"They die early, of cirrhosis and stuff.&quot

Whereas having the odd day off at the start of end of the week can sometimes screw up the sense of time and day-of-the-week awareness there seems to be no such problem when taking an entire week off, especially when engaging in activities which still require date-awareness such as attending scheduled events such as films where the tickets are clearly marked with the date. By waking up knowing that it was Saturday I was able to waste no time in getting out for a walk and to buy the newspaper in order to allow plenty of time to drink coffee whilst reading it before having to get on with completing house-jobs. The gentle use of a hand-drill got round the potential issue of some wires behind the plasterboard to fit the shelf above the utensil-rack above the sink and the right-hand bracket even managed to be in exactly the right place to be fastened to a nice sturdy joist rather than just the plasterboard (which made me slightly less uneasy than I would otherwise have been when Nicky appended a few extra large pots to the safe amount of stuff I added to the shelf after fitting it). With the removal of the wood from the hallway yesterday there was now some free wall to which hooks could be attached on which could then be hung the folding chairs bought last month in order provide adequate seatings for guests. There shouldn't have been any wires or pipes and the buzz from the pipe-and-wire detector was very probably just the radiator on the far side of the much-thicker-than-the-Rawlplug wall but the mounting-arrangements were amended, just in case. There was even time to speak briefly to my sister between packing up tools and preparing to head out for the day's films.

Stella was a pleasant telling of the director's semi-autobiographical tale of her first year in secondary school, her lackadaisical parents and few friends. As far as I remember the answer to the question concerning a UK distribution deal there wasn't one but it might cro pup and some point and is worth catching if it does, though it's nothing massively original or groundbreaking.

Sadly, after yesterday's crap second film today's second film was also piss (though nowhere near as horribly bad as Running In Traffic. Plugged as a twitchy thirller/horror and daring to mention the excellent Wolf Creek as a comparator, The Long Weekend features the apparently extremely limited ability-to-convince of Jim Cavaziel as a nebulously-employed but apparently rich and obviously arrogantly twatty man-character who heads to a beach for a long weekend with his better-acting, less-unpleasant and natural-voiced wife/girlfriend character. Apart from a very brief bit of ooh-this-must-be-the-horror-bit-starting (which it is, though nothing horrific really happens) there is nothing of any redemptiveness for the next ninety minutes apart from a sub-plotline which only works if viewed as taking the piss, though given the feeling of trying-for-serious of the rest it's doubtful it was so intended. Avoid, especially if you're in a DVD-rental shop looking for a nice horror for an evening. Even the opening credits looked slightly worrying - they'd tried to evoke the feeling of the start of Raiders by using the same font and a similar-looking mountain but the fact that the director, exec producer, screenwriter and music creator were all the same person set the alarm bells ringing slightly. Consider them now run, and save your money.

After a three-hour break in which I forgot to request that my pizza be delivered without cheese (though I ate it anyway and shall just walk a little bit extra tomorrow), resolved to complain to the people who run the bicycle-rickshaws about the arseholery of their drivers and tried to think of any public square in the city anywhere remotely as safe-feeling or pleasant in the evening as those almost anywhere outside Britain it was time for Modern Love is Automatic, a low-budget and mildly fourth-wall-breaking successful little comedy-thingby about a woman, her ex-boyfriend, her new flatmate, her new flatmate's boyfriend and a few other people and their various happenings. The lead character's dialogue is mostly comprised of "Yuh", "No", "I don't know", "I don't think so", "I'm not sure" and "Sure" but still engaged. It felt very similar to Flight of the Conchords at times. It's also the only use so far discovered for that sort of stupid thrash metal where the vocals consist of intelligible low bellows - there were a few bits of such 'music' squeezed into the soundtrack here and there (always starting abruptly and finishing abruptly after a few bars) but it was another little touch which worked very well. Worth catching in the unlikely event of it turning up anywhere visible.