Better than a kick in the knickers with a winklepicker

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Die Hard. Best Christmas movie, hands down.

Also - Muppets Christmas Carol


Tokyo Godfathers



the League of Gentlemen Christmas Special



Blackadder's Christmas Carol



and The Snowman.

Reader, I went to Asda last night to do the big shop. There's some scary folks in there. Got some tasty ass shizzle for the next few days, though!

we also managed to see a whole film afterwards since Alex didn't wake up til nearly midnight last night - madness!

We've started properly on the Bafta screeners now, you see, and have watched many recently. We watched Watchmen, which was OK, although it did make me hum this song pretty much throughout


Moon, which was very pretty (and hummana hummana Sam Rockwell) but had a pretty lazy script - felt very short-storyish and didn't make good, engaging use of an interesting concept IMO

Up, which was delightful - touches of Roald Dahl, Gilliam and Wizard of Oz - a storyline that breaks your heart in the first ten minutes and left me terrified of becoming old and alone and brilliant, brilliant Dog Acting. (WALL-E's still my favourite, though)

and Fantastic Mister Fox last night which took a bit of warming to (very odd direction - lots of straight-on close-ups of characters during dialogue and the 180 degree rule is regularly broken) but once I got used to the style I loved it - wilfully weird both visually and verbally, fun and pretty. Not for very little kids, though - I don't think Vi would like it.



Got loads more good ones lined up - Where the Wild Things Are, District 9 & The Lovely Bones are next on my 'want to watch' list.

Bafta screeners have started coming through, so we *finally* have Star Trek XI. We saw it tonight, and... I liked it. I really liked it. I apologise for nothing and my only regret is that I have Boneitis!
My only gripes were that Uhura only seemed to exist to get felt up, fought over, perved over or snogged ( slight spoiler ) and that Bones didn't get to do more because Karl Urban's McCoy was engaging and charming. Loved Pegg!Scotty, really loved PineKirk - felt he channeled all the best bits of The Shat without. Resorting to the... FAMOUS!... stilteddelivery... QuintoSpock was good too, I suppose the narrative of the film called for his emotions to be more raw and less contained than NimoySpock's...I do love it when Spock Hulks Out in TOS, but only because he does it so rarely... if he's going to go all Amok Time twice a movie or every time someone disses his Momma it might not have the same appeal.

( few more spoilers )
But most of all, you know what? It was bloody good fun. Me likey.

We have been recasting Mary Poppins with modern actors this afternoon. So far, we have:

Mary Poppins - Kate Winslet
Bert - Ewan McGregor, or John Simm
Mr Banks - Up for serious debate - see below
Mrs Banks - Jess Hynes
The Laughing Uncle on the Ceiling - Would probably be Jim Broadbent, but ideally we'd cast Alan Rickman for the lulz
The Admiral on the roof - Jim Broadbent unless he was the Uncle, in which case, David Jason.
The Admiral's Mate - Tim Spall
Two Policemen - Simon Pegg & Nick Frost
All the Penguins - Andy Serkis

Now - a debate rages on regarding Mr Banks, because I reckon David Mitchell should play him, but Hubs says no. Hubs is willing to give both Mitchell and the less brilliant Webb roles as Bankers, but really doesn't want to give the part of Mr Banks to the eerie-eyed voice of middle-class sarcasm. He says he'll 'play it as too much of a charicature'! Pah! Give a successful comic actor a chance in this, our entirely hypothetical recasting of a film that should never actually be remade, Hubby!

I think secretly Hubs just doesn't want to relinquish the role to anybody but the brilliant David Tomlinson. At one point he did suggest that Tomlinson would just have to be CG'd in to every scene of our remake. Very telling.

EDIT - bethamphetam1ne had the brilliant idea of Colin Firth as Mr Banks, which I'm happy to do, although Hubs believes that this is Sacrelige. In case you;re wondering what La Reynolds' role would be in the Poppins Reboot, BTW, he will play the Pearly King who says 'I said it to me girl, and now me girl's me wife'.

I have been in need of cheering today. Due to irritable legs (ah, Pregnancy, never change) I took some time to get to sleep last night, and then Vi was up very early and has been, while generally in a better mood than lately, still quite temperamental. Plus I still have a bit of a cold and a very hoarse voice - not made any better by having to repeat phrases like 'come on', 'don't do that', 'hold my hand', 'eat your lunch' and so on ad infinitum. Oh, and Vi decided she wanted to watch Big Cook Little Cook while having breakfast today, which just sealed my bad mood. They are the shittest people on telly. And that includes Horne & Corden.

Anyway, what ended up cheering me was the discovery that Vi enjoys the dance numbers from Singin In The Rain - 'Make Em Laugh' is her favourite, but this number particularly cheered me. And, as Vi noted, they are very naughty for jumping on the table.



If you've had a crappy day today, give this a watch. I guarantee it will make you feel better. If it doesn't, there's something wrong with you.

Insurrection Redux Part Troi!

( Mediocrities of the world! I absolve you! )

More for you, my lovelies, and you'll have to wait til after Easter for any more - I'm going on my travels!

NSFW, BTW.

( The Naughty Cupboard, the Flying Sue and the Wanking Bridge. )

We finally got Insurrection from Love Film a few days back. I figured, even if I wasn't going to use that film in Rollercoaster (undecided so far as to whether I will) I should really see it at least if I was going to take the story through to Nemesis and beyond.

So tonight we decided to brave it. And, you know what, if you have an excellent Snarking Partner like wot I do, it's not actually that bad. It does, however, appear to be a film about absolutely nothing. We watched about an hour of it tonight and nothing happened. Actually, a bunch of barely connected nothings happened, but funny nothings nontheless - made funnier by Hubs' comments. 'Would *you* like to satisfy a Big One?' was my personal favourite, although I ruined the moment shortly after by claiming Picard was walking onto a bridge to 'furiously crack one off all night long'.
This just about pipped -
RIKER: I don't think Dr Crusher can give me what I need.
HUBS: Yes she can. You, and every man on the ship.
ME: Says so on the door of the Ladies' Loos.

We've just got to the bit where Picard's wearing a leather jacket and the two people he wants to stay behind are, conveniently, the only ones still wearing uniforms. Fun times.

I am definitely using the phrase 'Think he's gone a little bit "Daisy, Daisy" in the Mainframe' later in the story, though. I wouldn't have come up with that one without this silly film.

Kind of have a hankering to rent out Generations, now. More silly, snarkable fun, with a FUCKING STARSHIP CRASH in the middle.

Ugh. I feel rotten today, with no real reason why - tired, dizzy, nauseas and emotional. Poot. The constant downpour hasn't helped. Neither did the fact that I needed to wrangle with the computer for about an hour this afternoon in order to get the tracks I bought off iTunes onto my non-Apple MP3 player. Stupid fucking 'file protection'. I bought the fucking album, all you're 'protecting' it from is me! Memo to self - never use iTunes again. It's too annoying.

The album in question, BTW, is the Dr Who S4 soundtrack. Just finished watching S4 on LoveFilm and I'm happy to admit I was completely wrong about Donna - she was brilliant, once she's stopped just being Catherine Tate and did some proper actin'. But I really thought that the music made this series - it was so very pretty, especially the Ood's song and that weird backwardsy music in Turn Left. Often helped me ignore that many of the plots were just fucking stupid.

Haven't commented on the Baftas yet - basically, although I really enjoyed Slumdog and thought it was a very good movie, I don't think it was worthy of sweeping the board last night. Frost/Nixon and Milk were better films in my opinion. And I reckon Kate Winslet got the wrong Bafta. She acted circles round Little Leo in Revolutionary Road, whereas I felt that pretty much every aspect of The Reader was just phoning in for a multitude of gongs. As Kate herself said in Extras, 'that's the only way you get an Oscar - play someone who was in the War or a Mental.' She hedges her bets in The Reader and plays both. Glad Noel Clarke won the rising star award, though (I'm still not over Chiwitel Ejiofor losing out in 2006) although I hope that the General Public didn't vote for him just because he's That Bloke Of Dr Who. The bloke's a budding auteur, for the love of Jeff. If only Kidulthood hadn't put the fear of God into me.

Anyhoo, let's see what the Oscars bring! Come on, Frost/Nixon!