Sunday, February 17, 2008

October Sky


I'm beginning to develop something of a dislike for Sundays. A day which was not too long ago a great day of friendship and fellowship, and just last year was the day in which I was usually able to spend a little time with Steph, has now become a day for frustration and a very real physical and spiritual battle. Church, especially Christ Church in Liverpool, seems like a hundred miles away and the community of good old friends there seems to be more and more unfamiliar. Saturday night/Sunday morning is often a time of little sleep and of great spiritual attack, attack that I seem to be able to do very little about. The net result is that I wake feeling exhausted, frustrated, far from the Lord and usually spend Sunday at home, not at church, away from fellowship and friends, tired, broken and just fed up. Today was no different. But, alas, I whine.


On a slightly less miserable note, I watched October Sky today. Steph bought it for me as a surprise Valentine's present and it was great. I'd seen it before, but it was so nice to watch a genuinely uplifting film and a true(ish) story to boot. At the end I really did want to indulge my engineering skills and build a ruidmentary rocket/jet engine. Sadly, I lack actual skill and the requisite materials and tools to make anything. D'oh! Still, it is a spiffing way to spend an afternoon.

3:10 to Yuma


Its interesting posting a blog when you have no idea of what your readership is. My humility and realistic side suggests none and takes the view that this blog is nothing more than a noble quest to write well and find novel subjects. Or at least its something like that.


Tonight I finally got around to watching 3:10 to Yuma, a film i've been longing to watch for a long time, and one that I eventually took the plunge and bought the other day. Thats bought - not rented - simply on the unique selling points of 1) it looked good, 2) Christian Bale and Russell Crowe were in it and they tend to make some pretty amazing films, 3) it was directed by the chap who directed Walk the Line which was great. I know that this policy of what i'm calling 'blind buying' causes Steph some consternation, understandably since it may result occasionally in a spectacular flop (no film comes to mind right now but I did buy an Idlewild cd once that I threw in the bin almost immediately), but in this case - wow!!! What film! So, so, so good. Not quite an epic to end all epics, but at the risk of overusing that word it was epic in plot, acting performance, cinematography, soundtrack and its ability to surprise. Not at all formulaic.


So yeah.. A great film.