfectly decent set pieces. There was a nice bit with a huge inflatable man (made from balloons). And some audience participation with some bouncy balloon stuff (not as fun as Slava’s though).
But the main entertainment for me was just watching the sheer amount of stuff not working properly. At one point they fired bits of foil into the crowd but loads got stuck in a lighting rig. Another bit was using a huge sheet of foil. This tore twice and then got stuck in the same lighting rig. Comedy gold it was.
An audience volunteer came up at one point. He was apparently wrapped in foil and then eaten by a giant duct. Shame was that it was clear that he’d gone before they finished wrapping him and then when he was surrounded by dancing ducts (yes that is as odd as it sounds) the figure that was supposed to be him was standing stock still; clearly a fake as it wasn’t moving a muscle, not even breathing. But then the finale of that little piece was done in the dark but you could still see a stagehand moving around (ironic really). Really poorly done bit of stage magic. And the killer was that the guy never re-appeared. So it wasn’t even the classic disappear - re-appear trick. He just vanished and was never referred back to again.
More stuff didn’t physically work (a cannon failed to shoot its load into the crowd). Other stuff broke (one tube got caught on a light fitting and, alloyed with the dancer not noticing for a while, it unravelled). At one point 4 performers just had to stand and wait for a tube to drop down from the roof while managing to stand in the right place to end up inside said tube. 3 of the 4 managed this leaving the last to scrabble somewhat to get in hers - very ungainly and a bad place to miss your trick. Just poor at times.
But the real turd on the wedding cake was an utterly pointless catwalk section. For reasons known only to themselves the cast stopped doing the inventive stuff with tubes and props and wandered onto stage with a variety of sub-”Buck Roger’s in the 25th Century” “futuristic” outfits, posed for a bit then wandered off. The ultimate outfit was some woman dolled up like a tall ship complete with rigging and sails - awful. The naked bloke wearing a tube was quite entertaining though.
But even that wasn’t the worst of this bit. Towards the finale of this catwalk was a tanned bloke (one might say he was bronzed) coming on with a really obvious “this is mine, isn’t it ace?” face. Completely out of place with the rest of the show and as far as I can tell this whole section was included just to show off some 6th form “fashion” ideas. Truly terrible interlude. It took a brass neck to dare to put this bit in.
It may sound like I’ve not enjoyed this show. That’s not true. I had a massive smile on my face through a lot of it, the rubbish didn’t really tarnish the event too much. The catwalk bit sorely tested my patience but otherwise the exuberance of the piece made up for some of the apparently amateur preparation. And the mistakes themselves were funny enough to compensate for their being there.
In all if I’d paid full price then I’d be annoyed now. As it is though, for a fiver it was definitely worth the trip. (Tom’s discount meant our one ticket cost seven-tin pounds).
No circus, nothing like Stomp, but nothing like I’ve seen before.
Paying for parking was a pain though as the machine wouldn’t accept any coppers.
Then we came home only to find that the ^**&ing Highways Agency had closed off the junction 21 exit without bothering to tell anyone before J22 meaning I (and no doubt plenty of others) had to drive the 20 mile round trip to get back to the North bound junction. Bastards! I shall be writing a very angry letter tomorrow wondering if they’ll reimburse the £5 worth of petrol it cost me.
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24 Aug 2008
Posted in Comedy, People, Reviews at 10:07 pm by alby
This is one of the most amazing pieces of writing I’ve ever seen. It’s a creation vs evolution thing so don’t bother clicking if it’s not your bag.
The author seems to know enough to string sentences together but logic and reason seem anathema to him. It really is some of the most startling bollocks I’ve ever read.
Top bits:
- Evolutionists are largely incompetent
- They are largely unproductive leaches on the productive members of society, else they are totally destructive.
I love the first part of that. Nothing like a radical generalisation to get you started.
The second part is even better. “Largely unproductive leaches” must include huge numbers of scientists in the world, many managing to produce the scientific breakthroughs that for instance mend more damaged humans than prayer ever did.
Then we get to “What should be done with evolutionists?”
Well the obvious answer would be nothing. But this guy’s first (note FIRST) response is
“Labor camps. Their fellow believers were high on these. But, my position would be that most of them have lived their lives at, or near the public trough. So, after their own beliefs, their life should continue only as long as they can support themselves in the camps.”
And if that’s not radical enough for you try:
“Require them to wear placards around their neck, or perhaps large medallions which prominently announce “Warning: Evolutionist! Mentally Incompetent - Potentially Dangerous.”
Marvellous this humility taught by Jesus eh?
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23 Jul 2008
Posted in People, Reviews at 6:43 am by alby
I was invited out last night by Ruth. Two of her in-laws from SA are over at the mo and I went to their place when we were oer on holiday there.
We ended up at an Indian place with the least Indian name I’ve seen.
Swatlands it was. And very nice too. Top food.
Worth a trip one day. Shame it’s a little way away though.
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14 Jul 2008
Posted in Juggling, People, Reviews at 7:17 am by alby
…how to get to Honeystreet?
A nice small event this weekend.
Lynne had booked us a space at a camping site/pub in Wiltshire.
I decided to head down there a while back but no-one up here wanted to go. Ah stuff ‘em.
I went via rural Oxfordshire to pick Tom up at his folks’ place. But first I had to get past Coventry. Bloody nightmare. The trip, according to google maps should be 1hr 45mins. I left work at 5.30 and got to Tom’s at 8.15ish. Annoyed by the drive but his ma perked me up no end with her rather lovely dinner she’d made for me. Star.
Anyway we left around 9pm for the site. Google said it was in a place called Pewsey. So we went there. Drove around a while. Found no venue.
Turns out that the place is miles away from Pewsey and by now it was dark so we had to keep asking people in pubs. So a 2hr and a bit trip (according to google) took me from 5.30 ’til 11.15 with a short stop for food.
I’d decided before heading that I was going to sleep in my car, Tom had brought his huge 3 man tent to kip in.
Once set up we wandered back into the pub only to find they’d just called time. So back to the tents for chat before sleeping.
Saturday was a great day of doing very little. There are a few places of interest around the area but a short towpath walk was pretty much all that we worked our way into bothering with. We met some interested cows and failed to find a memorial and that was that.
The rest of Saturday passed in a blaze of apathy, chatting and board games. Lynne thrashed me at Scrabble and introduced us to Saboteur which was quite a nifty little card based thing. I did spend a little time outlining the game Chain Reaction which led to some “ooh that sounds good” comments. It does need to come to Germany with us.
The pub was ok. The beer was varied and the people friendly. The campsite was also hosting a small gathering of bikers. They were nice enough and seemed to spend their days standing in circles nattering. It was noticeable that their numbers were split into geeks and others just like the jugglers. Interesting to see the same sorts of behaviour from a group into something totally different.
I’d not taken much food as I was expecting to eat in the pub for most meals. I had a nice piece of chicken s my first meal. It came with “baby new potatoes”; actually there were 4. 4 tiny ones. Mandy had some fish and also had 4 tiny potatoes. We both OD’d on carbs that day.
Later on I plumped for the steak and was really looking forward to it.
Hopes dashed when it arrived. Firstly it looked grey and unloved. Secondly it smelled of shit.
NB NOT smelled “like” shit meaning it just smelled bad. But it actually did smell “of” shit. Really unpleasant.
But I tried 2 mouthfuls before giving up. Not impressed but Tom pretty much finished it despite the smell. Ah the desperation of students.
So no more food at that pub for me.
Saturday was spent around a small barbecue that Tarim and Kate had brought. Lots of alcohol drunk and a few hours of silly jokes and that. One moment I’ll remember for a while was Void starting a “I’m just saying punchlines” bit and Tom immediately answered with “There are 20 of them”, confusing everyone but giving me a fine laugh.
I shall remain proud of the worst pun I have ever made which had the group groaning. I liked it and it got me a salute. And in my drunk state it had me giggling for about an hour. One of my finer japes. But it won’t work out of context so you’ll all just have to imagine.
Sunday was more sitting around until people started packing up. Some of your actual juggling went on too.
Near us in the campsite were a lovely dutch family and we spent a while playing with their older child. He spent his time believing himself to the “ballboy” at a game of volleyclub, or a saboteur to all jugglers by throwing a spare prop at them when they were practising etc. He was alright but a bit of a pain on the Sunday. Most weird of all though was that he was the exact image of the feral kid from Mad Max 2.
And then we went home, via some canal locks. And that was that.
There were only just over a dozen folk there and all were lovely. A nice and relaxing way to spend a weekend despite the hellish journey. Homewards took about the right time despite having to leave the M40 early due to horrific delays around my preferred exit.
Photos taken and here (hopefully they’ll meet tehVoidz minimum standards).
Grand weekend.
Ta to all who chatted and played.
Have fun.
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05 Jul 2008
Posted in Fillums, Reviews at 10:55 am by alby
2 fillums watched again with the usual crowd of masochists.
But before them may I just take a moment to decry the trend of declining quality in the fillums we have. They seem to have gone right downhill since the giddy heights of Ring, The Grudge and Ghost Watch.
Anyways.
First we had Versus. Lent to us by the lovely Philipp.
Starts with 2 prisoners escaping and reaching somewhere to be picked up by the associates of one of them. But odd stuff happens and you end up with zombies. Not just zombies but kung-fu lesbian zombies with guns. Sounds like it could be a riot. Sadly it was a mess. Appalling acting, gurning to out-do Eccleston’s Dr Who and atrocious dialogue. From about 15 mins in it was clear here was a fillum that would have lots of set pieces (all fights) and the only narrative progression would be that the baddies would be harder and more fun fights would ensue. A shame that the fun was missing then.
Another one we switched off before the end.
Second up was Tesis. Some woman at the local university is doing a thesis on violence on screen. She claims she’s horrified by violence but you know she loves it really. Well her prof dies and she nicks the fillum wot he was watching at the time. Ooh is it like “Ring”? Nope the vid doesn’t kill her 7 days later but does lead her into the world of snuff movies. Then the thing becomes a bit of a mess. She has one friend in her quest to find out what’s happening. He’s a nerd who’s into mondo fillums (stuff like “Faces of Death” - google it if you’re desperate). He figures out that the camera used is one particular model. So they trace sales of that model and bingo; it’s someone at the uni. Is it the handsome and slightly scary fillum maker? Has the nerd got something to do with it? Who’s the new professor? What about the handsome lad’s slightly psycho girlfriend? Fair to say that twists galore happen which frankly left me thinking the thing would have better simpler. Too many “oh good grief, so he is involved” moments for me. But the whole fillum was a sub-Funny Games rant against people professing horror at violence but lapping it up on screen. The movie closed with the news station playing the footage obtained and everyone around was watching avidly. As the scary professor says “Film is a business. Give them what they want.”
And that was that. Tesis was spectacularly better than Versus but not v scary and not anywhere close to some of the better fillums seen so far.
We need better ones!
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