Six months later
Well, my fears are confirmed: I suck at keeping any sort of diary. In the last six months a bit has happened, most recently an excellent holiday to Europe and Japan. I’ll post some photos once I have sorted them out a bit. I had a moderately nasty bike accident right before Xmas that broke my big toe, injured a bunch of ligaments around my ribs and left me with some amazing purple bruises all up my side. Everything but the toe is healed now, but the physiotherapist bills pushed the point where the bike paid itself back a couple more months.
I have seen a couple of films in the last few months, the best being Michael Mann’s Collateral (9/10, if Cruise can pull off a couple more performances like that, then I’ll stop avoiding films he is in). The Motorcycle Diaries (9/10, beautiful, touching and delicate in its treatment of such a controversial figure). Hero (8/10, visually amazing and mythic in treatment, compensating for a somewhat repetitive plot). The Eagle has Landed (8/10, classic ‘70s war film and Larry Hagman was hilarious). Year One in the North (8/10, a little heavy with the allegory). The Incredibles (8/10, but I am a sucker for Pixar films).
I have also read a couple of books, the most notable being Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, but I think that I need to read it again (at least once) before I will start to grok it properly - most of my first reading was marred by figuring out the Russian patronymic thing and the variable way that Dostoevsy referrs to his characters (formal name with and without patronymic, first name, affectionate first name). Despite my flawed reading, it is a obviously a keen observation and critique.