After being slapped solidly on the face by sweet Lady Daylight Savings Time, I'm apparently having difficulty with my sleeping. It's like having really really really inconveniently small jet lag. But that doesn't mean that I didn't get up to some mischief this past week! Well, it wasn't really mischief. But I did stuff. Let's see what it was!
The Book: After finishing Heir to the Empire, I started on Born Standing Up, Steve Martin's memoir on his years doing standup comedy. It's a deceptively short book: it's sizeable but the font is pretty big, so I'm moving through it on a fair clip. It's interesting to see what influenced him in his standup career, as I've been a big fan of his writing and acting but only discovered his comedy albums about three or four years ago. And he's a good writer, so even when it's more personal material it's still interesting. I'd recommend it, but then again, I'm a fan.
The Movie: About a half-dozen of us went out to see Be Kind, Rewind for Jago's birthday (yes, we're all aware his birthday was a month ago). I liked Michel Gondry's music video work and really liked Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, so I went in expecting good things. And it is good. But it's not great. I know that's a small thing to complain about, but it's true. There are moments of greatness, but there are moments of mediocrity too, places where the story seems to drag or things get a little too twee. The performances are really good: Jack Black's somewhat restrained, so the other actors really get a little space to stretch, and Danny Glover, Mia Farrow, and Mos Def all really sparkle in this one. So overall it's good. I was just expecting more, I guess.
The TV Show: I found my favourite game show! I know lots of people like Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune or whatever, but for me, the cream of the crop is QI (also known as Quite Interesting). It's a British quiz show hosted by Stephen Fry (awesome!), with a rotating panel of guests including Alan Davies, Clive Anderson, John Sessions, Bill Bailey, Richard E. Grant, and Hugh Laurie (awesome again!). The questions are really difficult to get right, so the whole point of the game is less about answering the question right and more about being interesting while answering them, throwing out trivia and showing how clever/funny/stupid/witty you can be (the awesome trifecta!). Brilliantly entertaining and fun, and actually rewatchable because of the quips and the really quite interesting things you learn. So try and track it down, somehow; I think you'll be rather impressed by the whole thing.
The Real Life: On Monday I celebrated my 29th birthday. I'm now as old as my dad was when I was born. You know. So no psychic pressure there.
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2 comments:
Belated happy birthday sir! Also, I agree that Be Kind Rewind had many flaws, but none of them really stood up enough to make me annoyed or upset with the film.
Aw! Happy Belated!
I miss you! I should take you out for birthday iced creamz0rz.
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