The movies

I made two New year's resolutions this year. The first was to remove myself from facebook and myspace. Hurrah! I'm free from the terminal nosiness of looking to see who said what to whom and on which wall. Apologies to all those who I was in the middle of a scrabble game with. Easy escape for you though, eh? Seeing as I would have won. Ahem.

My other, somewhat more exciting, resolution was to go the cinema once a week. I realised I haven't been to the pictures much recently and have sort of fallen into a trap of only going to see films that I am absolutely sure will be good. As of New Year I will go to see any old crap that takes my fancy. And already I have seen some stinkers! First up I willfully ignored Philip French's comments about I Do: "Vaguely misogynistic, vaguely amusing, and wholly uninventive" and went to see it anyway. And a very enjoyable pile of nonsense it was too. I was sitting in the Tyneside cinema just feeling quite chuffed to be watching something so entirely fluffy and pointless. That was not so true of the astonishing cheese-fest that is I Am Legend. Does Will Smith get scripts delivered, read through them and say 'how about we add a bit where I sing along to Bob Marley in a daft voice, or maybe do a voiceover to Shrek?' Call me a traditionalist, but I don't think it was a good idea to combine rabid zombies and light-hearted comedy. Still, seeing absolute clangers is very much in the spirit of the resolution. And it's always good fun to see a film involving any element of tension with Sarah. She does some quite astonishing face hiding and body jerking in response to, well, a door opening, a dog barking, pretty much anything really.

Happy New Year

I started 2008 in a somewhat embarrassing fashion. After a heavy night of watching The Wire and feeling sorry for myself with a cold I woke on New Year’s Day and spent several hours trying to get myself up and out of my pyjamas just to make a trip to the shop for soup, lozenges, pop and other essentials for those with colds, such as potatoes. Eventually I gathered myself and, having made it to the shop on the corner, I picked two potatoes from the racks outside and went in. Oddly, considering it was New Year’s Day, the place was quite busy. It’s possible that it was full of people who had had a premonition that someone was going to do something astonishing in the shop. I tried not to disappoint them as my slidey shoes and the wet floor came together to perform quite a slapstick fall. My feet flew to the right and, as they slipped under the shelving, my head crashed against the aluminium post to my left. I believe that was around about the point when I shouted an offensive word while simultaneously thinking ‘So this is how I am going to die. A brain haemorrhage in Medina Foods. How disappointing.’ Then I came round a bit on the floor with my feet still stuck under the shelves and someone asking me if I was alright. Oh, and there were five children all looking at me open-mouthed. Possibly connected to the unsavoury word I had uttered while battering myself against the fittings. You will be glad to know that throughout my near-death ordeal I held the potatoes aloft so they were completely undamaged.