The paper magician

The last couple of days I have been in Birmingham for a short break. While traveling I read "The Paper Magician",  by Charlie Holmberg. This was yet another fantasy novel. A youg woman is apprenticed to an expert in the magical folding of paper. The pacing of the novel seemed weird. She settled in for a couple of days,  before going on a big quest inside a dream sequence. She very quickly falls in love with her boss.

Dark city

For some time I have wanted to watch the film "Dark  City" . Trouble is I also dimly remember having watched it before. It was a great film if you are paranoid and scared of the thin veil of sleep. It was the changing of the buildings that freaked me out the most. Also the never ending night.

101000 messages from vodka

Two days OK I had a great idea for a story. A man is trapped inside his flat. His feet no longer work. He is a cripple with bloody stumps at the end of his legs. His only communication with the world, is via a vodka bottle. He keeps the vodka bottle in the icebox of the fridge. Sometimes the vodka is frozen and sometimes it is liquid. By opening the fridge every night, and checking the vodka, he sets up a binary communication system which allows him to talk to the dead. He gets angry with the solid vodka. He shakes and shakes the bottle, but nothing comes out. He puts another zero on the message pad.

Friday guilt .......

I went to the gym last night for the first time in 6 weeks. It felt good to work some weights. Afterwards I went for a beer in the Walkabout pub, followed by a beer in Noah's ark. It was kind of depressing. There were a bunch of old people staring at nothing in front of a pint. That was me of course too, but it is not much of a life.

On the other hand I have been at work all week, so a couple of pints is surely my due.

Master of Fiends

While travelling I managed to finish reading the fantasy novel "master of fiends" by Douglass Hill.
I had heard the tainted blade on the radio which is the first story featuring the characters in this book.
It was simply but cleverly written.

Bonn

I am sitting in a hotel room in Bonn Germany. I am at physics meeting. I have given my talk, so I am feeling relaxed. It has been very windy here. There was the most turbulence on the flight over from the UK, as I have experienced on a flight. I finally understood what the seat belt was for.

Germany seems the same as when I left it. They now have eye scanners to check the passport when you arrive. I didn't get arrested, because of my dispute with my ex-landlord, so perhaps I will visit again.

Political shame

I was sitting in my flat, just ideally digesting my lunch. The buzzer to the front door rang. I pressed the button and someone told me that there was a survey. I went to the front door. It turned out that the survey was for the Conservative party. I was so polite. I got confused by the paler shade of blue. He was an old guy, nice enough.

Did I really end the conversation with "Good luck" ?

Grr,  I am so weak.  What did I learn from reading all those Noam Chomsky novels?

Knight and Day

I watched the film Knight and Day this week, after having recorded it over a year ago. It was a fun light thriller with Tom Cruise as the superman CIA rogue agent.  I found Diaz's character kind of annoying.

Still a light level of violence, when you can't read, coz your brain is too fried.....

The Mexican

I was trying to think what kind of week I had. In my late night TV watching mode, I am slowly trying to watch all the films I saved on my digital recorder. I watched the Mexican, a film starring Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts. It was a fun gangster film with a lot of twists and a bit of folk lore, but till not too intense.

There is a night club in my toilet.

I drink tea all day and finish the day with a beer or two. As a result I end up going to the toilet too much during the night, when I am trying to sleep. I have now installed a green/red light on the toilet seat, so that I don't have to switch the harsh white bathroom light on.
   I now feel I have a nightclub in my toilet.   This will freak out anyone, who is unlucky enough to stay with me. It also solves the lid up war between men and women, because if I put the lid down, the light may fall off. Sorted!

parallels

This week i watched the film parallels via netflix. It started a bit weekly, but then got going. It had a good cliff hanger at the end, but the film felt like the start of a long running series, than a stand alone film. It was also a bit strange that I couldn't find much information about the film, or any other episodes.  Anyway the above review explains a pilot got updated to a film. But will further episodes be made?

Time travel and primary school

There is a primary school on the route from my home to work. If I am such a lazy bum that I am not at my desk by 9:00 means that I walk through a crowd of parents dropping off their kids. Yesterday, I heard a little boy chant "I want a time machine/" Don't we all, I thought.

kill list

This week I watched the film "kill list".  This was a great  and very strange horror film.  The first part shows one of the guys with his family, but it was a strange familiy life. I liked the way he ate the stuff that cat brought him. He had a bad tempter, but he was a good father.

The second part was more violent, ok actually it was very violent. I am still haunted by the phrase "was that 20 minutes."

Parenting skils in the pub

I was drinking a beer in a pub close to the bus stop. A guy started to talk to his son on the phone. He was very loud. It looked as though he was divorced and he was arranging to pick his son up the next day and to take him to the park to ride his bike. But then he started telling the kid off. He asked where mummy was. The guy helpfully repeated what the kid said. His mum was in bed.

I went for a piss, but the guy followed me into the bathroom. He locked himself into a cubicle and continued the conversation.  He then asked the kid, whether he had sweets pills. He said he wasn't happy with the kids voice. He told the child to just drink water.

I then left the pub to catch my bus. I can't help feeling, that calling your son from a pub is a bit rude, when they are not old enough to have a pint as well.  I hope the kid was just on a sugar rush, rather than anything harder.

The Mystery Road

The BBC Iplayer was showing a great Australian film called "The Mystery Road". A single detective is trying to find who killed a young girl and dumped her into a pipe. The landscape of the film was amazing.

Divergent

This week I watched a film called Divergent. This was a film based on some kind of Teen novel. People are assigned into 5 different factions. A cute 16 year old joins the army/police faction. At first she is crap, but with some training , she gets better. The army/police faction like laughing and free climbing. You get into their base by falling onto a trampoline through a smashed hole in the floor.

Perhaps the science fiction aspects were a bit naive and the teen romance stuff was boring,
but I enjoyed the film.

Calvary

I watched the film Calvary from a streaming site.  What a great film! I just love the actor Brendan Glesson. Normally I am not a big fan of priests, but I liked this film. A priest is given a week, before he will be shot.

It was the same set of people who were in the Guard. This confused me, because I kept getting flashbacks to their characters in the first film.

Blue ruin

I watched the film Blue ruin on netflix last night. What a great film. The "hero" starts out as a beach bum, but ends by becoming a Joe public. There is a lot of violence in the film, but it is done in a amateur way.

I now want to be a beach bum.

Time runners

Last night I watched the film: Time runners. I had started watching it before, but I had found it confusing. However, confusing can be good. An FBI agent is searching for her missing husband,  who has gone missing after some kind of accident. She can also rewind time for  short intervals. There are two sets of agents after her, one of which come from a war ravished future.

For the first half of the film, I had no idea what was going on, but things became clearer in the second part. it looks like they wanted to make a sequel, but that didn't happen, but given that the film was cheap to make and it wasn't released until last year, then it may still happen.

Anyway an interesting plot.

El gringo

Last night I watched the film El Gringo  starring the great Scott Adkins I had seen the film advertised on Netflix, but I never fancied the plot for some reason. I read a review of the work of the action guy
Adkins and this got me interested in watching the film.

I enjoyed the film. It was no great work of art, but there were some great fight scenes mostly
using guns though. It would be better if they filmed the fight scenes a bit faster, but it was a fun film.