ONLY PAIN I got an advance copy of Conan The Destroyer in the post yesterday (cheers Mark!). Haven't seen Arnie in fur pants for a long time and the thing is full of postcards depicting the mostly naked governor of California waving his sword around. Strange world we live in. As much as I like Conan the best part of the disc promises to be Kim Newman's commentary - I'll say more after I've watched the thing. Last night we went out for Thai food with Alan, all bronzed from California and telling stories of Hawaii and the contractors on his new house who would rather surf than build. We spoke of Arnold and shook our heads over veggie pad thai while the dead chicken on his plate took revenge by ravaging his tastebuds with fire alarm spices. Today we are off to see a movie. Probably The Village if only to see if the rumours are true. Over the last week or so we have ploughed through a pile of cinematic and DVD offerings: I am confused as to why this still hasn't been released (made in 2001 I think) and why there was a need for Christina Ricci to be naked in the first five minutes. Maybe it was a nod to Wurtzel being semi-naked on some of her book covers or maybe someone felt it was time that we got to see Wednesday Addam's pubic hair. That aside the film was ok. Not exactly depressing but not exactly entertaining either. I could never find much to say about Bruce Springsteen either but you don't see me jumping on a plane to watch Jason Biggs wrestle with his disabled sister in Texas. Chilling and sobering with the occasional laugh out loud moment. There are so many good documentaries doing the rounds at the moment but this is a must see. Not only does it put a very human face on some dry history it scares the crap out of you knowing how close we came to nuclear war. Try and not make parallels with what is going on in the world today if you want to sleep easy. An overly derivative action movie from Korea. Speed with the amps turned up to 11. As stupid as it is its still more interesting than any number of American action flicks to come out in a while but there are better Korean movies out there. Worth sitting through for the sad ending and working out why the (young Chow Yun Fat styled) hero never lights his cigarette... We saw this on a HUGE screen with Norwegian subtitles. Stupid movies are much better with subtitles as you can pretend you are in an art house and doing something worthy. There's not a lot I can say about Vin Diesel that I haven't said before - he just needs to get this out of his system and then make a new high tech Kojack series. I love Pitch Black - it's a remake of John Ford's Stagecoach with Diesel in the John Wayne role but Riddick is a remake of nothing and it loses the character of the first movie almost instantly. Way too much CGI but a few good ideas lost in the mix. Silly but entertaining for the most part... I don't know how I feel about rumours of a 3 hours + cut... Mike is blogging to: the cat squeaking for food