Stranger Than Fiction

Wednesday 2nd May

I have been having a completely lazy ‘recovery’ day today and it’s been quite nice. I have finished a book and started on a new one (reading not writing, have done sod all writing) and have watched three DVD’s. Mr B has got over his throat infection so I was alone today, this can be a good and a bad thing.

Being alone for me is a double edged sword. I really relax, really write or really start to get bored. The later is a dangerous place. If I get bored I get cranky, when cranky nothing will lift me out of the boredom. I have acknowledged this little trait in myself, but how do you deal with this. I’m not in a good state to leave my bed and do anything, like dance around to Kylie, so it just sort of hangs over me… the boredom I mean.

However the films helped. Mr B got me three, they were ‘Eragon’, ‘Stranger than Fiction’ and ‘Perfume’. I won’t say too much about Eragon, it doesn’t need much said. I liked the book, the film however just wasn’t quite right. I didn’t like the ‘mind talking’ of the Dragon, it annoyed me, and whoever it was couldn’t act for toffee – it may have been Rachel Weiss and normally she’s really kind of ok. As a dragon she is shit. ‘Perfume’ is good; again not as good as the book but I much prefer books over movies on the whole. The whole orgy bit was a little dodgy, but then it took away from some of the acting – what a bitchy critic I am today.

The best film was ‘Stranger than Fiction’ not a movie made from a book and also one I had never heard of. Mr B chose well, I love, love, love Emma Thompson and she was brilliant in this. The story is of a normal man with no life, one day he wakes up with someone telling him exactly what he is doing and has just done. Eventually he realises someone is writing his life. When he works out who (Emma Thompson), he has to seek her out as she is famous for killing all her main characters. From that synopsis it might sound a bit shit but it’s actually brilliant, I didn’t even find Will Ferrell as annoying as usual.

Book wise I want to really ‘Big Up’ David Llewellyn’s ‘Eleven’. I have been meaning to read it since he became a ‘myspace friend’. I have now finished it and it was brilliant. I laughed at all the ‘wrong’ parts – which is always a good sign. It’s about a guy in Cardiff who wants to be a writer and is unhappy in his job. It’s all based on the email he gets on one day… which happens to be 9/11. It is so close to the truth ‘corporations’ not giving a shit while everyone else panics that the world is going to end, and is so involving. I only read a few pages yesterday but had finished the rest in an hour or so. So please, please check his myspace, and also check out his book ‘Eleven’ on Amazon. It’s great.

So that’s been my day really. I am in recovery from an op so I think being a completely lazy sod is allowed is it not?