Gav’s Blog - Gavin Hudson’s Blog

“Gavin, you should of done this”

“Gav, you should of done that”

IT’S HAVE YOU ILLITERATE MORONS.  You should HAVE done this.  Maybe “You should’ve done this” but for fuck’s sake…

I can handle people writing things incorrectly, but when they also say it wrong? Cretins.

I’m with Giles Coren.*

*Note I didn’t end on an unstressed syllable!

I’ve just finished watching a Lars and the Real Girl - a film that I suppose falls under the category “feel good” even if these are the sorts of films that tend to make you feel a bit sad at times!

I’d never heard of the film before, but I can see why it only narrowly missed out on an Oscar for best screenplay to Juno.  (And so do others, apparently!) It’s a real good film with some charmingly delightful characters, and led by a strangely enigmatic Ryan Gosling playing the eponymous Lars.  I won’t tell you much about the film’s plot (I find that knowing nothing about a film before I go and see it definitely enhances the enjoyment - don’t you?) but essentially Lars is a small town guy, so painfully shy that he won’t even go to his brothers’ house next door for dinner.  Things gradually change, but I love the way that the town rally around Lars to help him and Bianca out - it’s really quite touching and made me feel like a bit of a softie!

I enjoyed it, and so will you! Probably.  I give it 4.5 out of five, which is pretty good for me.  It’s probably a 4 out of five, but I’m in a good mood and I really liked it today, so there we go.  Not out yet, but only a tenner from the US.

I’m not a softie by the way, I went to the rugby today and spent the rest of the afternoon drinking beer and eating a fab sunday roast (with Apple and Date crumble!) in the Superb Cricketers Arms near the SCG.  Highly recommended if you’re in the Surry Hills/Anzac parade area, and perfectly situated for a pre- or post-match schooner.  Oh, and doing childish tricks trying to get nice ladies to show off their boobies.  People are gullible, eh?

Right, well I went to watch the Dark Knight last week at the IMAX in Sydney.  Rather neatly, as I’m living in the future compared to most of the world I got to see it before it was released in Europe or the USA, on the day of its release here.  Even the hoardes of god-bothering locusts in the festival of the young and deluded couldn’t put a dampner on things.  I’ve never been a real fan of Batman and his ilk (not since the good old Adam West Batman days, anyway, though I sem to think Batman was the first 12 rated film in the UK? Am I right?) but this was a top film and well worth splashing out $50 for me and Annika to go and see it.  I think she only wanted to go for the hot boys in it, but there we are. (Her words).

You’ll hear a lot of people say that Heath Ledger steals the show as the deliciously psychotic Joker, well, I suppose that’s true to 99% of people who will see this film.  He’s really excellent and credible as a proper baddie, I’ve not knowingly seen any of his other films (and I don’t suppose I’ll see many more!) but if this film is to be his cinematic epitaph - it’s certainly a goodie.  I love the part where he makes the pencil disappear - he’s just brilliantly unhinged and mental.

But the real star for me was the IMAX cinemaphotography.  Filming in IMAX is a logistical nightmare - huge film, really heavy cameras and all sorts of issues.  Seeing the Hong Kong sequences and the skyscrapers in a screen 8 stories high was just breath-taking.  It really was one of the best moments I’ve seen at the cinema when the first real IMAX shots rolled by.  I think the new Batman was the first full-length feature film to be shot at least partially in IMAX - it’s not 3d, but the scope and depth of the lense means you see all sorts of things twinkling away in the distance (combined with amazing close-ups) that you wouldn’t see in a normal cinema.  If you are going to see The Dark Knight, splash out a bit extra and go and see it in IMAX, it’s well worth the extra money £12 or whatever you have to pay.

I’m going to give it a 4.5/5 too - it could well be a 5/5 film, but I think I might have been swayed by the IMAX, it could equally only have been worth 4/5 and my judgement has been equally blurred.  Who knows?!

OK, well that’s 750 words now, so that will do I think! Have a good week y’all - and let me know what you think if you’ve seen either of the above.

Hoorah - I’m off to see A Dark Knight at the Imax in Sydney - this is the new Batman film and the first ever mainstreem film to be filmed in Imax (in parts).

I’m rather excited, especially after reading this review.  It should be good!  I’ll let you know, and you know the nice part?  As I’m living in the future, I get to see it before it’s released in Europe or even the USA!

Woohoo!

Hey hey there blog reader!

Well, a bit of an update from me - nothing awfully exciting I don’t think in the last few weeks, erm, that sounds a lot worse than it is, but all good!  I did two weeks of the (f)Atkins diet - I quite enjoyed bits of it, it was a bit frustrating at times, but it kick-started a bit of a health kick and made me lose a good few kg’s.  I’m not sure how much as I never weighed myself though, d’oh!  I’d probably do it again, and I will at somepoint.  I have fallen off the wagon a bit, but not too much.  Been watching quite a lot of Entourage (what a good programme, I only discovered it a couple of weeks ago!) on the nice projector that I need to give back to work - I promise I will!  I’ve passed my probation period at work, so I’m here for good now, eeek.  Obviously they loved me.  It was nice to see Sarah back in the country again, we went for a few drinks on Tuesday, and my mate Colin’s birthday.  It was a really good day actually, a few drinks in pubs in town and watched a bit of the cricket.  Then we bought a few bottles of wine from a bottle shop in Darlinghurst, and on to the really rather good Bill and Toni’s restaurant in East Sydney.  It’s a proper old school Italian restaurant, you have to sneak up some hidden stairs through a cafe with a clientele list that somewhat resembles the bar out of Star Wars.  I thought I heard the theme music from The Godfather playing when we got upstairs, and everyone was Italian.

For veal schnitzel (they love schnitzel here - everything is schnitzellized!) and spaghetti bolognese, with salad, coffee and quite a bit of wine that we bought ourselves, the bill came to about £14 each.  Bargain!

Then just yesterday we decided to go to Cronulla for the day.  It’s all too easy to spend all your time in Sydney - there’s so much to see, but you forget that for just £3 ($6) you can get a train to a nice place like Cronulla (it’s a riot!) and get away from teh big smoke.  So the five of us trekked down there, (Me, Annika, Gertrud, Nik and Alison) and we took the girls to their first ever game of rugby league.  Cronulla was a nice enough sea-side surf town, a decent size, a great beach with a train station right next by, and an admirable selection of sruf shops.  It reminded me of Manly but with a bit more going on, and I really liked it - I could live there I think.  After visiting the RSL club (Where the bar was full of men gambling - the Aussies love betting on the horses like you wouldn’t believe!) and the three girls being the only females in a packed bar we went up to the Toyota Stadium, where the Cronulla Sharks play.

It cost us $20 to get in on the door with free transport to and from the stadium.  We managed to blag a spot right against the advertising hoarding and luckily we were at the end that my team, The Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles were attacking.  The game had really been hyped up and the small stadium was jammed to the rafters with just under 20,000 people in there, including a healthy Manly contingent.  The hype was because the two teams were top of the NRL ladder at the start of the game.  Well, the Sea Eagles answered any questions - the Sharks lived up to their big-game bottler tag, and Manly absolutely monstered them with a flawless first half performance to leave the Sharks trailing 22-6 at half time - rather pleasingly all the action seemed to take place within about 10 meters of where we were stood, so that was a real bonus.  The second half wasn’t much different, although I didn’t see too much of it as it was a) up the other end b) we were having too much of a good time to worry about the game and c) I was a bit pissed by this stage.

The atmosphere at Shark Park was really good, we met some great people (Nik thinks I always do!) and we had a really good day out.  The girls even went from never having been to a game of Rugby before (I know, I know this was Rugby League) to really enjoying it and wanting to go again, so I’m happy with that.  The night was polished off by a few drinks in a tacky bar, some kebabs (not for me! A bottle of Coke Zero!) and the late train back.  Rather nicely I got to see a really good fight outside a bar near me, so that topped the night off a treat.

Today, I’ve purchased both a bike and a multigym.  Well, I bought a bike off a dude on Gumtree and I’ve also bought the heaviest chain known to man to tie it up with.  Conservative estimates suggest the chain weighs about 15 kilos.  I’m going to be using it build the guns up, and maybe to shorten my 3 and a half minute commute to work!

OK, that’s all for now - I promise to be back with more random stuff and e few more opinion things rather than just my diary.  TTFN!

Oh, and the Pope arrives in Sydney this week - any ideas of how to piss off the estimated 250,000 god-botherers is much appreciated.  One idea was to try and shag a nice Catholic girl - for starters she’s clearly pre-selected herself as the gullible and easily influenced type, and she’s used to hanging round pervy priests, so all good.  We were hypothisising about this (beer’s great eh?) and we came up with the potential morning after scenario…

[BEDROOM - EARLY HOURS OF MORNING. COUPLE LYING IN BED]

GIRL: OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE, I’VE SHAGGED A RANDOM!

GUY: EY UP LOVE!

GIRL: OH GOD, WE DIDN’T DID WE?

GUY: ER…

GIRL: THIS IS TERRIBLE, PLEASE TELL ME ONE THING?

GUY: SURE

GIRL: WELL, I CAN GO TO HELL IF I GOT THIS WRONG - PLEASE TELL ME WE DIDN’T USE A CONDOM!

OK bye kids!:)