Archive for September, 2007
A Mighty Heart is the film version of Mariane Pearl’s account of the events surrounding her husband’s death. Many people will remember following the story of Daniel Pearl on the news. He was a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, kidnapped in Karachi and eventually beheaded.
Michael Winterbottom’s direction relies on flashbacks to fill in the backstory, but fails to ever set the film solidly in the context of the wider political atmosphere in Pakistan and between Pakistan and the US at the time. Due to the focus on Mariane, we as viewers never see the kidnappers or the story from Daniel’s side after he has been taken.
Of course, concentrating on the kidnapping would turn this into an action thriller, which is not what the film is trying to be. Instead it works as a sensitive telling of the endurance and hard work of the team aiming to return Daniel safely home.
Unfortunately, despite some fantastic acting from Angelina Jolie, the film doesn’t work. The story just isn’t engaging (however much it should be) and the constant backtracking only makes for a confusing track to follow. Disappointing.
The Saturday of the ECC Knights and Legends trip saw us meet up with a load of folk at Camelot and beginning the day with an ERS on Knightmare, their new coaster for 2007.
The ride was originally in Japan but, when the park closed, was bought together with the rest of the rides by a business consortium. Various rides were bought and can now be seen all around the world, but no buyer could be found for BRMX and it was left in an expensive storage facility at a dockyard in the UK. Camelot’s owners were able to do a deal to allow the ride to be “stored” at the park instead.
It rides very smoothly apart from a few kinks in the track. The highlight is definitely the “psycho drop” which pulls 5G as it twists downwards.
Continue reading ‘Camelot - It’s Only a Model’
Today saw a visit to the home of the precursor to the end of the world, haunter of my dreams, the tower of doom: Apocalypse. Yes, today Tom, John and myself visited Drayton Manor.
The inevitable lowlight of the day was a ride (or should that be a stand) on their big nasty drop tower. As you may know, me and drop towers don’t get along. Me and slightly broken drop towers get along less well. Today Apocalypse lost its tilt, meaning the standup side didn’t lean out to let us face the ground.
But that was only the beginning of a rather tiltless day. Drunken Barrels, tipsy as it may have been, certainly wasn’t tiltsy either. Instead, it has turned into a flat bog standard teacup ride without so much as a wimper of a raised platform.
Other parts of the day were better though, aside from the equally inevitable crushing blow on G Force and bangin ride on Shockwave. We rode the cable cars which are never open and visited the old penny arcade.
Things we learnt today:
- ostriches voluntarily gave up the ability to fly
- waltzers in the dark aren’t very good if they don’t spin
- you can’t have enough piratical adventures
It’s not been a spectacular summer weatherwise, has it? Then again, at least it hasn’t snowed. Well, not outside anyway.
In Tamworth, however, it snows every day at the Snowdome.
I’ve just got back from there after a spectacular tobogganing session this evening.
Courtesy of some rather nifty controls, the toboggans were steerable and brakeable (but where’s the fun in that?) down the length of the real proper cold snowified slope … hopefully slowing to a graceful stop at the bottom.
A bargain at just £8 for the half hour session - especially since we only shared it with 10 others instead of the usual 120 session capacity!
I went to see Knocked Up last night, without many expectations above it being a bit of a girly flick (I wanted to see Rush Hour 3, but that’ll have to be another time now). How wrong was I?!
Knocked Up revolves around a girl and a bloke who meet in a club one night and end up sleeping together. Eight weeks later, the bloke gets a phone call from the girl … she’s pregnant. Not wanting to be a total arse, the guy decides they should try and make a go of it. Cue all the getting-to-know-you absurdities, misunderstandings and associated goings on and you pretty much have the rest of the movie.
It may be a little coarse for some tastes, but the balance between chick-flick romance and gross-out movie fart jokes is about right to make it bearable for both sexes. As with most of these kinds of film, a lot of the story is predictable but nevertheless entertaining. The rest of the audience last night certainly enjoyed it too.
