Saturday, January 29, 2005
Can we praise Allan or whoever for my startlingly good ability to visit my sister & family on the very rare occasions that my brother-in-law is cooking Sri Lankan curry. Just so nice. Citrus-y and much more varied that the British-Indian cooking we or I are used to. He and my sister have spent many months extracting just a couple of recipes from his aunt, cos his father managed to teach him bugger-all about Sri Lankan cookery, apart from chopping multitudes of onions and garlic. It's much like my family's decades-long attempts to extract the full recipe for Chocolate Crumb Cake from my Grandma. Though this time I really shouldn't have watched the cooking and seen quite how much oil goes into Sri Lankan cooking. And finding out that there's terrible heart disease problems in Sri Lanka. Darn it.
My current temp employers seem to think they’ve conned me into staying. To be fair, they have succeeded to a certain extent because I would have been out of there at least 2 weeks ago had they not given me new responsibilities. And besides, they lock their stationery cupboard. What’s the point in temping at a place that locks their stationery cupboard?! And grown middle-aged women faffing about for half an hour because someone’s swapped their chair with another one. Jeez, perspective much? I’ve now almost fulfilled what I promised to do, when they offered this change of job, so if I’m still there at the end of February, SteveRedgrave: "You have my permission to shoot me" /SteveRedgrave. Because if I hear various people’s opinions on world affairs one more time, I will be throwing myself out of the window. To land on the pavement beside the luridly blue Thai restaurant that our office is above. Though there is something weirdly contenting about just doing a job for the money. It means you can release yourself from a lot of the bullshit and priorities come a lot easier. You can bet I’ll be out of there so I can spend time with one bit of my family before they emigrate to the US within the next month, or if there’s a need for support in another bit of my family, should something happen. I do like the freedom of it. Also, I’m still having trouble with the office clothing bit.
And I’m still doing the watching films in the morning to stay sane. Mulholland Drive this week. Which is a bugger when the sodding DVD has no chapters. Thank you David Lynch.
I bring you capsule film reviews, courtesy of the Nectar vouchers bestowed upon me by Father Christmas which make dragging a DVD out of Blockbusters all that much more bearable....
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: I’m one of the few people who like Jim Carrey. But his performances in Man on the Moon and Truman Show were far better and far more suited to his talents than this was. When the director is boasting about "Jim playing a Kate Winslet character and Kate playing a Jim Carrey character" you end up going "and the point of that is?" I like Being John Malkovich, but there were huge similarities between the two. It’s like Charlie Kaufman only knows how to write one world. And as Malkovich got there first, those that follow will suffer. I also found Gondry’s camera-work far too tricksy and distracting. The most powerful moment (and when I thought this film would be my kind of thing) was at the cut to the titles when you just see Carrey weeping away in his car, and if you knew anything about the plot of the film prior to seeing it, you know that he’s experiencing the reality of someone or him bleaching their memories. Can’t really explain it, but far better than any forced perspective and distorted focus that follows.
Starsky & Hutch: Meh. Vince Vaughn is entertaining, rest is meh. I’m starting to develop a detestation of Ben Stiller. He so thinks he’s it.
Secretary: Disappointing. I so thought this would be my kind of film, but James Spader hams it up to a huge degree (“and you didn’t expect that?”, you say). Too mannered, despite Maggie Gyllenhaal being Really Quite Good.
Mean Girls: It’s now possibly in my top 5 teen films: 1, Heathers/Clueless; 3, 10 Things I Hate About You; 4, Breakfast Club; 5, Mean Girls; 6, Cruel Intentions; 7, Never Been Kissed; (Go and Scream and its ilk do not qualify for this survey) Man, I have put way too much thought into that. On the good side, it’s less recognisably Toronto than some other films, (hello Skulls) (based on all of, oh, four weeks in Toronto spread across 5 years)), and we all know the emergency assembly. Even if for most of us, it involved something disgusting in the girls loos. The bad? Completely ripping the lunchroom quiz scene from Heathers and not even having the decency to acknowledge it on the commentary. The over-moralising. The presence of the usual hideously over-acting SNL alumni. But what swings it back to good: "You can't just ask people why they're white." Heh.
My current temp employers seem to think they’ve conned me into staying. To be fair, they have succeeded to a certain extent because I would have been out of there at least 2 weeks ago had they not given me new responsibilities. And besides, they lock their stationery cupboard. What’s the point in temping at a place that locks their stationery cupboard?! And grown middle-aged women faffing about for half an hour because someone’s swapped their chair with another one. Jeez, perspective much? I’ve now almost fulfilled what I promised to do, when they offered this change of job, so if I’m still there at the end of February, SteveRedgrave: "You have my permission to shoot me" /SteveRedgrave. Because if I hear various people’s opinions on world affairs one more time, I will be throwing myself out of the window. To land on the pavement beside the luridly blue Thai restaurant that our office is above. Though there is something weirdly contenting about just doing a job for the money. It means you can release yourself from a lot of the bullshit and priorities come a lot easier. You can bet I’ll be out of there so I can spend time with one bit of my family before they emigrate to the US within the next month, or if there’s a need for support in another bit of my family, should something happen. I do like the freedom of it. Also, I’m still having trouble with the office clothing bit.
And I’m still doing the watching films in the morning to stay sane. Mulholland Drive this week. Which is a bugger when the sodding DVD has no chapters. Thank you David Lynch.
I bring you capsule film reviews, courtesy of the Nectar vouchers bestowed upon me by Father Christmas which make dragging a DVD out of Blockbusters all that much more bearable....
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: I’m one of the few people who like Jim Carrey. But his performances in Man on the Moon and Truman Show were far better and far more suited to his talents than this was. When the director is boasting about "Jim playing a Kate Winslet character and Kate playing a Jim Carrey character" you end up going "and the point of that is?" I like Being John Malkovich, but there were huge similarities between the two. It’s like Charlie Kaufman only knows how to write one world. And as Malkovich got there first, those that follow will suffer. I also found Gondry’s camera-work far too tricksy and distracting. The most powerful moment (and when I thought this film would be my kind of thing) was at the cut to the titles when you just see Carrey weeping away in his car, and if you knew anything about the plot of the film prior to seeing it, you know that he’s experiencing the reality of someone or him bleaching their memories. Can’t really explain it, but far better than any forced perspective and distorted focus that follows.
Starsky & Hutch: Meh. Vince Vaughn is entertaining, rest is meh. I’m starting to develop a detestation of Ben Stiller. He so thinks he’s it.
Secretary: Disappointing. I so thought this would be my kind of film, but James Spader hams it up to a huge degree (“and you didn’t expect that?”, you say). Too mannered, despite Maggie Gyllenhaal being Really Quite Good.
Mean Girls: It’s now possibly in my top 5 teen films: 1, Heathers/Clueless; 3, 10 Things I Hate About You; 4, Breakfast Club; 5, Mean Girls; 6, Cruel Intentions; 7, Never Been Kissed; (Go and Scream and its ilk do not qualify for this survey) Man, I have put way too much thought into that. On the good side, it’s less recognisably Toronto than some other films, (hello Skulls) (based on all of, oh, four weeks in Toronto spread across 5 years)), and we all know the emergency assembly. Even if for most of us, it involved something disgusting in the girls loos. The bad? Completely ripping the lunchroom quiz scene from Heathers and not even having the decency to acknowledge it on the commentary. The over-moralising. The presence of the usual hideously over-acting SNL alumni. But what swings it back to good: "You can't just ask people why they're white." Heh.
