Life is grand

I rather enjoyed this movie. A faithful, lovely re-telling on the silver-screen of C.S. Lewis’ classic. It wasn’t a great movie but it was worth seeing.

My advice is this; If you have read the books, or had them read to you as a kid, and you liked the story then go and see the movie. You will more than likely love it. If you have children, they will love the movie. But, if you have not read the books and you aren’t a kid anymore don’t go and see it. It is a simple story, the characters are simple and the movie is simple too. For those of us who spent our childhoods in Narnia it is a case of us adding so much more to the movie experience. Like an old friend come back for a visit that nobody else gets.

Also, invariably, you will compare it to The Lord of the Rings. It is hard not to and in the movie you will wonder if the director has not lifted scenes directly from The Lord of the Rings. This is inevitable as C.S. Lewis and Tolkien were good friends and, if I remember right, C.S. Lewis even convinced Tolkien to have faith again (in Christianity, which runs strong through Narnia.) Even direct movie to movie comparison wise this movie is not the finely crafted piece of work Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings was. Story wise too, Narnia is a lot simpler.

I hate having to even validate this movie. It really is simple; See it if you loved Narnia as a kid. Like I did.

In High School I was really good at history because everything you needed to know already happened.

from The Past Tense by Scrivs.

Look, I know if you analyse it to death it is one of those nonsensical sayings but I still think it is brilliant.

And the third reason is because I like men. Men are very interesting to me… …And I suspect that whoever told you that he writes about women because it’s a challenge is lying. He likes women.

from An Interview with Annie Proulx on Bookslut.

Say it like it is, Annie. Awfully unfashionable to show an interest, a fascination, in the opposite sex these days.

I want to read this article on procrastination but it is a bit long, the text is so small it is hard to read, I have other priorities like a cup of tea, I can’t decide if it is worth it, it may not help and I have ten thousand other links to visit…

Romantisme
Originally uploaded by alibaba0.

On this day, the 6th of the December 2005, coding of Henry began. Watch this space.

Oh dear. Sitting here with Lethal Weapon 2 on in the background and I am apalled. I thought the South African stereotypes in Die Hard were bad but this just takes the cake. First of all, the accents. Only one of the so called South Africans in the movie actually sounds South African and then he is an Afrikaans (think Dutch) South African. The rest of the Saffas in the movie are Americans and Australians trying to put on South African accents. Then there are the names; The female lead is called Rika van den Haas. Never met a South African called Rika and van den Haas is very Dutch, not many van den Haas in South Africa.

And the whole apartheid thing. This movie was made in 1989, pretty much the year the timetable for free, open and fair general elections was set. Pretty much the year South Africa officially ended apartheid. Yet the movie is full of apartheid South Africa.

Damned Hollywood.

A moan splits the dark
I’m alone, white shoes the only light
Rasping caress on neoprene warmth
My hands stuck deep, back home I’d be dead
Her lust is taunting
She doesn’t know where I am coming from
A park is her parlour, my loneliness a target
I’d be slashed and torn, wallet gone
Her boy a ploy, drink drives the uncaring walk
I desire to turn but then I’d be bled
She leaves me be
I walk into the light
A park so dark, survived

The F1 GP teams for 2006 have been announced with plenty of changes.

It is sad to no longer see a BMW-Williams team even with their poor performance this year. Webber and a new guy, Nico Rosberg, head up the Williams team now. I thought BMW was going to have their own team but it seems they are backing Sauber which is now BMW-Sauber, driven by Heidfeld and Villeneuve. Good luck to them. Rubens and Jenson at Honda is an interesting one. Yes, Honda. No more BAR. Jordan is gone, replaced by Midland (British Midland Racing?) and is helmed by Tiago and Albers. Red Bull still has Coulthard but no word on the second Red Bull driver. Maybe it will be Sato, I can’t see him in the rest of the list.

I can’t wait for the 2006 season to start, should be another good year.

Just a notice that you should be wary of my Daily Links sidebar for awhile. It is a Blinklist RSS feed spliced into this page via FeedDigest and it seems as though spam is entering it at some point. The original Blinklist RSS feed has the spam so I’d say it isn’t FeedDigest. I have alerted Blinklist but till then you’ll have to skip the feed and view my Blinklist web-page which doesn’t have this spam.

– UPDATE –

Another reason I love Blinklist is that they reply to your emails. Just got word back from them that they did a major database update last night and that they are aware of the problem above. It should be sorted out “soon.”