John Mortell’s blog

Is that my damn internet connection keeps disappearing. Ugh. Also, the connection to my laptop is … weird. I can download antivirus but not get on the internet. Ahh….

In other news, since I was last in town 4 months ago Waterford has become infected with goth kids. I’m asking for one flamethrower or machine-rifle to be donated by all readers of the site….

For me anyway. College finished up today and now I’ve a month off to study. Not too happy about it to be honest, most of my friends are either not in the country or become very anti-social owing to study. As for me, I have been fairly on top of the whole college workload so I don’t feel too bad about it. Being on top of the ideas in the courses didn’t stop me doing a 1000 words for an essay this morning though. Ah well. With any luck, the month away should let me get back into some sort of regular(ish) posting. I still want to do a quick post on the Dublin City University/University of Limerick IV that was last weekend….

Prodigy’s ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ and Tommy Seebach’s ‘Apache’ – two things are scary about this video: the mustache and grinning head of Tommy and how well it matches up… enjoy

Well, I meant to go see 300 last night but the tickets for the 9.30 show were sold out by 8 so…. Instead we went to see ‘Hot Fuzz’. It was really good. To be honest I’m still unsure whethter I prefered ‘Shaun of the Dead’, mainly because while ‘Hot Fuzz’ is funnier and has better jokes, ‘Shaun’ was somewhat more consistent.

There’s a few things that stand out about ‘Hot Fuzz’ – it’s plot’s simplicity, the violence of it and the sense of absurdity that it’s hard to get over watching the film. And while that absurdity is part of the films strength – the jokes are just insane. My favourite example of this is the ‘kick the granny in the face joke’. Possibly the funniest example of violence that I’ve seen in a movie in ages.

But on the other hand the movie is a bit uneven for the same reason. Some of the murder scenes in the film happen off-camera while others are extremely gory. And while it’s done in such a way that you’ll be laughing in shock, the shifts in tone are kinda odd.

Also weird is the last 40 minutes or so, which is the big shootout scene that you can see in the trailer. This has to be the oddest shootout scene I’ve ever seen in a movie and while it’s something that’d put a John Woo movie to shame, it doesn’t feel like it’s meant to be part of the same film. Which may be the point but…

I think two of my friends descriptions work best ‘nothing happens until the last 45 minutes’ and ‘it’s funny the first time, but you probably wouldn’t want to watch it again’. It is well worth seeing the once though.

From my childhood. I’d forgotten how great this cartoon was… Enjoy!

Have spent the night watching family guy. It’s the newest season but I’m not sure which season. It’s either 5 or 6 depending on whether you follow the American or British ratings… It’s nearly but not quite as good as the first 3 seasons… I’l try find a clip on youtube later…

I really should be studying.

*Sigh*.

Been reading this book by Naomi Klein. I’m only about 60 pages in with not having been able to read much for pleasure recently owing to college work (which I’m currently avoiding doing by blogging but anyway…). It’s quite interesting stuff, but one thing has struck me: the book is very ‘heard it all before’. Now, I will do a proper review of the book once I get it finished, but the question I have is; is the book familiar because she says nothing that original or has she just been so successful in spreading her ideas? Anyone?