The Curious Case of a Truly Awful Film

Last night the Kiwi and I watched 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button', the latest film to involve Brad Pitt and apparently also-ran for last year's Academy Awards.

What a terrible, terrible film. It's like a 166 minute slap in the face, a prolonged insult or a particularly bad case of constipation. From the overall concept to the appalling acting and stomach-churning attempts to tackle 'deep' subjects in ways that the Dawson's Creek kids would find mawkish, it almost motivated me to call up David Fincher and ask for that 166 minutes back. There is literally nothing of merit here, not even Cate Blanchett's initially hilarious 'old southern woman' accent (which fast matches being poked continually in the chest as a number one annoyance).

I rarely post about films, but I really had to get this one off my chest. What an absolute shocker.

Shameless Panhandling

This is brilliant, and I hope you all see it in the same light as me because otherwise it might come across as little more than licensed begging, which in a way I suppose it is. Anyway, the new addition to my blog on the right there is my latest internet toy discovery.

ChipIn is a service where you can raise money for an event, or collect cash a group of people owe you. It's all secure, and the money you put in goes into my PayPal account. Once the cash starts pouring in, you should be able to see the money level rise. As an experiment, I'm seeing if I can raise ten US dollars, which by my reckoning should cover a sarnie and a bag of crisps in central London. Will it work, I wonder?

It's on my Facebook page, too. I know no shame.