John Hurt, once Winston in 1984, does a formidable job as the Big Brother figure in V for Vendetta. It’s set in either an alternative reality or in 3 years time, hard to tell which, where Britain is governed by a totalitarian regime bent on power and rampant with corruption. The populace is kept at bay with scares about avian flu terrorists and immigrants and V, the masked protagonist, is out to shake them out of their ovine slumber with some bonfire night pyrotechnics all over London…

I’ve always been fond of Natalie Portman despite her Star Wars travesties but in this film her English accent is a stretch to believe. She sounds like a South African who had a Canadian au-pair. Luckily for her, her lines good enough for you think about what she’s saying rather than how she says it. And in the second half of the film there’s the constant expectation she’s about to launch into Nothing Compares 2U.

There’s constant meditation about the power of ideas and not-so veiled references to US, and to a lesser extent British, politics too. The Bill O’Reilly figure is pleasingly hideous. It’s all too plausible if you ask me. Jose watched it too and reckoned it was more like the PRI than New Labour, but that’s cultural differences for you. He’s right that New Labour hasn’t had any political opponents assassinated (yet), whereas the PRI does have that reputation…

I reckon this film could stand a few repeat viewings. There is a lot of stuff going on and in that sense is a worthy successor to the Matrix (shame about Matrix II & III) for the Wachowski brothers. As for why Alan Moore took his name of it, I’m guessing because it doesn’t go far enough. Although it is daring for a film to have a terrorist as its hero, he’s nowhere near as anarchistic as he could have been. I’m not criticising it for that though, he’s placed as far left as he can be and forces you to consider the whole freedom-figher/ terrorist thing. And there ought to be more films advocating political awakening and revolution.

Stylish, well-scripted and excellently paced I’ve no trouble at all recommending this one.

Alas, we’ve come to the end of out initial lump rent payment of 5 months + deposit, so I had to go to the bank and pay April’s installment. First off, my (may very bad things happen to them) Wells Farrago card wouldn’t cough up enough money to cover it so I was forced to use my offshore Barclay’s card, but even that wouldn’t give me enough. I hightailed it over to another bank with my WF card and it gave me just enough that I could pay the rest with my remaining 40 dollars in my wallet. All this is happening on a very hot afternoon and involves crossing an 8 lane carriageway to move between banks… Anyway, I take a number and wait my turn (40 minutes) to change my remaining dollars, hand over the cash and pay the rent. When it’s my turn at 3:50 I go up to counter number 3 please, and say “well first I need to change these dollars”. And she tells me they don’t do that after half past three. I have this reaction in banks where the red mist comes down and I can barely suppress my anger. I managed not to swear too much and just pointed out how displaying this piece of information could save people a lot of time in the future and she agreed. It’s not her fault, I suppose… but you can choose where you work, same with traffic wardens, immigration officials and Nazi stormtroopers…

There, I’ve vented. And now on to the V for Vendetta review…

Hello to anyone surfing by thanks to the link in Mumpsimus Forum. Thought you might like the phone number for the Columpio place, if so click on the picture for a larger version: Also feel free to comment away or shove yourself on the guestmap… The entry on our weekend to Tequila is either at the bottom of the page or following this link. Enjoy
Last night Jose and me went to see the late showing of V for Vendetta (V de Venganza) and it was brilliant. Eyes right for a review sometime today. That’s all for now, off to chambear (work) to see if the internet’s back there or not… It’s something of an inconvenience for web design and historical research when you can’t connect to teh intarwebs.

While I was slaving away on Nueva Era Kindergarten and much, much more’s website Sita was off listening to a talk by legendary Mexican Zapatista Subcomandante Marcos. My camera is notoriously fickle in indoors situations especially on full zoom, but she snapped a few nice shots. Who knew that Marquitos was a chain pipe smoker? Anyway all this on Benito Juarez’s bicentennial, which is a holiday for the country, except I had yesterday off instead. If I’d realised that I could have listened to a lecture on neoconservatism from the revolutionary lyricist himself I might have changed it. Hey ho. So we’re off this evening with plan C: watch the footy in a pub. Fernando should be round any second, and possibly Sr. Valdez too…

Had a bit of concerning news about my gran’s health yesterday, but she’s doing much better today. Email me if you’d like to know more.

So last night I didn’t get around to V for Vendetta but stayed in and watched Brokeback Mountain with young Sita. She’s too far ahead of me with the whole Lost malarkey so we have to find times when we can fit it in solo style. I didn’t think Brokeback would be my kind of thing. And I was right. All a bit too slow moving for my liking, I preferred the Brokeback mountain in 30 seconds. With rabbits.version. And I wasn’t too keen on that neither… Anyroad, a review to the right soonish, if I get a chance… Today I’ve been starting on Jose’s mum’s school web site, there’s a few pages up here but most of the links are broken for now. I was fairly happy to have the CSS menu doing what it should and the resizable page width. I’m trying for a cleaner white-spacey look and I’m happy with how the pictures are coming along. I think I’ll need to go by the school to take pics of the kiddies in action.

I met up with Fernando and Ana again this evening to give him back the memory card he lent me and there’s a chance that tomorrow evening will be spent at a football match or the lucha libre & Fernando’s doing the organising. Que buena onda… Either’s fine by me… It’s a good little city this one…