Coltrane

Picked up a brder collie x mongrel from the RSPCA.

The Constant Gardener

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Now, I’m not usually a big fan of book to film adaptations. This is because they usually suck. Okay, so The Lord of the Rings was a brilliant trilogy in its own right, but as a book adaptation, I really think that it missed the point in a number of places.

Back to the point.

I watched The Constant Gardener last night, after having read the book about a year or two ago. At the time, I couldn’t put it down, and I really enjoyed it. I’ve read two other Le Carré novels (Absolute Friends and The Spy Who Came In From The Cold) and they were the same, but I’m currently reading Single & Single, and I’m really struggling to get into it. Anyway, I watched the movie last night, and I can honestly say, it was fantastic. The cinematography was brilliant, the characters portrayed well (Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz), and the locations were magnificent.

Now is a fitting time to include an image of Rachel Weisz.

Anyway, read the book first, then watch the movie if you haven’t seen it.

After the movie was over, it suddenly struck me that in all three of the Le Carré novels that I have read, the main character (and also arguably the main supporting character – Tessa, Sasha, Liz) is dead by the end of the book. Do any of his novels have happy endings, or am I just choosing the wrong ones? Who cares, I love them anyway.

Also, adopting Le Carré as a pseudonym was the best career ever for David John Moore Cornwall.

Trainspotting

I love this movie.

Swanney taught us to adore and respect the National Health Service, for it was the source of much of our gear. We stole drugs, we stole prescriptions, or bought them, sold them, swapped them, forged them, photocopied them or traded them with cancer victims, alcoholics, old age pensioners, AIDS patients, epileptics and bored housewives. We took morphine, diamorphine, cyclozine, codeine, temazepam, nitrezepam, phenobarbitone, sodium amytal dextropropoxyphene, methadone, nalbuphine, pethidine, pentazocine, buprenorphine, dextromoramide chlormethiazole. The streets are awash with drugs that you can have for unhappiness and pain, and we took them all. Fuck it, we would have injected Vitamin C if only they’d made it illegal.

V For Vendetta

Best use of the 1812 soundtrack. Ever.

This movie is great. George Orwell meets Spawn. Stuff blows up. There is fire. Natalie Portman. What else do you need? The Guy Fawkes masks remind me of Tintin and the Picaros. Now I have to go and hunt down copies of the original comic.