No updates over Christmas period. I couldn’t be arsed. Actually, I have (yet again) been wondering what purpose this Web site serves at all, and I’m lost for answers. It is something to do when all else fails, yes. I enjoy fiddling with it sometimes. But it doesn’t really say much or do much. It’s just there. Hmmm.
Christmas was quite boring. The television was generally rubbish, so no surprises there. The Only Fools and Horses special was pretty good—somewhat better than last year’s weak effort, anyhow. I OD’d on the soaps a bit, and they were, uh, full of shocks… Jamie died in EastEnders (wow, big surprise), Ray was the stalker in Emmerdale (wow, even bigger surprise), and Richard didn’t kill anyone in Corry (actually, that was a surprise).
The Hound of the Baskervilles film (mentioned here) was fairly good. It wasn’t quite as faithful to the original as had been implied, but I did like it. Although, Richard E. Grant being in it (as Stapleton) made me realise what an absolutely perfect Sherlock Holmes he’d make. Richard Roxburgh’s Holmes was okay, but Grant could have been genuinely great. A missed opportunity.
Since late Christmas night was rather dull, we watched the Minority Report video I’d bought a while ago. Well, you know, I wanted to see it, although I didn’t expect much. But it was rather nifty. It was actually really just a good thriller; the sci-fi trappings were entirely needless and pretty unfeasible. I should note, I’m always a bit loathe to rate anything with Tom Cruise in it—I find it hard to believe that anyone who follows the preposterous ramblings of L. Ron Hubbard (i.e. Scientology) could possibly have any working brain cells, let alone talent. So, I hate to admit that Cruise is any good. But he is. Grrr.
I finally read the Silence of the Lambs book. It’s taken a long time to get to it. I was one of the few people who thought the movie was terrible—cheap and sensationalistic, with a vastly overrated performance from Anthony Hopkins and a feeble, unconvincing killer. Okay, Jodie Foster was good. But otherwise I found it a real let-down.
The book, however, is an incredibly intelligent and compelling piece of work. Everything makes sense and the characterisation is uniformly solid. Lecter is a wonderful character, and if you think Hopkins was great (for shame), you need to read this to realise by how far he misses the mark.
I see that the new Dumbledore in Harry Potter will be Ian McKellen. Two thoughts: (1) Ian is going to get typecast as old, wizardy types; (2) thank God the concept of a computer-generated Richard Harris has been abandoned. [NOTE: This report was false. The role was given to Michael Gambon.]
A friend in Canada (hi Mike—if you read this before I get round to it, I will be e-mailing shortly) sent me a copy of Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon. Well, wow, this is a big book. Not quite Lord of the Rings big, but at least Stephen King’s IT sort of big. I guess this is something to read when I feel like making a big commitment! 🙂
That’ll be quite enough for now…