Chris Hansen’s blog

HWMBO wanted to see it, so we had choice: Chelsea at 1 pm or the Barbican at 3. We chose the latter, and planned a trip to Waitrose afterwards to pick up such things as light bulbs. Amazingly, Tesco here seems to feel that light bulbs are dispensable at Christmas so clears them out to put in yet another beer display.

Now, I have to say that I hate the Barbican with a passion. It seems to have been designed by a cock-eyed mad monk who mistook a labyrinth for a maze and transplanted the whole damned thing to the City of London. In addition, the signage is confusing, with arrows implying that if you want to get to the Cinema you need to climb up the wall and across the ceiling. Most of the signs keep the existence of the cinema a deep, dark, secret. We walked in on the second floor, went down to the Ground floor, back up to the second, then down to -2 (yes, they have a -1 and -2 floor). We were carefully sold tickets in the centre by a woman who implied that there would be a full house. There were in the end about 25 people (no more) watching the film. The Pearl and Dean advertisements at the beginning features our friend Singapore Alex as an Eskimo shilling for furniture with penguins in the background (who would ever accuse advertising people of being accurate!).

It’s a typical Ang Lee, with lots of long shots over scenery and trendy interiors and clothes. The story itself, like most of his other movies, is quite sad and the tension between the two major characters takes up most of the energy in the film. Lee’s main difficulty, for me, is that he can’t seem to get to the point. He just dithers and dallies and the film ends up being 2-3/4 hours long. I didn’t go to sleep, but it dragged and dragged. There is one scene with lots of blood, and two or three sex scenes between the two major characters. She has nipples like those on a baby’s bottle.

HWMBO gave it 8.5 out of 10. I could only muster 7 out of 10 and that pretty reluctantly.

Were very gay this evening and had quiche and salad for dinner. I feel like that QueerCard[TM] is about to land in my mailbox any day now.

Note: I believed that I saw chocolate bunnies in Tesco’s last week, thus making Tesco the first store to sell Easter candy around here. I misstated, and hereby apologise. On closer inspection, they turned out to be reindeer. However, the shape is so bunnylike that I bet they’ll use the same molds to make the Easter bunnies, and they’ll appear soon. Very soon. Once Peeps start appearing in the stores here, it will be the End of British Civilisation As We Know It.

Be Afraid!

Be VERY Afraid!

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 5th, 2008 at 10:09 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.