Gorgonzola mittens

As you can see, I made a (successful) last gasp effort at my cycling, 85km in the last 3 weeks, before I switched over to walking to take advantage of the fine spring weather. So this particular graph has come to an end, but I have just returned from my 6th hour-long walk in the past 6 days, ready for my Thursday rest day.

I'm halfway through Sliders S3, and thoroughly enjoying yet another reminiscing TV experience, as well as finally completing my Fast and the Furious trilogy, with an adrenaline pumping Sunday night viewing of Tokyo Drift (aka Fastest and Furiousest).

Interesting? No. My life? Yes.

What else?

And since I finally found the receipt telling me what other DVDs I'd seen the past few weeks...

The Illusionist - You can't go wrong with Edward Norton, and this is a moody murder mystery very different to what I'd expected.

Pan's Labyrinth - Meshes the horrors of the real world seamlessly with fantasy elements to create a distinctly Guillermo del Toro vision. Don't watch this if you're looking for some chuckles, but it's the movie equivalent of a compulsive page turner, really drawing you through to the end.

Hot Fuzz - Just as good the second time around, and having watched the first season of Spaced (with many of the same creative talents involved) since I saw this at the cinema, it's enjoyable seeing just how many of the action techniques were already in place back on Spaced, just cranked up to a larger scale here.

X-Men 3 - Some cool set pieces, but ultimately lacking the sense of real threat which X2 had.

Click - Not the laugh-fest the premise suggests, really focuses more on opportunities lost, with the middle third quite dark... then again... Kate Beckinsale!

Doom - Not bad as videogame adaptations go (at least I'd actually played the game in this case). A couple of surprises, but really it's all about the first person shooter scene which comes late in the movie.

Trontastic

The past 2 weeks have been quite a health struggle, with first my fatigue and then a return of nausea. Neither has been so extreme as to require time off work, or even a return to the doctor (yet), but it's taken up all of my energy and concentration just to get through each day, meaning blogging has been low on my priority stack.

In an attempt to push past this latest illness bout, I've returned to walking, thankfully enabled by a couple of awesome, warm days this weekend. A little over 3 hours of traipsing the suburbs since I got home from work Friday, with DVD watching in between to ensure recovery.

So, what have I been watching?

Tron - I hadn't seen this since my early teens, and I was surprised how well the effects hold up. Maybe I'm viewing it through nostalgic, old-school computing eyes, but it almost made me want to return to coding again.

Alexei Sayles' Stuff - a blast from my mid-teens past, this was mandatory viewing for me on TV back in the laste 80's. And it still has plenty of laughs. If you want to see socialist philosophers advertorialising press-on nails and hair curlers, this is the comedy for you.

The Late Show Presents Bargearse and The Olden Days - Far too many years in coming to DVD, but still genuinely funny, with a few extra tastes of other Late Show sketches.

Thank God You're Here S2 - Sadly only 10 eps long, but this is an even stronger season than the first, which was already hilarious.

The 4400 S3 - Another excellent season, with heaps of surprises all too rare on TV. Thankfully a 4th season is being made, so the story continues.

Return of the G-Raph

The sad fact is that graphs are more exciting than any other content I could write about... So, rather than fight it, I've brought back the most potent weapon in my action-selling arsenal.

At a minimum, this graph shows that, contrary to my usual routine-in-everything, my cycling is either on or off. All up a total of 230km over 3 months, which is actually less than I walked during my year-of-the-repetitive-'burb-circuits. Time for me to up my effort!

Why movies are...

... awesome

• The Simpsons Movie lived up to my expectations, and really ramped up the scale of animation, and took advantage of the longer run time. Plenty of laughs, great in jokes, and pretty much every character who's ever appeared in an episode shows up.

... crappy

• $15.50 for a ticket.
• It took 3 staff 10 minutes to get through the 4 people in line in front of me.
• I got into the cinema 10 minutes after the movie was supposed to start, and still had to wait another 5 minutes before the trailers even started.
• Is "Bratz" really a movie which will appeal to Simpsons fans?

Ah, just like the good old days of "the whinge"!