Monday, May 28, 2007

Holding back the years


A rare treat on Saturday night , a birthday celebration for G, brother-in-law, neighbour and occasional mountain biking chum), a box for the Simply Red concert at the Royal Albert Hall (fabulous venue) followed by dinner and dancing until the wee small hours at Tramp in Jermyn Street. I enjoyed the concert, they're not high on my list of favourite bands but the boy Hucknall can sing and it's a tight band and a good show.


The Albert hall is a great venue, and it was nice to be in a box with chums, share a glass or several and enjoy the middle-aged, middle-class, middle-of-the-roaders swaying gently in the aisles.

Onward to Tramp, my first visit to a club for some time, apparently jeans are now an acceptable form of dress, with the exception of the maitre'd I think I was the only person in a suit.
I've little doubt that some of the dozens of pretty, vacant, juvenile eye candy are still confused about the elderly waiter who seemed to be having a seizure on the dance floor.

There was a disproportionate amount of attractive young ladies to unattractive but opulent (no such thing as an ugly millionaire) older gents which made the evening very pleasant on the eye and the food was surprisingly excellent. Sadly for this old rocker the music (and I can't quite believe I'm being such a cliche) was repetitive, rapping, unintelligible and much too loud. I don't think I'm quite in the 'cocoa and an early night' territory yet but I can certainly see the direction signs.

Sadly for the connoisseurs of boogie the handkerchief sized dance floor didn't lend itself to a full exposition of the terpsichorean treat that is the "shaky hand dance". Sophie was there with some of her lovely chums and since there's only one thing worse than seeing a parent dance it's your friends seeing both of them dancing so Mrs Stuffy and I did our very best to make her day.
Other lessons learned :-

  • Stunning Russian ladies are really not impressed by greetings in Polish now matter how hard you've worked on the accent.
  • Young people smoke, all of them, all the time, I think I could probably negate my 20 years of abstinence simply by sniffing my jacket.
  • Not having a hangover when Mrs Stuffy does is good for about 2 hours of Sunday morning smugness before she turns nasty.
  • Stopping the 'music' and playing 'eye of the tiger' is apparently de riguer when the expansive party of ex-KGB in the corner orders a £2,000 bottle of fizz, so shouting "Oy put the thumpy thumpy thumpy song back on !" is frowned upon, tovarich.

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Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Movie review - The consequences of stretching spiderweb too far



Spiderman was a good movie, Spiderman 2, the follow up was OK. My feelings following a visit to view the third moneyspinner for the webspinner are that it is:-

  • about an hour too long,
  • poorly structured,
  • tries to do too many things,
  • does many of them poorly,
  • lacks subtlety and finesse.
  • tries to tug the heartstrings and fails,
  • wastes some excellent special effects by burying them in soap opera emotional content
In summary it just feels that they're turning the handle of the money making machine ... shame.

Friday, May 11, 2007


Lord of the Rings, the Musical ... yes that's right, the musical


Mrs Stuffy is well aware that reading Lord of the Rings stopped me getting bored whilst sitting in the exam hall wondering whether I should have done some revision for O'levels. Months ago she lost no hesitation in advance booking tickets for the London debut. The first preview was on Wednesday and we turned up for the second night yesterday, eyes wide and critical faculties attuned. If you're like me then your first reaction on hearing of this would be "Lord of the Rings as a musical ! How would they do that?" Having seen that question answered my question now is "Why on (middle) earth did they do that ?"...

Quick review -An amazing set and indulgent use of technology, lights, puppets, trapeze, smoke, puppets, acrobats and an (unending) supply of stilts overwhelmed some very average acting, forgettable music and incomprehensible singing.

One tiny point, there's a scene where the white city of Gondor is represented by a dozen folk in white nun-like outfits (but with cowboy hats) holding aloft little white buildings on sticks. I was hysterically reminded of the miniscule monolith and dancing dwarfs in Spinal Tap.

Friday, May 04, 2007

Movie review - 'Next' ... Nicolas Cage sends Mrs S into a coma


There have been some good movies about deja vu, the incomparable Groundhog Day still does it for me and I love the shopping mall scene in Minority Report.
I've not seen Deja vu with Denzel Washington, so I guess that's really Jamais vu, but the premise of this particular film is that Mr Cage can see 2 minutes into his own future, and then act to avert it. So I guess it's really Presque vu ?
Anyway, it failed to enthrall, which is a shame, the effects are good, the basic story (Phillip K Dick) is a great premise but neither baddies nor goodies are memorable and you got the impression that no-one ever asked, at any point during the making of this "why would someone do that ?"
End result Ne voyez pas ! Next !

That's two duds in a row for Mr Cage (see Ghostrider) two pillows on the Mrs Stuffy scale.