On the verge of making a stand

[alexsarll]

Club Popular tonight. Have I ever mentioned how a whole evening of Number One hits is like looking into the face of a god and realising you've known him all along/the end of DC One Million before? I believe I might have done. Still.

All urban foxes and Michaelmas daisies these past few days, and drifts of leaves in the cooling sunlight (well, except Tuesday when it was a summer heat again, as I strode around to find various bits and pieces including Turnpike House, only to realise that the 4 goes past it anyway so I'd already seen it plenty of times. Must remember to wander the Barbican at some point too while I'm on my St Etienne rambles. But I also found time to try Settlers of Catan (a beautifully constructed little boardgame which plays a little like a minimalist Civilisation, minus the overt warfare, and which I am possibly biased towards because I won) and Munchkin (a feast of backstabbing hilarity at which, on initial results, I suck).

I'd been meaning to see Breakfast on Pluto for ages, but kept not getting round to it. I didn't know much beyond it having Gavin Friday in and being about a transvestite. Turns out he's not the half of it - you also get Stephen Rea,
Ian Hart, Liam Neeson, all playing roles you'd normally think too small for them to bother with, but then it is a Neil Jordan film and I suppose that counts for something. Also, Bryan Ferry and Brendan Gleeson playing a would-be rapist and a violently alcoholic Womble, respectively. Being Neil Jordan, yes there are IRA elements to the plot but otherwise it's basically a kitchen sink Velvet Goldmine - a confused young man chases a lost vision of glamour. Cilian Murphy is very pretty in the lead, if a little too mumblecore at times - though, for all his eyelashes, I'm not sure he ever quite passes as female to the degree the plot sometimes seems to want.

In The Loop, which I should also have seen long before now, is rather less of a fairytale. The basic Thick of It-goes-to-war set-up is confused slightly by having everyone except Malcolm Tucker and Jamie play similar characters to those they did on TV, but not the same people, and there are one or two missed opportunities. For instance, when Malcolm confronts James Gandolfini as a US general, they get most of the way towards the key point - Malcolm may threaten to kill people as a matter of course, the General literally has - but then don't quite press the point. Still, we do get a wonderful scene where Malcolm realises his place in the scheme of things and is, for a moment, a broken man, which acts almost as a bridge between Peter Capaldi in The Thick of It and his apparently very different government advisor in Torchwood: Children of Earth
These are minor quibbles, but they are the most I can really say about the film, because I believe some of my readers still have workplace filters that don't like swears, and as with The Thick of It the film spin-off is magnificent and hilarious, and as with The Thick of It much of that magnificence and hilarity lies in the wonderfully inventive swearing.

Comments

Inventive swearing...

[steve586.livejournal.com]

"F star star c*nt" was my particular favourite.

[meerium.livejournal.com]

Munchkin and Settlers of Catan are both ace. I also stink at Munchkin.

Re: Inventive swearing...

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Hard to choose just one, but that was a definite candidate.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I don't know whether I would improve with practice, or whether it was just the dice/deck gods hating me.

[meerium.livejournal.com]

I've played with friends who own various decks and add ons and who play it a lot, and I think you definitely get more efficient at the back stabbing the more you get to know the cards. So practice ought to help a bit!

[kevandotorg.livejournal.com]

From the little I've played of it, Munchkin seems almost entirely random; you just hope to draw good equipment and weak monsters, and wade through the two-hour treacle of the "gang up on the lead player until he's in second place, then gang up on the new leader instead, and repeat" ethos.

It feels like there's some small strategy in knowing when to play cards and when to hold them back, but you need to be familiar with the entire card set to know for sure that there isn't a card out there with a zany name and a "foil the exact thing you spent five turns setting up" effect.

[tintintin.livejournal.com]

Speaking of Ian Hart, I seem to be regularly passing him in the tunnel to the Wells Terrace exit at Finsbury Park nowadays. He's rather intense and I fear that were I to look at him for a millisecond too long he'd grind my face into the floor with his boot heel.

[dickon-edwards.livejournal.com]

Stephen Rea playing a small role in a Neil Jordan film is really no surprise - they're old mates. Rea's in most of his stuff. Given Jordan's next flick is The Graveyard Book, I'm guessing Rea will either be Silas the vampire guardian, or the boy's ghost dad, or one of the Man Jacks. Place your bets now.

Just found out Mr Jordan's also making the movie of Heart-Shaped Box.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

The sheer volume of add-ons is insane, it'd take me ages just to get the hang of the basics. But then, I guess I always played Talisman with about five extensions and had no problems there.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Really? I've seen McAvoy in there a couple of times but never Hart. In fact, I can't imagine what he even looks like not in character, maybe that's my problem.

Did see Bernard Butler jogging yesterday, though.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my first attempt to backstab the leader fell apart when she instead sent the giant wandering monster right back at me, along with the one she was originally meant to fight. Cue death.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I didn't know either of those were on the cards. Wow.

Although, while I enjoyed Heart-Shaped Box, having just read 20th Century Ghosts I feel that, like his dad, Joe Hill's greatest strength may lie in his short stories.