Bold

Bit of a mixed week. My Friday magazine went quite smoothly up until it turned out that most of the feature copy wasn't in... That's the only reason we were in the office till just after 9pm. Other than that, the magazine went more smoothly that most of the others. I'm not sure if the manager is finally understanding what he needs to do and when, but the flatplan certainly wouldn't have been in the sensible state it was in were it not for one of his staff, who helped me sort everything into the relevant sections.

Not really looking forward to tomorrow - I'm about half a week behind on my Wednesday magazine. Thankfully my boss has offered to take on my next Monday magazine so I can focus on the next Friday magazine once I've got the current one out of the door.

Saturday was a bit of a lazy day... Lots of internet, a bit of laundry, some napping and some TV/movie later on. Did an excellent job of making myself cry watching Big Fish. I'd already seen it in the cinema, but it's lost none of its poignancy the second time round.

Today was far more active, by comparison. Yesterday's washing up, a bit of tidying, putting away the laundry, then off to see Star Trek at IMAX... I've deliberately not read about it, fearing that too many spoilers might... well... spoil it for me. That and, frankly, the prospect of a time-travelling Future Spock offering Leonard Nimoy a cameo didn't really impress me much.

Had I known it was not only directed by JJ Abrams, but written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (the writing team behind TransFormers), I might have been more excited.

It was a very bold step to basically write off almost 40 years of Trek and start at the beginning, changing a few significant points but, to be honest, I'd been getting steadily more bored with Star Trek movies... There just wasn't anywhere to take the series. First Contact was probably the last of the good ones, simply because the Borg represented such an important threat in the Trek universe. It wasn't a brilliant movie, feeling more like an extended and very dark episode of the TV series.

Casting was nigh on perfect... Kirk wasn't quite the Kirk we remember, but the others were very well written and played. Many nods to the TV series, and plenty of uses of catchphrases we know and love. My only real gripe - and it's a small one - is that Chekov wasn't quite right. It was as if they'd cast the only person they found who could do a brilliant impression of Walter Koenig's Chekov.

Do I smell a sequel?

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Possible Service Interruptions

There's a distinct possibility that my computer may be dying.

I know, I know, I've been complaining about its speed (or the lack thereof) and general glitchiness for ages, but recently it's taken to crashing. Or it had... I don't trust it to keep going much longer.

It started with a blanking of the screen, and progressed rapidly to blanking the screen, showing a pair of scrolling green bars on the lefthand side of the screen and then restarting - not even into Safe Mode.

To be honest, it's been well behaved since then... but I'm backing things up regardless.

Which led me to another set of problems: My DVD writer is very particular about the discs it uses. I am convinced I've written to DVD-R and DVD+R, as well as DVD+RW... but when I bought a pack of 50 own-brand DVD-Rs from Staples some time ago, I didn't reckon on my computer refusing to acknowledge there was a disc in the drive, let alone a writable disc.

So I took them back, and exchanged for a pack of Verbatim discs... to much the same effect.

At this point, particularly in the light of the sales assistant asking if I was sure I wanted DVD-R rather than DVD+R, I decided to look up the specs of my drive... and, sure enough, it's not equipped to deal with DVD-R. Theoretically, DVD+R is sound... but the pack of DVD+Rs I got in the second exchange also fail to work - there's a 'problem writing to the disc' right at the start.

Today, I picked up a pack of 5 DVD+RWs, out of spite, and they work fine... But now I have 50 writable DVDs that I can't use, and can't face going back to Staples again...

On the subject of today, I popped over to Harrow to stock up on underwear - somehow I seem to have far less now I'm at the flat. Because I'm a moron, I didn't check what size I need before I left the flat, so I had to guess... and I got the wrong size. Still, slightly too large is better than slightly too small.

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Shopping... of the nonessential variety

Today's trip uptown went rather well, all told. While I didn't get the bulk of the movies I was after on DVD - having recently developed a hankering for more of the Billy Wilder stuff I saw at the National Film Theatre some time ago - I did manage to pick up Resident Evil: Degeneration, the CGI movie spin-off which I couldn't find while I was out yesterday, and the original colours version of TransFormers Animated Ultra Magnus. The shades of blue look far more impressive than the garish 'Roadbuster' version that is the only official UK release that figure will see. Seems like a good, solid figure, so I wasn't too fussed at paying the usual Forbidden Planet premium.

While I was there, I also picked up the Endymion Omnibus, to follow on from the Hyperion Omnibus, which I finished reading a couple of months back. While Hyperion had quite a satisfactory ending in itself, I figured it'd be worth revisiting that universe, to see how it all carries on.

I also had lunch uptown, with my old mate Paul, catching up with further details on how his job is going now the buyout of another company is more or less complete. Thankfully, things seem quite stable.

Not much else to report, I guess... Back to work tomorrow, with my next deadline on Friday.

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Wolfish

Eventually, I kind of realised I had to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

I also realised that I didn't have to enjoy it... but seeing it was inevitable. I read some of the Marvel Comics version (while it was free as part of Marvel's Webcomic thing that eventually became pay-per-view), which read like the bastard offspring of The Secret Garden and Call of the Wild, so I wasn't really expecting much. I also kind of predicted from Ryan Reynolds' appearance in the posters that he was going to end up being Deadpool, despite knowing next to nothing about the character.

So, the movie...

Taken in its own right, it's a fairly successful actioner. Lots of explosions, gunfire, rippling muscles (seriously, Hugh Jackman must have really bulked up for this one - he looked much bigger all round that he did in any of the X-Men movies!), and buckets of mansweat. None of it stands up to scrutiny, but how many movies do?

While I rather object to the casting of Liev Schrieber as Victor Creed/Sabretooth, rather than bringing back Tyler Mane, I have to admit, he did a reasonable job... He just didn't seem big or scary enough. The confused loyalties and double-crossings for reasons that may or may not have been made clear did not serve to add depth to the story, and the eventual wiping of Wolverine's memory seemed too much like an afterthought, even though one could see it coming even before one of the scientists announced that Adamantium bullets were the only thing that could bring Wolverine down (while any bullets seemed to do a decent job in the X-Men movies). The inclusion of pre-X-Men Scott Summers and a certain Remi LeBeau seemed gratuitous... both could easily have been written out, and seemed to be there only to tie things in to X-Men.

As far as the story goes, the best thing I can say for it is that it referred to the comic book original only very briefly, with sickly young boy running off with his brother in the first few minutes, but none of the Secret Garden stuff, and no sign of the little girl brought in to be his playmate.

Much of Wolverine's history (and Sabretooth's, for that matter) was dealt with in the intro sequence, and suggested that the man is somewhere in the region of 140 years old...

Fun, on the whole, but very disappointing and just a little bit silly.

Before the movie, I did a bit of shopping - more Lemsips to help me kick this bloody cold, and a bunch of DVDs, including Silent Hill (fuelling my current fixation with the series?). I watched that when I got back to the flat, and have to say it's still a pretty good horror movie in and of itself, and a reasonable attempt to add to the mythology of Silent Hill... but the ending is still utterly disappointing and ill-fits the rest of the series.

Tomorrow, I'm hoping to pop uptown... Largely to visit Forbidden Planet and/or Orbital Manga... but there may be side trips, and lunch out is part of the plan.

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Birthday bits

Since it's my father's birthday today, I popped back to the house to drop over his present, staying for lunch and dinner. While I was there, I also grabbed a few more bits and bobs to bring back to the flat, crashed out on the sofabed for a couple of hours (I slept well last night, but I guess last week was pretty draining).

They'd had some excitement earlier in the week, when one of the houses at one end of the road seemed to be on fire. Police, as well as the Fire Brigade, were on the scene. Maternal Grandmother has been very weird - 'popping out' to get fruit or milk (whatever she believes she's lacking the moment you ask) when her shelves and fridge are fully stocked, and the friend who's meant to be keeping her out of trouble has broken her wrist. This can't end well...

My father seemed to like his new belt buckle, though initially thought the centrepiece could be removed simply to replace it with other mountings. He looked very pleased when I demonstrated the cigarette lighter, and he ended up putting it on after lunch, replacing the elaborate dragon buckle he had been wearing. I know it's not a useful gift, as such, and that it could be seen to be 'encouraging' him to smoke, but I long ago gave up on the idea of getting him to quit because, frankly, it hasn't affected his health that badly, and he becomes quite intolerable if he goes without smoking for any length of time.

While I was rummaging around upstairs, I heard the TV go on... and my folks were watching the BBC's ill-advised rehash of Robin Hood. Morbid curiosity got the better of me, and I popped down to have a look. It really hasn't improved since I last saw it... the actor playing Prince John is obviously taking his pantomime villain cues from Tim Curry (not necessarily a bad thing, but Tim Curry always does it well), and the fight between Gisbourne and the Sheriff seemed to be trying to say something important, but it didn't quite work.

Primeval, meanwhile, is just becoming screwy. They seem to have killed off the lead of the first couple of series, and replaced him with several more action-oriented heroes... who, this week, were being pursued by giant carnivorous turkeys. Um. Yeah. Oh, and there's an 'artifact', which may be a map of the anomalies. Or something. Most of the cast is so annoying, I long for them to be killed off... and next week they face a 'dragon' and a knight who's out to slay it... Good grief.

I'm still feeling pretty grim, all told, but I've had a headache all day, which may explain some of it. If only I could stop coughing for any length of time...

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