Did you ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?

I had a day off today, which I was very pleased about, having worked 6 days in a row which I don't feel entitles me to winge about but is enough for me to say the day off was well deserved. I actually used some of the time productively, getting my tax sorted out, as Revenue & Customs don't believe I am working just now, meaning I have been paying a ridiculous amount of emergency tax. It's sorted out now and sometime in the next month I should be arranging a massive repayment as I shouldn't have been paying ANY tax, with me earning less than 6k in the financial year.
I watched the 1989 Batman movie this afternoon; I hadn't seen it for many years and thoroughly enjoyed it; Jack Nicholson is fantastic as the Joker and I now understand why some people suggested the praise for Heath Ledger was overblown, with many traits being borrowed from Jack's performance. The Tim Burton styling of the movie was vague enough to appeal to the masses, but noticeable to a fan like me; there's hardly any of the spirals and such that he's well known for nowadays, but the horror movie style cinematography and art nouveau / gothic appearance of Gotham City are all clear indications of his inspirations. I really like Danny Elfman's score; I'm a huge fan of his music, with his band Oingo Boingo being one of my favourite bands and his scores including some of my favourite movie music. It is clear that the film as a whole was made in the 80's, but I still think it is very good. 8/10.

This evening I experienced the deep despair associated only with watching And & Dec's Push The Button on ITV2. In all fairness I don't really blame Ant and Dec as they try hard to make it entertaining, but it's the moronic hordes that swamp the show; referred to as the contestants and the audience. The audience annoys me in all of these shows; they are like well trained guinea pigs, making loud OOOOH noises whenever the opportunity to win something presents itself, even if aforementioned prize is something terrible. They laugh wildly at any misfired attempts at humor, be it from the host or contestants, and they insist on screaming and whistling if a male bares a forearm with a hint of a muscle on it. On to the contestants; game shows have always had dimwitted contestants, even the godlike Crystal Maze, but this took the mickey; the final challenge required a woman to memorise a colour/music pattern consisting of 7 notes from a selection of 5. If she was to accomplish this beginner Simon Says task her family were to be awarded just shy of 30,000 pounds. She was shown the sequence and immediately given the opportunity to begin recreating it. She promptly screamed that she couldn't remember it and pressed the wrong button for the first note of the sequence, forefitting the prize. How someone can be so inept at a childs game when being offered tens of thousands of pounds to complete an intermediate level is beyond me, especially when it was her who volunteered to be the one to carry it out.

Nonetheless, I managed to move on from this dark moment and watched Snow White on Blu-ray. I was slightly cynical about watching a 75 year old cartoon in high definition but I was totally wrong to be; the obvious enhancement of the colours went without saying but the clarity did add so much; along with amazing restoration, you could see sketch marks around main characters in a lot of scenes, making out each and every pencil line and brush stroke. Seeing it like this brought home the immense work that went into animated movies back then; it was clear that what I was watching was hundreds of individual drawings flying past me every minute. There is still a lot of work put into animated movies these days, but with the exception of stop motion it is incomparable to what the artists did all those years ago. I have been 100% converted to HD for all mediums now, and seeing how beautiful a classic Disney film can be makes me truly excited for the Blu-ray release of Fantasia, reportedly later this year. Fantasia is in my opinion one of the greatest movies ever made, and seeing it in HD will be like seeing it for the first time again.

Last thing for today was Heston Blumenthal's feast where he created a whole variety of Willy Wonka inspired dishes. He is a genius and his programs always fascinate me. Enough said.

Just as this finished I was heading through to my room when I stepped on a rose thorn on the carpet with bare feet. This was most unwelcome and I informed the thorn of this on the strongest possible terms. It still hurts and I fear that it may have to be amputated tomorrow if infection gets into the wound. On that I am feeling faint due to blood loss so shall be off to bed ready for work tomorrow.