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.

Houston, we have a conference

A bit of a day of firsts for me, yesterday (or at least, the past 36 hours or so, thinking in terms of days is challenging at the moment). Getting into the Virgin Atlantic lounge was one, all lovely and great and all but somehow not quite the land of dreams I'd hoped for. Perhaps, because we only had about 30 minutes in there, I didn't really get the full effect. That said, it was a damn sight better than the alternative, fast track security and free wine and all.

Second on my list was actually flying Virgin, which it sort of surprises me I've not done before for some reason. Although the promised upgrade to Upper Class didn't materialise, I was in Premium Economy, which is better than it sounds. I spent most of the flight in the bar being force-fed red Bordeaux by the barman.

Third was actually being late for a flight. I know how anal this sounds, but this is something I just. don't. do, and haring through Newark airport trying to negotiate the (irritatingly chatty) immigration and customs people, pick my bags up, re-check in, go through security AGAIN (this time with the plebs) and get to the gate isn't really my idea of fun. Travelling's mental enough without that sort of stress, and to top it all we proceeded to spend the next hour on the tarmac. Fortunately, for some reason I was in first class, which meant there was a lovely lady on hand to make sure my wine glass didn't get empty. So much so that I had to pretend to be asleep so she'd stop.

So after all this, we got into Houston at about midnight-ish, which as far as my body was concerned was 0600. Getting a good 6 hours' sleep meant today's been reasonably ok, but I'm not sure how tonight's going to be - a networking cocktail thing followed by a dinner we're hosting for some people or other. I'm currently wearing a pink striped shirt with a frankly enormous collar, which I'm rather enjoying - most Merkins are so excruciatingly dull and conservative with what they wear that I'm standing out as if I was wearing a clown suit.

Fortunately we're taking cabs everywhere. I don't imagine they like pink shirt-wearers here, it's still very much a moustache and cowboy hat sort of place*. Over lunch, I was introduced to the various forms of the contraction 'y'all': 'y'all' refers to one person. 'All y'all' refers to more than one person.  And, dear god, 'y'all's' means 'your'.

Needless to say, my accent has moved into the sort of RP register of which Laurence Olivier would have been proud. I might even start drinking tea.

 

*yes, the irony hasn't gone unnoticed. The Village People are probably seen as 'good hard-workin' decent men, 'cept for that injun' by those who remember them.

Happy Birthday!

Apparently, blogging is ten years old this year (at some point). Which makes me feel not only tremendously old, but way behind the curve. Thanks be to the Lord for the lovely new Super Furry Animals album to keep my spirits up. Despite the fact that I'm at work at 0800 and alone in the office, for the sole reason that the Kiwi gets up early and thus so do I.

Does get me thinking about the whole blogging thing though. Bloggers always used to really get on my nerves - all that baseless ranting and opinion-mongery - but I came to see it as a way of documenting your own personal experiences for your own record, plus that of those close friends and family you might invite to view.

Personally, I reckon that it's purely the high profile of the medium that's giving it a bad name. It's an open, public media platform, available for free (which is a first in history), so naturally those with an axe to grind will get on board and grind away in full public view. The sort of nasally self-righteous muppet who's more than happy to proclaim forth on any topic in any situation for a bit of attention. Who tends to start sentences with 'What I don't understand is...' followed by an inexpert and poorly-informed view of why they know better than a multi-million pound corporation guided by hundreds of years of direct experience.

So unfortunately the loudest voices in the blogosphere (can't believe I actually used that word) are consequently the most idiotic. It's a shame, really. They're spoiling it for everyone else.

Rant. Pure, unfettered rant.

There, warned you. I've been in the most appalling mood for the past few days, inspired almost entirely by the people around me and their complete inability to follow instructions. Let me paint you a picture of recent times, starting with a mid-point presentation to the client at the end of last week.

All the way through this project, I've been clear to the creative team what the priorities are from the client's point of view, and how the fact that we've understood what these priorities are is crucial to maintaining our credibility. Despite this fact, two key points were missed off the presentation. I mean, so key that the client had to spend about an hour going over them again, pointedly looking at me with a sort of 'are you some kind of idiot' look on his face.

Coming out of the presentation, I mildly voiced my concerns to the group, and we settled on redesigning the whole thing the following day. That was actually quite productive, and I thought we were getting somewhere. We did, to an extent. The plan was to re-present to the client (who's on holiday - we presented over the internet) today, with more fully formed designs and technical solution.

Everything turned out well, except for the fact that we presented a homepage design without any advertising, one of the key points missed off the first session. Cue me going very red-faced and coming up with a number of excuses and again, looking like a bit of a fool.

So, whilst we're more or less back on track and I'm reasonably sure of getting this all sorted by the end of next week, I'm not exactly loving some of my colleagues right now. Stuff like that, by which I mean blatantly not listening to briefs and following one's own agenda, really doesn't help speed things along. It doesn't help that my 30th birthday falls right in the middle of it all, and I don't think I'll be able to properly relax with all this going on, in fact I know I won't be able to.

Still, all good experience I guess. Off to Dublin again tomorrow, thankfully just for a day trip, back there again next week for a couple of days. Can't decide if I want to stay on this project after this phase... jury's out on that one.