Facts from the Fringe

Well, I haven't posted for absolutely friggin' ages. Not impressive, I know - but the new job has got me caught up rather epically! Working for the good ol' Gilded Balloon for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It's an absolutely fantastic job - I really can't recommend Festival jobs enough: you meet amazing people, have great fun and earn money for it. So yeah, Gilded Balloon took me back after Winter Wonderland, which is good.

Seen a butt-load of comedy that I really enjoyed - Nick Revell, Miles Jupp, Ali Cook - and some that I didn't - Martha McBride (though that wasn't really her fault; her show relies on audience interaction, and the audience we were in was shit) - as well as the heats of 'So You Think You're Funny?', which - for those who don't know - is a comedy competition that launched the likes of Dylan Moran, Jo Brand, Peter Kay, Phil Kay and loads of other comics into stardom. The winner of the heat I saw - his name was Shaun something-or-other, I'll find out his last name later so you lot can look him up - was absolutely fantastic and had both me and Fee in stitches...which is a plus.

Also finally saw The Dark Knight - it was a week ago, but like I said...been busy - and it's absolutely fantastic. The only thing wrong with it was that it was maybe a touch too long, and it did rely on slightly silly gimmickry towards the end. But to be quite honest, some critics are annoying me...and no, it's not the ones giving it crap reviews, but the ones who say that if it weren't for Heath Ledger it'd be decidedly average. That's entirely not the case - Ledger is fantastic, I'll give him that, but the movie has two other absolutely monumental performances: those of Christian Bale and Aaron Eckheart. The former puts in a top notch turn as Batman - separating the two personas of the character brilliantly - and the latter makes Harvey Dent's devolution from Gotham's shining knight into deranged, fate-obsessed madman believable, and more importantly, incredibly tragic.

In short, it's a film that really does transcend the 'comic book movie' nook to become something truly special. It'll be robbed at the Oscars - if anything related to it wins any of the big Oscars (Best Actor, Best Film, etc.), I'll eat my hat. Not because I think it's a bad movie, but the Academy has a habit of looking down it's nose at technically brilliant films that are based on what it deems 'inferior material'. Take, for instance, Transformers not winning the Best Special Effects Oscar...criminal, no? And it'll guaranteed be the same deal with The Dark Knight. Sad, but true. Anyways, I shall try and write a review for both this and for WALL·E at some point, so watch out for those.

Only things left that I want to see this summer is Hellboy 2 and The Mummy 3. Not really that bothered about the CG Star Wars movie - Jabba the Hutt's son? Please... - but am really excited about Hellboy. I loved the first one, depsite its flaws, and this new one certainly looks like New Line have decided to let Guillermo Del Toro off his leash and really let the imagination boot give us a hefty one to the nuts.

That's it from me tonight - need to be up in 9 hours to go to work once again. Joy of joys - but at least I get to hang out with the likes of Tim Minchin! Oh yes, I do get to do that, kiddies. Mwahahahaha.

Latas!