Best.Day.Ever.
Another one down. Neglected the 101 somewhat, but I’m back on the case. I went and did this with Stu (who was horrendously late, despite actually living in Wakefield) and it was quite a challenge to find it! Google maps GPS on the iPhone just simply doesn’t work in Wakey for some reason but eventually we did. It was nice seeing the quote public art and the house he was born in.
Given how relatively close it is, I’m surprised I never did this one sooner.
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January
I discovered a wonderful app, Visited Durham for the first time with work, Woolworths went under following the start of the recession. Something which would haunt the rest of the year.
February
Saw me buying an iPhone, It saw Sheffield’s first flash mob happen in the peace gardens, and we saw some of the worst snow we’ve had in recent times.
March
Quiet month for blogging, but I had a comic based rant, and my first outdoor pint of the year. Off blog, I visited Liverpool and Chester Zoo.
April
I didn’t blog… Off blog I went to London with my brother, did a 3 model photoshoot and met jarvis cocker.
May
This month saw old friends Paul & Claire get married, I bought an NC10, saw the new Star Trek at the manchester IMAX, went to Yorvik in York, started playing CNPS (I’m stuck on 25, 7 months later!!) and I sold a canvas print at almost a loss.
June
I went to Cadburyland in June, bought a squeezebox, Sheffield nearly flooded again, and we had some baby Robins.
July
In this month I attended one of Sheffield’s famous Gallery Crawls, had a horrific 20 minutes in Milton Keynes, played golf, visited Luton, and finally did archery (and loved it).
August
Saw me being an official photographer for Tramlines music festival, Visited the awesome stockholm. Off blog I went to the Sheffield Fayre.
September
Went back to York again, started my PG Cert and I bought a BlackbirdFly. Off blog, my friends Paul and Abbi got married.
October
I didn’t really blog anything. Off blog my friends Ren and Paul got married – the third wedding of the year. I carved pumpkins, our oven broke, saw franz ferdinand live.
November
Saw me buying an Instax camera, Photographed the potteries museum, joined the national trust went to Orlando and… SAW A SPACE SHUTTLE GO UP!
December
Well, you saw December yesterday…
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This month, I went to stoke to complete a photography Job – which was interesting and proved yet further that I need to replace those broken flash triggers.
In the same week I popped over to Manchester to see Julian Plenti (aka. Paul Banks from Interpol) play live at the Academy with Jayne. It was a pretty awesome gig, with fun had by all!
I went *back* to Manchester later in the month to meet up with Daniel and his friend Lauren which was fun, but I don’t think i’ll be visiting the main Manchester Xmas Markets again (ending 4 or 5 years of tradition) unless they sort it out next year crowd movement wise.
Closer to home, the Sheffield Tap opened. It was the first new pub opening to interest me in a long time as it serves over 200 beers (many of which Belgian bottles) – suffice to say a lot of time has been spent in there of a weekend so far. In the first week I enjoyed a (now banned) two pint stein from there.
Home delivery network upped their game and delivered something to me on a Sunday, while DHL utterly cocked up so badly that I strive to never use them again if I can help it.
I compiled the Christmas CD again this year, it was its most successful year in terms of number I made, and the feedback gained.
Nearer the end of the month, my team won the final ever music quiz at the Shakespeare Pub.
Christmas was excellent. I had a great xmas day filled with great company, food and gifts (given and giftee’d) and Christmas 2.0 was also great, where we went to a park in Huntingdon and my brother gave me some excellent presents.
And I enjoyed a £10 return ticket to London with Rich where we went to a few of the touristy places and one off the map. A post about that will follow in the new year hopefully.
That was december 2009, and this is 2009 going.. Happy Decimal Switchover Day!
Fountains Abbey
The other week I had an overwhelming desire to go and take some photos as I realised I hadn’t used my DSLR for a while so I plumped on heading to Fountains Abbey, a National Trust property. What I didn’t realise was it was £9 to get in! £9!!! They tried flogging me £35 National Trust membership (which I later got for £12 online, score) but I did want to use my camera and I was quite keen on seeing the building so I paid up and went in. No sooner than 5 minutes after we arrived annoying black clouds started to form and within 10 minutes we were sheltering inside the only part of the building with a roof as torrential storm rain came down. Quite annoying, I don’t think I got my value for money out of it… but there’s a cool thing on at Christmas featuring lights and music that I can go back to now.
You can see the rest of the photos here (although, there isn’t many).
This is from Where the Wild Things Are, the popular book and soon to be released film. It was pretty difficult to carve, but I’m glad I persevered with it.
This was a lot easier to carve, but the teeth were a challenge. I think I’m going to use this effect again next year with an idea I had.
Rule #2 – Don’t be a hero..
I wasn’t sure what to make of Zombieland from the trailer. I mean, it looked interesting – but it felt a bit “Right guys, we need to make a hollywood version of Shaun of the Dead (which I love), lets get cracking”, that along with some TERRIBLE unfinished CGI in the trailer and I felt a bit meh about the whole thing. When Empire decided not to review it in time for its release the final nail in the coffin, so to speak, was set.
Then.. I heard about the cameo.. and my interest spurned again.. then I heard it was an unexpected massive hit in cinemas.. so I decided to go and see it and I’m glad I did.
Essentially the film is about how Mad Cow Disease in the United States had mutilated into Zombification, and it follows the story of a guy (who looks remarkably like Dan Kett’ with curly hair) trying to get home to his parents to see if they’d survived (they probably hadn’t, but you don’t know this til much later when the extent of the zombification is expanded upon) and what happens during that journey.
The cameo, and if you’ve not seen it by now then its your fault I’m spoiling it for you, comes from non other than Bill Murray, who plays himself exceptionally well – he’s only on for about 10mins but completely steals the show.
Not long after that scene is one where lots of zombies run at the screen while the camera is on the floor effectively, during this happening a woman ran up the aisle in the cinema, which caused me to laugh as she ran like a zombie. They could easily apply this to a 4D showing of it.
Anyway, I heartily recommend going and seeing this film if you haven’t already, it really is quite good.
Its a beast
I went to get some film for my Instax Mini the other day and also picked up some film for my Instax 100. Its not as nice to use as my polaroids, or even the instax Mini because its HUUUGGEEEE. But, its polaroid-esque and the best thing I’ve got between my polaroids running out and the new stock being made in the middle of 2010.
I’ll pop up some sample pictures from it when I go shoot some.
But it’s a TALKING DOG!
So, Up is the latest film to come out of Disney/Pixar studios – annoyingly months and months behind the US release. Infact, not just the US release but every other bloody country in the world. The only place that didn’t get a release before us was Japan. It was even translated and shown in Peru back in JUNE compared to our October.
Anyway, annoying releasing issues aside, back to the film. Essentially its about a 70 year old man and a small Korean boy who embark on an adventure around the world. A yawnfest if anyone else did it, but as it’s Pixar they’ve managed to turn it into a believable story. Without spoiling it too much, the first 20minutes is heartbreaking and my showing of it had a few people around us sniffing.. Then we get to the meat of the film after the house is lifted up on balloons (as in the poster) and the two try and get to their destination while being hindered/helped by a Talking dog and a bird who befriends the group.
The Villain in the film is probably the weakest villain in all the pixar films, and felt a little tacked on – while its been a great storyline for pixar in the past, I wonder how much more they can keep relying on the good guys gang vs villain story and not have it feel dated.
Having said that, the scenes involving the villain were some of the best ones in the film, with the dog fight with actual dogs in planes being the highlight, especially in 3D.
Overall, its a pretty good film, and yet another Pixar classic. Its a while til their next original film, as up next we’ll be seeing Toy Story 3 and Cars 2 milking the sequel bandwagon that only Toy Story had previously gone for.
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I’m sorta struggling to populate this with anything interesting at the moment, given my life is spent either at work or not at work, but not doing anything exciting. But, I won’t let blogging die as I think its vaguely important that I note down my crap every so often (even if I’m speaking to an audience of about 2 people) so within the odd post about places I’ve been I’ll be trying to review movies I’ve seen at the cinema recently.
The first two up for review are Up and Zombieland – stay tuned for those two early this week.
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