Clash of Tit

Today work was much quieter than everyone expected. That was a bit of a let down but I seem to have gotten back into fairly enjoying working there now that the last week's annoyances have passed. All the customers I dealt with were great, so it went pretty well if a bit slow when it was really quiet.

In the Co-Op car park I encountered my daily loon; an old man pushing a bike along. Crossing the dual carriageway, he was bellowing at the cars driving by, before including me in his conversation explaining to me that he recently spent a week in Dochfour where he was undisturbed by traffic. He continued questioning how so many people can have cars as there is "no way people can afford all these cars". I was just agreeing with him with awkward laughter of empathy until he asked me if I drove. My honest reply was "not YET", to which he dealt me the advice "Don't! There's already enough bloody cars around without MORE people learning to drive". Thankfully at this point we were already going our separate ways so this was the end of our chat.

After work I went with Danny to see Clash of the Titans. The evening went off to a great start as the tickets from the machine had the film's name abbreviated to "Clash of Tit". The film itself, however; I was dreading it being an awful remake of a film I really like, hoping it would be not as good, but stylish in a 300 sense. It turned out to be brilliant; Sam Rockwell was oddly cast as the lead, Persius, with his fickle accent and crew-cut, but everything else was very good. They retained the fun tone of the movie, not making it too serious, also balancing thrills, plot and the odd moments of sadness, romance and comedy just like an action fantasy from the 1980's. There was a lot of CGI effects, but where possible they did use Practical Effects, especially with the make-up; there are some intricate character designs and these were all done with Prosthetics rather than computers which I really liked. The CGI was all done well, with action scenes favouring large scale excitement rather than gritty realism, a choice that I really feel fits the movie. The relatively short 106 minutes goes past quite slowly, but it is always immersive and I didn't feel like it dragged, rather there is just a lot that happens and it is a mini-epic of a movie really in the scale of the plot. I was thrilled to see a cameo from Bubo the mechanical owl from the original as well. My only real criticism is the 3D; it was hurriedly added at the last minute and it shows; the most part of the film has limited depth, with many scenes having little more than a foreground and background plate. The only scenes at all enhanced by the 3D are the opening in the stars which was incredible and the final kraken scene. These two scenes however didn't really justify the extra cost. Overall, I would give the movie 8/10 as it is very entertaining but has little "film school" merit that would really be required to push it much further. As for the 3D, I would consider deducting a point for it, but in all fairness its the studio trying to cash in at the last minute, not the director or anyone else's fault so 8/10 is the movie on it's own.

The bus home was largely uneventful except for a chance meeting with James Redmond who has developed a terrible throat infection. My thoughts are with him.