Caboose

Went to see Morvern Callar last night, it was fairly good but somehow disappointing. It missed out a lot of the humour surrounding the town where she lives but does well in not trying to explain why Morvern does things.

One of the strengths of the book was that although it was written in the first person there’s never any explanation of Morvern’s motivations, she just does things. Samantha Morton is very good as Morvern, looking vulnerable and out of place.

Maybe I was just grumpy due to sitting in the cinema in very wet trousers. I got caught in a sudden downpour crossing the railway bridge on Mill Road.

Just found Matthew Pariss’ articles from his time on Kerguelen.

I knew he had been there and read a couple of cuttings from the Times they kept in the bar. In fact his mind-blowingly arrogant comments in the visitor’s book at Port Jeanne d’Arc wound me up no end.

The articles are well written though and he does seem to have fallen for the place, I can understand why and I was only there for a month.

I’m off to see Morvern Callar later, I liked the book so I’m curious to see how the film has turned out.

Which Donnie Darko character are you? by Shay

Quite worrying, does this mean I’ll start getting visits from the scary rabbit guy? I do live pretty much right under the approach to Cambridge airport…

Went out to the pub this evening. Walking back I felt really opressed by the hideous orange sky over Cambridge. Admittedly this place isn’t too bad, it’s just an overcast night, you can often actually see the stars.

It’s weird, I’m basically an urban person, I’ve never lived in the countryside. I still feel the need to look up and see the stars though…

Just saw Donnie Darko, another not-very-cheerful film.

I’m not entirely sure what happened in the film, which I suppose is how you’re supposed to feel at the end. It mixes up so many different types of film: 80’s high school, dark teen angst, X-Files weirdness…

Jake Gyllenhaal as Donnie is convincingly confused and angry. It’s not all dark though, the occasional outbursts of humour brighten up the film when it’s in danger of becoming too miserable.

(don’t read the rest of this post unless you’ve seen the film)
(more…)

I occasionally check my webserver stats, and sometimes find odd things such as the weird referrers. Recently I’ve noticed a few improbable search strings.

For example “german influence in argentina”, “toga party photos” or even “planning a 60th birthday party” (don’t know what search engine they used!).

Some are a bit worrying, “little girls peru” for example (what were you looking for?). Others just never should have led people to my site, why on earth would somebody looking for “second hand petrol go-karts” be interesting in this site?

Search engines are very odd things, even the good ones…

Last week I spotted a link to this Wall Street Journal article in Jim Romenesko’s Obscure Store and Reading Room.

Some of the quotes are pretty easy to laugh at (hint: it’s about being in control of the car, stupid!):

It also calls for such maneuvers as driving backwards around a corner and up the street along the curb. Touch the curb with the wheel and you flunk.

My favourite part is the way they completely fail to connect “Britain’s pass rate is under 44% and falling” with “Britain has one of the world’s lowest auto fatality rates”.