Happy Easter. I had a great day on Friday visiting some vineyards in Kent. Yesterday evening, this afternoon (and tomorrow evening) are all to be spent with good friends. On top of that I managed to start to clean up the garden and have ambitious plans to tidy up the tiny amount of loft space that we have so that we can load up even more junk!
2005: That Wedding
2005: That Wedding
Not sure what has happened, but weeks have passed since we went to the cinema and now I have done two films two nights in a row.
50 First Dates had a preview last night (I think it opens today) and it was showing at the right time for us in Wimbledon so we thought that we would give it a go. I expected an Adam Sandler gag-fest and, really, it wasn’t. I am not a fan of many of the movies Adam Sandler has been in but this is heart-warming (and humorous) and was a big surprise.
Sandler’s character (Henry Roth) meets Drew Barrymore‘s Lucy in a breakfast diner and tries to pull all his best lines on her. None of them really work but he falls for her and so begins a touching story (if somewhat unbelievable) and a thoroughly entertaining evening out. You may, or may not, really be suspending your disbelief as the woman with no memory seems to fall for Roth but I think you’ll get over that.
Surprisingly Good.
2003: End Game
2003: End Game
A few weeks ago, I wrote this but didn’t ever get round to finishing what I was trying to write:
I am not sure what the point of the news that McDonald’s are to scrap ‘supersizing’ is, but does seem somewhat silly when they don’t actually make the food healthier – we’ll just buy two portions now, won’t we? I am pleased to say that since my new gym routine started that I haven’t been anywhere near any type of fast food outlet. This, of course, makes me feel very virtuous when I shouldn’t. I haven’t stopped visiting the pub and there are lot of calories in bitter.
Well, all I can say is that I nipped into a branch of McDonald’s today (only for a cup of tea) as it was right outside a place where I had a meeting and I had some time to kill. I was surprised to see a stack of leaflets with a nutritional break down on all their salads – which shows that some of them are no healthier than burgers but some of them seem to be pretty good. I have no idea how they will persuade people to eat them though as, by the time you get to the counter, all you see is donuts!
2004: The Station Agent
2004: The Station Agent
A quick review of The Station Agent, a film a saw on the spur of the moment last night.
It’s a well-written, superbly acted film where – almost – nothing happens. And, unlike many films of its type it’s well-worth watching because the characters are both fascinating and endearing. Fin is, as they say, vertically challenged and moves into a parochial American backwater town where a Cuban hot dog man sells his wares to (more-or-less) nobody and Olivia, an artist going through a messy divorce who almost drives over our hero (twice). They are an odd set of warm characters performed brilliantly by the cast.
It’s also a comedy and succeeds in not turning farcical with lots of slapstick about shorter people. The comedy is tender, clever and entertaining but it’s not a belly-laugh-a-minute film.
The Station Agent turned out to be one of the best films I have seen so far this year.
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You can buy The Station Agent on DVD from Amazon.
2004: Fries Are Chips and Chips Are Fries
My Mum and Dad have been married for forty years. It was their anniversary yesterday. PY and I took them to Lightship Ten at St Katherine’s Dock, which was wonderful, and they treated us very well indeed. We were there for our own anniversary in October. It’s a superb – and different – place to go for a celebration.
While on the subject of trivial entertainment pieces [by which I mean this rant about radio], maybe it’s time for a gay ‘Richard and Judy’ equivalent.
Scots interior designers Colin McAllister and Justin Ryan have been signed on an exclusive two-year contract, and are being lined up to present a range of property, entertainment and lifestyle shows on Five [Source].
Honestly, I can’t wait (and I didn’t even watch a great deal of The Million Pound Property Experiment, and I am not in the house for daytime lifestyle shows).
I always thought Ashley Paske was quite cute when he was in the daytime soap Richmond Hill and, later, in Neighbours. But now where is he? The only reference I can find to him recently is in an ABC (Australia) documentary called The Fame Game that tellingly says that the stars, “reveal how they coped with the all-encompassing fame followed by a sudden and unexpected return to virtual oblivion.”
And yes, that is his autographed photograph in the picture. It was a gift.
Comments are disabled for this post. There’s a slightly updated version of this post here.
Last night, while pounding the treadmill for thirty minutes, and trying to avoid watching about crime and disaster on the news, I got to thinking about a couple of things I have written here over the last few days.
In Tuesday’s Link Dump I noted that I thought I was lacking some passion. I don’t believe that’s true. I am still passionate about many things and, particularly, personal publishing online. I just don’t get to write about it or discuss it. I do seem to write a great deal here though.
In yesterday’s post about Portion Distortion I mentioned something about re-designing this site, and, after some consideration, I have decided to do a little bit of housekeeping here. This site has started to get a little out of control. I need to rationalise: keeping it simple will involve removing pages that I don’t think serve any worth and getting rid of some sections. I will also re-work the design. I suspect for some time there will be things in several layouts but I don’t think anybody will be too upset.
The first casualty will be the gallery section – it’s hard to maintain, and it’s not where I store pictures that I want to share with people anyway. Perhaps Movable Type will incorporate some new image controls in a future version, which will allow me to bring it back.
2005: Your Search For Philip Olivier Returned Results
2004: Britain’s Railways
2003: Trackback away
2003: It was fun – no need to search my site anymore
2005: Your Search For Philip Olivier Returned Results
2004: Britain’s Railways
2003: Trackback away
2003: It was fun – no need to search my site anymore
A very interesting item it today’s G2 about the ongoing saga of the upgrading of the West Coast Main Line, one of the key railway routes in Britain:
One of the most disturbing facets of the west coast saga is the failure of democratic government that it represents. Not just of a particular party, but the whole system of government.
and later,
And yet we cannot accuse our elected representatives of looking the other way. In mid-February and early March of 1995, after the consultants had delivered their report but while Railtrack and the government were still mulling over it, members of the House of Commons transport committee questioned Edmonds, Horton and the heads of some of the big signalling firms about the WCML project … Members of parliament had done what they were elected to do, conscientiously and thoroughly scrutinising a big plan by an unelected organisation with power over the lives and purses of the public. It had pointed out its weaknesses. And nobody paid any attention.
What the article does highlight is that, today, projects of national importance and public good like this one come second to short-term profit, power and – to some extent – ego. I wonder if we will ever see a situation where transport planning is for all our good rather than the few?
2005: Your Search For Philip Olivier Returned Results
2004: Simplify The Site
2003: Trackback away
2003: It was fun – no need to search my site anymore
2005: Your Search For Philip Olivier Returned Results
2004: Simplify The Site
2003: Trackback away
2003: It was fun – no need to search my site anymore
Catching up with the excellent writings of Chris at prosaic (whose new design is simple and elegant), I was directed to an article at sfgate.com (The Obesity Crisis), which is fascinating and rings true. I am sure that, over the last ten years, the amount of food I have consumed has increased massively as a result of the size of the portions that I eat (rather than eating more meals). Anyway, methinks I should head off to the gym now and resist the urge to simplify the look of this site …