words XXIV

When I was young
It seemed that life was so wonderful
A miracle
Oh it was beautiful
Magical

And all the birds in the trees
They made me sing so happily
So joyfully
Oh playfully watching me

The Logical Song – Scooter

I would so love to be able to tell you that Signs joins M. Night Shyamalan‘s last movie Unbreakable as one of my favourite movies. I just can’t.

I loved this movie, the only way I can describe it is: fucking awesome. I have not enjoyed a
movie this much since Spider-Man. From the outset I was hooked. Tension was built within the first two minutes and it just kept building from there. I don’t know if I have seen this done any better. I was completely enthralled and I was just waiting to see where it would go next. And it worked 100%, it just worked. I was sitting there wondering how in the hell this was going to end. Several times I was going if this ends just now it will be perfect and it will make the list.

I had really high hopes for the ending. Given the writer/directors previous movies I wasn’t expecting it to be the typical Hollywood ending, I was wrong. It suddenly became completely predictable and flat. It just didn’t work. It was a happy ending tacked onto a dark chilling movie. There were quite a few funny moments in it, the hats for one thing made me laugh twice and the comments about the “nerds” was spot on awesome. Speaking of spot on, the cast were that and then some. Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix came off really well together as brothers and were completely believable. They were both however acted off the screen by the two kids. Wow, they were both fantastic.

I feel hideously let down by the ending but thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the movie. I suspect I will buy this on DVD and I will click stop when he gets the TV.

***
I am fairly cynical by nature I know that. So when I first saw this site I was suspicious to say the least. However I think now I would like to believe it. Either way it is worth a read: The Homeless Guy

Background:
Warren Ellis created a character called Jack Hawksmoor in his pre Authority run on StormWatch. The concept behind the character is pretty fascinating. Since he was very young, Hawksmoor has been abducted by aliens on a regular basis and changed. He was designed to live in cities, there he has special gifts and powers. One of these is the ability to communicate with the city as a living being. He is a really great character.

Thought:
I was browsing some blogs using Bloggers Random Blog feature. One of the blogs I found was based off of Montreal.com. The thought struck me. Yeah it happens every now and again and yes they can be fairly strange. How very cool would it be to read a blog about a city by a city. Ok so it is a way out concept but to be able to read about the events that shape a city on a daily basis and affect so many people would be fairly awesome.

On a whole other note I just saw a tag for a blog on a random list and I think it is a pretty good thought. This blog is my therapy

I headed out a few hours ago to Blockbuster to return the movies. I watched the first 20 minutes of Violent Cop and really wasn’t interested so I gave up. I did decide that I should go and have dinner because I knew I wouldn’t bother otherwise. So I headed out to that pizza place in Fulham that I like a lot and had a nice dinner.

I decided afterwards to walk home. Its only about 3 miles away. I had nothing better to do and I had my discman. Still going strong on Springsteen’s The Rising and I haven’t listened to much else in the last couple of weeks. But anyway I love doing that every now and again. I tend to walk pretty fast and when I have music going I’ll just get lost in thought. I don’t do it all that often, but I should. So I had a nice walk home.

One thing that I was thinking about was being alone at the time. I’ve never had a problem doing stuff on my own. I’ve just been out to dinner by myself and enjoyed it. I’ve been to the cinema on my own, I’ve been to gigs on my own and I’ve gone out for a night on my own. I have had people question me about it before and its not a problem. If I don’t know anyone up for it, I’m not gonna miss out on something because of it.

Oh and its now actually been more than a year since this blog has been going in its current form, one year and two days to be precise. A lot has changed since then, everything has changed since then. Hmm lots of stuff covered in here. More to come…more than likely. Fuck it is interesting to see what I was thinking about a year ago (other than the obvious). I’m going to be keeping this up, I enjoy it and I’m getting better at it.

So in the true spirit of Friends Reunited and Classmates, the interwebnet brings you Taliban Reunited. Class 🙂

The Friday Five…on Sunday I know.

1. What was/is your favourite subject in school? Why?
History. It was fascinating about 95% of the time which is probably why I found it really easy.

2. Who was your favourite teacher? Why?
I had quite a few,
Sandra Gannon. Irish and History.
She was a damn good teacher. I wish I had realised it more at the time
John Cook. Irish
Fuck did we give him a lot of grief but he was a really decent guy who I did like. I feel bad about some of the grief, we did go overboard. I ever run into him, I owe him a pint.
Alan McManus. Commerce
Good guy, very funny with a good sarcastic streak at times.
Mary O’ Connell. Geography.
She was just dead sound and a good teacher

They were all good teachers, I liked them all.

3. What is your favourite memory of school?
One of the girls I went to school with.

4. What was your favourite recess game?
See above; talking with a girl. I wasn’t all that big on games

5. What did you hate most about school
fuck I have a list, but I’ll just pass on that.

Today has been a strange day for memories. I got a bus into town earlier from outside my local comic shop. I’d not got that bus before and it took me into town along the embankment. It was a part of town I hadn’t been in for a long time. In fact the last time I had been there, I had walked to some sci-fi event in Pages with my friend Matt a few weeks before he passed away last year. I have some good memories of the time I spent with him at those nights out and indeed many other times. Going along the same way we had walked on a number of occasions brought back some of them. I miss Matt. He was a good friend and always on for a laugh.

I knew him before I moved to London, we had some mutual friends. He was pretty much the only person outside of work who I knew. I’m always going to be grateful that I knew him.

On another memory, I just found some photos from a night out in Canada about two and a half years ago. Myself and a group of friends went to Toronto (and do enjoy this laugh) for a sci-fi convention. Well, that was really the excuse it got about 30 friends to Toronto at the same time from all over the world. Some had never met, it was a big internet crowd. Some were friends who I knew from Dublin, some from London, some from Germany, one from Russia and the rest from all over the US and Canada.

Fuck did we have a good time. It was a great couple of weeks and I really loved Toronto. Someday I’m gonna go back there. I was just talking a few moments ago to a friend on im. I’ve known her oh must be four year now and I like her a lot. She is a really cool person. We met for the one and only time in Toronto that time. We missed each other in London a couple of years ago because I was away on work. That wasn’t good. I shouldn’t have agreed to those dates but I did.

I’m glad we met, I’m so glad at the number of people I did meet over those couple of weeks. I’m not in touch with as many of them as I use to be. I’m glad I knew them though.

The One: a couple of nice action scenes but nothing else really to say in its favour. It was nice to see James Morrision of Space: Above and Beyond. He is a good actor.

Robotic Indiana Jones to penetrate pyramid
The wonders of the ancient world don’t give up their secrets easily. But the most advanced modern technology is being put to use in Egypt to answer questions about the most advanced ancient engineering — Egypt’s Great Pyramid.

how cool is this 🙂

Powers rocks. So I picked up and am still enjoying my comics, I rented a couple of movies (Jet Li’s The One and another cult Japanese extreme Violent Cop. Thats the general plan for the night.

Headed into town after going locally for a couple of comics, primarily to do a quick rush between the 4 shops to see if I could get those two issues of Lucifer I’m missing. I manged to get one which I’m happy with so just one more to go now. More later.