Sin City

I definitely enjoyed it. I don't know anything about the books, so I don't know how faithful it was, but it worked pretty well as film. It was funny in good places, and interesting, and lots of the effects were cool, as were the charactersor, or creepy as appropriate. It did seem too gratuitously gorey in many places, but I suspect that came from scenes in the book so had to be there, whether or not it worked better or worse than the book.

I did have a nagging feeling that someone had seen Resevoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction and Schindler's List and decided to do their version, in that at places all of the gore, and black and white, and playing with time all seemed slightly as if they were there for the sake of it rather than a reason; but as in the last para I think a lot of that was unchangable, so I don't think that is what happened. Though perhaps putting in a 'n years' message or something would have helped.

I think Sonicdrift summed it up with "Um, yes" and then "It was cool, but would have been a lot better with a crowd of friends who could mock the most extreme bits."

Doctor Who

Cool. I did wonder if rochveleth was disguising herself as RTD when the Doctor was (arguably) flirting with Jack again, and became certain when bondage was mentioned :)

Though I would point out that I can't remember Jack definitely responding to Dr's flirting at any point, it could be one way so far.

I was glad they kept Jack though. He was a bit annoying when he first appeared -- well, ok still is -- but is great to watch, and its good to have a companion who like knows alien tech stuff.

Ricky. He had a couple of good lines, and I feel for him because he's probably the most realistic self-insertion character, but he's just rather boring. And Rose doesn't seem to like him at all, even when she's saying she does; and just because he's boring on screen doesn't mean he's not a good boyfriend, he certainly tries, but neither of them seem to have any affection.

Slitheen. I liked what they tried to do, moral ambiguity always needs exploring. But you can go too far for the sake of humour: the doctor was all very smug about poison needles etc over dinner, but seriously, if he missed one of her tricks he'd likely be condeming the earth to being destroyed, starting with cardiff, so it was rather too blase. And Margaret was trying to change, but, like, step zero in changing is not wiping out planets; if it had been just cardiff that'd be a *bit* more plausible. Though the whole 'raised to it' thing was a good point. Another unexplored option would be to offer her a painless death if she was worried about being boiled.

The ending seemed a load of DEM, though.

Lazy weekend

I had an incredably lazy weekend. On friday I went to Sin City, but after that didn't schedule anything.

I had gone through my piles of bills and statements that I was going to look at soon, and checked everything is up to date, and then redid my funky "expediture per week, month or year" spreadsheet by actually looking at a statement and seeing what I did spend in a month, and using genuine utility charges, rather than guessing both, and it looks like I'm doing ok. Though I need to do it for multiple months; I kind of ignored a ball ticket or so that is definitely a one off, but has to be recorded *somewhere*.

Also I was nostalgicly playing Hexen (an archaic FPS with slight roleplayingness in the stats if not plot), and concluded (1) it's cool to be good at something you used to suck at (2) it would be cool to get some more games and (3) I play life the way I play RPGs; not knowing how much money or healing potions will be available later I tend to horde them until I have no choice, and then expend some without thinking about it, whereas reasonable planning might occasionally leave me short more often would be easier in the long run, and hence I should spend some of the surplus I think I had on shiny discs.

I went into town and got a few 3-for-£n movies and games, and trawled many second hand shops. Then I spent the rest of the weeknd trying to get the games to run. OK, and reading lots. And writing a bit. And tidying not veyr much.

Early Asimov stories: I love it, Isaac, but for crying out loud, one more story written around an awful pun in the last line and I'll disown you from the genre. Though there was one where the character was lynched for it, so I forgive.

Dodgeball: that was quite fun. I thought goodguy and badguy were actually quite similar, except badguy being slimier. And I got all the way to the end and then the pirate took his scarf off and I said "Oh my god! Its Alan Tudyk, who plays Wash in Firefly[1]!" I really do suck at recognising actors :)

[1] I said this inside my head so explaining who he was was implicit and didn't take any longer, but I put it in here for anyone who doesn't know, so I didn't have to bother with a footnote. Oops.