daveydave

Finally got round to setting up a flickr account. Not a huge amount on there so far - just the photos I took one very busy lunchtime when the Millennium Bridge was being lowered into place. Photos as they stand available here

I must be honest, I have some concerns over the Google/China situation, although overall I think it's best that Google is in there rather than not - at least it should be fairly honest about what it's not letting you look at. The main point of this post is not political, however. Basically I, like many folks I know, have spent many happy hours on Google Maps and Google Earth. To no real end you understand... just to have a look around. Now however, I have a mission. In a couple of weeks I'm going to visit my cousin who has just (and by just, I mean today) moved to Omaha. Thanks to Google, I have seen his new apartment from above, I know where the local bars and restaurants are and, as this is the US, I have driving directions to the nearest gun shop - of which there are 10 within 7 miles of his house! Never ceases to amaze me does Google.

Last week I bought a compressor/sustainer pedal off eBay. It's the first thing I've bought for my guitar for some time. Having connected it up at home and switched everything on, imagine how surprising it was to hear German voices coming through my headphones. I'm guessing that the particular configuration of cables turned my rig into a long-wave receiver. On a similar note, I pulled the battery out of the bike today as it's run a little flat (bike taking some coaxing into life.) I hooked it up to the charger and switched on. Nice popping noise and blue smoke from the charger. I may be wrong, but I suspect something's not right there...

Since joining LOVEFiLM in September I've have sat through 26 films. That doesn't include those that I have seen at the flicks. So, naturally, I'm not going to post individual reviews every single film. I will however post a round-up every now and again (much as I did in November .) Here's number 2... Wimbledon Very much from the Four Weddings, Notting Hill, Love Actually tree except Hugh Grant wasn't in it. Required no thought or anything. A nice, happy film with the usual smatterings of Brit-wit. I enjoyed. The Body A question: what is an actor with the abilities of Derek Jacobi doing skulking around in a heap like this? I liked the idea behind this film (modern-day Israeli archeologist discovers body of crucified man from 1st Century AD) It just wasn't very well executed (no pun intended) The English language has many flaws, particularly its chosen representation on the written page, but what it does have are many excellent descriptive words that I could apply...

The life of the late Johnny Cash in 2 and a bit hours. I would never call myself a big fan of the Man in Black, but I knew enough about him to be interested in this film. The trailers looked promising and the end result certainly did not disappoint. A very strong performance from the whole cast. Both Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon were excellent in the lead roles. The film was well paced, covered the ups and downs of Cash's life well and I certainly came away with a real feel for the man. Many, many great parts, but I particularly liked the coverage of the early tours when you see the likes of Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis sharing the bill. So many big names hanging around together, before they really made it.

Newcastle Airport has an ever increasing number of scheduled, year-round flights. As I've made use of them myself I thought I'd produce a handy list here. When I eventually get round to sorting out a proper web page I'll keep an up to date list there. Until that time, this blog will have to do. There are several airlines running scheduled services out of Newcastle: easyJet is by far the largest presence and will get you to Alicante, Barcelona, Belfast, Berlin, Bristol, Budapest, Faro, Geneva, Ibiza, Stanstead, Malaga, Nice, Palma, Paris (CdG), Prague and Rome. The other big name, Ryanair flys to Dublin, Milan and Oslo. Eastern Airways covers Aberdeen, Birmingham, Isle of Man, London City and Southampton. Jet2 has recently arrived on the field and will happily take you as far as Amsterdam, Bergan, Cork, Mahon (Menorca), Murcia and Pisa. flybe serves Belfast City, Exeter, Jersey and Southampton. British Airways handles Heathrow and Gatwick and through them the rest of t...

It's almost 6 years since I returned to working in the city centre. For all that time, with one or two exceptions, I've used public transport to commute. Initially driving to my local Metro station and using the train but after poor service and strikes I moved to the bus. Now I find myself seriously contemplating driving into work. Some background to perhaps explain what a big shift this is for me... I have been propelling myself around Tyneside by public transport since I first decided to get the Metro to school when I was about 9. I've always gone to work by bus or Metro apart from a 2 year period when I worked in Durham and then the Team Valley. When I travel long distance it is usually by train. So I'm a big fan of public transport. However, the service is starting to grind me down. I'm sick of being glared at or ignored by miserable drivers, I'm fed up of being thrown around by those same drivers who don't understand the concept that brake and throttle ...

Denzil, Denzil, Denzil.... such a talent, what a waste. This film had - somewhere hidden deep, deep inside - a decent story. To be fair, the acting staff did a good job, Denzil was canny as were the two female leads. But Oh My God! What appalling direction, scripting, production, etc... That's two and a quarter hours of my life I'm never getting back. You know, I don't mind watching a crap film every now and then, but it pains me to see such a hash made of what could have been a good one. I know I'm usually "don't take my word for it" but, honestly, don't believe the 7.5 IMDb rating: this is toss. Unless you are very, very bored, give this a wide berth.

I'll chop this one into two parts: childhood and the rest. The editing in the early stages of the film felt choppy, leaving me at a loss as to what was going on. Although Suzuka Ohgo did a great job of portraying the young Chiyo. Once we move a few years forward, Zhang Ziyi and Michelle Yeoh put in fine performances as you would expect, and Li Gong played a convincingly bitchy Hatsumomo. The scene setting was fine, interior sets and town scenes looked bang on. Ultimately, I suppose, I just never really got round to caring that much about the characters. Whether that was down to the material they were working with or poor direction I'm not so sure. Perhaps an original screenplay would have worked better? It's a shame, I'd been looking forward to this one. But hey, don't take my word for it...

Slow paced Korean number, this one. Atmospheric and very scenic. It follows the life of a man, from childhood to middle age, as he lives and studies with his Buddhist master on a floating temple. It shows how his life goes awry after a young woman arrives and how he gets back on the straight and narrow. As with all excellent films this has a bit of everything including some very Asian humour - retrieving a stray boat by the use of a chicken, and writing calligraphy using a cat - and, of course, a dose of tragedy. Nicely illustrates how life has a habit of repeating itself as hinted at in the title. So, Korean cinema isn't always action and horror. This is a film well worth seeing if you fancy something a little slower.

What a cracking film. I could rattle on about how well it's shot, how fitting the soundtrack is and how well acted, but I won't. The important point about this film is the lives it portrays: how men who are trained to kill and then left with nothing to do react to their circumstances. It's very funny in places, does not hold back from the bleak realities of war and, for good measure, throws in little hints of the differences between what US forces had to deal with during the 1990 conflict, and their predecessors in Vietnam. Ah yes, the British influence of director Sam Mendes popped up too. There was a scene covering a friendly fire incident only this time it was A-10s hitting USMC rather than UK troops. Quote of the film: during a typical GI-style shower scene. "Hey look, a cock, but smaller." I darn near soiled myself. Go see.

In preparation for trips away over the next few months, I thought Id see if I could post to my blog from the mobile. As I cant access the blogger site through WAP, I'm trying email. Now lets see if it works...

To tie-in with the Asian Invasion season on BBC 4, all dates on this blog will be in Japanese until the end of the month. Not a good enough reason? Well then, you can call it a learning experience. Assuming your PC has the necessary fonts that is...

Over the last 6 months or so I've seen 3 films by Hayao Miyazaki and not one has disappointed. I haven't mentioned the fabulous 'Howl's Moving Castle' before, but the simply amazing 'Spirited Away' does appear elsewhere in this blog. Tonight, I finally got around to watching an earlier work: Kiki's Delivery Service. Despite being 16 years old, the Miyazaki trademarks are all there. The characters are just wonderful; beautifully thought out and produced. The meticulous attention to detail makes the people you see on the screen seem so very real, and as a result you become emotionally involved with them for the duration of the film. And, perhaps, a little bit after too. This is, as ever with Miyazaki, film making at its very, very best. Wonderful.

Technology, eh? Very handy at times. And then sometimes it's nice to do stuff just because you can. So this evening I tried to open this blog on my mobile phone using WAP - just to see what happened. Now WAP is not the fastest medium in the world, and my phone sure did struggle - but to its credit, it worked! The obvious next step was to see if I could edit/publish a blog post using the mobile. Result: out of memory. Ah well, I'd got further than I'd expected. So why on earth was I messing around in the world of WAP? Well, I remembered earlier today that I actually have a WAP site, courtesy of O2: here if you're interested. It contains nothing very much, but I thought it might be worth trying to keep it up to date in the future. Not so much a New Year's resolution as a we'll see how it goes type of thing. Oh yes, happy New Year!