apparently not gonna walk in the rain

Every weekday when I'm not working I always promise myself to get up at my normal getting-up time in order to not waste any of the day but have failed to consistently do so, mostly since I got out of the habit of going for a big early-morning walk or cycle at the weekend since it ceased to be necessary to make the most of all of the few hours of daylight available during the winter when a simple hour of sunlight at the weekend represented perhaps five percent of a typical weeks' potential insolation. Whilst it's still light up until ten in the evening there isn't the same pressure to see both ends of the day. If I ever feel that I'm not outside enough during the summer I just have to remind myself that spending too much time outside only results in sunburn and unsightly face-pinkness. At least today I have plenty of sitting inside in nice (and hopefully cool) cinémas lined up to make certain I don't spend too long under the treacherous beams of the fiery sky-ball. Even in the time it's taken to write this my sunward arm is starting to feel distinctly dry and hot.

Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest (part IV of V):
Go and see it; there's another screening on Saturday along with the other four parts though I doubt anyone would need to see them all though there's a discount for booking all five. Almost every scene would make a beguiling B&W still photograph - as a moving-film it's like a collection of stills but showing the few seconds either side of a shutterclick that you usually have to imagine yourself. It's shot in digital B&W with slightly-visible pixellation but such was the photographicness of it that it developed an imaginary sepia tone. It's dialogue-free with only quiet ambient sound leaving plenty of bandwidth to absorb the visuals and it almost seems a shame when there are finally a few vocalisations even if they're free of information other than that implied by the type of noise. Go and see it. The different parts are purported to be reflections on differing themes (I shall verify this tomorrow in Part V) but I believe all the chunks will be of the same general style and visual niceness.

Hmmm. Can't really say the same about the Milky Way Liberation Front... pleasantly amusing in spots but a little inconsistent even for a film whose premise calls for a certain amount of random. Watch it if it ever comes on the telly but I wouldn't advise rushing out and spending cinéma-money on it unless it turns up somewhere for which you have some sort of membership discount. Onwards and westwards...

Ah. I forgot that this is another prémière and that one of the headline names lives locally. I feel I should have hung around, edged as close to the barrier as possible and taken some pictures but (even when Dylan Moran is rated quite highly) papping him just seems so... dirty (and possibly even common) thanks to all these idiot-magazines selling pictures of famous idiots to not-famous idiots. The last thing I would want to do is ruin someone by artificially enlarging the crowd surrounding them and causing ego-inflation to the detriment of their behaviour.

Bleg. Let's hope a film with me in it is better than the coffee.

Eurgh. Multi-cheek-mmmmwah-kissing-greeting? Was that a "daaaahrling!" I heard? This isn't bloody London, large amounts of London-accented industry people in reserved seats notwithstanding.

Hmmm. Not bad... a little bit too much like a for-laughs version of Shallow Grave but worth a poke when it comes by if there's nothing much else on. Only slightly spoiled by the ersatz, sycophantic guffawing from the row behind me which started much too late to be convincing and carried on much longer than everyone else and usually overran the next punchline. There was a short Q&A afterwards but the artistic-director-woman was being far too simpering and "we'll just be quick as I'm sure these guys are dying for a drink". Save the schmoozing and networking for the bar rather than in front of the paying audience. It was also odd seeing a flesh-and-blood-and-collagen (though barely any of the former two) actress-person doing one of those shape-minimising starlet-poses usually only seen on the television; as my POV was slightly different to that of the camera it just looked like she was desperate for the toilet.