On Friday Afternoons

I find myself here contemplating the last half hour of my working week. Normally, I wouldn’t be at work at this time of a Friday afternoon, since flexible hours (and my own reluctance to get anything done once my timesheet is submitted) tend to conspire to see me out the door of the office by 3pm.
But since this is my first week back from holidays, and it is only a 3 day week, I don’t have the time up my sleeve to do that today.

So here I am, contemplating the wonder that is Friday afternoon.
Time seems longer here, perhaps because I know that 2 days of freedom are mere minutes away. The office is quieter than normal too. I’m not the only one to get out as soon as I can most weeks.

Having extra time at leisure on a Friday afternoon makes the weekend feel that much longer, almost as if there was a whole extra day of peace.

Next week I’ll be out of here earlier.

Twilight/Quantum of Solace

She of the infrequent blogs is back from holidays and today I’m going to review the two films I saw last night – Twilight and Quantum of Solace. An odd double, to be sure, but who am I to question the provider of cheap cinema experiences?

Twilight
My God this was a bad film. Horrendous, in fact. Now, I’m not a fan of the book, I haven’t even read it, but I was well aware of the story going into the film (thank you wikipedia and themoviespoiler.com). I hadn’t even heard positive things about it either (one review giving the film the almost unheard of association of being “better than the book” while still being crap). Indeed, the only reason I went to the screening is because a group of friends wanted to go, in order to poke fun at the “14 year old emos” in the audience. We’re a cynical and occasionally cruel bunch, we are.

Things didn’t start well. A line for tickets stretching out the door, and solely populated by, well, 14 year old girls.
As for the film itself? Angsty. Angst central, in fact. Now, there is nothing wrong with a bit of angst. In the right setting, it can be a good thing. But this? This was too much. More than once I asked “Why am I here?”, and I was somewhat amused to see the “Oh god this is horrible yet I am still watching this why am I still watching I’m still here” expression on my partner’s face, an expression I’ve only seen once before, when watching the first episode of “Maid in Akihabara”.
Traumatic indeed. And then it got worse. The key scene of reveal (“Vampire”) had the four of us in silent hysterics. I’m not kidding, there was a large amount of biting of hands to try and stop laughing. I believe I almost fell off my seat. I think the film makers used every single cliché they could think of in their little romantic montage.
And then they did it again. Surely you have heard of the “dancing as a metaphor for sex” comment. Well, this took it one step further. It was tree climbing as a metaphor for sex. and lying in fields. etc etc. If you’ve seen the film, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
On to more review like areas – the acting. Hoo boy, where to start. The lass playing Bella was 3 shades of wooden for most of the film, as was Mr Ed. I mean, Edward. (He was much better in Potter, I believe). I almost burst out laughing at the obvious “Hi, I’m a vampire” makeup of the eldest Mr Cullen, and the others weren’t much better. Bad. Very bad. Surely, one could do better than that not even trying?
I must admit though, the film wasn’t all bad. Indeed, the pursuit sections towards the end and the fights were sufficiently well done to make me forget the angst. It’s quite possible that those were the only sections where the film came alive.
And then at the very end, came the most concerning thing at all. The audience applauded.
Rating 3/10

Quantum of Solace
Ah, welcome back Mr Bond, it is indeed good to see you again.
I have become quite accustomed to Daniel Craig’s Bond. He lacks the smarmy-ness of Pierce Brosnan’s, whilst still being the ultimate secret agent, and that is welcome indeed.
Quantum of Solace contains all that is required in a Bond film, without the torture scenes that have popped up in the last few.
Car chase: Check.
Feisty Bond girl: Checkx2.
Improbable fight scenes: Check.
M revoking Bond’s passport: Check.

Judi Dench is as ever awesome as M, and the supporting cast acquit themselves well. I still don’t understand the attractiveness of either Bond girl, but then again, I’m not the one they are trying to attract.
Quantum of Solace sees Bond shake off the grief over Vesper’s death in Casino Royale, so the next film should see him back to his best. I’m peeved they killed off Rene Mathis, I liked the guy, even if he did have questionable taste in friends. And I wouldn’t object to a reappearance by the CIA’s Felix, either.
All in all a much more enjoyable film than Twilight, and in my humble opinion, better than Casino Royale as well.
Rating: 7/10

1337-speak

I just discovered that with the recent interest rate cuts, my repayments are now leet dollars a month… Oh the amusements of being a geek.

On Bagels and Other Achievements

As I sit here, munching on my plain old ordinary toasted bagel with cream cheese, I ponder how someone first discovered the way of how to make these tasty delights.
Which brings me to the thought of a conversation I had yesterday (I originally typed yeasterday… Bread on the brain, perhaps) regarding the pinnacle of human endeavour (which itself stemmed from my partner’s musing on what was the best thing *before* sliced bread). I was presented with two options: The Wheel, and The Written Word.

Initially I thought the choice quite simple – but on further reflection, it was not so.

At the end of our discussion, we had established that they were of equal significance, but for differing reasons.

The wheel makes civilisation work; the word makes civilisation exist.

Anyone care to comment?

Musings

I’m a bit scattered this morning. It’s a Wednesday, but I keep thinking it’s Thursday. This is partially due to wishful thinking, and also due to an interruption to my normal routine. I regularly visit my family of a Thursday evening for dinner, but this week they are busy, so it has been changed to Wednesday, and hence throwing my schedule out of whack. (Where did that phrase come from anyway?) In a way it makes it easier for me, because I get the opportunity to finish my Christmas shopping on Thursday night (hooray for late night shopping) but the disruption is causing great confusion. All this tiredness doesn’t help either.

Fortunately, I’ve got two (ok, nearly three) days of work left before I’m on holidays, and I really need the break. The last few weeks have been rather stressful at the office, primarily due to the world economy going down the plughole.
As a consequence, our clients are cutting back on budgets and the like, and discretionary IT work is usually some of the first things to go. My team hasn’t been as hard hit as some of the others here, but we are still losing work, and the news earlier in the week that one of our major clients is taking one of their major systems back in house was cause for concern.

We were reassured that we’d be picking up more work in different areas and that the team wouldn’t really be affected, but I worry.
I worry about everything – I am a worrier.
I wouldn’t have been so concerned had I not be in the situation of having a home loan to pay off. ~sigh~

I’ve been very lucky in terms of jobs. I didn’t have much trouble finding a part time job before I started uni, and I stayed in that job the whole way through my degree right up until a few weeks before I started full time work in my current job. I landed this job before I even finished my degree. The thought of suddenly being without employment and having to go back to living with my parents so as to not lose my house is a great horror to me. Of course there hasn’t been any indication as to any possible job losses in my team. Yet.

Burn After Reading

Last night I had the dubious pleasure of watching the latest film by the Coen brothers, Burn After Reading. It’s only my second experience of watching one of their films (the first being the relatively normal Intolerable Cruelty) so I might be missing the quintessential Coen brothers’ style.

Whichever way you look at it, Burn After Reading is a strange film. The plot revolves around several characters: Linda Litzki (Frances McDormand), Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt), Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), Katie Cox (Tilda Swinton) and Osbourne Cox (John Malkovitch).

The film begins with Osbourne Cox getting essentially fired from his job at the CIA. He doesn’t take this too well. Indeed, were someone to use this film as part of a drinking game (using ‘What the f***’ or just any variation of ‘f***’ as the drink trigger), Osbourne’s opening rant would remove quite a few participants, and those still standing wouldn’t last much longer. The very irate Cox then proceeds to write his memoirs, which somehow fall into the hands of Linda and Chad, two very vapid gym employees, and it is what happens next that sets the stage for the rest of the film. Chad suggests to Linda that they seek a ‘reward’ for being ‘good samaritans’ and returning Cox’s memoirs to him, aka blackmail.

The film continues on, getting more and more complicated and strange, and then suddenly everything stops, and we get a little interlude (if you could call it that) from the CIA guys, who are desperate to get themselves out of the mess that they still can’t figure out how it started.
And then – end of film.
To quote Osbourne Cox: “What. The. F***?!”

Let it be said that Brad Pitt puts in a very entertaining turn as the very very very empty-headed Chad.
There are a few laughs to be had in the film – primarily from Chad’s expressions, and the CIA guys.

I wouldn’t say it was a bad film, I’ve seen much worse (Yes, ‘Meet the Parents’ I’m looking at you), but I wouldn’t be keen on watching it again. I suspect a lot of my confusion and meh-ness about the film can be attributed to my lack of familiarity with the Coen brothers style of film-making. Pitt is hilarious though. Almost worth watching the film for.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Where am I again?

After a break of a few days I’m back with musings on the old standard small talk topic – the weather.

Here in Australia, it’s summer. Or, it’s *meant* to be summer at the very least. This does not explain why I wore a jumper and a cardigan to the movies last night. Or why I now have snow falling on my blog.

Having been told all week that Wednesday would be a scorcher and to expect temperatures around 35 degrees (celcius), I dressed accordingly. More fool me, as the temperature didn’t get higher than 25. I feel the cold easily and as usual, my office had the air conditioning cranked up to ‘Arctic’, so I froze.

This morning, I looked out from my balcony over the city and couldn’t really see much at all. It was rather misty. Low cloud hung over the whole area, even right out to sea. It’s still like that as I can’t see the mountains from my desk, only a wall of grey beyond the freeway.

The weather here lately reminds me a bit of a quote from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (one of my favourite films of all time).

A year passed: winter changed into spring, spring changed into summer, summer changed back into winter, and winter gave spring and summer a miss and went straight on into autumn…

I wonder what tomorrow will be like.