The week that was #5

Facebook Voodoo

On Friday last week the two of the people who sit near me at work (diagonally, I guess; it’s hard to show without a map) were away – leaving me bereft of conversation. After half a day of having my many witticisms go unheard and lacking the necessary straight lines I desperately need to prompt my snarky one-liners, I was rather frustrated. So, at lunch time I logged onto Facebook and changed my status update to the following:

Jamie Wright has logged on specifically to curse (Shakespeare style) the two co-workers who sit adjacent to him in the cube farm; they've conspired to have today off, leaving him bereft of conversation. So, to R & J: a plague on both your houses!

‘A plague on both your houses!’ - I love that line¹. But it’s not all that often that two people bug me at the same time to give me the opportunity to use it.

Anyway, imagine my surprise on Monday when one (R) was at home sick and the other (J) complained about all the stuff that had gone wrong – computer problems, utility problems and so forth. When R got back it turned out that she had had a crap weekend also – being sick, being stuck with sick flatmates, and a whole bunch of other mostly-minor-but-when-all-put-together-kind-of-annoying things.

So, I spent most of Monday apologising profusely to one, and then most of Tuesday doing the same to the other. I had the blame for every tiny thing that went wrong in their lives – some of which even occurred before I wrote the status update - laid at my feet.

The lesson? Don’t curse people² via Faceook! It’s too powerful!

¹If you’re wondering it’s Mercutio, from Romeo & Juliet – Act 3, Scene 1.
²Important note: I don’t actually believe cursing actually ‘works’ in any sense of the word. But it’s still funny.

Up

Warning – may contain minor spoilers.

I hadn’t been to the movies in a few weeks but managed to fit in seeing Up (in 3D) this week. And I’m glad that I did; it was brilliant, one of the best films – animated or otherwise – I’ve seen this year³.

The plot is (roughly) this: a grumpy old man attaches balloons to his house and floats away; a slightly goofy kid in a uniform stows away and goes with him; they wind up in a strange-looking place with a talking dog and a huge iridescent bird. There is, obviously, much more to it than that, but that’s the bare bones – and, more significantly, all I knew about it beforehand.

Yes, it’s an animated film, aimed at a younger audience. But to think that that means there’s nothing in it for adults would be a foolish mistake. It’s got some of the best-written and most emotionally moving scenes of nearly any film I’ve ever seen. One of the scenes I’m talking about features absolutely no dialogue whatsoever; it’s just a montage of short pieces put together with music – and yet I rate it as one of the most touching and genuine pieces of cinema I’ve experienced.

Let’s put it this way: I’m far from sentimental; the terms ‘unemotional’, ‘cynical’ and ‘cold, miserable bastard’ would be far more likely to be used to describe me. For something in a movie to be both meaningful and able to get past my high saccharine intolerance is an impressive feat⁴.

It’s not, of course, a movie about melancholy – it’s about the very opposite: embracing life and living every moment you’ve got. And it’s very, very funny. The voice acting is superb and the dialogue, particularly that of the talking dogs, is brilliant. The ability of animators to imbue their on-screen creations with a depth of expression is about as good as it can get – a scene where one of the characters is scraped along the glass window of a zeppelin while another watches with an incredulous expression had me nearly on the floor.

And, as should be the case, the serious and the funny are mixed together in such a way as to give you that emotional rollercoaster ride that’s expected of such a film.

My only regret now is that I waited so long to see it – as a result I can’t get the satisfaction of knowing that I sent a lot of people along to see what I suspect is a movie they would really enjoy.

If you can find somewhere that’s still showing it, go see it. In 3D if possible.

³Bear in mind, though, that this is the same year I saw Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen – arguably one of the worst pieces of cinematic crap I’ve ever had the misfortune to spend time, money and a great deal of loathing on.
⁴Off the top of my head there are two others which have/had a similar effect on me: The Princess Bride and Big Fish. There may be some others, but those are the ones that come to mind - although the emotional trigger in those two films are along similar lines, and it's not what affected me in Up.

Reviewing

On Saturday last week I went to review Unseen Theatre Company’s The Last Continent at the Bakehouse theatre; the write-up can be found on the ATG site here. As you’ll see when (if) you read it, I wasn’t that impressed; it wasn't very good theatre (even by amateur standards) and I had to say so.

Which, despite what people might like to think about theatre critics in general (and me in particular), is not a pleasant thing to have to do.

I know what it’s like. I’ve been involved – on some level - in more than twenty shows over the last seven years, and there’s nothing more demoralising than to find out, after having spent months rehearsing (and, if you’re involved on a committee level, several additional months prior to that choosing, planning, organising and casting), that everything you’ve worked for has fallen short of expectations.

Reviewers giving bad reviews are often castigated by dissatisfied casts, production crew and/or directors, most often for ‘missing the point’. Which, to be honest, can happen. I don’t know if that’s been said (and been accurate) about me in the case of any of those shows I’ve given poor reviews to; I’d like to think that is hasn’t and never will, but I imagine that it will have to happen at least once, eventually⁵.

On the whole, of course, I prefer to see shows that I don’t have to kick around. Fingers crossed it's a while before I have to sink the boot into another show.

⁵Though, short of someone being incensed enough to send me hate mail, I probably won’t ever actually know if someone feels I’ve missed the point.