Moonwalk One + Public Enemies

The title pretty much sums up my last 24 hours. Firstly, last night I watched the premiere of the recently discovered 1970 Documentary "Moonwalk One", about the Apollo 11 mission. It was awful. So dull and really bizzare at times. Also a lot of the scenes were undoubtedly fake; I'm undecided about the actual moonwalk, but some of the shots from the shuttle/rocket were not real; there would have to have been a camera attatched to the outside of the ship. Nowadays that's easy, but not in 1969; there would have to have been an endless reel of tape to record the stuff, and the camera would have had to have auto-focus to achieve the shots shown; another thing unavailable in that era. Also, some clips of the astronauts' daily life aboard Apollo 11 were excellent quality, and some were pitiful (as I would have expected them to be). Lastly, when "the one whose name no one can remember" was alone, orbiting the moon, who was holding the camera? It was panning around and stuff filming him when he was "alone"... My Dad, who has never questioned the moon landing is now a sceptic having watched this documentary. Nuff said.

Today I saw Public Enemies - it was below average. Johnny Depp was brilliant, as were Christian Bale, Marillion Cotillard, and the rest of the main cast. The problem was Michael Mann's direction. He pushed it too much towards an action-packed exciting film, and away from the exciting-at-times, but interesting and thoughtful biopic that it should have been. There was minimal characterisation; none for anyone other than Johnny Depp's character, meaning all the characters were so dull, drawing out the 140 minutes running time, and removing all of the shock or upset at characters' deaths or pain. The action scenes were too plenty; quite often unneccessary, meaning actually plot-specific action scenes lost all impact or tension. Johnny Depp portrayed John Dillinger in an interesting way; as a fairly immature, naive man trying to live like his heroes from the ganster movies, but the film overlooks this most of the time, and simply recounts his "adventures" in a tired, cliched, unoriginal way. My final gripe with the film was that NOT ONE SCENE had a tripod. I can't stand shaky cameras during "talky" scenes - in an action scene, it sometimes fits, so fine. But NOT during a quiet scene. This film gets 4/10.

On the way home from Public Enemies I was very nearly in a crash when a car pulled into a layby RIGHT in front of us.

Lastly I feel like poo. I'm back to the doctors tomorrow to see if I'm dead. At the moment I fear I may be.

Musical Merriment of the day: 32 Songs in 8 minutes - Pure genius.