Brighton and Beyond!

Well, the trip down south is going well. Fee's met the parents (all three of them - mum, dad and step-mum), as well as my step-grandparents and my sister, and finally my step-brother and his ladyfriend. That was entertaining, to say the least. Went to Brighton on Saturday, that was good fun - despite the fact that it chucked it down with rain for the majority of the stay.

Although, of all the things we saw, the oddest was a dead bird bang in the middle of one of the Lanes. Not the fact that there was a dead bird per se; but that there was, right next to it, a tiny, neatly place origami crane. Grim practical joke? Someone paying homage? Or perhaps student art project? We'll never know. But here it is (be warned, it's pretty grim...click for a better look). Apparently it's grimly artistic, but I dunno...

But hey, new news! Lots of great films coming out in the next two or so months. I'm sure you're about as knowledgeable of these as I am, but I'll cite them anyways...because...y'know...it's fun.

Body of Lies is a new film with Leo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe, with Ridley Scott in the directors chair. Has the potential to devolve into a generic, sweaty pot-boiler - but with Scott and Crowe thrown into the mix, could be absolutely incredible. Good old Russell is proving more and more diverse as time goes along, so I await with baited breath to see if I'm right.

Next up, we're into Western territory, with Appaloosa. I'm really quite excited about that - Westerns are my favourite genre of movie outside of fantasy and sci-fi (hence why I liked Firefly so much, I assume), and this one looks to be shaping up to be fantastic. Viggo Mortensen's in there, and Ed Harris is both directing and starring, so it'll be interesting to see if Harris has got the directing chops to go with his almost invariably fantastic performances.

Slightly more controversially, in the 'looking forward to' camp, is the Max Payne movie. I'm honestly of the opinion that it could well be the very first truly good video game adaptation. Mark Wahlberg, whilst not an instant fit, could well fill the angst-ridden shoes of Max, and whilst I was ridiculously sceptical at having Mila Kunis as Mona, from the trailer it looks like she's slotted perfectly into that particular wonderbra. But still, I do have to remain undecided about it - although with a rumoured $40 million at the director's disposal, along with decidedly brilliant source material, I've gone for optimistically undecided. And hopefully it'll inspire Remedy to get off their arses and get going on Max Payne 3 - if only to say 'no, this is how it's done, you cunts'.

There's others, but those're the major three that I care about. Seems Saw is getting a 5th outing - hurray for torture porn - and Frank Miller is directing a comic book movie: The Spirit. I'm not honestly enthused about either - the Spirit seems to me to be ridiculously weak source material, and from the trailer it looks completely over-directed. As for Saw...well, I think enough is enough - but Twisted Pictures clearly don't share my views.

Wow, that was a movies vent and a half, wasn't it? Next time I might even talk about Spore - which I bought on Friday. But I think I do need to play it for a while longer before commenting on it - but so far, so good.

That's it for now, ladies and gents. Hope you all had a great weekend. Ciao!!