Bank Holiday Mayhem…
After becoming annoyed with myself over recent months at not properly exploiting my free time and just sitting around the house I was determined to make the most of the final bank holiday weekend of the year - I think it’s fair to say mission accomplished.
Friday night and after a couple of beers in Victoria I legged it over to a friend’s for an evening of serious gaming - one of the most eagerly awaited games ever made has finally arrived in Europe - Bioshock. To put this in perspective, my mate’s PC has a graphic card which costs just under a grand - it’s a beast of a machine and the ideal environment to experience the state of the art graphics in the game. Gameplay wise I was impressed - it follows the usual FPS model but each encounter feels genuinely dangerous and threatening. Most intriguing is the back story and world, apparently inspired by the philosophical discourse of Ayn Rand, set on a undersea utopia that has collapsed into ruin and degredation - somewhat different from the hordes of aliens/mutants/cyborgs you have to kill on the space station/mining colony/secret military base that is the norm for this genre.
After leisurely making my way back to Richmond, I took it easy on Saturday (pacing myself you see, must be getting wise in my old age) and took in a few movies including ‘Knocked Up‘ and ‘Planet Terror‘ via the magic of the internet. The recent BBC strand of British Film Forever finally delivered an episode actually worth watching, concentrating on the UK’s contribution to the SF, Fantasy and Horror genres. This series has been absolutely awful up until now - when they’re not actively showing you the end of the movies they are examining, they also have some faux ‘matey’ voiceover which sounds like it’s escaped from the pages of ‘Loaded’ magazine. After the crime genre episode where they concentrated on films like ‘The Krays’ at the expense of genuine classics such as ‘Performance’ I’ve been hesitant to waste my time watching these, but I persisted and this weekend’s threw up some genuine oddities that I shall take a gander at. Alex Cox delivers some spirited criticism of the whole British Film Forever season here.
On the Sunday I strolled down to Brighton for a one off ‘Stick it On‘ event. With the likes of DJ Derek and Kid Carpet (who’s kind of a solo Half Man Half Biscuit for the 21st century) on the agenda it was sure to be something different. Great fun, nice eclectic mix of music, a fun crowd, nice food and reasonably priced booze - what more does a growing boy need?
After a late start on the Monday and a fast train back to London I waded through a few more movies which takes this weekend’s count to a Ozu, Dreyer, Bertolucci and a Fellini. A mixed bag, ‘The Dreamers’ was good if only for the eye candy of Eva Scott but the best was ‘Tokyo Story’ which is genuinely moving and heartfelt. It also includes the fantastic Setsuko Hara in the cast who is an actress I’ve noticed more and more in a series of immediate post war Japanese films that I’ve caught over the past year. As always she’s fantastic in this and is highly recommended if only because we share the same birthday, give or take fifty years….
EDIT - Just found this, which will only be up for a week so make sure you copy or download it now - and RIP Tony Wilson…
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