Paul's journal

Over the weekend I was going to hire a couple of DVDs but circumstances changed, what with borrowing season three of Deadwood from the library and a free temporary trial of some of the Foxtel movie channels. I thought about going to the cinema but the current list of releases is pretty shocking.

I did watch two movies though. One was a melodramatic telemovie called Gracie's Choice or something like that, staring Kristen Bell as the teenage daughter of drug abusing Anne Heche who has to become 'mom' to her younger brothers and sisters. You know you're in for something unique when the opening credits say "based on an article in Reader's Digest"

I also saw "An Inconvenient Truth" which didn't win me over to Al Gore. I just don't like him. I liked the use of a Futurama sequence but they missed my favourite earlier Futurama joke about climate change: "It's a good thing global warming never happened" "Actually It did, but thank God nuclear winter cancelled it out".

Over night I taped Crash and Mirrormask, both movies I've seen before but would like to see again.

I waited. I've been tempted but I've waited and finally the wait has paid off. Completed Arrested Development available in November. Anybody wanting a Christmas gift idea for me, look there.

Yet again I get my hair cut and I fall sick. I woke up feeling a bit off and by the time I got to work my nose was running and it continued to all day, plus with added sneezes.

I left work early, and might have left earlier but I wanted to see our new website delivered safely into the world wide web.

This time around the cold wasn't as bad, and it shouldn't have been since I just had one a month ago. I was a bit wasted Friday night and had a a bit of a chill on Saturday, but by today I'm mostly fully functional.

My plans to go shopping and to go to the movies were postponed, but I could catch up on the Deadwood DVDs, and have now started series two.

I was hoping to watch The Office tonight but the download is still going. Since we hit our monthly quota every thing's dropped down to a crawl

I did venture out today and got some containers I wanted to help organise my room a bit, and it is helping, but I really need more room.

I hired the first two discs of Deadwood from the video shop and am now four episodes in. I am loving this show much more than I thought I would. It's great. There's so little on TV at the moment to watch so this is a great find for me.

The weekend?

Well it started on Friday night with me seeing Hairspray. I didn't love it or hate it. I feel a bit indifferent about it. I've seen a lot of musicals this year, and although this was fun it felt a bit fluffy despite the themes. I would like to the see the original movie now.

I bought the soundtrack last week prior to seeing the film and the soundtrack is better. On the big screen the music seemed to drown out the lyrics more. It it's impossible not to dance when listening to "You Can't Stop The Beat".

Saturday I went and picked up a secondhand Beta VCR. I started ripping the old tapes to DVD and at long last got to rewatch Come Midnight Monday. It's just as I remembered and holds up well. One thing that keeps rocking me is seeing the teenage bully smoking nearly every time he's onscreen, something that wouldn't happen in a children's show nowadays. I've got four and a half of the episodes and I think the missing one and the start of the other are waiting to be found on another tape.

This morning after watching a fighter jet do laps before the racing started a few suburbs overs, I went to the new video shop. Their TV range is really good. I planned to borrow Deadwood series one but they were missing one of the four discs so I decided to wait (since to hire them at 95 cents per disc you have to hire a minimum of three).

The power went out for about 20 minutes before tea. That fierce wind that's been blowing all day must have finally knocked something into a power pole.

This was the first Doctor Who story I ever watched. If I recall correctly it was on when I was in grade give (which meant it was about 13 years old at the time) and it was on Friday nights at 6 o'clock. For a long time when I thought about Doctor Who this is what came first to mind.

There is a clear connection between Tom Baker's Doctor and the most recent two. They all play the character differently but there's common threads. Sarah Jane is less strong-willed than Rose and was perhaps too often a damsel-in-distress. The dynamic is different with two assistants, but these episodes had a very tight cast list and I can't recall what it's like in other episodes.

The insect effects worked fine but some of the others weren't so great. After the first shot of the space station I chose to watch with the new CGI model shots and it made all the difference.

There seemed to be a lack of energy in this film. I thought it was over after about an hour and while it extended an extra half hour any longer would have been pushing it. It was an interesting idea but there was an over indulgence on setting mood but not doing it that well. There was a long introduction with two characters that would later move the plot but this introduction didn't add anything. There was an confusing sex scene that I couldn't see the motivation for. The son's subplot didn't seem to have a third act, and the daughter was very annoying. The violence was quite violent but I would have liked it kept to one scene and let the fall out of this take precedence over more vengeance.

After reading Tom's positive review I went to DFO to pick up that Neil Stephenson book I saw a while back and was happy to find it still there and cheap. Also went to the video shop and ended up hiring The Departed, A History of Violence, Munich and, for something light and not rated MA for violence: Bride and Prejudice.

I played with my video capture software a bit more and am getting closer to developing a "Know my name" clip. I also need to do some work on the template for my new travel blog but I'll be watching the Departed tonight so I will put that on hold for now.

Didn't get up to a lot today. My sister hired Talladega Nights so I rewatched that with here. It must be an extended version on DVD as there were segments I simply do not recall being in the original movie. It was funnier the first time around. I played some FFIX leveling up the B-squad a little more and coming across two special event battles with a squirrel and ghost that wanted ore rather than to fight. Next up is a ladybird apparently. My squad got killed again by a bunch of chestnut throwing characters that look like Pokemon.

The new Simpsons wasn't too bad despite the familarity of the story (Bart befriending Nelson) and the Brokeback joke at the end was cute. Ugly Betty was a bit better this week but if the solution to the drama is going to be Betty's family/honesty/good values etc this show could get a bit boring. I watched about half of the Kylie concert (didn't see much difference between it and the UK DVD my sister has) while reading comics, before retreating to my room to read a book. I put on the locally shot Indian film . I half watched maybe three-quarters beIt and thought it was odd how the language kept switching between English and Hindi, even mid-sentence. Melbourne did however look good on film.
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Now I'm not sure if this film's logic makes more sense than Deja Vu's or not, but mostly because I'm quite a bit confused. It doesn't appear to be as fundamentally flawed but it's so complex and layered that I'm not really sure what was going on. A timeline online doesn't help because it shows nine timelines! There were some really nice visuals and the conversations felt very natural even when the physics started flying thick and fast. I've got this for a week so I might watch again before I return it.

I knew it. Just like they released a special DVD edition of Spider-Man and X-Men just before Spider-Man 2 and X-Men 2 came out, a special edition of Spider-Man 2 is coming out before Spider-Man 3. My patience in waiting to buy Spidey 2 has paid off, although even earlier today at the video shop I considered renting it again.

Another day home but today I felt the heat more. I spent the morning watching another disc of Ally McBeal. I was up to the episode 'Boy Next Door' and I knew exactly what was coming but it still made me cry. I wondered what Peter McNicol had done that had him laid up for this episode (it wasn't him trapped or rolled out on a stretcher) and also where Lisa Nicole Carson was as her absence from the funeral was telling. She was back for the 30th birthday episode so maybe she was just off doing some episodes of ER?

Finished off the second series on DVD tonight. Most of these recent episodes were kind of downbeat really with Ally questioning whether there would be a man of her dreams out there or not. As much as I laugh at the humour, some of the relationship stuff really hits me hard in the heart.

I finished off series four of Allo Allo while waiting for Veronica Mars to start. It was a rather abrupt ending. Series two was a finale, series three was a cliffhanger, series four just ended with a sight gag. This series was a shorter series with the episodes shifting to an American type running time. I'd wonder if that was the reason for loosing two characters (Hans and Maria) except they were replaced with two more (Bertorelli and Mimi). Herr Flick in drag was pretty funny, as was their secret Gestapo listening device.

A little depressing really and when the disc started playing up I was in two minds about watching the end. The disc skipped from William and Justine's characters finally getting together to a rainy upset montage. I'm glad I did though as it redeemed them movie and gave it a bit more of an upbeat feel. William was kinda just his usual self, but I thought Justine Clarke was really good in this. There were a lot of little subplots but way too many long montage sequences. The animated daydream nightmares also reduced as the movie went on. I didn't like them that much as they seemed to contrast too much with the rest of the movie. C-

This wasn't so bad. The voice actors were all a bit too famous but I could look past it. The story didn't have too much weight to it, and it seemed kind of familar but I can't work out what other film/story I'm thinking of. It was all nice and colourful, but didn't have that realistic underwater look of Finding Nemo (which also had subplots not just film references and a lot of music). Oh and Tracy Grimshaw... she wasn't needed. C

We're always ages at the Video shop trying to find the one or two extra DVDs we need to redeem an offer (usually the one overnight and three weeklies). Today was no exception. When my sister finally found a final one and was in the queue I was looking through the shop's magazine and found a write up for 'The Librarian 2'. I had a look but the first one wasn't on the shelves. I wouldn't mind seeing Noah as a librarian turned adventurer.

They are releasing the Henderson Kids on DVD. The Henderson Kids! Come on, please release Come Midnight Monday!

I will probably buy the Goodies now they're reduced to $15 for 8 episodes.

I'm annoyed that the listing for Allo Allo is not mentioning the Christmas special being included.

New versions again of the LOTR trilogy, I'm still in no rush.

Oh and please Come Midnight Monday. One disc with all seven episodes. Come on!

With no new ER on on this it's traditional night, and nothing else I'm all that interested in watching, I popped in ER on DVD and watched a couple more series three episodes which are new to me. I know that Mark and Susan never get together, but boy did the writers tease that sexual tension! The episodes I watched, second and third of the series, were also quite funny too. More laugh out loud funny then the most recent episodes have been. I did see a bit of David Tench (is it Tim Ferguson? He's a good candidate), and some of Australian Survivor where they continue to replay the US series tasks and it reminds me I should look up and see how closely they are following the US order.

JB have the ER box sets for $30 each if you buy three (buy two for $45 get one free). I'm tempted to buy all six but have held off for now and just picked up three of them. Series 5 and 6 (which is when I really got into the show), and Series 3 as it's the only series I haven't seen (except towards the end when I started flicking over to it to see that cute Dr Carter). Series 3 has double sided discs which are annoying, but the other two are single sided. I watched the first episode and am reminded that one of the great things about ER is the support cast is pretty constant through out. It was funny to see Omar Epps in this as a doctor, yet it felt right to see him in the white coat with the medical jargon down too. And he's not that young looking considering that the time of this episode Billy probably hadn't even met Anne yet in Neighbours.