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Show me the orphans
Apr. 21st, 2007 12:07 pmBlades of Glory is a Will Ferrell comedy, so it should go without saying that it's vastly better than most films out there. And yet...it's not quite right. The dynamic is out somehow, though I couldn't tell you just how. At one point around the middle, I even started to think it was sagging. Perhaps I'm just in a hypercritical mood when it comes to comedy this weekend, because I also found one strand of last night's Peep Show plot unusually implausible.
Blades was, however, preceded by the trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Though I enjoyed Dead Man's Chest more than a lot of people seemed to, for some reason the imminent arrival of the conclusion hadn't intruded too far on my consciousness. It would be fair to say that the trailer has changed that; it looks like they've given the story exactly the finale it needed, and now I can't wait.
Though not battling a plan to meet in a Leicester Square pub called Waxy O'Connor's on a Friday night, you can guess even from that bare description why I didn't have high hopes for the venue. But the drinks were only averagely ridiculous in price, the crowding less than one might easily expect, and the music an acceptable selection of the indie everyone likes, played at a volume sufficient to feel lively but easy to talk over. The crowd, though initially looking to be heavy on the townies, turned out to include representatives of most of London's tribes, apparently boozing in harmony, And the space itself - it feels like a sort of cavern network, and the room we were in had a tree towering over us, feeling like it might be holding up London. It reminded me of one of the better scenes in Stickleback, and that the West End is not quite a lost cause.
I've finished Burgo Partridge's endearingly batty History of Orgies. When I complain that non-fiction dates too easily, it's only really an objection to modern stuff - who wants to read a book prognosticating from the perspective of two years ago? It's pointless. But let them ferment a little longer and you get, as here, a perspective on the time of the writing as well as the times written about, fifties erudition woven in with the debaucheries of the ancients (and earlier moderns). Intriguingly, though a peripheral Bloomsburyite Burgo only appears to have a Wikipedia entry in Spanish. If you search him in English you get an article about his uncle and a list of dog breeds sandwiching the piece on group sex - which itself has "[citation needed]" after several statements of the blindingly obvious. It may be an incredibly handy resource, but it should never be forgotten that Wikipedia can also be extremely annoying.
Blades was, however, preceded by the trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Though I enjoyed Dead Man's Chest more than a lot of people seemed to, for some reason the imminent arrival of the conclusion hadn't intruded too far on my consciousness. It would be fair to say that the trailer has changed that; it looks like they've given the story exactly the finale it needed, and now I can't wait.
Though not battling a plan to meet in a Leicester Square pub called Waxy O'Connor's on a Friday night, you can guess even from that bare description why I didn't have high hopes for the venue. But the drinks were only averagely ridiculous in price, the crowding less than one might easily expect, and the music an acceptable selection of the indie everyone likes, played at a volume sufficient to feel lively but easy to talk over. The crowd, though initially looking to be heavy on the townies, turned out to include representatives of most of London's tribes, apparently boozing in harmony, And the space itself - it feels like a sort of cavern network, and the room we were in had a tree towering over us, feeling like it might be holding up London. It reminded me of one of the better scenes in Stickleback, and that the West End is not quite a lost cause.
I've finished Burgo Partridge's endearingly batty History of Orgies. When I complain that non-fiction dates too easily, it's only really an objection to modern stuff - who wants to read a book prognosticating from the perspective of two years ago? It's pointless. But let them ferment a little longer and you get, as here, a perspective on the time of the writing as well as the times written about, fifties erudition woven in with the debaucheries of the ancients (and earlier moderns). Intriguingly, though a peripheral Bloomsburyite Burgo only appears to have a Wikipedia entry in Spanish. If you search him in English you get an article about his uncle and a list of dog breeds sandwiching the piece on group sex - which itself has "[citation needed]" after several statements of the blindingly obvious. It may be an incredibly handy resource, but it should never be forgotten that Wikipedia can also be extremely annoying.
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