Ginger DJ Rob

We booked some balcony tickets at the Duke of Yorks for Synecdoche New York . It's Charlie Kaufman's latest who also wrote Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, two of my favourite films. We haven't been to the D of Y since Quantum of Solace but the same stuffy hot air conditions and the sound quality still needing more clarity and volume. It had an impressive cast and I did enjoy the first half as the main character went through a series of health ailments and, the main concept, of his theatre experiment of repeating his life with lookalike actors and a giant set. But after this, the novelty wore off and the film just plodded into self-indulgence.

This year's Eurovision wasn't as good as last year. Not enough campness or LOL WTF moments with a lot of countries recognising that strange dancing, theatrics and dodgy costumes don't get votes. The semi-finals managed to uncover a few of these (my camp favourite was the Dutch entry) but didn't get through the voting net. At least the voting seemed a lot better. What was different this year for me was how Twitter was used as an amusing side show of online heckling. I'd only used for random thoughts and personal status updates as well as the odd festival update. As we watched the semi-final I started using the right hand side search to see how many Eurovision # tags were being used. It was incredible with 100's of people Tweeting instantly their reaction to a country's song. I even picked up some followers from using country names as if I was going to mention their country again. I'm surprised the final itself hadn't overloaded the servers as every re...

I've been playing catch up ever since we've been back for holiday adding a Peru entry nearly every day. Saturday was a Brighton Fringe play called Godfather Death . St. Andrew's church in Hove was a pretty venue though the pew benches drained the enthusiasm from the performance. The actors were excellent with some clever small touches but the story was a little too simple even boring. Then all of a sudden it ended. The evening was another Fringe do called Kanoti/Bamboozled seeing a free screening of various animated films from local producers (see Beastenders by Cyriak as an example). It was a nice feeling to see so many outside the town library watching the projected films. Pity the screen was a bit small but the films were excellent whilst trying to ignore the bemused hen and stag night tourists passing by. You can actually see us standing in the video footage they took of on the night on the website. Afterwards we headed over to Paul and Sarah's for a good local ga...

Wow! If the Star Trek franchise was a soft drink it would be Pepsi with the newest incarnation as Pepsi Max. Basically, strap yourself in for one of the fastest cinema rides in ages which will leave you breathless. JJ Abrams, he of Lost and Mission Impossible 3 fame, has directed an alternative legend with the best original characters. However, the film has subtly included some classic lines that everyone wants to hear again with a dash of tongue in cheek. All this adds a comedy sparkle which any level of fan will enjoy as well as pleasing the non-SciFi viewers. It starts with how Kirk is born then efficiently peddles out the backstory of the soon-to-be captain and Spock's childhood upbringing. Some years later we see how Kirk joins Starfleet Academy then the real story and action unfolds. The casting is excellent. In one scene, Chris Pine playing Kirk actually captures Shatner's swagger, speech and posture, whilst Karl Urban (remember him from Lord of the Rings) gets in the li...

Our first Fringe performance for us and a really funny one at that. The Malborough Little Theatre was the humble venue which drew a small but appreciative crowd. The comedy duo really deserved a big audience and a bigger set production as I predict bigger things for them in future. Their show was an hour of short sketches each with a television theme. Each costume change and scene was like flicking through late night TV with 3 or 4 longer set pieces and dozens of quick fire sketches against a projected screen of animated drawings. Some of the highlights were the literal sense of Sky Sports, their quick and probably slightly deserved dig at Horne and Corden's BBC3 show and all of their songs were spot on for wit and their upto the minute topical referencing like their Credit Crunk (see below). For us though, their masterpiece was the Mario Brothers meets Martin Scorsese direction sketch which twisted all the right Italian plumber character references into a tense mob style drama wit...