Susan Hated Literature

Today, as I was ensuring I didn’t have to lug three tonnes worth of glossy publications and leaflets^[1] by hand, I got the the bus to work. Okay, I’ll admit it. I usually get the bus to work. But I’ve been prety good recently about walking home. As I was saying, as I was getting the bus a fine and upstanding member of Garda Siochana pulled us over.

See, the was a bus already picking up passengers at the stop at the top of O’Connell St., so our bus driver pulled in behind and let the people get on. Only this very fine member of the Traffic Corp didn’t like this. And proceeded to tell him to pull in and then ticketed the the bus driver.

Honestly. What a load of crap. Especially seeing as he wasn’t stopping anywhere that he wouldn’t have been stopping anyways. I mean that he would have had to wait behind the other bus in any case, so he wasn’t causing any more of an obstruction to the rest of the traffic than he should have been. Fussy cops.

But as we sat, watching the lights change from green to red to green to red, as the garda wrote out his ticket, this crazy woman came along and asked the bus driver if he’d be so good as to open the door so she could hop off and grab and Metro while we waited. Was she insane? The bus driver gets a ticket for stopping a few feet short of where he should do, god only knows what the cop woulda done if he’d opened the doors again between stops and let some get on and off! The horror of it all.

Anyone use Google Reader? Isn’t the new layout very snazzy altogether? Must start learning those shortcuts so I never have to use the mouse again

Related posts

• The world is full of educated derelicts (8)
• Hey! You use language like that again son, you’ll wish you hadn’t! (11)
• A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention in human history, with the possible exception of handguns and tequila (7)
• You think that I could muster up a little soft, shoop devil sway (7)
• You struck me dumb like radium (19)

Dir: Adam McKay
Writ: Will Ferrell & Adam Mckay

• Will Ferrell - Ricky Bobby
• John C. Reilly - Cal Naughton, Jr.
• Gary Cole - Reese Bobby
• Sacha Baron Cohen - Jean Girrard

Ricky Bobby, born in a speeding car, wants nothing more out of life than to go fast. That, and win. Because if you aren’t first, you’re last. As his daddy told him the one time he turned up in his life. And as a winning NASCAR driver he seems to have a pretty good life. He wins, has plenty of money, two obnoxious kids with the genius names of Walker, and Texas Ranger, a beautiful wife, and the ability to go fast all he wants.

But then things begin to go wrong, as Jean Girrad, an F1 driver turns up on the circut. Ricky crashes his car, and all of a sudden begins to feel the fear. He loses his drive, his wife, his desire to go fast. And its all fun and games when his father shows up trying to help him out, in his own drunken bum with a heart of stone way.

Overall it is an entertaining enough film, with a fair few laughs, but it isn’t the genius that was Anchorman and a few of the laughs fall flat. Still, worth watching if you’ve nothing better to do.

Related posts

• Step Brothers (1)
• The Producers (0)
• Slither (9)
• Severance (0)
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (0)

Author: Louis De Bernières
ISBN: 0099478986
DDC: 823.914

The people who remained in this place have often asked themselves why it was that Ibrahim went mad. I am the only one who knows, but I have always been committed to silence, because he begged me to respect his grief, or, as he also put it, to take pity upon his guilt.

I’m not really sure where to start with this review, because this book covers so much. It is set in a small village in Anatolia, in the finaly few years of the Ottoman Empire, just before the forced separation of Turks from Greeks, and Muslims from Christian. There are a multitude of characters, sometimes they tell their own stories in first person narration, other times a third person narrator details their lives as they intertwine and grow apart.

Continue Reading »

Related posts

• The Medici Guns (0)
• The Wars (4)
• The Sunne in Splendour (2)
• The Separation (1)
• The Reverse of the Medal (1)

Dir: Stephen Frears
Writ: Peter Morgan

• Helen Mirren - HM Queen Elizabeth II
• Michael Sheen - Tony Blair
• James Cromwell - Prince Philip
• Sylvia Syms - HM The Queen Mother
• Paul Barrett - Trevor Rees-Jones
• Helen McCrory - Cherie Blair

This is an odd sort of film. Parts of it are very good, but other parts, well I just don’t think they work. The film is mostly set in the few days surrounding the death of Diana, as the British public went into public mourning over the “People’s Princess” while the Royal Family seemed to remain aloof and distant. Thereby earning a lot of criticism from their subjects.

Maybe my main problem with the film was that I never understood the huge out pourings of grief over Diana, and I really don’t get why she still manages to sell papers, almost 10 years after her death. The hundreds of thousands of people who went into the streets in tears didn’t know her at all, yet her death still impacted hugely on them. And the Queen of England didn’t appear to get it either. Prefering to stay in Balmoral with the family, dealing with the family’s grief in private. In a dignified manner.

And Helen Mirren does a good job at portraying this woman raised to be dignified and in control. Raised in a different generation so that to some she appears cold-hearted and distant. The rest of the casting I wasn’t so impressed with. James Cromwell is too dignified to really excel as Prince Phillip, although on occasion he does get it right. While many of the other actors looked to similar to the characters they were portraying and so came across more as a skit show rather than as actors. And I wouldn’t be happy if I was Cherie Blair as written for this film.

Also the fact that “the boys” were never shown was a bit of a mistake from the story’s perspective, although I can see why the film makers would want to respect the privacy of William and whatever the other one is called. And I suppose you could argue that the film is about the Queen, not the family, but it didin’t really work for me.

Overall I felt the film was effective in parts, especially in its mixing real footage of the time, but it just didn’t work as a whole. As a character study of the Queen, yes. But apart from that it wasn’t great, maybe because instead of characters we got imitations of the other main players.

Or then again, maybe it is just the fact that I really don’t seen the point in having a monarchy at all, and that political opinion coloured my interpretation of the film.

IMDb | Film Fest Journal | Me Against the Keyboard | Movie Reviews for Greedy Capitalist bastards

Related posts

• No Such Thing (2)
• Miss Potter (7)
• Katherine (2)
• Becoming Jane (11)
• According To Queeney (0)