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Saturday, 14 November 2009

Jennifer's Body

Last night was really quiet and pretty uneventful. My mouth was still pretty sore this morning and I'm still taking the painkillers. I think it's from where they cut into the gums that's causing the pain now. Also, I've barely been eating lately so I have lost quite a bit of weight.

This afternoon I went along to the cinema and saw Jennifer's Body, directed by Karyn Kusama, and written by Diablo Cody (who wrote Juno). The film is a blend of horror and comedy amd is set in a small American town and centres on two High School girls, Jennifer (played by Megan Fox), the most popular girl in school, and her less popular best friend Needy (Amanda Seyfried). However after a night out at the local bar ends in tragedy, Jennifer becomes posessed by some kind of demon which causes her to seduce and kill the local boys in order to eat them. It was a lot of fun, with plenty of humour and shocks.

On my way home I got the groceries for the week, still plenty of soup and soft foods, I'm really looking forward to when I can actually eat something substantial.

Friday, 13 November 2009

2012

Last night I was watching Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, directed by Tim Burton, on Blu-Ray DVD. The film stars Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd who sets up as a barber in London's Fleet Street sometime during the 19th Century, and is in the habit of cutting his customer's throats, and then dropping the corpses through a trap door to the pie shop below him, where his friend Mrs Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter) uses them to make her meat pies. The film is an adaptation of the 1979 Stephen Sondheim musical. The character of Sweeney Todd is quite a famous figure who originated in the 19th Century "Penny Dreadful" magazines. I normally don't like musicals but this one I liked a lot. The film is very stylishly made with some fun music.

Today my mouth was still pretty sore. I'm still taking painkillers. I was feeling kind of depressed and so, to cheer myself up, I went along to the movies. I had originally intended to go and see the movie Jennifer's Body, a kind of horror-comedy film, but due to the bus taking nearly an hour to get to the cinema, I missed it. Instead I saw 2012, directed by Roland Emmerich. It's based on the idea that the ancient Mayan calendar calculates the end of time to occur on 21 December 2012. In the movie the Earth starts to suffer from massive displacment of the crust. This causes massive tidal waves, earthquakes and volcanoes all over the Earth's surface. An unsuccessful science-fiction writer and divorced father of two (played by John Cusack), and a top US Government scientific advisor (Chiwetal Ejiofor) are among those struggling to find some kind of safety as the world falls apart. It's kind of predictable and over long but it is fun, with some really great special effects and spme pretty exciting action sequences.

Thursday, 12 November 2009

Ashes of Time

I managed to write another two thousand words of my NaNoWriMo story yesterday. Last night I watched the latest episode of True Blood, which was really good. I also watched the movie Ashes of Time Redux, directed by Wong Kar-Wai. The movie was first released in 1994, but the director released a re-edited (or "redux") version last year. The film is set in medieval China and concerns a cynical swordsman (played by Leslie Cheung) who sets himself up as a hired killer after his wife leaves him to marry his brother. He is hired by a man (Brigitte Lin) to kill his sister's boyfriend, who happens to be the swordsman's best friend, on the grounds that he deserted her. However the sister (Lin again) wants to hire him to kill her brother on the grounds that he is too possessive of her. He also ends up helping two other younger swordsmen in their seperate battles against the same group of bandits. It's a really beautiful looking film which, unusually for a martial arts movie, focusses mainly on emotion and philosophy rather than action (the fight scenes are depicted almost as fast-moving blurs of sound and colour). Apparently it was a huge flop on it's first relelase and was barely released.

Today my mouth is still quite sore, and I'm still needing painkillers. Also I am absolutely sick to death of eating soup (apparently I need a "soft diet" for a week after the procedure). I did manage to go out today though and I got the movies There Will be Blood and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street on Blu-Ray DVD.

Wednesday, 11 November 2009

Fear in the Night

I managed to do another thousand words of NaNoWriMo last night. Less than usual but I wasn't really feeling into it yesterday. Later on I watched a 1972 movie called Fear in the Night, directed by Jimmy Sangster. It's about a young woman (played by Judy Geeson) who is attacked by a mysterious assailant with an artificial arm. Later, she and her teacher husband go to a remote, deserted rural school, where she meets the creepy headmaster (played by Peter Cushing) who has an artificial arm, and who wanders around the deserted school corridors in full headmaster regalia playing tape recordings of classes in the empty classrooms to preserve the illusion that the fire-damaged school is still in session. At the school, the woman is again attacked by a mysterious, one-armed figure. Of course she immediately suspects the headmaster, but there is a twist. It was actually a pretty neat thriller.

Fortean Times magazine came yesterday, featuring this month articles about the British thriller author Dennis Wheatley, who was massively successful in the 1930s to 1970s but is almost completely unknown now, and also an article celebrating fifty years of The Twilight Zone.

I woke up and I still wasn't feeling well. I was really feeling the area where my tooth was taken out and I've still been taking painkillers. I took Monday and yesterday off work on sick leave and I've booked for the rest of the week off on annual leave so, hopefully, I'll be able to do something fun later on in the week, but for now I'm having another quiet day at home.

Tuesday, 10 November 2009

Tooth Extraction

On Sunday night I got up to 18,604 words on NaNoWriMo. I wasn't really able to do anything to it last night.

On Sunday night I watched the movies The Notorious Bettie Page, directed by Mary Harron, which starred Gretchen Mol as the controversial 1950s pin-up model Bettie Page. It was a very stylise movie and very entertaining. Following that I watched a 1949 movie called All the King's Men, directed by Robert Rossen and based on a novel by Robert Penn Warren, which starred Broderick Crawford as an honest, "man of the people" politician who runs for office vowing to stamp out political corruption, however, once he gets elected he starts behaving worse, more brutal and more corrupt, than the politicians he replaced.

Yesterday morning I went along to the Dental Surgery Institute to get my wisdom tooth removed. Basically the procedure was to cut open my gum, drill into the bone and kind of lever my tooth out. However, apparently the tooth was so impacted, they had to cut it into two. I was given a local anaesthetic, which was like four injections into my mouth, so although I was aware of what was happening, I coudn't feel any pain. The whole thing took about forty minutes.

After the operation I went to my parent's house where I mostly sat around and watched episodes of The Wire. I also watched the movies Starter for 10, directed by Tom Vaghan, about a student (played by James McAvoy) at Bristol University who gets the chance to appear on the popular TV quiz show University Challenge. It was very funny, and An American Werewolf in London, directed by John Landis, about two American hikers who are attacked by a werewolf on the moors in England. That is a really good film.

I stayed the night at my parent's and just recently got back. I've been on painkillers since the operation, and it has been sore and uncomfortable most of the time. I've not really been able to eat either.

I'm off work for the rest of the week and I hope it gets better soon.