Posts tagged ‘james bond’

As I write this, there are 79 minutes left in November, which means I’ll need to average something like 10 words per second to finish NaNoWriMo in time. Maybe next year.

Several things got in the way of it, but one of the most enjoyable was Fable II. After previously giving up on Fable in irritation after a gaggle of annoying villagers called me “Chicken Chaser” for no reason I could sensibly work out, I didn’t expect to enjoy the sequel, but a bunch of good reviews persuaded me to give it a chance. I was happy I did; though the villagers are still annoying in that they’ll swarm you the second you come into the village,¹ the generally malleable nature of the world is highly entertaining. Any game which claims that you can make your own destiny will always be lying to some extent, but Fable II’s major decisions and consequences are usually interesting, and occasionally hilarious.

Another thing was Gears of War II, a solid if unremarkable sequel to the solid if unremarkable original. I’m playing through the campaign with Andy and with housemate Andrew at the moment, which avoids those awkward moments when you shout out the wrong partner’s name during a particularly intense bit.

I moved house recently, and was given a chilli plant. Having gotten over my initial disbelief and excitement at learning that I suddenly controlled the means of chilli production, I almost forgot I had it. Luckily, it still appears to be alive.

They’ve released a Deluxe Edition of Casino Royale, the bastards. It’s not even remotely fair. Most films don’t even have one Blu-Ray release, and here’s Casino Royale getting two. I’ve gotten some practice at palming off DVD copies of films to friends when I want to upgrade to Blu-Ray, but it’s harder to find people to palm old Blu-Rays off to.

I’ve been meaning to write one of Andy’s “And Now, Five Things”, but then, I’ve been meaning to do a lot of things.

1. And, occasionally wander into your bedroom while you’re sharing a special moment with your wife. ↩

This just in; Ian Thorpe has retired from swimming, at 24 years of age. I’m sure he’ll get murdered in the press — they’ll call him lazy, pathetic, a disappointment. But I for one know that if I could have retired last year I would have. The daily grind is getting to me. My 3-day weeks are wearing me down. The pressure of updating a website on a semi-regular basis. All the television I’m forced to watch.

Like Thorpie, Torchwood is also failing to live up to expectations. I’ve fallen behind on reviews mostly due to rehearsals for the Revue that happened on the weekend, but also because they’re not that exciting. I don’t enjoy writing negative reviews much, and I’ve got at least two that I need to do to catch up. It’s not the worst show ever, but it suffers from a strong case of “what the hell are we trying to do?”

And even though it looks from the outside like an ensemble show, it’s miserably failing on such things, partly because it keeps insisting on only having one plotline to sustain you for 50 minutes of runtime. This sort of thing works in Doctor Who, partly because you’ve only got two regular characters, and more because the adventure genre’s really good at stringing excitements together in a row. Putting five cast members together running through the same plot just gets dull. Let’s have multiple cases in an episode please. Or something.

At least some of the characters talked to each other this week. That was nice.

Putting on the Revue was something of a disappointment too — not that anything was wrong with it, particularly, but the fun of putting on a musical, putting all the songs and scenes together and getting something bigger and cooler as a result is completely missing from stringing a bunch of unrelated songs together. Of course, there was a lot less effort involved, too, but I’m left feeling like I paid half price for something a quarter as good.

Everyone online is talking about how good the new James Bond flick Casino Royale is, but it’s not out here for another two weeks. You’d think I’d be used to this sort of crap, but I’ve grown accustomed to getting everything at the same time as everyone else in recent years, for one reason or another.

Not everything’s disappointing. Battlestar Galactica continues to rock. There’s a Christmas special of Doctor Who around the corner. The next Harry Potter film looks like it might be better in film-form than in book-form.

Retiring at 24. Jealousy just doesn’t cover it.