Archive for August, 2006
Hardly seems a week since the BB final. At least The Law Of The Playground is back though, which pleased Lisa.
The BB final panned out as predicted, with Pete winning of course. For many weeks I’d pictured that scene with Pete and Glyn the only two people left in the house, and it was pretty much as I’d imagined. The only disappointment was Pete’s interview, but I guess he was always going to be unable to speak. His main aim was to “sort my mum out”, but at the back of his mind must have been some notion of publicising Tourette’s. I have to confess that I changed my opinion on that during the series. At the start I thought that people would laugh at him for the wrong reasons. Guess I was wrong.
Saturday I spent finishing the bathroom windowsill and door for political reasons. Also realised from the radio that X Factor was starting that night. Here we go again. Quite amusing in the event though, and looks like Trevor is making a comeback.
Sunday. Usual round of shopping and stuff. Some revelations about Cornwall that went surprisingly well.
Monday saw some flurrying about door handles, and then it was time to get Gemma and Kane from the airport. Again, it all went smoothly, and I needn’t have worried – although I couldn’t help it.
Tuesday and Wednesday were committed to some DIY in Clitheroe. I think it went well, in the end, although a supposedly simple plumbing job turned into a nightmare, largely because of the unorthodox methods of the previous occupant. Compression joints on plastic barrier pipe. Phase to neutral reversal – sounds like a job for the Enterprise. Some rumbling in the pipes.
Thursday was GCSE results day. I really struggled with whether to go in or not, but in the end decided I might as well put myself out my misery. Brigid had also said, from her roof terrace in Holland, that she wouldn’t mind her own SAT and GCSE results. I was really pleasantly surprised with the results for my own GCSE group. I suppose really intelligent students are bound to do well.
Friday and Saturday I had hoped to finish the bulk of my paper, but I was struck by some weird stomach thing that robbed me of energy. Spent most of Saturday in bed. Today I’m kind of returning to normal. Saw most of a storming set by Muse at Reading before bed last night.
In the last proper, reflective episode of this series, there is consternation about Aisleyne not having delivered a proper eulogy for Pete. All very unfair. Welsh speaking day in the house. Glyn took the opportunity to make Nikki say some uncomplementary things about herself in the diary room.
Russell Brand has been on great form this week – much to Lisa’s delight.
Despite what many critics have said, Superman Returns is actually a very effectively realised treatment of a myth that was always going to be difficult to revive. The eighties were into irreverent deconstruction and role reversal – to the extent that it might be considered that no further cinematic statements on Superman were going to work or even be necessary. I guess the same could be said of Batman, but last year Christopher Nolan proved that there was much more to say about that comic book superhero. The same kind of brooding self-doubt comes across in Bryan Singer’s revival of Superman. OK, so Brandon Routh’s Superman is up himself a bit, but wouldn’t you be? There’s nothing left of his home planet, and Lois has moved on. Or has she? She’s even had a child by someone else. Or has she? As if that wasn’t enough, Lex Luthor is biting at his heels again and he’s nicked all the crystals from his crib at the North Pole. Luthor is brilliantly (effortlessly) portrayed by Kevin Spacey. Generally, critics have said that this film is lugubrious and lacks humour. Humour it definitely does have – for example, a Luthor henchman pulling a suitcase on wheels as they escape from an island about to disintegrate. It’s just more understated than the Richard Donner romp. As for the supposedly heavy handed symbolism – parallels with Christ – well, the guy repeatedly saves the world. It was bound to go there eventually. It’s a no-brainer really. Just go see it. You know you want to. Somehow the physicality of the heavy lifting comes across better in this version than in any I’ve seen. Attention to detail in the CGI probably.
We saw it on Sunday, the day before Gemma went off on her first independent holiday. I’ve enjoyed our trips to the cinema ever since the kids were little, the first one being when I took Gemma at the age of four to the now defunct Bradford Odeon to see the Tom and Jerry movie – and she kept asking when the video was going to start.
Gemma commented that the sequence where Superman saves the plane was not the thing to see the day before you fly. I guess she was also thinking about the recent raised security at UK airports. Although the disruption appeared to be subsiding by Sunday, it was on all of our minds that things at the airport could drag out. In the event it was all fine, and I think even convinced Lisa a little that airports are perhaps not such alienating places. Not much queueing, and no heavily armed police. All quite laid back really. Dropped in to see Dad et al after the airport. Good to see everyone again, and have a chat. Reassuring text from Gemma that they had arrived and all was fine.
Minor blip in that Gemma had left her phone charger behind, so I had to post it to her.
Since Nikki returned to the Big Brother House, Pete has done little else but lick her face. There was a notable exception when Pete was invited into the Big Brother Nightclub (the Diary Room) for winning a task. This week he’s also been talking about a vision he had when his dead friend came down from heaven and told him that he would win Big Brother. There is no doubt that Nikki has dampened his powers. Glyn has not amounted to much without Imogen. I enjoyed the occasions when they felt that they could be articulate and sensitive, knowing that the other housemates couldn’t understand them. I’ve even been thinking I’d quite like Richard to win. I don’t doubt it’ll still be Pete though. Final tomorrow.
Yesterday I had my annual attack of paranoia when I realise results day is coming and they might be rubbish and prove that I can’t actually do the job very well. All was fine though – very pleased overall. The new Media spec has bedded in well – one A and crop of Bs. Definitely can’t complain.
Currently watching Brainiac live on Sky 1. The John Tickle legend lives on. One of the two best ever housemates. The other one was Alex. Remember him?
So Sloane is trapped in a tomb forever (immortality at a heavy price – he can’t even play Sodoku) and Irina has fallen to her death because she chose Rombaldi over Sydney. Sydney, Vaughan and child flash forward into the future and they have a remote house by the beach. But they haven’t quite hung up their mission boots and are considering helping Dixon out. The show must go on.
Can’t help feeling creeped out by the idea of Sloane trapped alive underground forever. Surely it can’t be entirely permanent. In a few hundred, maybe in a few thousand years there’s going to have to be some geological movement that’ll free him up. But then he might find himself the only (immortal) human in a world ruled by giant insects.
Big Brother eviction night again. Richard and Imogen are up, and it looks like Imogen is probably going. The two possible evictees are in “the house next door” until after the eviction, at which point the person left will return to the main house. Lea, Nikki, Grace and Mikey were voted (back) into the “house next door” by the public, on Tuesday, as potential candidates for returning to the main house until the final next Friday – decided tonight by the other housemates (I think). Here’s hoping it’s not Grace or Nikki. Can’t abide either of them.
It’s Imogen. Lots of cheers.
It’s Nikki going back in. For Heaven’s sake…
Tempting to think that the massive scheduling break (four months) between episodes 9 and 10 was due to the arrival of Jennifer Garner’s baby. I don’t doubt that this had something to do with it, but it does seem to be a deliberate policy with US TV drama to pause half way through a series and go into re-run for the next few months, before resuming the series. Why do they do that?
It seems to have returned from the break leaner and tighter – in lots of ways reminiscent of series 1, reminding me of why we got hooked on it in the first place. It definitely needed to end, partly so that we don’t have to hear about the confounded Rombaldi anymore. I always thought that the best episodes were the one-offs in which an immediate threat was confronted using the combined resources of the main characters. (A welcome recent addition to this formula has been Rachel Nichols. No – not just for aesthetic reasons.) But I really never want to see page 47 of the Rombaldi manuscript (with the sketch of Jennifer Garner) ever again.
I guess not really much of surprise that Sloane got consumed by Rombaldi fever all over again, after being on the wagon for so long. Perhaps a little ham-fisted, though, to have Nadia sacrificed so soon after he has spent such a long time getting her a cure for her rage-like condition (shamelessly ripped off from 28 Days Later). Who’d have thought that Vaughan was still alive? I have to say I like the way that they’ve set up the endgame. As I said, a return to the slick gadgetry and deft reinterpretation of cliché that marked it out as innovative in the first place. For a long time, I’ve been hanging out for Marshall turning out to be an ass-kicking agent for an evil force, but I guess there isn’t time for that now.
Just inadvertently (kind of) looked at some spoilers on Wikipedia. Can’t help myself. Sounds good.
Gentle rain at dusk dampening down the humidity. A peaceful Sunday evening. One of those rare times when we are all in separate rooms. I’m downstairs on the laptop, listening to the water pour off the scrapyard roof. Not long before Gemma goes off on her first non-parental holiday, with Kane.
Big Brother in fifteen minutes.