Torchwood

Last night was pretty quiet. I watched a couple of episodes of Torchwood on DVD (I got the second series DVD box-set for my birthday). If you’ve never seen it, the show is a spin-off of the later Doctor Who series and focuses on a secret group who investigate aliens in Cardiff.

It has been absolutely freezing here and I woke up with a really bad cold. I went out, however, and bought a game called Fallout 3 for my PlayStation 3. It’s a kind of action, role-playing game where you have to explore a post-apocalyptic environment and fight various monsters and solve puzzles and so on. It seems to be pretty good so far.

After today I probably won’t be on-line for a couple of days due to it being new year. So Happy New Year, and hopefully 2009 will turn out well.

Winter Market

Last night was pretty quiet. I was listening to the radio most of the time. I really like the stories, plays and comedy stuff that they have on it (I have been really getting into the radio over the past few days). I was also playing a lot of video games, which was fun.

I went out today to meet my Mum in the city centre. We went for something to eat first, and I had a cheese, bacon and chicken toastie with a plain scone and a mocha. Then we went out to the little Winter Market that they have every year, but there wasn’t much there. We did have a cup of mulled wine though, so that was nice. We went along to a shopping centre to look around and then we split up. I went home and bought a small amount of groceries and also a PlayStation magazine.

Quiet Weekend

It’s been a couple of quiet days recently, but I’ve spent most of the time playing video games, watching Doctor Who DVDs that I got for my Christmas, and listening to the new radio. There’s a station called The Arrow that I found the other day and I really like it because it is non-stop rock music with no DJs or adverts or anything, so it’s great to listen to when you just want some music.

Of course it will soon be New Year, I really hope that it will be better than this year, which has been kind of disappointing in many ways so far.

Last Few Days

It has been an eventful few days. On Tuesday, it was my 30th birthday and so I went to my parent’s house. I got a DAB digital radio with a CD player and iPod port built in, so that was really good, along with some books and DVDs. We went along to the Hard Rock Cafe to celebrate, and that was a lot of fun.

On Christmas Eve we went along to the cinema to see a movie called A Bunch of Amateurs, which was really funny.

Christmas Day was really good, and I got some more books and DVDs. The only real problem came when we were having out Christmas dinner and my Dad spilt his wine everywhere, including over my Mum’s new carpet, which she was not happy about. Of course, we also watched the Doctor Who Christmas special.

I just got back yesterday and I was busy getting everything set up. I went out today and the streets were absolutely packed.

Birthday

It’s been a fairly quiet couple of days, and I’ve not been out at all. Although I know that the rest of the holiday will be more eventful. It’s my birthday tomorrow. I’ll be thirty years old, which does feel kind of strange. It’s kind of a depressing thought actually because you always hear about things like “100 Things to Do Before Your 30″, and as you get older and realise that you’ve not actually done anything and that life has more or less passed you by.

Of course I’ll be turning thirty and it’s almost the New Year, maybe this will be the year that things turn out better, but who knows?

Anyway I’m going to be busy, so I probably won’t be on-line again until after Christmas so I hope that everyone has a good festive season.

Movies!

Last night was pretty quiet. I was watching a 2002 horror movie from Hong Kong called The Eye, directed by Danny and Oxide Pang, which told the story of a young volin player, Wong Kar Mun (Angelica Lee), who has been blind since the age of two, and undergoes a corneal transplant to regain her site. It appears initially as if the transplant has been completely successful, however Mun starts to experience bizarre nightmares and also seems to be able to see the spirits of the recently dead, and she becomes preoccupied with finding the donor of the corneas. It is a pretty effective film, with plenty of suspense. The horror and supernatural elements are mostly quite subtle. It was remade this year with Jessica Alba.

I’ve stayed in today. I’ll be going over to my parent’s house on Tuesday anyway, for my birthday. This afternoon I was watching a 1975 film called The Passenger on TV. It was directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and told the story of a cynical, burnt-out TV journalist, David Locke (played by Jack Nicholson), who is investigating rebel soldiers in the African desert. He discovers the body of a dead man in the neighbouring hotel room and decides, seemingly on impulse, to adopt the dead man’s identity. It turns out that the dead man was an international gunrunner, as Locke tries to lead his life, while letting the rest of the world believe that the dead body is that of David Locke. However he soon finds out that leaving his life behind is much more difficult than he thought. The film is very slow-moving and often very pretentious, but it is quite mesmerising in places and features spectacular scenery and camera work, and a brilliant performance by Nicholson.

Destiny of the Daleks

Last night I was watching a Doctor Who story from 1979 called “Destiny of the Daleks”. In the story, the Fourth Doctor (played by Tom Baker) and his companion Romana (Lalla Ward) arrive on Skaro, home planet of the Daleks, where they soon find out that the Daleks are excavating the subterranean ruins of their old city in an attempt to find their creator, Davros and enlist his help in their latest war with the ruthless alien Movellans, who have also arrived on Skaro and are determined to stop the Daleks at any cost. It was quite a fun story, but it has not aged well, with the special effects severely lacking, for example the mask for Davros was obviously designed for another actor, and was visibly too large for the head of the actor who did play the role, and it wobbles quite obviously throughout the story.

This morning I got up quite late and went along to the supermarket to get my groceries for the coming week, and spent some time cleaning in my kitchen.

Off Work

Last night was really quiet. I got into work for about half past eight this morning and I left at two. It was a pretty quiet day there today, with everything winding down. Anyway, I am now off work for my holidays and I will be back in again on 5th January, so that is really good.

Tarantula

Yesterday evening I watched a 1955 film called Tarantula, directed by Jack Arnold. It was set in the American desert where two idealistic biochemists are working on a serum which causes animals to grow to giant size, which they hope will cure world famine. However, while their experiments with animals are successful, when they accidentally inject themselves with the serum it causes grotesque disfigurement, madness and a painful death. However a tarantula which has been injected by the serum escapes and quickly grows to giant size while eating cattle, and before long, humans. The special effects are very good, by the standards of the time, and the desert locations are effective, also a giant spider can’t help but generste some chills. Clint Eastwood has a very early, uncredited, cameo as a fighter pilot.

Later on I watched a 1993 film called Fire in the Sky, directed by Robert Lieberman, and set near a small town in Arizona in 1975. Heading home from work one day, a group of lumberjacks notice a strange object in the woods. One of the group, Travis Walton (played by D.B. Sweeney) goes to investigate, but approaching the object he is struck by a beam of light which knocks him unconscious, assuming that he is dead, his friends panic and drive off, but return quickly to discover that both Travis and the object have vanished without a trace. A large-scale search fails to turn up any trace of Travis, and tensions quickly increase between the lumberjacks and the local community, and the local police quickly come to believe that there may have been foul play. However, five days after his mysterious disappearance, Travis Walton reappears, and the mystery becomes what hapened to him during those five days. The film is based on a true story, of one of the most famous cases of alleged alien abduction. The highlight of the film are the genuinely effective scenes detailing Walton’s experiences of his time missing, which were changed from his actual reports, which the film studio deemed too dull.

Today was pretty quiet at work. Tomorrow is my last day before the holidays, so I am looking forward to that. I am ready for a break!

I got back at around quarter past five and made some microwaved spaghetti bolognese for my meal.

Out for Lunch

Last night I was watching a 1990 film called King of New York, directed by Abel Ferrara. Christopher Walken stars as powerful drug baron Frank White, who at the opening of the film is released after a long stretch in prison. He returns to his old territory in New York City and immediately takes over his old gang and begins violently wiping out the competition, while also regaining his influence over the city’s political elite. This time White decides to use some of his ill-gotten gains to finance an inner city hospital. However as White deals with rival gags and trechery within his own team, as well as three cops (David Caruso, Victor Argo and Wesley Snipes) who are determined to bring him in, events spiral violently out of control. The film is extremely violent and very bleak. Christopher Walken gives a superb performance in the central role, often looking genuinely sinister with his ghostly appearance. In it’s original release the movie was a massive commercial failure but since then it has become quite a cult film. Abel Ferrara is a very prolific, but often very inconsistent, film-maker however this is defintiely one of his better films.

I was only in work for a half day today. At around midday I went along to the Ellwyn House Hotel for Owen’s 30th birthday (which is a little over a week away), there were about six of us there and I had a prawn cocktail to start, followed by a sirloin steak with stuffing, potato and sausages, and finishing off with a slice of apple pie and cream, with two pints of Kronenbourg beer. It was pretty good. I got home at around three.