Friday, July 20, 2007

My Summer, Part 4: DVDs & Scotland



SUPERBLOG!! Link of the Day: Boring Harry Potter Personality Test. I was Gilderoy Lockhart.

Summer continues. Lost of Wikipedia links this time. Aren't those FUN?

Day 16: Bought another fuckload of comics. Continued my nostalgic superhero binge with Secret Wars, which, to my great surprise, held up very well. Weird.
Day 17: Left Lickpig, went back to my apartment in Falun for the first time in 19 days, read Don't Go Where I Can't Follow. Reread The Authority: Kev, and The Authority: The Magnificent Kevin.
Day 18: Read A Man Called Kev, the last part of the Kev Hawkins tetralogy, or whatever you'd call it. Went shopping for food. Reread Punisher Max: From First to Last and All-Star Superman Vol 1. Both fairly excellent. (Level of intoxication: 0.9.)
Day 19: Read Shiny Beasts - pretty fun. Watched Equilibrium (2002) - sucked. Watched About Schmidt (2002) - a moving dramedy, maybe a little too long. But Nicholson has rarely been better. (Level of intoxication: 1.1.)
Day 20: Watched a bunch of episodes of NewsRadio - not very good, but I love some of the actors, especially Phil Hartman. Read The Three Paradoxes - slightly disappointing, cos it's fine but I expected more. (The title refers to Zeno's paradoxes). Watched Secretary (2002), an unusual relationship comedy starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader. The last act wasn't very good, but otherwise I liked it. Watched The Color of Money (1986), Scorsese's worthy follow-up to The Hustler (1960) (given a one-word review in Part 8 of The Year of Watching DVDs). (Level of intoxication: 1.3.)
Day 21: Finished I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets - The Comics of Fletcher Hanks - brilliant and insane. Watched Final Destination (2000), which I got from Sammy for my birthday. Dr Arzt from Lost and Ali Larter from Heroes (dissed in Part 19 of my DVD-watching extravaganza) are in it. The tacked-on ending super-sucks. The alternate version, available on the DVD, is much more satisfying and and gels better with the rest of the movie. A short documentary featuring interviews with the film executives on why the ending was changed is an interesting case study of how to suckify your movie to reach it's commercial potential. Watched Hoffa (1992) - okay, not great. Jack Nicholson is very good as Jimmy Hoffa, but Danny DeVito is wrong for his character, and the script is one of David Mamet's weaker ones. Watched Next (2007). Nic Cage sees up to two minutes into the future, is hunted by Julianne Moore. Jessica Biel is girl of his dreams. Fascinating premise (based on PKD story), pedestrian execution. Like, you know, pretty much all PKD adaptations. (Level of intoxication: 1.3)
Day 22: Left Falun, went to Sthlm, continued to Nyköping and then Prestwick, Scotland. Then Tiny Troon. Hung around in a hotel bar. (Level of intoxication: 3.6)
Day 23: Left Troon, went to Glasgow. Wandered around. Bought 5 DVDs and a book. (Level of intoxication: 2.5)
Day 24: Left Glasgow, went to Skavsta and then to Lkpg. Bought a book and a DVD.
Day 25: Didn't do much. Watched a few eps of Ugly Betty and Veronica Mars for reasons that remain hazy.
Day 26: Went out. Finished Thinks... by David Lodge.
Day 27: Never left the house. Watched more Ugly Betty. Read some.
Day 28 (yesterday): Finished Basket Case by Carl Hiaasen. It was okay, I guess, but not very good. Cover by Charles Burns! Went to Ryd and watched The Illusionist (2006) with some people - fun evening but somewhat disappointing film.

2 comments:

Somebodyiusedtoknow said...

Hey, I'm going to Cali with knicksgrl0917 this weekend and won't be back EVER... so... here is that website I was talking about where I made extra summer cash. Later!

website

Koala Mentala said...

I didn't even know you two knew each other.