I mean, for example, Friday in the PM, the whole network goes down again, including phone and email but OMG deadlines so there am I running about like a blue arsed fly, actually being handed print outs and scrawled notes which I have to type up, old skool, and then I have to phone interstate on my own phone ($$$) and breathlessly ask if they could look over what I've managed so far, with the clock ticking down. Oh no, they blithely wave off as I miss the last bus home, it can wait until Monday.
Somedays, I really want to buy some folks a ticket for the Titanic, you know? So I finally get home and there's a tin of beans on the counter to heat up for my tea. But it's been holed and is orf, luv, so it's off to a freezing cold bed with no tea or telly.
Hence the woe is me aria. So I decided I was going to see some bloody fillums, dammit. Spent Saturday in my usual dawn to dusk hard labour, though I did make time for tea and marmalade, the posh marmalade from the F&M hamper, too, again, as a treat to my bruised esteem.
Sunday dawned, not cloudy and damp as promised, but that was probably for the best. Managed to get a taxi, too, and it had to be a taxi because there are no buses in Scuzzville on Sunday (or house arrest Sunday, as I like to call it) and a quick check of the transport page did not reveal any tricky Phileas Fogg like zig zagging round trip but instead suggested I walk 78km. So, yeah, taxi (none of the taxi drivers questioned my going out of my way to a nice mall, they all know about my local and all them 'orrible murders, an incremental tally to rival Colarado, just far less theatrical).
So, onto my mini film festival of sex and deviancy.
First up was Magic Mike. Well, not quite first up as, to my surprise, the 10:15 am session was sold out, so I had to go to the 10:40. Which meant I had time for an ill considered cup of tea in the T2 cafe. It's a good thing it's one of my fave cafes to sit in and read because the service is so slow the waiters walk backwards - both times my tea arrived over an hour late so I had to gulp and run.
So, Magic Mike. Perhaps the reviews I'd read had bigged it up too much, desperate to reassure all that it was not another Showgirls, but I was a bit 'meh' to be honest. There was nothing left to surprise or intrigue, which is why I should never read reviews. There was a lot less nekkid boy action or Bomer as I'd been led to believe, too, though Bomer did make for pleasing background eye candy, but that was pretty much it (in the role he was born to play: background eye candy).
It's a thing with Soderbergh films, people wander in and out, without me ever learning of their characters, hope, dreams, motivations, or why they are there at that moment, doing what they do. A lot like lesser characters in maybe a Shakespeare play, I guess, who wander in, announce the king is dead, and wander off again, which kicks the plot along, I grant you, but I find a bit wanting, especially when the main characters are so shallow and unlikeable. Except Mr McConaughey, who did indeed bring a mercenary and sinister sleaze to the plot. His back story and motivations were clear just from the way he walked and talked, so, impossibly, as I've never liked him, I must declare Mr McConaughey the best actor in the film. Mr Tatum, too, surprised, with a sweet humour and existential angst (at one point I was so bored I started assigning various schools of philosophy to various 'characters', and it worked, too, as they were such bland ciphers anything could be reasonably projected onto them) and the girls were wastes of objectified space, especially that lead with one of those really ugly American faces that are all bulging chin.
So, near naked Matt Bomer and I can only manage a 'meh' at best. Guess I really was feeling a bit wooby and grumpy.
Then there was running around on the scavanger hunt of new pyjamas, a bottle of Italian wine, some tea from T2 and another spare cardigan (this violent flu has caused some severe wardrobe attrition, I must say).
Second and last film was Hysteria and I loved it to bits. A broad British farce, about, well, un, women's health issues, starring the delightful Hugh Dancy, the ever louche Rupert Everrett, and a fiesty Maggie Gyllenhaal. It was very silly, and also very earnest, but I enjoyed it immensely, and Hugh Dancy was such a brilliant straight man, all those startled and alarmed expressions, the dear boy, it made me annoyed once more that I had to miss him treading the boards in New York. I've never seen him do finer. Clearly he's one of those pretty actors more suited to comic foil than dashing hero, and he was comic foil, stooge, what have you, to just about everyone in the film, a raft of Midsomer thesps going for gold and completely over the top.
Still, for someone raised on silly British films, it was the very ticket. I was very pleased and considered my dollars well spent (and, oh the trouble, it took me three goes to get the seat and session I wanted, finally the girl on the counter admitted it might help if she paid attention, well, yes, possibly, give it a go, what ho, eh).
Managed to get a taxi back (me and my shopping) and was home in time for homemade pie and Once Upon a Time, which is still confusing but I'm a sucker for shippiness (which is why I probably found Magic Mike frustratingly hollow and Hysteria far more my cup of English Breakfast tea) and set True Blood (well, there's no way I could be watching Joe after that scene, now, was there - grin).
So that was my weekend. No typing or writing but I've given up on that. Sort of. I did buy two new notebooks. Ever the cockeyed optimist, me.
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Russian oligarch wins £1.7m refund from Christie's after auction house sold him 'fake' painting
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