Cyberclogs

Well just read the official start date for the new Doctor Who series, really pleased to see it will be strarting on Satuday 31 March. Can't wait :))

I was pleased to hear that at long last Martin Scorsese finally won an Academy Award at the Oscars last night, as he's had a long struggle with the Academy over the past 30 years to get one. Despite the fact his films are generally vastly superior to most of the films that win oscars over his (namely Ordinary People and Dances of Wolves which both won over Raging Bull and Goodfellas) the Academy has never really cared for Marty for some reason. I think its basically because most of the time he doesn't make films about good people, his films are generally all about unpleasant, weird, or unconventional people, also probably because of his penchant for graphic violence and major use of profanity aswell. The Departed, which he won for last night best Director and Picture, isn't one of his world best films imho, but it is pretty damn good by Scorsese's standard, and beats the crap out of Bringing out the Dead any day. So well done Marty.

Well tonight went and saw the much anticipated (by me anyway) follow up film from Edgar Wright after his great success with Shaun of the Dead: Hot Fuzz, starring Simon pegg as one of London's greatest cops who is sent to a quiet village of Sandford to get away from the city as he is just too good at his job, where he meets up with local policeman Nick Frost, who together unravel something fishy going on in the village.

And I'm pleased to say it was a great laugh from start to finish, although the pacing is a little bit slower for the first hour or so but in the last half hour or so it kicks into gear and delivers some hilarious gun-toting action. Simon Pegg seems to be making a name for himself over in Hollywood now as well as over here, but what's great is he still makes really funny comedic British movies over here. Although it does appear that his playing the straight man in Edgar Wright's movies is going to be a trend.

Hot Fuzz wonderfully takes the piss out of alot of American cop movies, Point Break, Die Hard, Bad Boys 2 etc etc, and even has footage of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost diving into a pub guns blazing (something I bet they've always wanted to do). The style of film making is still very much the same as it was in Shaun of the Dead from Edgar Wright, as the camera is very restless in close ups (probably the best one where Peggster slams some money down, a shop clerk takes it, and gives him his change back!). It also takes this mickey out of films like Wicker Man and Straw Dogs nicely too as it potrays the village in the film as being something a tad sinister (one of the cast even boasts to being an extra in Straw Dogs!).

The cast were also pretty good too, although there was an abundance of British comedians on display in the film (in fact pretty much all of them) with the likes of Bill Bailey, Adam Buxton (watch out for his nasty ending) Martin Freeman, Olivia Coleman, Kevin Eldon, etc etc. The best surprise in the film for me was the inclusion of Timothy Dalton who was really good at playing the sneering, insincere sinister local businessman and even had some funny lines ("My assistant here also holds down a lapdancing job at the club Flappers").

So on the whole Hot Fuzz was a really entertaining British comedy movie, and Edgar Wright is definitely one of the most refreshing Brit directors out there just now, as he manages to balance this crime-drama, comedy easily, and the Pegg and Frost are forever watchable. Look forward to seeing what they will do next.

Well I've been downlaoding like crazy of late off of bittorrent and LimeWire for the purpose of getting two shows The Sopranos and 24 latest series. Both shows are two of my favourites although both of them are very different so it would be silly to compare them both too much. My only problem though with 24 is with each season things tend to get a bit more hackneyed a bit more predictable and its get a bit more difficult to keep the surprises up, and the double twists can even be predicted at times, and you go to yourself "of course that character is a baddie" and "well I could see that coming!". Jack Bauer also seems to have an almost superhuman endurance to torture and death and being put in extreme situations that will involve deaths of his family or close friends and he still bounces back quicker than anyone. But inspite of all that you still root for the guy cos he is the goodie, and he'll push things as far as they need to go.

The Sopranos for me has always been richly entertaining and although it is often fairly brutal and graphic in its depiction of violence and is filled with violent and impulsive characters it is really engrossing to watch. Although I don't really know what came first in terms of the chicken and egg here, Analyse This or The Sopranos? Obviously the latter is vastly superior to the broad comedy of Robert De Niro's panic attack suffering mob boss. The Sopranos really digs deep into all areas of society in America and perhaps most interesting is how it shows Tony Soprano as a human being, warts and all, yeah sure he is a violent bad tempered, cheating, two-timing, mob boss, but he's also a family man who cares about his friends and family and he also is troubled about his way of making a living too at times. The characters are mostly all wonderfully written especially Tony, Paulie and Junior (with perhaps the exception of Meadow who is next to useless most of the time).

Anyways onto my third acting class which I had on Thursday there which I really enjoyed again, this time we read script from the play Waiting for Godot, so I did a scene (twice!) with two other people. It was fairly nerve wracking doing a scene in front of about 20 people but its good fun all the same, and the more you do it the more you get used to it. It was also really good to see the others in the group give their all and was pleased to see them "act" well (I for one tried to do it as well as I could). Perhaps before the course is done I can recite some Doctor Who or Monty Python just for a laugh. ;)

Well I downloaded the new blog and well it looks the same. I guess that's ok so I don't have to search around and look for things that use to be there (so thankfully its not like Microsoft!).

All the same I've been getting some comments from Mozilla firefox lot, saying, you're blog is very good bla bla bla, why not try our browser etc. Well I'm already using this browser, so the comment is pretty redundant (and automated I guess).

Anyway on a different note, I had my second acting class last night and it went fairly well, we did our usual (or rather unusual) exercises, running round the room to start, then getting into single file and swarming behind one another as a group doing silly moves, and then we huddled into a group while one person would act as a volume controller, and we would use the vowels to make sounds, quietly and loudly. Well it is a bit unusual. The best bit was when we had to act out a death scene in 60 seconds, so me and another fellow actor (lol) pretended to be brothers rowing over a will and he poisoned my coffee (as you do). Anyway guess I'll have to wait until next week to see what craziness we get next.

Well Feburary for me has got off to a fairly busy and eventful start. Last Thursday I started some acting classes (something I must admit to have fancied trying for quite a while, just for fun, not to win any baftas ;) at Strathclyde Uni, and it was pretty unusual as well as quite alot of fun. The tutor, Judi, a petitte and somewhat crazy English woman, had me and the others in the class do all sorts of weird exercises, such as being a hypnotherapist, pretending to be an archway and getting into a circle and performing some silly dances (well I said it was weird).

At the weekend there I had a jam with a guy, John, I had previously jammed with last year, so this is first time we got together again after the new year, and we jammed with a drummer last night up at LoFi, which went not too badly. I also surprised myself on the drums, as last time I played the drums I thought I sucked, but this was mainly because there were no cymbals in the studio and its a real bugger to do without any. The drummer we got was very good although he kept hammering out some funky drumming while we struggled to tune up.

To top that off I started this week tonight by finally passing CCNA Semester 2, the dreaded skills test is finally out the way after about 4 weeks of trial and error, and I also sat and passed the voucher exam tonight that would give me a discount to sit the final INTRO exam (which of course takes solid months of preparation and has a rather high failure rate, due to its high pass mark of 85%). So all in all not too bad a week so far.