Thursday, April 19, 2007

Are you kidding me?

Turns out tickets to see Axl, Sebastion and Angry are going to be $120 - $170. I think I just lost interest. Maybe if Slash and the rest of the gang were in tow, but not without them, that's just ridiculous.

While I probably won't be going to that show anymore, here are a few other things I'm looking forward to.

Grind House


I think this comes out here next month. Two horror films back to back - one directed by Quentin Tarantino, the other by Richard Rodriguez. I've been looking forward to this for like a year now - it got released in America a few weeks ago and was a big flop for some reason, but hey I don't care. It's going to be great. It has Rose McGowan with a machine gun for a leg. I sense an Oscar nomination isn't far off.



New music from Tori Amos and Queens of the Stone Age

Tori's album is out in May, QOTSA in June I think. I'm looking forward to Tori's the most, even though her last one, "The Beekeeper" was a piece of crap that I don't think I've listened to since the month it was released. The early reviews say it is her best album since "From the Choirgirl Hotel" in 1998, which is still my all-time favourite, so I've got high hopes.

Queens of the Stone Age should be really good too, although I think they are maybe 25% worse since they kicked Nick out of the band, it's not the same without his screams on a couple of songs on each record. It's nice though knowing if you go to one of their concerts these days that everyone on the stage is going to be wearing pants.


The NBA Playoffs

Man it's going to be good being able to watch basketball for the next six weeks without having to worry about my fantasy team. I don't really have an opinion on the whole San Antonio - Dallas - Phoenix debate, but I really hope the Suns win. And Nash gets MVP again.

Tori Amos - Live

Word on the street is that she's coming to Australia in September this year. If so, I'll be there. Her last tour was a bit of a disappointment, but I think part of that was becase the source material was kind of weak (see above). Hopefully she brings the full band this time, and a decent setlist.

"The Timewaster Letters" by Robin Cooper

Mirjana lent this to me today, it's a book comprised of ridiculous letters this guy has written to various people/organisations, having a laugh. Sometimes, when these people don't realise he's making fun of them, they write back, which can be even funnier. Anyway I'm really looking forward to reading this on my daily commute. Mirjana knew I'd like this because it's got a quote from Ricky Gervais on the cover, and I'm a sucker for a good celebrity endorsement. She's trying to use this book to get me to rewatch a TV show this guy made called "Look Around You" which she thinks is hilarious but I think is rubbish. It's not going to work.

That reminds me - I think someone may have read his book and been inspired because I got an email about a month ago from some crazy people whose dog had recently died, and wanted me to send them a card from the city of Adelaide consoling them on their loss.

The weekend

Because work hasn't been that much fun lately.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

GNR

After years of waiting it seems I might finally get the chance to see Guns n Roses live, with their upcoming concert at the Entertainment Centre in June. Unfortunately its not really the same band - it's just Axl and a whole lot of session musicians. And there's a good chance the whole thing will fall apart and he won't bother to show up. But I'm excited anyway.



I'm not real sure about the support acts though. Sebastian Bach from Skid Row? What, the rest of the band weren't available? But that's not even the worst part. The second support act are . . . Rose Tattoo! Did they break up and reform? Or have they just being playing biker rallies for the last twenty years? I'm not expecting much there at all. Last time I heard Angry Anderson was like a reporter for the Today show or something.

Anyway, I'm not going to let anything as trival as a stupid support act ruin this for me. "Welcome to the Jungle" . . . "Nightrain" . . . "Rocket Queen" . . . "Mr Brownstone" . . . OK pretty much any song from the first album . . . how can this fail? Who's with me?


Thursday, April 12, 2007

Fitness update

Two weeks in to the gym experiment, and I've got two personal training sessions under my belt. Things seem to be going fairly smoothly.

My personal trainer is called Scott. Scott is very serious. I don't think I've seen him smile once yet. Even the other night, when I told him I would be continuing with the training sessions, he didn't crack a smile, not even at the thought of all the cash money I was going to be handing over to him. I'm not sure if this is his natural facade, or if he doesn't really approve of me and my non-personal trainer-like body. Actually now that I think about it, he kind of remains me of an asian version of my old friend Tim Pearce. Although Tim loved to smile, but other than that, I think its a pretty good description of what he looks like.

Anyway he's come up with a program which involves me working different parts of my body three times a week. It seems to cover everything, which is probably a good thing, because left to my own devices I probably would have just done bicep curls and bench press and morphed into some freaky looking guy with an otherwise regular body but with huge arms and chest. Like most of the guys who go to my gym really.

The actual gym work isn't too bad. I don't think I'll ever be one of those guys who actually enjoy working out, but it's not all that bad. The hardest thing is making the time to get there a few times a week - since it's only open till 9pm, and I'm usually out a few nights a week, it takes some planning.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Still with the movie reviews?

For some reason I've been watching a whole lot of DVDs lately. I suppose laziness. Over the Easter weekend I worked my way through three more - "The Prestige", "Capote" and "Kenny".

The Prestige was the best of these. It was directed by Christopher Nolan, who directed probably the only good Batman movie (Batman Begins) as well as Memento, which is one of my all time favourites. The film is about two aspiring magicians, who start off as friends, and become rivals, with one eventually killing the other (that's not really a spoiler since you see that happen in the opening scenes). The movie moves back and forward in terms of the timeline a lot, so can be difficult to follow at times, but it's worth it.



The two magicians are played by Hugh Jackman (who to me will always be the guy who explains how to use Foxtel on channel 999) and Christian Bale. I'm not really sure if I like Christian Bale or not. He was in the pretty horrible film version of American Psycho, although it wasn't really his fault the film was so bad. And that movie The Machinist which was meant to be a cross of "Fight Club" and "Memento" but was mainly just weird. He was scary thin in that, so much so that he seems quite overweight by comparison in The Prestige.


The film also stars Michael Caine as a mentor to both magicians, and Scarlett Johannsen as the girl who works as an assistant for Jackman and then Bale. I used to be a bit of a Scarlett fan but my interest is waning, and she did little to win me over in this.


Capote is a film I'd been planning on seeing for quite a while. I've read the first half of "In Cold Blood" - the book that this movie is about - two or three times. I feel like it's a book I should enjoy, so have returned to it a few times, but never manage to stick at it. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is one of my favourite actors - I think he just has a real presence to him - but I didn't really enjoy his performance in this all that much. Perhaps it was the fact that he sounded like Cartman from South Park that put me off, I'm not sure. I know the movie did become a lot more enjoyable when I started imaging Cartman in Capote's place in various scenes in the movie. Apparently people who give out awards for movies liked this but it wasn't really for me.

Finally, Kenny was some good lighthearted entertainment for a Sunday night. I'm not really a fan of Australian movies, or toilet humour, but this was well done, with a surprising amount of heart - I guess that's where all of the Castle comparisons come from. Worth checking out if you're looking for something lightweight.

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Weekend movie recap

Ahh the weekend - the time to get out, hit the town, and blow off the stress of the working week. Or stay at home and watch DVDs, like I did this weekend.

First up I saw "Little Miss Sunshine", with Steve Carrell, Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Chloe from 24, and Phil the Writer from the Larry Sanders Show. I had heard pretty good reviews about this, and really enjoyed it. It's about a dysfunctional family who travel cross country to enter their daughter in a junior beauty pageant. The tension between the family members is great, the opening scenes in particular sucked me in. It slowed a little towards the end but was still good. I especially enjoyed the work of Steve Carrell in this, better known as Brick Tamland from "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burghundy"



and Michael Scott from the (unfairly I believe) often criticised US verion of The Office.



This was a bit of a different turn for him. It's still a comedy, but he plays a gay professor who has just attempted suicide because one of his grad students declined his romantic advances, so his character isn't really all that zany. He carried it off well though, and there was a lot of humour and humanity in his understated performance.

Sunday night I saw "The Interpreter". I'd seen it a while ago but Michella hadn't so I watched it again. As I'd seen it, she asked a range of questions during the movie (eg "Who is that guy?", "Is that the same guy as before?", "Is he a bad guy?" etc) and often I couldn't answer. Remember this is a movie I have seen before, and thought I understood. It made me wonder if I ever really understand movies, and take everything in, or if I'm content to just figure out the general gist of what's going on and then enjoy the car chases and explosions.

Michella pointed out that for one of the world's most famous actresses Nicole Kidman doesn't really make that many good/successful movies, which I'd never really thought about before, but it's probably true. Anyway if you haven't seen this before and want to know whether it's any good . . . it's OK. You probably won't be blown away, but you won't get bored. Although you might not understand it all if you're anything like me.