I will never be as cold now...

This will only hit a nerve if you've seen and enjoyed Proof

Let x equal the quantity of all quantities of x Let x equal the cold It is cold in December The month of cold equal November through February There are four months of cold and four of heat Leaving four months of indeterminate temperature In February it snows In March the lake is a lake of ice In September the students come back and the bookstores are full Let x equal the month full bookstores The number of books approaches infinity As the number of months of cold approaches four I will never be as cold now as I will in the future The future of cold is infinite The future of heat is the future of cold The bookstores are infinite and so are never full except in September

The thing with people who love the numbers is that they never see the beauty of the words even when they're right in front of them... [Music: off]

Well this sucks...

ROME (Dec. 26) - Character actor Vincent Schiavelli, who appeared in scores of movies, including "One Flew Over the Cuckoo�s Nest" and "Ghost," died Monday at his home in Sicily. He was 57. He died of lung cancer, said Salvatore Glorioso, mayor of Polizzi Generosa, the Sicilian village where Schiavelli resided. Schiavelli, whose gloomy, droopy-eyed look made him perfect to play creepy or eccentric characters, made appearances in some 150 film and television productions, according to the Internet Movie Database. Among the movies: "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," "Amadeus," "Batman Returns," and "The People vs. Larry Flint." He was selected in 1997 by Vanity Fair as one of America�s best character actors. Schiavelli, who was born and raised in New York, studied acting at New York University�s School of the Arts. He also wrote three cookbooks and many food articles for magazines and newspapers, possibly inheriting his love for cooking from his grandfather, who had been a cook for an Italian baron before moving to the United States, according to IMDB. "He was a great friend, a great chef and a great talker," Glorioso, who has known Schiavelli for almost four years, said in a telephone interview. "With a smooth, witty conversation, he would make everything look more colorful. I�ve lost a brother," he said. Schiavelli also had worked in Italy, including in 2001 when he directed a theater piece in Sicily based on nine fables. A funeral service will be held Tuesday in Polizzi Generosa, Glorioso said. [Music: Disturbed - Ten Thousand Fists]

Christmas recap...

Jess has already covered this, but I'd be a heel not to mention how much fun it was to have Laura here to help Make War on Christmas. Good conversation on a day when we are usually cut off from the rest of the world thanks to London grinding to a halt was a pleasant change. Jess being awesome knew exactly which films I needed which is a tricky task seeing as I watch so many of the blasted things. The restored Big Red One and A Fistful of Dynamite (along with the extended cut of Donnie Darko and a decent copy of Shaolin Soccer) are waiting for me tomorrow... how many girls buy Lee Marvin movies? We watched Proof which I'd already seen but like a lot, Bad Santa which always kills me, Shopgirl which I thought was a damn good port of a great book and assorted other bits and bobs. Doctor Who aside we didn't watch any regular TV so survived the holiday over-stuffed but with all our brain matter intact. The meal was fantastic - all I did was chop a few spuds so I can't take any credit. The slow nod to 2006 begins here... I was hoping to be asleep by now, but insomnia fucking loves me. Slowly moving off the coffee and onto green tea. We'll see if that helps. Hardly took any photos at all this year, but I've thrown a few up on Flickr including this one of Kelly, Corran and Arran who were nice enough to put up with us today and allowed me to drink all their wine and smiled at my usual rapier wit and jokes about fisting: Maybe I should watch a film right now... [Music: Disturbed - Ten Thousand Fists]

The Christmas Invasion

After a good preemptive moan in November a couple of emails have already started coming in asking me if I enjoyed yesterday's festive Doctor Who episode - the first one for new Time Lord David Tennant and one that seems to have been widely enjoyed. At least it sent John into a quivering mess. Humbug. Letting the new Doc lie around in a coma for most of the episode was always going to be a big mistake, but worse it also lets the halfwit supporting cast take centre stage. Not good. Watching the wooden Mickey take on a badly rendered killer Christmas tree... not a highlight. The annoying thing is that when the new chap actually woke up he was a lot of fun - it's just a pity he woke up in a RTD penned episode complete with silly Santa assassins and a hidden UNIT base that I can see from my window. Watching it was a little like letting your 12 year old Niece play GTA for the first time - having to sit on your hands and bite your lip as she repeatedly guides the character into the same wall before stumbling into some exceptional cut scenes that only betray how good the whole thing could have been. All those "Big Damn Moments and Speeches" were nothing more than a dying episode's white light for you to follow - the dying brain firing off a feel happy lightshow as it shuts down, the cancer patient having a day of remission before the body gives up. The odd thing is that RTD can write some excellent dialogue for those HERO moments that would look great on a trailer and would make your mouth water as long as you believed that there was something tangible holding the thing together. As it stood it was a lot of very quotable lines stuck up on cheap post-it notes. It'd be much easier to ignore if it was all bad, but there's just enough great moments in there to keep you watching. Which means I'll watch the whole next season and complain about that too. And Torchwood. What I thought was clever wasn't the British PM giving the US Pres a slap across the chops (that was too similar to the 45 second thing in the last season), but rather the fact that Harriet Jones once in power felt obliged to do what she knew was wrong for what she thought was the right reason - that's Blair in a nutshell right there. That's why I was annoyed when seconds later the Doctor crippled her with a single sentence. It would have been interesting to see her downward spiral played out over the season (if indeed they continue to keep visiting the same planet and timezone every other fucking episode) but maybe we'll see more of that in Torchwood. I do hope that Anthony Head is The Master though... he's my second choice after Christopher Eccleston. [Music: off]

Happy Holidays...

[Music: off]

The sea urchin it is audible...

Jackson just pointed out that the thing I wrote for SFist a little while ago got itself translated into Japanese... pretty cool. I just ran it back through the Babel Fish and it came out the other side like this:

Not to doubt, as for one of the most splendid web application, It is Flickr. And, it loves also Google simultaneously. But, Picasa is the Imai ?. The London people, the individual release the Matinami straw raincoat photograph to "the pool". And, by the fact that that badge is registered to ???, As for ??? it is possible always to be able to charm to fresh. By the fact that due to the purchase of Yahoo, rumor of several censorship was heard. But, if you look at the recent free account and the extra space, it is problem improbable. So something problem? Flickr sends the mail vis-a-vis the user. Way tag is attached to the photograph of several private. Is this probably problem? In many parts, this is not new thing. Always, there are times when the photograph is marked when "private" is. Those the friend and it makes the photograph which the family only is visible. Or, you do not want, it is something where charm to random the adult with the photograph. Vis-a-vis this, the other person can raise Flag, "unpleasantness". This way, the self sensor ship will have been secure. As for us, the friend is. They the lith key take the shot, Those are designated as private. (And, that is always good ones) But, of, as for problem of the common opinion whether something it is permitted in the public, Something "unpleasantness?" it catches. And, opinion of the business partner of Flickr is this way. "Became now, we the portion of Yahoo. And, it probably becomes more liberal. Vis-a-vis strict photograph policy and the like. The photograph once more At back of the safe search, it probably becomes search possible. Applying the restriction of 18 years old or more, " This is good, the sea urchin it is audible. But, this still has not answered to doubt.

You may call me Sensei. [Music: off - Jess is back and kicking all sorts of arse on Prince of Persia]

Dare I say it?

That was a blast... Jess rang me a few times between the live updates and she also managed to find time to blog (and read Boing Boing by the looks of it). I made a quick n dirty Flickr screengrab gallery of the launch so make with the clicky: [Music: off]

The Eagle has Landed...

In the time it took me to crawl underground from Heathrow to central London Jess managed to make it to another country. She just called to say she landed ok and is on her way to the hotel and first press conference. I meanwhile am struggling to find the pizza menu and have a headache. I did find the official site for the launch complete with live feed of the main attraction: MSG-2 Launch All systems are green - t minus four hours until my pizza arrives with the rocket thing going up sometime after that. Maybe. I have no idea what time the bloody thing blasts off... Ah ok - the launch is scheduled for 23:33 German time so that'll be 10.33pm here. Of course that may change at any time if the weather moves in, something goes POP or the Martians get wind of what we're up to... [Music - off]

Thunderbirds are GO...

Jess is packing. No, she hasn't finally come to her senses, but she is off to Germany tomorrow. She's been invited to tour the European Space Agency followed by a live transmission of the MSG-2 launch from Kourou, French Guiana. That's right - an actual satellite launch and she gets to press buttons in mission control... Kind of puts the few perks of my gig into perspective. Free movies as opposed to playing Quatermass... man. She's been too busy to get too excited yet, but for a major space geek like Jess this is quite an early Christmas present. With some of her dad's work in orbit right now and a lifetime of Asimov under her belt she'll get a hell of a kick out of this. This is the MSG2 and the launch of its predecessor: Not sure if there'll be a live web feed, but if I find one I'll chuck it up here. [Music: Frank Black & the Catholics]

From the depths of Hell's ocean...

Jess rolled in around 2am, about as steady on her legs as my income and splashing water everywhere while telling me about her altercation with a cab driver after spending the evening with retrobates: This left me time to catch up with Peter Cushing and the Toten Corps. Not quite as terrifying as I remember and still something of a lost opportunity, but it certainly has its moments. Cushing and John Carradine aside it's mostly about Brooke Adams and that yellow bikini - this is my favourite film of hers after the '78 Invasion of the Body Snatchers. With the current vogue for remaking old horror flicks it's surprising that no one's stumbled on this - maybe it's a good thing. The world doesn't need any more Paris Hilton movies. Any more Paris Hilton anything actually. I still need to find me a pair of those goggles. I saw a pair very similar on eBay, but I was outbid... Speaking of the fatherland - Jess is off to Germany tomorrow. I can't reveal all the details yet, but I guess she'll mention it on her own blog later. She'll be back on Thursday which leaves me another 24 hours to dig out a couple of films that she'd shake her head at if she were here. Anyone wants to come over for pizza and Dario Argento tomorrow night just drop me a line. [Music: Loudness - The Best of Reunion]

Some things are worth repeating...

I first posted that in May 2003, but I got an email from Mike this morning that made me want to dig that photo out:

Heya folks! I just wanted to drop you all a line and let you know that I will be hosting a new internet radio show at www.agroradio.com on Tues and Thurs nights from 12:00 midnight until 1:00am EST. Most of you know me and my eclectic taste in music, so you'll know what to expect. Hope you tune in!

Mike has truly awesome taste in music. I loved getting into a car with him simply because of the stuff he'd pull out to listen to - now thanks to the power of the inturweb I can listen from the safety of my laptop. You know a guy means business when he pulls this outfit on to fuck around in Baltimore graveyards (that was the day we almost fell victim to gang related crime, met Alan Rickman and I got to speak to the FBI): So tune in, drop out etc... 1. DCMike is very photogenic. 2. He wishes he were here. 3. Facial hair being the only hair on your body is a trifle weird. 4. The only mullet at a Murphy's Law gig must be worth a prize. [Music: Loudness]

Curious genitals...

We just got back in from a little wintry stroll along the Thames. It's easy to take the city for granted, but there are worse places to be stuck in December. And the damn place refuses to stand still. I swear this was empty sky before we went to Sweden: When we got back from our 3 month USA/Mexico/Australia/Japan trek whole portions of the city had transformed, but SE1 just never stops throwing up new buildings like a small child coughing up lego. Speaking of small children: Do you remember when you were that curious? [Music: DKs]

Idiot Boxing...

I mentioned in the comments that I would still be watching Lost if the Big Bad had turned out to be a polar bear eating dragon instead of a crappy column of smoke and I got two text messages. The first called me a fucker for "ruining the ending" of Lost and of course came from one of my fellow Brits who is still being spoon fed season one of the show on Channel Four instead of torrenting it like a grown up. I'm sure if I mentioned who it was that shot JR in Dallas back in 1980* I'd get angry email from some fan in Siberia complaining that I ruined the surprise. For the record Lost has no ending - that's the point. Nothing will ever be satisfactorily resolved in case the battery hens stop pecking away at the corn for even a moment (and peck away they do). I stopped watching it because I want them ALL to die. Just not this slowly. The second text message asked me what I was watching instead. Good question. Bad answer: Here's what I'm not watching anymore. Threshold - started great but tripped up badly early on and I bailed before it was put out of its misery so as not to get blood on my shoes. Invasion - I simply didn't care about any of those people and I know a bad bodysnatchers concept when I see one. Surface - Too cutesy. How do you fuck up big monsters that eat whales? Even the teenage girls in bikinis couldn't stop me from wanting to hit the moany heroine across the head with the annoying kid and then use their corpses to weigh down the body of the big dumb one. Prison Break - I know a lot of people rate this one quite highly, but people... it's utter bollocks. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you? I've stayed clear of Triangle because the same people telling me it's good are the same people telling me I have to see past that idiot's magic picture tattoos until I see the beauty of the intricately structured sailboat beneath. Fuck. That. So what am I watching? House, of course. Hugh Laurie is riveting and it still makes me laugh even though it's not doing anything quite as special as it did in season one. Veronica Mars. Still one of the best things on TV, but season 2 is flagging alarmingly. Dare I say I'd like less of Ms Mars and more of her dad? Season one though - unfuckable with. But the best show on TV at the moment, head and shoulders above the competition?

Bones.

I was slow to warm to it, but it sucked me in because of the dialogue, the characters and at least one killer scene in every single episode. I had Boreanaz down as a one joke lunk, but he's very good in this and he and Emily Deschanel are perfect together (please God never let them get together). The squints that surround them are like a little geek family and even though I thought Jonathan Adam's character was forced in a little late his turn in the Christmas episode was maybe the best bit in the best episode of the season so far. High fucking bar that. And yeah I still watch the two bad CSIs, but that's like the porn you download not to jerk off to, but simply to say what the fuck did I just see?* That keeps me more than busy until 2006 offers up more Galactica and Deadwood. Notes: * It was Sue Ellen's Sister ** You just saw David Caruso aging with every step like the bad guy at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, forcing the wooden dialogue from dead lips while his supporting cast of mannequins push and pull until the whole thing lies still born in it's own blood before being stamped with the Bruckheimer boot. Excellent. And no I haven't forgotten Curb Your Enthusiasm. It's not simply a show so it doesn't get name checked above - it's more a way of life - a spiritual thing. Feel free to argue with me but that would just mean you have an unfeasibly large vagina. [Music: Henry Rollins - Twas the Night Before Christmas]

What would Quetzlcoatl do?

The last time I was excited about a dragon movie I was eventually disappointed although I did get some interesting emails:

"Dragons can be battled with swords, bowie knives, khukiries, guns, bolo nets, and bombs, but the most important weapon of any dragon-slayer is his intellect and flame retardant gel."

Quite. So I wasn't about to get all excited about D-War when I first heard about it. Then I saw the posters and got a little more dragon happy... Than again it was the poster of dragons fucking up London and other cities that got my happy on last time: Robert Forster though... I was starting to feel a little Q-The Winged Serpent nostalgia. Then I found out the director was responsible for more than one other dragon movie and figured that this was going to be a whole lot more fun than Reign of Fire. After watching the trailer it seems I was right: The fx are just dodgy enough to lend it some charm and the trailer edit is hilarious. Two minutes of dragons coiled around skyscrapers, attacking attack helicopters and also being ridden into battle and I can't help think the best part is when the guy collects the girl from the cafe. That and the elephant being spat out... My Korean is a little rusty, but I think the guy at the beginning is saying "Christopher Lee protect us! Dragons!" Could be the film of 2006... but I think it's only fair to once again refer you here for a military perspective on the whole dragon thing

I won't bother with the math, but I'm pretty sure the kinetic energy of a supersonic missile, warheaded or not, would be sufficient to dispatch a dragon.

[Music: Transvision Vamp]

I'll be always there, fighting the ancient sin...

This just made my weekend. I got a few interesting emails - turns out more people than I imagined love a little Orson Welles with their metal for breakfast. I don't think I'll try and run a dedicated MP3 blog again, but I will share some of the more interesting tracks I have lying around right here on VM in the new year. Sebastian who runs the awesome The Crime in your Coffee (been on the sidebar for a while now) pointed out that Lee pulled from the Manowar gig at the last moment due to filming commitments and then like an early Christmas gift pulls more metal goodness out of his bag. You want Christopher Lee singing about being a wizard with an "Italian epic metal band"? Of course you fucking do: Rhapsody (feat. Christopher Lee) - The Magic of the Wizard's Dream The song is pretty much what you'd expect, but the video is fantastic. The accompanying notes are a hoot too. Turns out that Lee had concerns about simply narrating so he and the band got together again so he could do the duet - in English, Italian, German and French.

It would not be an overstatement to call the new version of "The Magic Of The Wizard's Dream" a grand and epic piece of work in the style of Disney movies or world class sports events...

Oh I totally agree. I'd be a lot more excited about London hosting the Olympics if there was a series of events based around Michael Caine singing with Motorhead. You've gotta love the banner pic that runs across the website - the lead singer looking in sudden confusion to his right and obviously thinking Holy mother of fuck! That's Christopher Lee... These guys are a Film Score Metal band... and of course I pulled ten people from my email address book at random and signed them up for the Rhapsody news letter. You're welcome. [Music: 50FootWave]

These words are all that's left...

Think Orson Welles and if you have a shred of respect you think of his War of the Worlds broadcast and of course Citizen Kane along with the fine body of work he left behind (especially the sublime F For Fake), but eventually your mind wanders to his final role as the voice of Unicron in Transformers: The Movie. I like to think of it less of a step down and more of a step sideways... of course you could always take it as a damning indictment of the American film industry that had turned its back on him so brutally. Aside from a variety of dodgy television adverts that I grew up with he also found time to do some interesting voice work (he was the original choice for Darth Vader no less) but it seems that not many people seem to talk too much about his work with these guys: I wonder why. That's Manowar signing their record contract in blood. And yes, that is a loincloth. You'd prefer he was naked? Don't answer that. For a while back in the day you could go see these guys play the loudest heavy metal in the world (official) and each and every night they'd be introduced by the then dead, but unmistakable voice of Orson Welles:

"Ladies and gentlemen, from the United States of America, all hail Manowar!"

Man oh man. Good times. As a teenager 'Fighting the World' was just one of those albums that I never tired of listening to - it's ridiculousness beat Spinal Tap into submission with a large studded fist and yet the band took it all so seriously... which again was part of the charm. Welles, mostly ignored in the US at the time, was more than happy to accommodate this over the top metal band and sadly it turned out to be one of his final gigs. Perhaps he saw something kindred in their unashamed ego or maybe he just wanted the money. But how much could these guys and their label have paid Welles for his time? Motorcycles, gym equipment and animal fur don't come cheap. The story goes that Welles was so huge at this point that he had to take the freight elevator to the recording studio... he also took along a dog. Maybe a pet, maybe lunch. Who knows... Some of the words in question can be heard on the first Manowar album 'Battle Hymns' on the track 'Dark Avenger'. It's not their best song, but it is priceless to hear Welles come out with lines like this:

"... And they placed in his hands a sword made for him called VENGEANCE forged in brimstone and tempered by the woeful tears of the Unavenged".

If you need one Manowar song on your MP3 player though (and who doesn't?) then it's got to be 'Defender'. It's mostly Welles playing the role of fallen hero/father bequeathing his task to his son in the form of a letter. I dread to think how often I listened to this when I was a teenager. I even wrote a story based on the song. You can download the track right here - I'll keep it up for a week or until one of the band throws an axe at me. The kicker is that earlier this year Manowar played some over the top metal fest in Europe and along with their hundred strong choir and orchestra managed to persuade Christopher Lee to step into Orson's shoes to recreate that song and the other spoken word parts live. Now I'm guessing that that was for the money. Jess is out tonight for her last MA class of the year. I'm going to sit back with a glass of something strong and listen to some old Mercury Theater plays... I may even rewatch Transformers... Any MP3 files hosted on Visible Monsters are posted for evaluation purposes only and removed after seven days. [Music: off - I think I blew my speakers...]

Firecracker December Issue...

The stuff with my name on it: Crying Fist The Hidden Blade Steamboy The Little Norse Prince Memento Mori Swordsman II & Swordsman III: The East is Red [Music: Texas is the Reason - Do you know who you are?]

Gothenburg / G�teborg...

It's taken me until now to get back on top of things. Still a lot of email to sort. In the meantime if you want photos you can have 181 of the fuckers... Special thanks to Jesper (below) and Ola for extending the hand of blogship above and beyond the call of duty. Loading us up with coffee, adding fine detail to our crappy tourist map, inviting us to secret parties and generally being the best kind of ambassadors that Gothenburg could ask for. It wouldn't have been half as much fun without these guys. More later... [Music: Pretty Girls Make Graves]

All change...

Things will feel a little new in places and a little old in others. A little like rubbing your salt wound against a raw Joan Rivers. [Music: Jets to Brazil]

Still here II...

Just killing time in the hotel lobby before we haul ourselves to the airport. Jess filled in some quick detail over on her blog already and you can always click HERE if you want to see one of the cool things we got up to... Make with the clicky on the Firecracker thingy to the right and there should be a bunch of new reviews up for you to snuggle with until I get all the photos Flickred... Can hardly contain myself at the thought of being back in London. I'll try and grab a windowseat for the flight back... perhaps if the wind changes I can see a portion of the city go up in flames. �Music� It's a hotel lobby... and the keyboard is fucked �

Still here... just...

Jess has crashed out for a few hours... I'll have to wake her in just over an hour so there's not much point in me trying to sleep. Just finished Figures in a Landscape by Barry England - stunning novel and something I've had on my shelves unread and unloved for as long as I can remember. It's a second edition from 1969 and I think it belonged to my dad... not that I ever saw him read anything. He did collect these ridiculous red bound hardback Dennis Wheatley novels - I think the full set is still safe and sound up north - but I was never allowed to touch them. God forbid anyone should actually want to read a book in that house... not when they looked so nice and neat simply stood on display. I brought back a small pile of quite old hardbacks from the last trip so I guess I'll go pick one to start off as my holiday read. Still having withdrawal symptoms from the double whammy of Paul Auster and Cormac McCarthy. Looking around for blogs on Gothenberg I stumbled across Tokyo Style in Gothenberg - it's a great duel site dealing with both the city we're flying to and the city I want to return to the most. Great mix of culture and design bits and bobs and quite reminiscent of Jean Snow - not surprising as he used to blog there too. There is a related store (Kid Robot-ish I think) that I intend to visit... It's also where I nabbed the cool pic of the police car from a few posts back. Time to pull out that book and relax until we start panicking over where we put the passports... [Music: Lovage]

Speaking of gun-fu...

John has a great post on action scenes over on the Monkey. Not sure how he manages to blog so often while holding down so many pies and fingering the hell out of them until they spurge warm gooey goodness all over every type of media going. I will have to send him a distracting postcard... Speaking of which - I need snail mail addresses. Email me your hideouts and I'll drop you a line or two from the land of snow. Not sure if I'll be online up there so the sooner you mail me the better. Consider me off the grid from tomorrow until Tuesday. I now have some unwatched Takashi Miike movies to attend to. [Music: Maiden]

2009: Lost Memories...

Loved this film. It's a big budget action fest that puts most Hollywood drivel to shame. It looks stunning throughout and while it loses its way a little towards the end that's mostly down to the limitations of the running time. In a perfect world they would have cut it off at the 2 hour mark and then made a sequel. The rush job ending really deserves 90 minutes or so of its own to do justice to the characters involved and to tie up the plot neatly. I don't want to get too involved in the actual plot as I feel too much is given away in both the marketing campaign and the reviews - it would be nice if people could go into this blind and try and unravel the plot in the same way that Jang Dong-Gun's detective has to. What I will say is that it's set in the year 2009 in an alternate Korea where history took a decisive turn from our own. Japan sided with the Americans during WW2 and the atom bomb was dropped on Berlin. Korea is now all but a lost nation completely subjugated by Japan. There is a tiny underground movement trying it's best to fight the system, but most Koreans have forgotten their culture and are happy living in a prosperous Seoul under the Japanese flag. Masayuki Sakamoto (Jang Dong-Gun) is one such Korean - working for the Japanese Bureau of Investigation he and his Japanese partner do their best to stop the Hureisenjin terrorists and retain the status quo. As the film unfolds following a spectacular insurgent attack Sakamoto is drawn into an investigation that his superiors would prefer he left well alone... It's a long film that takes its time to develop the friendship between Sakamoto and his partner Shojiro Saigo (Toru Nakamura) and also drops in a mystery woman, Hye (Seo Jin-Ho) who seems to have a connection with Sakamoto that he doesn't understand. Add what the cop feels was a betrayal by his father and you get a choice plot filled with good old fashioned melodrama that wears John Woo's name on it's sleeve. The shoot outs, of which there are a fair few, are well done with a nice signature touch where a person will get hit with a single bullet (preferably in slow motion) before another six or seven guns are trained and let loose. The central shoot out in a Hureisenjin hideout seems to have been influenced by the 'over the rainbow' sequence in Face/Off and if anything tops it. I haven't actually seen a decent action flick in ages... I was obviously looking in the wrong country. [Music: Maiden]

Countdown begins in three, two... Up at 7ish feeling a little brighter. Dead to the world by 8, crashed on the sofa with a cat and a book that sent my brain into a spasm. It's almost noon when I wake up. I was a wreck last night - so much so that I didn't even try and get into town for the Londonist bash. I missed out on a lot of free Mexican food... for shame. I hate being ill. Still things are looking up now that I remembered how to breathe. Jess is still fit as a fiddle so we seem to be all systems go for Friday's plane ride. This was supposed to be the Christmas trip, but Jess has the possibility of a solo flight just this side of Christmas that kind of tops this one. Can't say much now and it's her scoop anyway... it's not right when you're jealous of your fiance. Maybe I should get a real job... one with international travel. And leggy Russian spies. Even though I was pretty fucked today I got all my stuff in - whether it's any good remains to be seen. Didn't leave much time for blogging or reading though. Merry is going to get fed and watered by our neighbours, Chris and Jen. It's nice to live somewhere again where you actually know the people on the other side of the walls. Tomorrow I intend to relax... probably won't happen but it's a nice thought. [Music: yet more Throwing Muses - I am on a kick]

Reasons to break the law in Sweden #8762... You get chased by cops in Automan/Tron mashup mobiles: Meanwhile Jess over on the FWord reports why it's best not to try and rape Swedish girls (unless you're really good at Rubik's Cube). [Music: Throwing Muses]

Ick and ack... My cold suddenly became a lot more progressive... Another day of sneezing Lovecraftian slime out of my head and I should feel a lot better. Jess let loose a volley of Captain Trips style sneezes this morning... not good. I'd hate to be stuck in a hotel room having to be waited on hand and foot by Swedish Viking wenches, only strong enough to crawl and empty the mini-bar. Needless to say I still have a couple of films to watch today, but my eyeballs feel slightly shaved and not at all up to the experience. A quick soak in coffee and a vodka rinse should do the trick. More later... [Music: Throwing Muses]

Homecoming... I had decided not to track down the 'Masters of Horror' series for a couple of reasons. Mostly I just figured I'd be underwhelmed. I love most of the people involved in this series and have watched their work in film religiously (the original Night of the Living Dead is the one movie I've seen more than any other) and yet I wasn't excited to hear that the likes of Romero and Carpenter had been brought on board a new anthology television series. I never really got over the original 'Twilight Zone' and 'Outer Limits' episodes and have had very little truck with shows in a similar vein over the years since. What I do love about more regular television programming is when they touch upon horror themes and imagery in an unexpected way. 'Twin Peaks' was not a horror show, but had some real horror jump out at you amidst all the other head fuckery going on in there. Frank Silva's Bob is still ridiculously scary and the onscreen murder of Laura's cousin, Madeleine (again played by Sheryl Lee), is just gruesome and still hard to watch. 'The X Files' had it's moments in the first couple of seasons and closer to home 'Jam' of all things was simply terrifying because of some of the visuals that escaped from the mind of Chris Morris. Remember the mother with the dead baby who calls in the plumber to fix a Gilliamesque series of pipes to reanimate the tiny corpse in its crib? You don't actually see that much, but it's always stayed with me... So the idea of an actual horror themed TV show was never that exciting to me plus I figured it was always going to watered down Argento as opposed to the full on crimson spectacular that I can watch anytime by loading up a DVD. Then a day or so ago I saw this post over on Boing Boing about the sixth episode of 'Masters of Horror' - a Joe Dante directed political zombie story. I'm queer for the undead so I forgot all the above and torrented it. Now I'll probably go back and catch up with the other five. Not that Homecoming was fantastic horror TV or anything - it sagged in places, had a hokey postscript and was never ever remotely scary - but it was (it seems to me, stuck on a little island well away from Washington) beautifully political. Enough so for Reuters to pick up on it too. I loved the Ann Coulter clone blasting away on the edge of the road and would have thought her right-wing shrew a little overdone if I hadn't seen way too much footage of the real life bitter blonde that the character was based on. I enjoyed the political spin that the Republicans tried to put on the left wing dead before sending them off to internment camps. All that stuff was VERY broad satire but done well enough to raise a smile. What really got me though were two scenes. One is captured in the screengrab over on Boing Boing showing one of the few vocal dead soldiers decrying the lies that cost him his life. The other scene was earlier when the first batch of corpses come back to life. It's set inside the kind of hangar we've all now seen inside but were never meant to - flag draped coffins fill the screen. Now it wasn't too long ago that these very images were being kept from us and now they're being used as set dressing (and in a much better way than say the Abu Ghraib inspired images that have popped up on satirical comedy shows). As the first coffin bursts apart (and I took their flimsy nature to be yet another comment on the fact that these troops were given inadequate supplies while at war and continued to be given makeshift equipment in death) the first returning soldier is hidden from view by the flag that rested over his coffin. A dead American soldier shrouded in the American flag was a ballsy shot and made the whole show for me. I also liked the little touch of the coerced undead detainee putting on his glasses to reveal a bullet hole through the left lense to match the wounded eye socket. So now I'm interested to see if the previous directors can take the limitation of 60 minute TV and come up with something as interesting... On a slightly related note I got an early Christmas gift today in the shape of a DVD boxset from Jess' cousin out in NYC. We spoke a little about TV while she was here and in particular some of the American staples that never made it to these shores. Carol now reinforces how much she rocks by sending me 32 episodes of classic comedies, detective shows and westerns from the 1950s. Once the other stuff I have to watch is out the way I can sit down and relax with the likes of Andy Griffith, Bob Cummings, Jack Benny, 'The Lone Wolf', 'Man with a Camera', 'Death Valley Days' and 'Bat Masterson' for the very first time. That's not mentioning the stuff on here that I am familiar with like 'Dragnet' and 'The Beverly Hillbillies'... Jess tells me it just started snowing in Gothenburg. Doesn't get much better than that. Tomorrow I'll be mad busy in the day followed by the Londonist Christmas meal so it may be a while before I get back to emails etc... [Music: Throwing Muses]

The Gavle Goat goes up again... Feel slightly more human this morning... fucking cold though. Can't wait to relax in the sun on one of Sweden's more exclusive beaches... we're going to die up there aren't we? By the Sunday Jess and I will be sat with just a single flare left between us as John Carpenter plays us out. Some Swedish goat burning news made the BBC. More here:

The strange history of the G�vle Goat began in 1966. A man named Stig Gavl�n came up with the idea of making a giant version of the traditional Swedish Yule goat of straw and placing it on (Slottstorget) Castle Square in central G�vle. On 1 December the 13-metre tall, 7-metre long, 3 tonne goat stood on the square. At the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, the goat went up in smoke...

As Johnny pointed out in the previous comment, there's a lot of interesting music escaping from that part of the world... Once I've got these films out of the way I'll have to work out if anyone insane is playing Gothenburg while we're there... [Music: off]

Throat go owey... Spent a large portion of the day asleep - or trying to sleep with a throat rawer than a face donor's forehead. I need to kick this before getting on the plane on Friday. Lounging around in a semi-medicated haze, eating horrible Korean sweets and listening to just about everything that The Misfits ever recorded has given me a lot of time to think. There's a list of things that I need to get done in 2006 which means there's a list of things that I need to stop doing to free up some time. I like making big sweeping decisions while drinking coffee laced with vodka. Somehow I always have time to fit in a Rutger Haur movie*. Tomorrow I have to watch one Japanese horror film, one Korean horror film, two Japanese animated films, two Chinese swordplay films and if I have time (yeah right) one German and one Italian horror film. In between I'll try and blog and then of course have to write them all up before Wednesday. What I'm saying is don't ring me. *Split Second - first time I've seen it since it's initial release and it hasn't aged well, but was still highly enjoyable. [Music - off]

Brace yourself, Bats... I love that this post by Donavan over on Creamsicle starts with a French girl pissing all over her floorboards then moves on to point out a few things that are actually wrong with the world before coming back to state that French people having sex is beautiful. Good stuff, funny stuff and the fact that it's filled with nudity doesn't hurt. This isn't related at all, but I found this little flash animation showing how to use a condom funny because it's hard to watch without thinking of a Predator having safe sex.[Music: Pulp - This is Hardcore]

All The President's Bloggers... I'm getting a lot of email about this, but in all honesty I don't have a whole lot to say about it as it wasn't my post so it's not my place to comment in detail. What I will say is that I did see the lists in question and nothing I've heard from the NME makes me second guess that what was posted on Londonist was not written in good faith or indeed wrong. There are reasons that the whole thing couldn't be pulled out for everyone to have a look at in detail, but none of them were about covering Londonist's back or it's writers - which was why the spreadsheet in question was passed onto The Guardian. That the original post has now been taken down annoys me, but aside from that I don't have much more to say on the subject. The important thing now is that I added a splash of colour... 'go-faster' stripes to detract from the fact that I don't use this space quite as well as I should. We'll have to see about that when I get back from Sweden. [Music: Pulp - This is Hardcore]

Insomnia from the other side... Figured I'd try getting up early and see how that works out. Not enough hours in the day and all that... Had a good meeting last night - always nice to know you're on the right wavelength and have some sort of plan for the new year. Jess is back in the blogging saddle again - she's prolific with The F Word (I am an inverterate slob...), but let her own page slip a little. I'm constantly amazed she fits it all in - work, college, library etc... I get tired just trying to keep up. Nick and Erika got engaged yesterday :) very very cool. All our friends are slowly heading towards that real grown up thing. About time I made an honest woman out of Jess perhaps... [Music: The Bee Gees]

Kill Will... Yep that's Alyson Hannigan spoofing The Bride in her new movie, erm, Date Movie - a spoof of romantic comedies... just the kind of film that Hollywood needs to produce to get us back inside the multiplex. After seeing the first few episodes of How I Met Your Mother which is very drab and uninspired, but will probably run for years I wonder why no one has cast her in anything awesome since Buffy... If anyone had the balls to film 'No Country For Old Men' she'd make a perfect Carla Jean. December 1st already? The last wheeze of the year is always a slow one, but I have a few things up my sleeve to stop this month from slipping into a persistent vegetative state. Tomorrow is a little more hectic than I'd like. Out early (so why am I still awake? Oh yeah because I'm an idiot) to pick up some new clothes for the Gothenburg trip then back to London Bridge to pick up some screeners and catch up with Nick and Erika. I'll be in and out for the rest of the day before being tempted with pizza to attend an editorial meeting. I noticed that the Londonist thing also got picked up on Metafilter. It's not something I feel qualified to weigh in on because I don't think I've ever bought a single issue of NME - I may have glanced at the occasional copy over the years, but actually pay it enough attention to care what they consider the best music of the year? I don't think so... At some point it'd be nice to get a handle on my email - which is why I'm still up and yet here I am talking to you guys... Send me to bed already. [Music: Ennio Morricone]