Away From Her

The Bank Holiday weather must be a big disappointment to many, particularly given the beautiful weather we've had up to now. Why is it that when you're stuck inside a busy, over-heated office the weather's perfect but as soon as you get some time off it changes?!

Fortunately my weekend plans revolve mainly around needing to study, and get to grips with all the stuff Microsoft announced at their MIX07 Conference last week, so the inclement weather hasn't really impacted me too much.

Not that the holiday is 'all work and no play' - despite the impending unemployment which means I should be using every available hour to get up to speed on technologies I haven't been using on my current contract - I've been adding a 'study incentive' of a new movie at the end of each day.

Friday night saw me enjoying the UK HD-DVD release of Smokin' Aces which Universal, echoing pretty much the whole HD-DVD launch story in this country, have managed to totally screw up. The disc sells at a hugely inflated price because it's supposed to be the UK's first 'combo' disk (one of those irritating faceless silver discs that has the DVD version on one side, and the HD-DVD version on the other). The sealed packaging boasts endlessly of the advantages of this 'combo' format. But the disc inside is just a straightforward HD-DVD disk that WON'T play in an ordinary DVD player.

As for the film itself - it's enjoyable enough in a 'look what Tarantino started' derivative sort of way. I guess I'm officially getting old, because I find films like this (and Alpha Dog which I also caught on HD-DVD last weekend) annoying because of the way they encourage violence, bad language and objectionable behaviour in the name of 'comedy'. Anybody who's travelled on London public transport with a crowd of ipod-blaring, ringtone-incessant, feet-all-over-the seats with effing and blinding all over the shop school kids will know what I mean!

Having renewed my Clapham Picture House membership I used two more of my free tickets to book seats for Spider-Man 3 (tonight) and Away From Her (yesterday afternoon). I've posted a quick review of Away From Her over on my UK Movie Review blog which has been languishing with no entries for a couple of months now.