The Importance of Being Idle

Yo Ho Yo Ho A Pirate's Life For Me!

There are a couple of ways I could deal with the fact that I've not been able to update my blog for the past month. The first and most obvious is to relentlessly and remorselessly catalogue everything that has happened between my last post and the present. This is both boring, and very hardwork, and will therefore not be happening. What I will do is carry on as though nothing untoward has happened at all, and fill in the gaps as I go along, or when I feel like it. So, to business!
Last night we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Naturally we went dressed as pirates, 'cos how often do you get to do that? I thought Ronnie looked great, she seemed to have accidentally modelled her look on Anne Bonney (although without the hat). I was fairly happy with my pirate costume too, although it did rely heavily on me wearing nearly all the jewelry that I own, for that authentic treasure hungry look. I had a red bandana too. Sadly (or perhaps luckily) for some reason Blogger doesn't want to let me add pictures, so you'll have to let your imagination fill in the blanks. Anyway, so we're dressed as pirates, driving about, going to cash-points to get money, turning up at the cinema, and it's amazing how few people actually had the nerve to say anything at all, or even consciously notice us. I suspect that being dressed as a pirate would be the ideal disguise for robbing a bank, or stealing or car, because when questioned by the police people would say that they don't remember what we looked like 'cos they didn't want to be seen staring. Nobody else had made any effort at all, we were the only pirates there. The staff appreciated that we'd made an effort, and some parents pointed us out to their kids, but that was about it. Still, it was fun, and who wants to dress like everybody else anyway?
As for the film... I was left feeling disappointed. Obviously it can't have the same "bloody hell I didn't expect THAT" effect that the first movie had, and I was really excited about it, but it seemed convoluted, overly long and somewhat repetitive (did we REALLY need five kraken attacks? It's a big monster, I got it already). Jack was less charming this time around, in fact I thought he was a self-servingly callous bastard (which he always was, he was just rather charming about it last time) and it had a feeling of inventing peril for our characters, rather than peril naturally appearing as a result of their actions. That said the movie itself is visually stunning; the sets and costumes just drip with almost Gilliam-esque levels of detail, and the effects work is little short of breath-taking (indeed I can't wait for the DVD to find out how much of certain effects is CGI and how much is make-up and so forth). The soundtrack was great too, it's just a shame that the story didn't seem to be there to give all these elements a reason for getting together in the first place. All that said, I did still enjoy it, I just wanted more than I got. Maybe Pirates 3 will fill in the gaps, but right now it feels more like The Matrix Reloaded than it did The Empire Strikes Back.
The night before we'd gone to see Over the Hedge, and I hadn't expected a great deal from that (I'd liked it primarily because of the "great and powerful Steve" from the trailers), but that turned out to be really enjoyable. I guess high expectations can only hurt you, eh?

posted by BadMonkey @ 5:37 PM