Yes, it’s true, I’m still going to the Gym. And no, I’m not just sitting in the lounge area for an hour drinking the free coffee. Oh no, I do all sorts of manly running and cycling and weights type things. I’m even starting to enjoy it, sort of. Not in any kind of ‘actual’ or ‘tangible’ sense of the word of course, but I do like the fact that my arms are starting to develop some kind of musculature that stays firm when called upon to do so. Not a lot of it, but my arms are no longer so skinny that when put next to my belly I look like a lost species of dinosaur. Now, if only I could stop gorging on chocolate the rest of the time that I’m not actually in the gym, maybe I might get somewhere with the whole thing.

A lot of what drives me on is the fact that I can distract myself from the fact that I am physically exerting myself by watching films, which then also give me something to talk about on here. I have done so once already, which if you missed you can find here. As you can see, my first few films were possibly not the wisest of choices, seeing as they were largely, well, a bit shit. Oh, and then there was Tron:Legacy, which was so hideously bad I nearly slipped into a coma on the treadmill. So let’s see how the next batch of films fared.

Battle: Los Angeles

In the last thrilling instalment of Gym Films I rounded things off watching the dullest alien invasion film since Will Smith smoked a cigar with Jeff Goldblum. Given that all I knew about this one was that it was considered a less interesting treading of the same ground which had almost identical special effects. So colour me surprised to find this little gem was in fact a rather exciting little war film, largely unburdened by the half arsed characterisation that befalls most of these films, There’s a cursory ‘hey, meet the guys, and look, it’s Harvey Dent!’ intro for all of ten minutes and then it’s slam into Black Hawk Down with Aliens. Of course it is all fairly predictable, but there are some quite spectacular set pieces and even a vaguely unexpected ending. Huzzah for unpredictable action films. Anyway, the whole thing is fairly adrenaline pumping, which is just what you need for the gym. Loses half a point for quite unnecessary Colon use in the title though.

7.5/10

The Lincoln Lawyer

If B:LA was a welcome shot of adrenaline, trying to muster any enthusiasm while watching this turgid lumpen weight of a film is the equivalent of trying to do the Great North Run while carrying the accumulated judging panels of X Factor and Dragons Den on my knees and a vat of cheese on my back. It took me about twenty minutes to realise that I had in fact read the book some years back, and the plot (such as it is) remained unchanged, so in the end I remembered everything that was about to happen about five minutes before it actually did. Not that going in blind would have been much help, it wouldn’t have changed the fact that Matthew Mahogany is such a detestable screen presence that you actively hope for a major traffic accident every time he climbs into the back of the aforementioned Lincoln automobile. If that’s not bad enough he’s set against a main villain played by Ryan Phillipe. It’s like watching a judo bout between two dollops of wallpaper paste.

2/10

Paul

After the shock to the system of the world’s most tedious film, I opted next for a little light relief in Paul, the brainchild of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. That I ended up watching this on a small screen some months after its release, rather than queuing up to see it on day of release speaks volumes for how these two have dropped in my estimation over the years, the immense goodwill they earned after Spaced and Shaun of the Dead eroded slowly over the years by increasingly bland Pegg performances and, well, the other blanbd Pegg performances. I didn’t have much expectation for this, and it met that expectation admirably. It isn’t a bad film by any stretch, it’s quite funny but never really LOL, let alone LMAO, and certainly never near a ROFL.

Excuse me. I’m so sorry. Just typing that made me vomit everywhere. I’m so sorry.

Back to the film. It passed the time well enough. It was cute. Oh fuck it, it was a bland mainstream comedy, and I expected more, but at the same time I expect nothing less.

5/10

Limitless

If a face ever achieved a smugness beyond this, it might actually implode in a cloud of self satisfaction.

Ah Bradley Cooper, the purveyor of ultimate banality. A man utterly incapable of any other facial expression other than overwhelming smugness, like some kind of Hollywood Fearne Cotton. Quite how he has managed to luck into this career is beyond me, but I imagine the overwhelming sense of self entitlement he consistently has plastered over his grinning face convinced people he’s worth employing with alarming regularity, the final product being this, a film that is essentially a Greatest Hits performance from an actor with only a handful of mediocre movies under his belt. For anyone who remembers him turning up on a regular basis as the most annoying character in Alias, this film will be nothing of a shock. He plays a writer (like in Alias) who is a bit of a loser (like in Alias) until a chance encounter with a narcotic (um, the Hangover) makes him all super brainy and able to do mad stuff (like, um, Alias again.) He gets rich and becomes a bit of a dick (Wedding Crashers) until it all goes a bit wrong and he’s on a mission to find out what happened (like the Hangover) and eventually he ends up kicking a load of people and shooting at them and stuff (The A – Team) until he finally learns a valuable lesson. (All of the above) It’s watchable enough, largely to see Robert De Niro trying to look interested and not utterly disdainful of this upstart prick who he now has to sit opposite and condescend to act against. He doesn’t do a very good job.

5/10

I’m still not doing that well, am I? Oh well, maybe I’ll have better luck with the next lot. Some of them have Paul Walker in, surely the highest possible guarantee of success?

Again I’ve done the thing of writing a blog post at a time when I can’t post it, and then forgetting to post it once I got home. I wrote most of this last week, gleeful at the time that it would mean more than one blog post in a week, giddy at making September the most blogged month of 2010. But then I forgot about it, missed the many opportunities afforded me by the weekend to get it up, and missed the end of the month. And now it’s also not quite as relevant, seeing as it is about a TV show that was on a week ago. But I shall post it nonetheless and hope that it augers that October will be the new king of 2010 for blogging frequency.

But anyway, the other night we finished watching Alan Davies’ Teenage Revolution, which was a nicely gentle personal perspective of the radical eighties that I was always that little bit too young to comprehend at the time. I remember getting to my teenage years in the early nineties and feeling thoroughly upset that I had missed out on it all, the social unrest, activism, the feeling of being part of something bigger than you. Of course at the time I didn’t realise that being a spotty privileged public schoolboy meant that had I been around during the social unrest of the eighties, I would have been ‘The Enemy.’ But you try telling that to a thirteen year old obsessed with the lyrics of Eddie Vedder, Kurt Cobain and Zack De La Rocha.

Alan Davies’ show was an interesting watch, not just because he is a witty man whose televisual company I enjoyed, but because the parallels between then and now were stark and clear to see. Oh, and he’s a massive Arsenal fan, which helps. But without ever hammering the point home Davies made a very good job of saying that it is in times of austerity and injustice that you tend to get great leaps forward in artistry, in societal changes, and within a generation. The makers of the show never felt the need to draw a big parallel between its subject matter and the current precipice of despair faced by this country, but those parallels were there and plain to see nonetheless. It’s not hard to see that for all of its rhetoric on the Big Society and ‘fairness for all’ that the current coalition government is making changes that are going to leave vast swathes of unemployment, social division and unrest.

Now of course this is ‘a bad thing.’ Misery is hovering over the horizon like a portentous cloud and many lives will be ruined, as was the case in the eighties, but this kind of blight also has a tendency to bring about exciting and interesting art, music, film and television of the type that has been largely absent from the mainstream since the eighties. And when you look around at the hideous crap that passes for mainstream entertainment these days, it’s not hard to again draw parallels between today’s collection of bland pop, dancing and talent shows and their late 70’s counterparts.

What Alan Davies’ show was intending to remind us of, I believe, was that things have to get bad in order for things to get good. I have no idea whether things will be as bad under Cameron as they were under Thatcher, I suspect that he’ll be better at targeting his cuts at the already voiceless to minimise public complaint, but I would imagine that the next decade will prove to be interesting, to say the least.

What I have also been thinking about is the kind of society Rosie will be going into once she reaches the age that she starts to leave the world of childhood and becomes more interested and engaged in the world around her. I suspect that like me she will actually miss out on the next period of upheaval, and that she will arrive into a teenage world where everyone is harping on about what had just been in the same way as I encountered in my teen years. In some ways of course this would be a blessing as this means she will be going into a more stable and nicer world. But there is a big part of me that hopes she gets to experience a genuine movement in her generation, something that gives her more opportunity to be truly extraordinary. Watching Alan and his journey, I couldn’t help but think that if he hadn’t have been spurred on by radical politics and the nascent left-wing comedy scene then he could have been just another funny man, working in an office, doing 9 to 5. And perhaps if I had been 10 years younger, I would have found my way more easily in that more pressurised world. Who knows?

Whilst I’m on the 80’s theme, last night we watched Control, the Ian Curtis biopic, and when I woke this morning I think I actually had a depression hangover just from watching it. On the one hand it’s a brilliantly made and unflinching portrayal of one of British musical history’s most iconic and interesting characters. On the other I was left with a huge question mark as to why on Earth this film was even made. Why make a film so resolutely determined to make sure that nobody came out of it well? Curtis came across as a nasty and unlovable man, his wife as a pathetic and cold woman, his lover as shallow and a bore, and the band and management as ruthless and uncaring about their talisman’s obvious difficulties. The film raises interesting points about treatment and diagnosis of mental illness, but in the end I just disliked everyone involved so thoroughly that I found little to take away from it except a sadness that is hard to shake. It even made me dislike the music. Odd film.

I am also becoming obsessed with Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo’s film reviews from Radio 5, and have lost a whole hour of this very evening tracking down videos of them reviewing films I’ve seen. And that includes the below review of Control, in which Mark Kermode makes very good points that I utterly disagree with. But there you go, as always this is still worth a watch. (I am aware that I am late to this party, but never let it be said that I am not one for turning up last at the party then loudly declaring to everyone else already there that they really should check out the same said party.)

Ellen and I are off on holiday later this week, off to Devon where hopefully the rain will cease its onslaught of these fair isles long enough for us to venture outside of our cottage and enjoy the local area. If not, well at least we get a bit of time to relax as just the three of us. I can’t wait.

The idea of blogging for money used to be hugely appealing to me, back in the day when I first started a blog and imagined that it would magically make me a .com billionaire, but recently I’ve seen a couple of blogs that I read avidly taking their first tentative steps into posting more commercial output and it’s made me immensely glad that I’ve never taken the same route. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve nothing against the decision to do so and we’ve all got to eat. And in both cases the blog carries enough of a readership to make it worth a company’s while. Every time I see it done however, it always seems to stick out like a sore thumb. Most of the bloggers I read tend to have a rather caustic and ‘real’ voice, and when they then find themselves writing something that isn’t fiercely them, they tend to go the other way into saccharine chirpiness about whatever they are writing. Perhaps they are signalling to their readers that this is something ‘not them’ and so to be ignored, or perhaps they are not quite comfortable enough to tackle it properly.

It’s not about to make me stop reading these wonderful blogs, and I know that the next post they make will be back to business as usual but it does strike me as being a little bit odd to see something so blatantly ‘selling’ from people I would not really expect it from. Again, I’m not trying to have a go at doing it, and in my financial position I would imagine I would make the same choice were any company lunatic enough to spend money to reach the handful of people who read this.

Last week’s post on atheism and other topics really did get a rather nice discussion going in the comments, which is always nice, especially when it’s not accompanied by flaming from delusional people who take life far too seriously. It has been nice however to see that the wider humanist movement has been quite adept at spotting that they may have gone about dealing with the Pope’s visit in the wrong way. This post on the New Humanist site especially seems to sum up what I was saying in more eloquent terms than I managed. I also find it hard to imagine any such hand-wringing in the Catholic camp over the way they conducted themselves, so strangely enough this article’s acceptance of its own fallacy in this regard has helped to reinforce my own views that we are right because we have the gift of humility.

But in order to avoid the merest whiff of impartiality on these pages, I should also put across the Xtian viewpoint, which I believe can best be shown through this trailer for what I’m sure will be the biggest film of the year:

I don’t know about you but I sense box office, critical and potentially even Oscar gold awaiting.

The other night I watched the Shane meadows film This Is England for the first time, having somehow missed it the umpteen other times it has been on. I thought it was very good, although I did wonder if it was entirely successful in repudiating the rather reprehensible far-right politics at the core of some of its characters. If you haven’t seen it, this is a very moving story of a young impressionable boy being dragged into far right politics through sheer blind chance. As the film goes on it gets darker and darker until the quite harrowing conclusion, where the boy finds himself as party to a violent and horrifying racist attack. He then turns his back on the group, and the charismatic father figure who has indoctrinated him.

My problem with it is that the character that embodies this fascistic sensibility who is chillingly erudite and convincing in his arguments has no intellectual counterweight. Any character who tries to interject any rational argument against this fascism never does so by pointing out the flaws in the argument itself. Combo, the thug leader (brilliantly played, it has to be said, by Stephen Graham) gets his inevitable comeuppance in the end, but it’s as a result of his own temper, not his political idiocy, and as such, the many statements put forward by him are still left there, unchallenged. To someone of liberal sensitivities it is clear that the director Shane Meadows intends this as a cautionary tale of the sorts of people who gravitate to these groups, but I would imagine that anyone of those sensibilities who go into this film would not take any sense from the film that the underlying politics are wrong.

At one point the group attend a meeting of the National Front, and witness what is a fairly chilling hate speech, and while to most people it would be chilling viewing, I still think that there is a proportion of the audience for this film that would be whooping along with Compo, and my problem with this film is that the director shies away from dealing with these issues on an intellectual level, instead opting for a ‘well these are a bunch of wrong uns’ attitude.

I did quite enjoy the film, but it did leave a nasty taste in the mouth. Compare it to I.D, which tackles a similar topic and what was great about that film is that it never really preaches, but shows you just how outside the realms of normality these sorts of thinking are, by contrasting them with the people left in its wake. Same can be said of American History X. By the end of I.D you know that its central character has fallen off a cliff of self-delusion. But in This Is England we see nothing of the outside world other than grainy Falklands War reports. When any character speaks up, they are jettisoned, and the mother of the boy is never really present aside from some vague grumbling about his hair. Still, it provoked a response and a heated discussion between Ellen and I, so it can’t be all that bad.

The reason we watched it, however, was so that we could follow it on with the new TV drama This Is England ’86. But we had to switch it off after fifteen minutes, so utterly different was the tone of the new show, which seemed like a slightly watered down and blander Shameless. Disappointing.

On unrelated matters I have signed up again for Nanowrimo, which if you’re not familiar is an annual online writing competition. The aim is to write a novel of 50,000 words over the course of November. Quality is not a factor, purely quantity. Whenever I have told people in the past they inevitably ask what the prize is, but the only real prize is the novel itself, and the level of satisfaction that comes from that. I have completed Nano twice now, the first book I really liked and probably could have knocked into shape, but it got lost on a corrupted hard drive, and the second one was a bit rubbish so I never went back to it. But it’s a great writing exercise and a lot of fun. And seeing as I want to get a lot more involved in the wider writing community, this is a great way to do so. I’ve never really taken part in the social side of Nano before, but it is there in spades, so I’ll definitely be checking that out.

As for what to write, the rules stipulate that it has to be a new story. There’s no way of checking this of course, but then if you cheat you’re only cheating yourself. One thing I am considering is a separate Blood on the Motorway strand. I want to add some extra dimensions to the story, so this would be a great way of figuring out some plot points at the very least. The joy of writing an apocalypse story is you can have infinite tales within it. But then again, I am quite tempted to just do something utterly new, just to clear the cobwebs out of my bonce a bit. Either way I’ve got until November 1st to decide what I am going to do. And if you are interested in the idea of Nanowrimo, then go and check out their website. It’s completely free, utterly stupid as an idea, but thoroughly rewarding to do. If you do sign up, let me know, and we can support each other. It’ll be fun!*

*Disclaimer: May not be fun, but will involve a lot of coffee and MSN procrastination.

‘Jesus Christ!’

This was the response of the nice lady from the disconnections team at Virgin Media when I recounted my tale of woe to her. As promised, I took the bull by the horns and phoned up to cancel my account with them, armed with the fresh knowledge that the £30 recommend-a-friend discount hadn’t gone to my chosen friend either. The woman on the other end, who I imagine cannot have the nicest of jobs working in the disconnection team, was obviously authorised to do more than anyone else I had spoken to previously, and after she had spent a good five minutes apologising for the incompetence of her colleagues, she has now arranged a delivery tomorrow of a shiny V+ box, and my wireless router. Of course I won’t entirely believe it until I am recording programmes at my leisure, but there you go. A little bit of persistence and eventually getting through to someone with the sense to do what was promised initially, and I have exactly what I wanted. So that’s nice. Thanks again for everyone who sent advice on here and on Facebook, you lovely good good people. And apparently the £30 discount will come through after we’ve been paying on time for 3 months, so don’t worry Jen.

So hopefully this tale will only need to be a trilogy of posts, I’ll be very disappointed if I have to return to write a fourth installment. But onto other things. In the last few days I’ve really started to grasp how cool my phone is, as it seems to be able to play YouTube videos at a rather nice quality, even given a general paucity of connection. Honestly, aside from a few stutters, it’s able to play videos when my connection is snot strong enough to even send a tweet. Yesterday I finally got around to watching something that a good many friends have told me about, Zomblogalypse. This is a web series made by some friends of a friend, and as such I wasn’t expecting that much from it, in the same way you never really expect a huge amount when someone tells you about their mate’s band. But actually this is lo-fi horror heaven, brilliantly scripted and acted, and funny as anything put together by more famous zomcom creators. On the bus home yesterday and the bus to work this morning I managed to cane the whole first series, and can’t wait to travel to work tomorrow to get cracking on series 2. I’m also immensely jealous that I didn’t come up with it first.  Click on the image below to go check it out.

Also, I am currently listening to the full Glastonbury set by Radiohead from a few years back, which is every bit as splendid as I remember from watching it on TV, and it’s all thanks to my little Android. Cheers little buddy.

Aint It Cool News is reporting  that Star Trek reboot master JJ Abrams is considering whether or not to include the baddie from the original Star Trek II movie in his second film in the franchise.  Well, I say he is considering it, but the quote they give from Abrams is as much of a denial as it is anything else. As Aaron Sorkin may put it, a non-denial denial.

“While I don’t want to approach the second film as a remake of episodes we’ve seen in the past, and I don’t think any of the other writers or producers are interested in just rehashing or throwing characters in for the sake of it…Khan is certainly the most obvious one in the history of the series for me…I do think that there are…nothing is off limits in terms of what we’re discussing.”

So in other words, yes we know the fanboys would really like this, but we don’t want to do it really, but who knows, maybe we’ll be so stuck for ideas that we’ll just do a tired old rehash and use up all the goodwill we earned on the first film.

May I officially stick my oar in and say for the love of Chekov please do not put Khan in the next movie. Wrath of Khan is easily the benchmark that all Star Trek movies must aspire to, but it was very much a product of that crew (can you have a Khan movie without there being the correlating story from the original series?) and also, the plot revolves around Kirk’s son. How is that gonna work, and still have the relevancy emotionally?

So instead of tackling Khan again, here are my top 5 recommendations for what characters from the Star Trek universe could show up as villains in the second movie:

1. The Borg. Yes, they’re not due to show up for another 100 years or so, but what’s the point of blowing up the timeline if you can’t have a bit of fun with it?  The Borg were the easily the baddest of all Trek baddasses. And besides, would be interesting to see how Kirk would line up against them.

2. Morn. You know, the one who sits at the bar through pretty much every episode of Deep Space Nine without speaking, without anyone knowing what his back-story was, save for that he died with a fortune, but then it turns out he didn’t die.  It would be great to find out that he was previously an arch villain who comes up against the original cast. Bonus points for keeping him as a mute.

3. Wesley Crusher. In which the crew of the enterprise zoom through time to the future Enterprise and then beat seven shades of shit out of Wesley for his dazzling array of shit cardigans and jumpers.

4. They could remake Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, aka the one with the whales. Except this time rather than save the whales they find out that whales are responsible for global warming, which is actually caused by whale song, and spend months trawling the ocean brutally slaying every last one of them.

5. They could have an ORIGINAL FUCKING IDEA! Just a thought.

Anyway, I loved where they went with this year’s reboot, which is probably going to be my film of the year come December, so I have every faith in Abrams being able to provide an excellent sequel. But please, no Khan.

So it seems that UNICEF have named a goodwill ambassador in Orlando Bloom, yes he of the vacant stare and ‘unique’ approach to acting (as in making sure as to never display emotion on that face of his, lest he develop wrinkle lines.)  Interesting choice. Perhaps they plan on using his perfect forehead as a background for their projector when they come to make PowerPoint presentations. Or perhaps he will put the funny ears back on and go around shooting hunger with his bow and arrow.

Also John Barnes, purveyor of wonderful football and terrible rapping, has been confirmed to be involved in the next world cup, not by coming out of retirement to use those wonderful feet, but by re-doing his infamous rap for the official song. Excellent. So in 1990 we had Barnes in the prime of life, utterly unable to convincingly rap. Now we have to hear him make even more of a balls up of it now that he’s old enough to be the father of any of the chart’s successful rappers.

On top of this, twitter has caught fire today with the news that some legal firm put an injunction against The Guardian to stop them from reporting on a Parliamentary question. It turns out it all had something to do with a company called Trafigura polluting the hell out of the coast of Africa. 

This sort of censorship of our own Government is obviously ‘a very bad thing’ but turns out its a bad thing mainly for Trafigura and its Lawyers, who now have hundreds of citizen journalists on their tail, plus the Lib Dems raising questions over the whole affair in Parliament today. Suddenly a story that would have been reported only in the Guardian and probably easily forgotten is now being chased by every single paper and reported worldwide through twitter.  Funny how things work, eh?

Oh, and the MP’s expenses scandal has raised its head again, with the Government’s report leading to even more money being paid back, including our erstwhile PM paying back £12,415.  And Manchester Airport have introduced security measures that verge on the pornographic. And Michael Jackson’s estate never thought to see if the rights to his ‘new’ single actually belong to someone else, like, say Paul Anka. Who wrote it with Jackson for his own album.  Looks like Paul Anka is about to become even richer.

There are days when the absolute absurdity of the world we live in really becomes apparant. Today is one of those days. It’s lovely.

Top Ten Albums of the Year

1. Meshuggah – Obzen

A spitting, spiralling mas of polyrhythms that will melt your head and confound the ear.  Truly mesmerising.  Imagine all the worlds classical music being played at once by a robot with a distortion pedal and it would sound nothing like this.  I just like the image.  Brutal, technical metal that manages to be accessible and, well, rather splendid.

Meshuggah – Bleed (video)

2. Sigur Rós -Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust

By far and away the best non-metal album of the year for me.  Alright, so it’s not as good as Takk, or (), but it fills me with a sense of unbridled joy whenever I listen to it, and it pulls me back again and again.  Uplifting and yet mournful at times, I love this album.

Sigur Ros - Gobbledigook (Live With Bjork at Naturra)

3. Origin – Antithesis 

If you watched the Meshuggah video above and thought to yourself, ‘bloody hell, that’s a bit too heavy,’ then you probably don’t want to follow this link.  By far and away the most technically astounding album made this year, it is a relentless, bludgeoning cacophony of noise.  And it’s brilliant.

Origin – Finite (video)

4. Portishead – Third

One of my favourite ever bands coming back, something that happened a lot this year (AC/DC, Metallica and Guns n’ Roses) but this was the one album which really didn’t disappoint.  Dark, mournful, harrowing, a truly stunning album, with easily my favourite song of the year, Machine Gun.

Portishead – Machine Gun (video)

5. Mogwai – The Hawk Is Howling

A startling return to form by Scotland’s premier instrumental weirdos.  A crystalline sheen sits atop these tracks, which became a staple of my listening when I was doing my nano novel.

Mogwai – Batcat (video)
 

6. Kings Of Leon – Only By the Night

Many purists see this as a dip in form, but to be honest I’ve never really been sold on Kings until now.  Slightly hampered by a dip at the end of the album, this nonetheless became a regular fixture in my household as Ellen loves it too.  And the bassline on Crawl makes my spine tingle.

Kings Of Leon – Crawl (video)

7. Mouth Of The Architect – Quietly

In a year with no new releases by Neurosis, Pelican or Isis, a brilliant slab of Post Metal which remains ethereal and bruising throughout from a band I had never heard of before Last.fm. No videos for this, you’ll just have to wait for my mix!

8. Dozer – Beyond Colossal

Great dirty slabs of Swedish stoner rock.  If you like your rock dirty and fuzz-laden, seek this out.  No vids for this either.

9. Cult Of Luna – Eternal Kingdom

One of my favourite bands, I would hesitate to say this equals their early work, despite a return to heaviness eschewed on Somewhere Along The Highway, but it remains a fascinating listen, layers upon layers of Post metal noise linked to a central concept based on a book they found in a mental institute.

 
Cult Of Luna – Eternal Kingdom (Live in Warsaw)

10. Elbow – The Seldom Seen Kid

I’m sure this merits a higher place in my list, but I did overplay this over the summer to the point where I can barely listen to it again, but this remains a rarity, a British indie album that doesn’t make me want to throw things out of windows.  Great songs, brilliant lyrics, and a wistful melancholy that erupts into a joyful chorus by the end.

Elbow – One Day Like This (live at Glastonbury)

Honourable Mentions for; Metallica, AC/DC, Cancer Bats, Ben Folds, The Sword, Adele.

Worst Album of the Year: Guns N Roses - Chinese Democracy

As for gigs, the truth is that I have only been to two gigs this year, shameful though it is to admit.  However, that does at least allow me to do a best and worst gig of the year!

Best Gig: Conor Oberst – York Duchess

Worst Gig: The Streets – Leeds Academy

Top 5 Films

1. The Dark Knight

2. No Country For Old Men

3. There Will Be Blood

4. Hellboy 2: The Golden Army

5. Juno

Greatest Thing to Happen This Year: The election of Barack Obama

Worst Thing to Happen This Year: Israel’s bombing of Palestine seems to making a late grasp for the honours here.

Paul’s quick capsule review of the year:

This year has been a good one for me, despite the world seeming to cave in around me.  Obviously the most significant thing to have happened to me was the start of a new relationship with Ellen, the mother of our wonderful little girl Rosie.  It was hardly the most traditional way to start a relationship, but I’m happy to report that nine months on, and everything is still tickety boo.  We clicked so immediately that I almost forget sometimes what a new relationship it is.  Not only that, but Ellen has brought something out of me, a drive that was never really there before, which makes me want to achieve things that will make the lives of my family move forward.  I’ve never really had direction before, and 2009 will hopefully see it being implemented.  But that’s for another post.

As for all the standard geeky Paul stuff, it’s not really been a great year for anything other than political reading.  Music had been a bit ho-hum, with not many great new bands and most of my favourites not releasing anything this year.  Telly has been a bit rubbish, with Heroes going a bit shit and nothing to really get excited about outside of the excellent Big Bang Theory, The IT Crowd, Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe, and the frankly excellent Dead Set.

This year has also been the year that I rediscovered the Internet, in all of its shiny glory.  Without Google Reader I think I would be adrift now, and Last.fm has introduced me to a ridiculous number of bands.

I also returned to Nanowrimo and managed to succeed yet again, although the book itself is far from finished.  But still, quite an achievement.

The other main event of the year was of course the economic collapse, but to be honest I really can’t bring myself to care very much, as it seems the richer you were, the worse of you are.  Now I’m no raving pinko, but so?  It seems to me we are on the brink of some kind of epoch making shift in the way we all live our lives, and that everything terrible that’s happening, from the meltdown to global warming, to the increase in mental religious nutbars killing each other for no particular reason, is providing a rich stew in which we can move forward as a race to find some better ways of dealing with the world around us.  Whether we will or not is another matter.

Blimey, I went a little bit Star Trek there.

So there you go, my review of the year.  I shall be doing a year end mix and posting soon, but not today.

Paul’s quick capsule review of two films he finally got to see over the weekend:

Hancock is alright.

Quantum Of Solace is rubbish.

Honestly, I was shocked at how little I enjoyed QOS.  I thoroughly enjoyed the new direction Casino Royale took Bond to, and was looking forward to another step in the right direction, but this seemed to be a movie utterly devoid of direction, with poorly directed action set pieces, no tangible threat from the villain, and Daniel Craig taking a step away from Bourne-esque stoicism towards emotionless dullard.  I know at least one reader who will vehemently disagree with me, but I stand my ground.

On the other hand, Hancock, which is actually far less plausable in its plot twists is Hancock, which nonetheless manages to remain fun and entertaining, with Will Smith proving once again that he can carry a film through sheer weight of personality.

I was going to see Wall-E too, but didn’t get around to it, so I didn’t.

Well I did it, 50,000 words in 30 days, and now have the shiny evidence of my ability to write a ton of drivel in a short space of time.  That may sound harsh, but it probably is drivel at the moment (I don’t know either way, I haven’t looked back on it at all) but hopefully once I give it s re-write, it may come out as something readable.

I’m sure you’ll understand that this is the reason posts have been a little sparse of late, I only have the capacity for so many words at any one time, and they’ve all gone in the book.  If anyone is remotely interested in reading it, let me know and I will mail you a copy.

Other than that the main news is that I’m going to be a student again.  Starting February I will be doing an open university degree in computing, although I won’t choose a specific path until I’ve done the basic modules.  I utterly messed up my last attempt at a degree, and I’m sick of being poor, and of not knowing more about computers.  So that’s exciting.

With the nano month, I neglected to mention anything about the election, suffice to say when me and Jonic stayed up to watch the speech and the result, there were tears in my eyes.  At the time I was pretty pissed off with some of the coverage of the man’s race, until a few days later when I listened to Nina Simone’s Strange Fruit, and it hit me how far America has come in less than a century.

Other than that, my expert opinion on some things for you, in bullet point fashion:

• This video is one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen
• The new AC/DC album is alright
• The new Guns N Roses album is terrifyingly awful
• The return of Charlie Brooker, first with Dead Set and then Screenwipe, is a very good thing
• This video is beyond comprehension, Rosie…please never be like this
• Last.fm is my new version of online crack
• The new trailers for Trek and Watchmen blow me away
• Shopping for kids toys is brilliant
• I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here is every bit as horrifying as I’d imagined, only I never knew it would be this watchable
• The new series of Spooks is very silly
• Little Dorrit is marvelous

Lastly, I heard some truly horrible news today.  J+H, you are both in my thoughts, and if I were a praying man, you’d be in my prayers too.

That is all for now, but now that I have gotten back in the writing frame of mind you can expect more frequent posts.