A few weekends ago, I made the trip up North to become Godparent to my nephew. Fortunately, my brother and his wife don’t take the massive responsibilities they’ve asked me to accept too seriously, so mainly this meant going into a Church for an hour and then onto an afternoon do at a local public house, where said nephew regularly admonished me for spending too much time at the bar and not enough time at his party. I’m pleased to report he’s developed a keen fascination with trains, and can now readily discern between an electrically powered Pendelino and a regular diesel train (both pass through his local station regularly). Whilst there is something impressive about the speed of the Pendelino trains that run up and down that west coast line, not to mention the engineering that allows them to do it, I hope he doesn’t become too disillusioned when he travels on one and finds they’re hideously cramped, uncomfortable, and always ludicrously overbooked coming out of London. Branson, if you allow that to happen to my young charge, they’ll be Hell to pay.
After the main party I continued drinking in town with my brother and Terry Christian, which was unexpected, where they attempted to convince me Bramhall, Cheshire was a better place to be single than London.
Meanwhile, been to the cinema recently:
Moon - reservations about how much you’d actually save, economically speaking, by establishing the kind of set-up that serves as the the film’s premise aside, I really enjoyed Bowie Jnr’s directorial debut. Was pleased the much talked about twist was actually the premise, and that it turned out to be a rather touching, thought-provoking movie about alienation, identity and compassion. A great performance from Sam Rockwell also cements his place as one of the best actors of his generation.
District 9 - This, on the other hand, was just silly and tedious. Tonally it veered all over the place, from humourous to horrific to po-faced cod-meaningful, and never in a particularly entertaining way. I also think if you’re going to make a film about the evils of racism, then making the ‘others’ part of a caste system in which the entirety of the lower-caste act throughout the film exactly as the human racists describe them as acting, probably isn’t a particularly smart decision.
Next: what I did on my holidays
