Monday, September 26, 2005

update

hi everyone


well, it was off for another scan today and i am pleased to say that all seems well. have to say and not show this time as young Napoleon Elvis was lying with his back to us, so there was nothing to take a photograph of! all is well, though - growth and development (if that's the right way of saying it) are on course.

we are off for the 3D scan thing tomorrow, one from which he presumably will not be able to hide away. it will be put onto video, and so with some luck i should be able to get some images to post here. if not, expect my apologies to be printed instead.

otherwise, i decided (surprise surprise) to watch the three films which have been made of Bret Easton Ellis novels to date. my opinions, for what they are worth, would be (in chronological book order) :

Less Than Zero : other than another sterling job by Robert Downey jnr, this film is somewhat at a loss and a bit of a mess. it does not know what it wants to be. it picks up some vague thread of a plot from the book and does the best that it can with it. i do not believe that this is the best that could be made of the book, but i doubt anyone will ever revisit it to have another go.

The Rules Of Attraction : outstanding, breathtaking, ingenius filmmaking and it does a damn good job of trying to capture what the state of mind of the book feels like for the reader. well done Roger Avary for the adaptation, and take a bow James Van Der Beek for your exceptional performance as Sean. i only wish all film adaptations of novels were like this, since we live in a world where you have to have film adaptations. good luck, cast and crew, with your efforts to secure funding for filming Glamorama. and the soundtrack is spot on!

American Psycho : oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear. what a mess. Christian Bale was an ace choice as Patrick Bateman, but what on earth is going on here? the violence was clearly impossible to film. instead of coming up with some vague way of referring to the acts, instead we get completely different murders, and a stupid "murder mystery" plot with Willem Dafoe as a detective who, at best, lasted a couple of lines or maybe a paragraph in the novel now being a key character. i thought i was just being harsh the first time i saw it, but the 2nd viewing, a couple of years later, has not helped. dismal, and very annoying.

conclusions? why can't we just have books to read, films to see and never, or rarely should the two meet??

otherwise, i have played the new Franz Ferdinand album, You Could Do So Much Better With Franz Ferdinand, and i am still in two minds about the group. mostly, i think they are ace, but part of me suspects they are just one big lazy Talking Heads / Happy Mondays collision tribute, with a few rifts stolen from Ocean Colour Scene. they are a band that i reccomend you listen to, though.

right, lightning crashes outside, so i had better disconnect the pc.

behave yourselves!!!!

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