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Events almost conspired to thwart my chances of attending…

I had arranged to go to a birthday party in London for the weekend, so when I found out about this seminar at the last minute, my Saturday afternoon was already booked so I’d had to decline the seminar. Then, I found out yesterday that the party had been postponed, so I called my Tae Kwon-Do instructor to ask if there were any places left… he said not, but that he wasn’t going to be able to make it, so I could go in his place :-D

I spent yesterday evening and this morning trying to get in touch with the other people that were driving up to the seminar to find out where to meet, what time to arrive, where it was, when it started and other minor details, but couldn’t raise anyone. Luckily, my instructor called this morning to ask if I’d arranged a lift and had all the details for me as he hadn’t been able to contact anyone either. So, now I knew I was going to Shifnal Sports Centre (where I had already been to a Samurai Sword seminar last Autumn) and that everyone else was leaving Worcester at 1pm. :-D

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Not normally the kind of thing I would watch, but having seen the trailer the last time I was at the flicks… my interest was piqued. I had thought that Spike Lee’s movies were generally political racial commentaries that wouldn’t appeal, but I’ll eat my words: This is a really clever movie.

There seems to be a nod in the direction of Quentin Tarantino with the tone of the dialogue, and the offbeat flashforwards’ interspersed through the body of the film. Lee takes an overused premise from a 60′s and 70′s scripting mainstay, “The Bank Robbery”, but uses a completely fresh approach. The story isn’t focussed on the robbery particularly; it is more of a character movie. The interplays among the characters of Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Christopher Plummer and Jodie Foster are intriguing and carry the movie in their own right.

Bad stuff? Well, I thought it odd that we never learn what inspires the bank robbery, or why Clive Owen’s character ends up in that peculiar predicament… maybe that is being saved for the “Director’s Cut” on DVD ;-)

Minor gripes aside, well worth a visit to the cinema.

Dog shit.

Trying to bend Moin to make it look like a blog didn’t really work out for me, so I’ve migrated to WordPress, which is certainly a lot prettier, and is just as easy to post to. More importantly, we now have searching by category and date, and can step back through history to look at older posts.

I notice that I blogged most regularly in 2003 and 2004 while I was using emacs-wiki and blosxom, and that the effort involved in posting through Moin throughout 2005 killed my productivity. Hopefully I’ll become prolific once more… feel free to look around, and please leave comments on anything you find interesting.

Also of interest is that the site is now professionally hosted, so it shouldn’t go down anywhere near as often as it used to, and will respond faster to boot!

Enjoy!