roundup

let's see. what have i been feeding my head?

tv
last night watched a random episode of six feet under, which is a great show in small doses (when i rented the first season on DVD i ended up feeling ever so slightly out of focus after watching it and decided one episode at a time was probably a better move). i agree with things i've read that say the opening titles sequence is excellent - it is almost perfect. but that leaves me worrying that i don't get out enough if i am starting to appreciate the merits of a credit sequence.

movies
most recently saw shaun of the dead with heath. very funny, if you like zombies and english comedies like the office.

dvds
have been getting in a lot of slothing time lately. the usual buffy nights with mark and jen have been quite frequent lately, and we've watched almost a whole season over a couple of nights (just seen the end of faith, which is a shame because i like eliza dushku).

my mum stayed at my house last week and we watched girl with a pearl earring and lost in translation, a bit of an inadvertent scarlett johansson fest. the first was...pleasant, but lacked something, i thought (as did the book, for that matter). absolutely beautiful film to look at, very evocative of vermeer, and colin firth was also extremely...good to look at. but lost in translation was infinitely better, obviously a very different film, but very well put together and great performances by johansson and bill murray.

the sunday afternoon movie fests continue, but i've seen most of them before - in the last few weeks we've watched chocolat, moulin rouge, once upon a time in mexico, nicholas nickelby, and the recruit, amongst others.

last sunday we watched kill bill vol 1 & 2 (first time for me). watching them together was a good ploy i think, they are brilliant films if you can stomach the violence and some of the ickier concepts (the bit in the hospital when the bride first wakes up and finds out what the intern has been doing to her...oh man...). tarantino's manipulation of time and genre appeal to me. uma thurman, sonny chiba and lucy liu are great. david carradine is too, in a creepy kind of way, but i never saw kung fu so i don't have much of a reference point for him. i was surprised how good daryl hannah was actually, but then the enduring image i have of her is as a mermaid in splash so i guess she didn't have to do much to improve on that.

books
you won't be surprised to learn i just read pratchett's night watch again. one of his best discworld books, i'd say.

am about to start on gaiman's american gods, but not sure if i'm in the mood for it. maybe i should give margaret atwood's the blind assassin another go. it bugs me, that i couldn't get into this book, as she had been my favourite author for years and years. i still think she's amazing (oryx and crake left indelible impressions), but maybe my capacity for complex prose has diminished over the years for some reason. i should try to rectify this, i feel.

writing
haven't done much lately. pulled out a bunch of half finished stories - wanting to know what happens next when you get to the end of one of your own stories is a good sign, i think, so hopefully i can start working on some of them again. lost interest in the cyborg story, but there is a good whack of it sitting there on my hard drive so maybe i'll go back to it one day, along with undragon stories (my MA work).


and that's me at the beginning of november.