Interstellar

Having bought the Blu-ray of this film a while ago, I thought last night was the time to see this film. It felt very long. I thought the main character was very annoying and he detracted from my enjoyment. It was a film that tried to do too many things for me. I didn't see enough sci-fi in it for my liking. Far too much time was taken up at the start with Coop on Earth. Then a load of physics was thrown in our face. Then there was a sole survivor scientist who they tried to save but who went mad. So, it felt a little bit clichéd in places and at other times felt slow. It also got too serious with itself. There were elements of other sci-fi films but none were that well taken up. The music was pretty good though, it certainly increased the drama to a higher level than the acting did.

Jurassic World

Over the Christmas and New Year period we watched Jurassic World. I was disappointed with it. There were few interesting moments in the film. It certainly was nowhere near as memorable as Jurassic Park. It features a return to a dinosaur theme park. However, this time I wasn't concerned by the plight of the theme park guests. It just didn't make me want to see the humans live, I wanted the dinosaurs to conquer them.

The Day of the Dead

I have watched George A Romero's film Day of the Dead this week. It's the third in his series after Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. The movie is set in an underground mine where a set of scientists and military personnel are isolated and trying to find the answer. The chief scientist is trying to find a way to domesticate the dead. He has a zombie called Bob who represents his most successful subject to date. The situation is bad as there is a lot of internal tension in the group and this eventually boils over into unimaginable horror. It's an amazing film in terms of the level of gore it provides.

Shivers

I've been a fan of David Cronenberg for a long time. I don't like all his movies to the same degree though but some of the films he made in the 1970s and 1980s are in my all time favourites list. Shivers was a film I hadn't seen before. I associate the films Shivers, The Brood, Rabid and Scanners together. All strangely fascinating in their own way. Shivers is the simpler film in many ways. I like the way that not very much is explained in this film. The budget is noticeably small but I like that in a way. I think it made its funding back many times over!
The story is about the spread of a parasitic bug that incites its host to become sexually voracious. The parasite looks like a turd. An odd choice but there you go. There are some great set pieces in the film and some memorable acting. There are also some very lame effects and lame acting too, sadly.

Jagermeister

This week I tried a new liqueur, I bought a pack from Tesco of this drink that included two miniatures and two shot glasses. I asked how much it would be and when the lady on the tills said £2.50 I thought it was cheap enough to try it out. It was obviously a knock down price to get rid of stock bought in just for Christmas. The shot glasses alone will come in useful.
I put the drink and the glasses into the freezer. I didn't really know what to expect. It smelled quite strong, of a sort of aniseed or menthol flavour. That is pretty much what it tasted like. It wasn't completely unpleasant but wasn't as nice as I thought it might be. It had a similarity with cough syrup, being fairly sweet and dark ruby in colour. As it is sold in green glass you don't see what colour it is. I haven't drunk the other bottle, I might save that for another day. A friend of mine said he has enjoyed a drop of it on the ski slopes and I imagine that it would be nice and warming in those circumstances. Or perhaps when hunting deer in the frozen Norwegian tundra!

Sadly, the holidays are over

January usually bites in some ways, the first of the bites is the back to work one. I don't go back tomorrow as many do, however I will return on Tuesday and by then I will be feeling quite uncomfortable knowing that most of the people I work with have already returned and got a start on me. C'est la vie I think the expression goes.
I don't really feel like I've done very much this holiday. We have entertained people at home it seems more than usual this year. So, a lot of the time we have been preparing for people to come around. I've done some alcohol drinking and a lot of eating. I thought I would have catched up on more TV than I actually have.

New Years Eve and the Flu Arrives!

Typical that as the year end arrives I've come down with flu and I'm not able to celebrate in the way I would like to. I'm glad that I have no social plans this evening. My wife took the Christmas tree down already earlier today so the sitting room is already looking sparser than it was. I wish I felt better, that my headache was gone and that my nose wasn't dripping. Ah well, that's at least just a small inconvenience compared to what others have to go through everyday, I'm grateful for small mercies.

H A P P Y    N E W    Y E A R !!!

Instant Capuccino

My last post of 2015 is about coffee. This time, it's about instant cappuccino. I have tried Nescafe's instant cappuccino coffee sachets but they are very frothy, not too bad though just a bit too frothy for me. The top just blows up like a head of froth on a pint of beer. I like a bit of froth but there is such a thing as too much.
I was in the 99p Store the other day and saw that they had a box of 12 cappuccino sachets by a brand I didn't recognise so as I had no Nescafe sachets left I tried the 99p Store ones. The sachets are just in plain foil wrappers, no branding on them just plain and simple. The coffee is decent though and there is froth but not too much. Overall I can recommend these.
Have a very happy New Year this evening, take it easy and go careful whatever you are doing.

Christmas lunch

Well, the house here smells wonderful with the Christmas lunch cooking. We have got a great lunch lined up for everybody coming. We have my mother in-law and my step-sister and her partner coming to join the four of us. That's three people less than last year so the table won't be as crowded but hopefully it will be a little bit more intimate because of that.
I have prepared sprouts this morning, after opening my presents that largely consisted of PS4 games but there was a Manga book from my son, which was a surprise.

Jessica Jones

I watched the first episode of this series today. It was a good start to a series I hope to watch more of. The character is one from the Marvel universe although I have to confess my ignorance from that point on, I have no idea who she is or what her back story is.

Imitation Game

Last night I watched The Imitation Game with my family and we all thought it was a good film. I had bought the film earlier in the day from a charity shop, it just cost me 99p which I thought was a bargain for a film that is only about a year old. The film is set during and after the second world war and is a sad film in many ways, the story is based on Alan Turing and the code-breaking work he did with other code-breakers there. It is a remarkable story and one that is told very well by the film, although how accurate it all is who really knows. Shame that Alan Turing's life was so hard, if he had lived I wonder what he would have achieved in his lifetime. He was certainly a brilliant mathematician.

Captain America: the original avenger

I watched this film today. Or rather I had the misfortune of having to sit through it. It was quite awful and a bit of a disaster. The script was bad, the direction was bad and I'm finding it hard to say what might redeem it but I'm afraid I can't. The special effects were truly laughable. There was no sense of threat or danger, a very flat affair without making me want to side with Captain America. I even fell asleep during a section of it -- that's how much I felt engaged.

Lucy

This week I watched the film Lucy by the director Luc Beson. I watched a film by the same director recently, Nikita. This Lucy film was really interesting, it starred Scarlet Johansson. She is known to me through the Avengers films and her role as Black Widow, which she plays very well. In this film she starts out very ditzy as the girlfriend of a creep. Suddenly she comes into contact with a brutal Japanese criminal gang who want to smuggle drugs to Europe. They do this by surgically implanting kidnapped human mules, which she becomes due to her boyfriend getting her involved. The film takes a few crazy turns and then turns into something very strange.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

I took my son out last night to go and see the new Star Wars motion picture The Force Awakens. I was hoping for a decent film after some of the disappointment that I experienced during the first three episodes. I was pleasantly surprised that this time the film was good. It had a few turns and twists in the plot that were good. It was good to Han Solo and Chewbacca. I liked the new characters, There was a little bit of humour in there as well, which were good. Overall, I'd recommend this film.

Japanese Sweets

I bought a bag of Japanese sweets from the Birmingham MCM ComicCon and there were several packets like these. They contain three balls that pack quite a lot of flavour into them. The balls are actually bubble gum but when you first start chewing them they don't have the texture of gum. They are quite strange in that the flavour bursts out of them overpowering your senses until after a couple of minutes of chewing when the bubblegum texture starts to appear. You'd almost be forgiven for swallowing them within the first two minutes, as they don't feel like bubblegum and if you haven't come across them before you wouldn't know.

Frenzy (1972)

Last night I watched a Hitchcock film I hadn't seen before. It was on TV and I wasn't intending to watch it but it got me hooked. It's a classic Hitchcock film. We have a character who has a lot of circumstantial evidence against him and a true monster villain who is a wolf in sheeps clothing. The style of the evil monster (Rusk) character is reminiscent of Jimmy Saville to me in a strange way, with very blonde hair and a tie pin. There is a good story and plenty of suspense and great acting. Some clever cinematography too.

Continuum

I've been slowly making my way through the TV Sci-Fi series Continuum this year. I finally got to the end of the first series last night. What a decent series it has been as well. My expectations were quite low but they have been surpassed quite healthily. It tells the story of a group of terrorists from 2077 who time jump back in time to the present day but inadvertently bring a policewoman with them. It's about her trying to bring them to justice in the present day whilst also trying to return back home to the future where she has a husband and a son. I look forward to watching season 2. I believe there are four seasons in total.

New headphones

I was in B&M Homestore a couple of weekends ago and I was looking for a new pair of headphones. I bought a pair earlier in the year that were very good but my wife has them now (since the cat bit through the wire of her last pair). I saw this pair of Akai headphones and thought they looked quite good. The sound is pretty good for the price, they were only £10. Nice packaging too, although it has to be destroyed to actually get in there.

Horus Heresy novels: False Gods

Okay, so I haven't started reading these novels yet but I did pick up the second in the series yesterday from a charity shop. Haven't got much to say on this book or series yet however!!

Watchmen

I picked this film up from a charity shop recently and I'm glad I did. There are not many films in the superhero category that delve into the psyche of a superhero character. This film does it very well and stays very faithful to the graphic novel as far as I can tell. I love the relationship between Nite Owl and Silk Spectre and how Nite Owl has to be in superhero character to become sexually virile.
It's a good cast as well. The Comedian turns in a good performance, showing the unfortunate side of a superhero. Probably my favourite performance is that of vigilante Rorschach played by Jackie Earle Haley and especially in prison where he has a famous line about him not being in prison with them but them being locked up with him. A cracker of a film, but don't expect it to be the all-out action film that other superhero films have become. This one is a film set in that world but is not about the action.