Time for a nap.

There are a whole bunch of fun activities I’ve utterly failed to document of late; I apologise to you o great internet for depriving you of yet more trivia.

Lovecraft Night

One of my birthday treats, now sadly in the past was attending the rather grandly titled Justin Woodman introduces HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos at the Nottingham Contemporary. I don’t know who Mr Woodman is but he talked for a while before a Lovecraft double bill. I do enjoy a spot of HP. Despite his curious racism and sometimes terribly purple prose he undoubtedly created a magnificent  universe that many of us have had fun playing in since.

We were treated to The Call of Cthulhu (2005) by the HP Lovecraft Historical Society (whose cast and crew includes the makers of the H.P. Podcraft podcast which is great fun, and also the creators of the wonderful A Very Scary Solstice Cthulhu carols and songbooks which we enjoyed last Christmas). It’s a very loving treatment, filmed in Mythoscope silent movie style. It’s funny and nicely done, though it did look a bit odd blown up to full cinema size. The stop motion Cthulhu at the end is marvellous and I loved the effects when they’re sailing through the fog. It certainly seemed like a masterpiece compared to the second film we were shown.

Dagon is shockingly bad. The opening credits seem to have been the most expensive part with their wibbly wobbly watery letters and quite cool dream scene of swimming into a mysterious hole in the ocean floor (possibly made of bones) and getting a near-snog from a mermaid. It goes downhill pretty rapidly. I was wondering how long it would take to get the female lead’s baps out and was surprised how long it took. She is remarkably orange. An ill fated sailing holiday leads to a longer stay in a Spanish coastal town filled with fishmen. The make up is fun and the weird whale noises, clicks and barks of the staggering morphing town folk. Thankfully there’s a crazy and incomprehensible drunk to explain it all and lead our young “hero” (he does grow less wooden throughout the film) to his final encounter with his fishy half-sister “you are my brother, and my lover” and setting fire to lots of people. It’s very silly.

I had a great evening, but it it’s rather sad to think that these two films are probably the best and most authentic films to have been made of Lovecraft’s work. Surely someone can do one really, really well. I’m gutted that Del Toro is no longer on the cards for The Mountains of Madness, which would surely have been awesome.

♥ This week’s scribbles

Tuesday Autofiction: Tasty Tasty Amitryptilene Choice shmoices.

Wednesday Lego Blog: Jabba’s Palace Unavoidable Mod The damn thing won’t fit on my shelf.

Thursday The Desert Crystals Part 18 “Cut and Dried” Blood falls like rain.

Friday Film Review Roundup: Lots of Films! (2013) I am getting too far behind to do them all justice.

Updates on my thrilling life

Writing

Aaagh I ran out of time last week to finish my film review… Only God Forgives is such a bad film that I actually lost heart and interest while slating it. Sad. Never mind! I shall bounce back this Friday with micro reviews of the seven or so films in the queue.

Last week’s scribbles

Tuesday Autofiction: Reflection and Regret  We tell ourselves stories about our lives, but it’s hard to know which is the real one.

Wednesday Lego Blog: Birthday Minifigure Gallery  The cool custom minifigs I got for my birthday.

Thursday The Desert Crystals – Part 17: Stolen in the Breeze Piracy high in the skies.

Lego

I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with all the primary coloured Lego that I’ve inevitably ended up with. Red yellow and blue are undoubtedly my least favourite brick colours (at least to use in bulk), but they take up a lot of space. So I’m going to do what I originally bought a load of random Lego to do – make display shelves for the squillions of minifigures we keep acquiring. It is a good plan. I’ve also got some smaller boxes so I can indulge my love of sorting bricks even further. Now browns and greens are in their own boxes. The world is correct.

Improv Comedy

We had a wonderful jam last week – an intense and hilarious run through most of the head fuckiest short form games we play. Twas a Martin jam and everyone had a very good time.

We were back in Derby on Saturday with the Furthest From The Sea gang at Knickerbocker Glorious – Martin, Marilyn, David and I performed three Unspeakable Acts for the public’s amusement. It’s a fine afternoon of music, poetry and us. We started with Alien Vs Predator – Christ, it’s a terribly screenplay with two pages of description instead of story at the beginning. We skipped through that and got to the far better storyline, you know, the one with nuclear chickens (Martin and me) with cyber weapons in Sector 12. We moved between the chickens and the Weyland Industries office (I love touch screen miming) before sending out a team of incompetent soldiers who were all killed in short order. Oh, then Sector 12 got nuked. It was fun. Then we got lost in time with Credit and Debit, a time paradox philosophical marriage story ending in South Africa with Brummies. Also splendid. The last one was Titanic – already one of the worst films I’ve watched (excepting the beautiful design work). It’s another film with a tedious pointless beginning of submarines before getting to the made up story. We went straight to the giant squids that destroy the big ship, and the undersea office they work in. We also got in mention of Hentai and prawn cocktail crisps.

Most definitely the best Saturday afternoon one can have. Oh, and we discovered that you can fit ‘narwhal’ into most songs.

Media Intake

Books

I polished off Alan Campbell’s Sea of Ghosts this week. It’s wonderful, a dark complex tale of a world drowning in poisonous Brine – a substance leaking in from another universe. It’s full of telepaths, bizarre technology, weird science, different races of man and all manner of craziness. I loved it and can’t wait for book two.

Events and Excitement

MissImp in Action – Friday 30th August

8.30pm at The Corner, Lace Market Nottingham.
High energy improvised comedy show.