There’s a short article in this week’s Church Times about vicar’s who blog, or rather how few there are. This got me to thinking that I should blog with pride – the only reservation I have is that if anyone finds my blog and chooses to wander back in time, they’ll find a whole load of entries (a bit like this one, I suppose), which aren’t particularly meaningful or uplifting. Perhaps I’m just kidding myself that subsequent entries would create this expectation! 🙂

Yet another winner from Nicole Kidman – the woman has the midas touch. I’ve not seen (or read) the original, so can’t comment on its faithfulness, but this version was absolutely brill!

The casting and acting was top notch – mind you the heavy guns were out; Glenn Close, Christopher Walken, Bette Midler… And there was the light but oh so effective touch of comic genius. A quick look at IMDb suggests the plot follows a very similar line to the original version, although my feeling that was horror while this was most certainly comedy.

I guess the basic premise is no secret, but I love the noughties update that all the Stepford men are those who (formerly) had to live in the shadow of high flying woman. Plus the last 5 or 10 minutes were really good – unusually for films these days it caught me by surprise too.

Probably doesn’t quite make it into the “own-er” category (unless you happen to run a marriage prep course, in which case it might be an interesting talking point), but is an absolute must for a rental, and almost certainly worth setting the video for when it makes it terrestrial. Easily the best of my recent batch of films – on a par with Kung-Hu Hustle.

What an absolutley heart breaking film – all about loneliness and betrayal, and a young girl caught in a trap she’s desperate to escape. It’s certainly not a film for the prudish
either, in the way that is perhaps typically French.

All the main characters are so lonely – the loveless marriage and the prostitute hired by the wife to try to discover what her husband is truly like, by having sex with him. Like Moulin Rouge, the sex industry is presented as all glitz and glamour, and the girls being young free and easy – while at the same time the true picture is never lurking far from sight, with unguarded moments showing all too clearly the girls’ desires to be free from it. The contrast of Nathalie ice skating – on her own – and plying her trade in the “private club” speaks volumes.

I wouldn’t want to suggest it’s all tits and bottoms, or a porn movie – thankfully only one very short sequence approaches this mark – but there is not too much doubt left in the mind about what goes on at said clubs. Actually breasts do feature quite a lot, come to think of it – but only in the brazen topless french way (if you know what I mean).

One of the most interesting aspects is the wife trying to hard to be “modern” and accept that her husband puts it about, while clearly just desperate to have him to herself. How she gives him the cold shoulder, and then cries on Nathalie’s shoulder about how distant he is being. And equally how he can’t see why she has a problem with him having a quick bonk while away with work – “it doesn’t mean anything”, he claims.

Had a couple of programming discoveries at work in the last week or so. The first is Dev-C++, a free IDE for Windows. I’ve got Visual Studio as well, but this seems like a really good environment (not least of which because it’s free).

The second discovery was Simple DirectMedia Layer (or libSDL) – a cross-platform multimedia library that provides low-level access to input, graphics, and audio hardware. It seems to work really nicely, and the best thing about it is that the same code will compile under Windows and Linux with no alterations, as far as I’ve sene so far.

I’ve been playing with a few graphics libraries, trying to get a decent visualisation going, but they’ve all been too slow. SDL, on the other hand, is very zippy and nice and easy to use.

I knocked up a fake visualisation in no time, once I’d got to grips with SDL, and I’m looking forward to refining my code and making it work on real data.

As shown by the sudden leap in the number of reviews, I’m enourmously enjoying my easyDVD membership. When the little orange envelope flops onto the letterbox, and I tear it open to see what the title is, and Yes it’s a film I’ve been wanting to see for ages.

Of course a millisecond’s thought shows this as hugely circular – after all I’ve made a list of all the films I really want to see, marked them in order of preference, and that’s the order in which easyDVD send them. But there is still a small thrill because you don’t know exactly which one they’re going to send next – so today’s batch had Anchorman, The Stepford Wives, and Nathalie, three pretty different films. I don’t think they meant to send me three actually (I only bought 7 credits, which should have meant 2 at a time), but I’m not complaining.

As it happens I have potential film watching nights tomorrow, Saturday, and Monday too – although with some other bits and pieces to do I don’t think I can take all three. The other problem is that now I’m actually starting to catch up on films, my to-see list is in danger of growing again. Note to self – avoid Apple’s trailer website!

Tee hee hee – what a fab film. And actually a surprisingly nice film, given the ripe language, and adult theme. So often films leave a nasty taste in the mouth, but Anchorman.. well I’m sitting here typing this with a big smile on my face!

The story follows Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) as the head honcho news reader in Channel 4, but the boat is well and truly rocked by the beautiful and – gasp – female Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) arrives. This film was never going to be deep, and once or twice had me gsaping “I can’t believe they just did that”.. for instance drop-kicking a dog off the San Diego bridge! Don’t get me wrong – it’s comic-book violence that is in no danger of realism, but still a bit shocking, in a funny way.

The escalating war between Ron and Veronica is very good, as is the deadpan delivery of all the jokes, and the ending, although soppy and predictable, does redeem the whole film.
Actually the whole redemption theme plays heavily in the second half – Ron’s life loses his meaning when he loses his job, and only comes back when he’s made an anchor again. He’s prepared to sacrifice himself for the woman he loves (even though she betrayed him), and at the end of it he’s a better person.

This is not a classic though, and although it might just survive a second viewing as I suspect there are some more background or subtle jokes I missed, it’s probably not worth buying. And for all the deeper themes, it remains a definte “Friday night with beer and curry” film.

Oh happy day – parliament have voted to ban all indoor smoking. At long last I’ll be able to go out to pubs and restauants without having my evening spoilt by second-hand smoke, and I can come home without my clothes and hair stinking of burnt tobacco.

I have the tiniest slither of sympathy for those working in the tobacco industry who are increasingly finding selling their products harder and harder, and hence have their livelihoods threatened – but then I think the tobacco industry is little more legalised drug dealing. There is a strong history of deliberate deception and ‘grooming’ in order to get people hooked younger and harder. I don’t think that anyone working in a tobacco company can truly claim to have a clean conscience (but then again, who can?).

I’d go so far as to say that I think smoking is one of the sicknesses in our society today – it burns through money, is addictive, is a pretty effective way of killing yourself and those you live/work with, and is thoroughly unpleasant for anyone who’s unfortunate enough to have to share the same office/platform/train/waiting room/bus/street….

That said, I have huge amounts of sympathy for those trying to quit. Nicotine is highy addictive, and it must be extremely unpleasant to give it up, especially when the “quick fix” is so easy to get hold off. I know it’s very easy to use all sorts of damaging habits (smoking, drinking, self-harm, sex, violent crime) as a way of dealing with stress and creating a (false, but comforting) feeling of being in control.

Of course it ultimately backfires – the fix wears out, and your worse off then before! Let’s hope this bill encourages more and more people to give it up for good!

I actually love this time of year – yes it’s rainy and cold still, but every morning it’s just a little bit brighter in the morning, and you can’t help feeling the overall thrust the weather is taking is towards warmth and sunshine once more.

This morning, as I walked to the station, I wouldn’t go so far as to say the sun had risen, but it was the lightest it’s been for months, and the sky was very definitely “day blue” rather than “dawn grey”.

Lent is rapidly drawning closer too, so thoughts have been turning for how to mark it in 2006. Both A. and I have activities we’ve been meaning to do for a while, but somehow haven’t quite got around to, and we’re thinking for this Lent we might start doing them. Anna’s is to start swimming regularly, mine is to start studying Greek again (I got stuck trying to learn the different endings of words!). Say just an hour or so a week in both cases. In my case I’m expecting to be formally studying Greek later this year, but it would be useful to get a head-start, I think.

The other nice thing about February is that it’s got St Valentine’s day in it, our wedding anniversary, and then I know that my borthday is just around the corner too. 🙂

What a very odd film this is. Still, I get to do crazy CSS in order to display the title properly – i ♥ huckabees – see!

But then it was no great surprise, this was always going to be an odd film as it follows Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman), a environmentalist who doesn’t know whether to just give it all up or to keep fighting to save the swamp. He goes to the existential detectives – Bernard (Dustin Hoffmann) and Vivian (Lily Tomlin) to try and answer his big questions, and also solve his co-incidence, involving a tall african.

Jude Law, Naomi Watts, and Mark Wahlberg pleasingly finish off the cast, and it must be said the casting was just brilliant. Namoi Watts as Dawn was particularly good, especially her existential agnst phase.

However, this was not a film without flaws – firstly the language was pretty unnecessary, the opening 2 or 3 minutes basically being a tirade of swear words going on inside Albert’s head, and pretty well set the theme in terms of language content. I also thought it was trying to be too clever by half, and failed to either raise the big questions of life or even shed any sort of insight into them. Perhaps I’m being too harsh – it is a very funny film (if you’re into existential humour). I especially like the way you are drawn into thinking that the utterly odd behaviour of the “enlightened” is understandable – normal even, until other minor characters react against it and you realise that 90% of the film is on another planet.

So while I feel that I didn’t waste my 1.99 in hiring it, I wouldn’t rush out to buy it.

I think I’ve found a good test of vocation/calling; You know you’ve found your vocation when you genuinely feel sad for people who can’t/won’t do that thing.

So, take preaching, or even lecturing. I absolutely love doing it, and I do feel really sorry for people who say “oh I’d hate it.” I feel like they’re missing out on so much – the chance to help people learn or discover new things. To challenge and help people grow. Just awesome!

On the other hand, consider going to an academic conference – I intensely dislike almost eveything about them; the whole process of submitting a paper and the peer review thing. Then the event itself, when everyone seems to be only really interested in promoting their own work, chiefly through picking holes in everyone elses! Contrast this with my friend Clare, who loves going to conferences, and gets a sparkle in her eye when she’s talking about a recent one. Or again, a work mate of mine who listed ‘the opportunty to go to conferences’ as one of the highlights of the academic career. In fact this is one of the factors that made me realise an academic career is not my calling!

Of course it remains to be seen if it’s conferences per se that turn me off, or just computing conferences. For instance, I would imagine I might enjoy a conference on preaching, if such a thing exists. Incidentally, this conferphobia is nothing to do with an aversion to sitting and listening; after all, I’ve always enjoyed lectures, and it’s one aspect of theological college I’m really looking forward too. I’m sure there’s a proper -phobia word too!

I suppose it’s not a very discerning test, as I love driving, and feel people who can’t are probably missing out; yet there’s no way I think being a driver is my calling (although I quite like the idea of being a racing driver). Perhaps it’s a degree thing – I’m not passionate about driving, and don’t feel my life would be incomplete if I never did it again.

… and an irony has just struck me – I’m meant to be preparing a sermon right now, instead of which I’m blogging about it! 🙂