A film about maths

Thursday April 30th 2009

Here is a picture of an old man holding 12 books:

I display this picture in honour of a film called Fermat’s Room which I saw the other night. It’s about maths and stuff, which is perfect for me because I love both maths and stuff.

The basic premise is this: 4 mathematicians in a room that is constantly shrinking. That’s it.

I know what you’re thinking… AMAZING. But two things put me off before the movie had even started. Firstly, the refreshments at the screening extended to plastic cups of water (wtf is that?) and secondly, the press notes that they handed out made it look like the sort of amateur theatre production you’d find in the basement of a pub in Croydon.

In reality, it wasn’t even slightly bad. Most of it was in fact quite good. And it was only 88 minutes long so even if you didn’t enjoy certain bits, they were over relatively quickly.

I’ll tell you what else, IF YOU LIKE MATHS do not hesitate to see it. Your heart will leap at all the cheeky Pythagoras references.

Amazing Synopsis Tuesday

Tuesday April 28th 2009

Humpday tells the story of two straight college friends who reunite after years apart, fall back into their old habit of competing in increasingly outrageous dares in order to one-up each other, and, at the end of a wild night out, challenge themselves to have sex together in a gay porno for an art film contest.

Screening Report: Wolverine

Tuesday April 28th 2009

I got three seperate e-mails last week, each offering me a pair of tickets for the same Wolverine screening (sorry, did I say Wolverine? I of course meant X-Men Origins: Wolverine.) Anyway, it seemed they couldn’t give them away.

Turns out it was because they were holding it at the Odeon Leicester Square. Not the Odeon West End in Leicester Square but the actual 2000-seat flagship Odeon with the big tower. They were warning people to allow up to an hour for security and seating but obviously that would be insane so I bowled up 10 minutes before the film started.

This photo does not do the queue justice. Here is a better representation:

Anyway, it took ages. But it was all worth it because I got to overhear what can only be described at The Best Anecdote of All Time about a man named Jimbo, who after drunkenly urinating in his wife’s wardrobe was sent downstairs to sleep on the sofa. He proceeded to do a poo in the dish washer.

Of the 2000 attending, 1999 had already sat down by the time I entered so I got a shit seat. Not that it really matters in the Odeon Leicester Square, where pretty much everyone gets the same terrible view:

Fuck knows why people pay £20 per ticket to see stuff there.

Anyway, Wolverine. It’s a bit like a superhero movie from 2002, when they could just be mediocre and gimmicky and not have to bother with the whole genre-defying Watchmen routine. Obviously, this is not a good thing. Neither is the casting of Will.i.am. In any movie.

For every slightly exciting bit there’s a dozen bits with Hugh Jackman shouting at trees or staring intently at his blades, which incidentally look like they were superimposed in MS Paint. It is quite fun to imagine how homoerotic most of the scenes must have felt before they edited in the claws though.

So yeah, bit crap really.

Fucking hell, is it just me or are these ‘reviews’ getting more and more like Newsround Press Packs?

P.S. Before the movie started a man came on stage to warn us that we should stay an extra five minutes until the end of the credits for a special ‘hidden scene’. We did. IT WAS NOT WORTH IT.