Catching Up

Spent a fair portion of the day dealing with the sort of business that simply needs dealing with - quite a bit of it related to the car. Had to take it to pass an inspection, a mandatory requirement, and rightly so, now it's three years old. It passed without fuss so now it remains to spend oodles of cash just to ensure I have the right to drive it. Again, rightly so in my estimation. I regard driving as a privilege and perhaps one that I should seriously consider for-going in view of the wear and tear it exacts on our environment.

I also have been reminding myself of just how bad I am at watching films. I've been having a go at a DVD I bought around about this time last year, at an iffy price, when I was in Medan in Indonesia. I'm off there again in a couple of weeks and I suppose it was that which made me aware of the need to ensure I'd actually watched all the DVDs I came back with last year.

The movie in question was There Will Be Blood and, sad to say, I've yet to finish it. It's obviously got a lot going for it. The cinematography is seriously good, the sense of period spot-on (the oil-fields of California around 1902) and the acting very fine, except for Daniel Day-Lewis who goes well beyond that into his usual stellar territory. But I just couldn't get into the thing on the level of story somehow. I wasn't too sure of what was going on most of the time and when I was I wasn't too sure of why anyone thought it would be good to make a film of it. I think I've got about twenty minutes or so left and I'm not looking forward to it, though I will watch out of a sense of duty. And I mean that seriously. I know the film-makers involved have got something valuable to say, it's just that I'm too deaf to hear it.