Sad News

While talking to my mother earlier this evening, I learned that my great aunt died recently - about two weeks ago, we think.

We're not sure because various family members had been trying to contact her over the last couple of weeks, with no response. One relative popped round, and found her at home, dead. It was supposedly clear that she'd been dead for some time, but an autopsy is necessary as there is some mystery surrounding the circumstances. She was old, but not obviously at death's door.

Making matter worse, attempts have been made to contact her cousin - of a similar age - but she's not at her last known address, and the person running the place only started recently, and has no knowledge of her. We're attempting to track her down...

I hardly knew my great aunt - only remember seeing her briefly around Christmas time - but this death is far more upsetting than that of my grandmother last year. The circumstances are bad enough on their own, but she'd been living alone for quite some time having lost her husband a few years ago.

This leaves my other grandmother - my mother's mother - and I'm not sure how we're going to go about telling her, considering she has Alzheimer's...

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A Triumph of Optimism Over Experience

Had to get the train home tonight as my boss was working late and, while waiting for the train on the station platform, I saw a woman using hairspray.

Bearing in mind that she was heading out of town and, past that station, everything was above ground, the fact that rain was pouring down should probably have put her off such extravagance.

People Are Weird.

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Shaggy Dog Stories

Not sure quite what's going on with Hollywood these days, but the trend towards remakes seems to be gaining momentum. Horror seems to be the focus right now, with the Halloween movies already rebooted, Friday 13th prolonging its existence with fairly regular reboots/sequels, and even Nightmare on Elm Street (minus Robert Englund, Freddy is played by the diminutive Jackie Earl Haley, most recently of Watchmen).

But it's Universal who have the greatest stock of the true Monster Movies, and The Wolfman is a remake of the 1941 classic starring Lon Chaney Jr. and Claude Rains. And, if this remake is anything to go by, roll on future Universal Monsters movies.

I have to admit, it's a bit of a patchy film. I dozed through the first half hour or so and, to be honest, I didn't find any of the performances particularly electrifying. Benicio Del Toro does a good enough job as the man cursed to become a werewolf at the full moon, but it's not a particularly compelling character. Anthony Hopkins lends the film some weight, but is equally unsympathetic. Even Hugo Weaving as the Scotland Yard Inspector looking into the mystery doesn't really capture one's attention. He does slip into Agent Smith delivery once in a while, but not enough to ruin the film.

The main problem, at the heart of the movie, is that there's very little story, and it's played out very much by the numbers. It's all very functional. A leads to B, leads to revelation C, leads to climax D. It's not bad, and it is a remake... but it seemed rather flat.

While out, I managed to remember some of the DVDs I was after... Well, one anyway. I picked up Surrogates (missed in the cinema, but it looked intriguing), Them! (ancient cautionary tale about ants grown large following nuclear bomb tests which inspired the old Amiga game It Came From The Desert), Gran Torino (missed in the cinema, but recommended by a friend), The Good, The Bad and The Weird (Korean Western, featuring the guy who played Storm Shadow in the recent GI Joe movie) and volume 6 of TransFormers: Animated (they didn't have volume 5, though).

I have watched Surrogates and Them! today, but reviews will have to wait - giving myself an early-ish night due to a headache.

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