MAGIC : Derren Brown

Wow. He really is amazing. Combining magic with mind tricks, and admitting it all as such (no claims to psychic powers here) Derren dumbfounds an audience for a whole night. I never thought I'd enjoy a magic show but I did.
Derren's biggest ace is his showmanship and charisma (Jo totally loves him) so when he performs the same glass walking trick as I saw a guy in Egypt do, he makes it that much better by claiming that he is going to cut off the flow of his blood (with nurse from audience verifying that his pulse has stopped) by asphyxiating himself first. And a good few minutes making sure that audience members are happy that the brand new broken glass is real.
Good stuff.
And Jo even got pulled up to slap him in the face! She had to get a tray, load it with buttons from a jar, cover it up, then hit him as hard as she could (which is why he got the nearest girl - otherwise it could have been me!) to 'inspire' him to be able to count the buttons really fast.
And when I say fast I mean fast! He basically just glances at the board, looks away and yells our a number. both times right - first time 69, second time (with board being moved around by Jo so the buttons are moving) 84. Amazing, I can't imagine there's a trick to that one. (Actually I just thought of one way, but it's quite involved and I am more inclined to believe he can count fast)
Anyway, I won't give any more away, just go see it! (If you're in London :)

MOVIES : Sin City

A Clockwork Orange popularised a term that applies to this film : Ultra-Violence.
This film is ridiculously and stupidly violent. And I don't mean a guy mowing down 100 hundred others with a machine gun. I mean savouring torture.
A review I read said the stories were cliched. Fair call, but a cliche becomes a cliche because at some point it was good - so got copied lots - so it could be good again. In fact the film noir aspects of this moview were great - very stylish and sexy and I really enjoyed.
That same review said the movie was morally unambiguous. I guess this means you know who the goodies are and who the baddies are. I thought it was actually quite ambiguous, because I don't consider anyone to be a 'goody' if they delight in chopping a man's arms off in such a way that he is still alive, and then getting his dog to eat him (while still alive). That is an evil person, and yet his vendetta of vengence is presented in a 'goody' light - seems ambiguous or at least ambivilent to me.
And that is sort of the flavour of the film. I wouldn't see it. If you enjoyed it then you would know that you were a sick fuck, and otherwise you wouldn't enjoy it.
The most annoying thing is there were some aspects I loved about the film. The chic. The style. The black and white with flashes of colour. The ham acting, with voice overs.
Oh well.

MOVIES : The Jacket

I loved this!
It's like Twelve Monkeys only emotionally based rather than action based, and with a far more ambiguous ending.
The actor is the guy from the Pianist and his acting makes up for everyone elses, including the very sexy Keira Knightly who couldn't act her way out of my bed (did I give anything away then?). He plays a guy who was shot in the head in the first gulf war (or was he) who is accused of murdering a cop and sent to an insane asylum for naughty people. There he is subjected to total sensory deprevation with drugs! Sounds like fun. While under he travels into the future (maybe)
There is one section of the movie where one of the actors suddenly changes their attitude completely, which I just put down to the director not bothering with showing the period of time they spent coming to this descision, but one of my friends found this disconcerting to say the least.
There are some plot holes, but I managed to not notice them until after, and the ending is a little too ambiguous for some of my friends, but I really liked it and recommend it (unless you are Mark, in which case you are probably to pedantic to overlook the gaping holes, or are they holes?)

MOVIE : Millions

This was a fun film about a boy who is a little 'different' who receives a bag of £200,000 from god (or actually a robber on a train who threw it out a window). This boy sees saints, who help morally guide him, and cover his arse a few times.
It is light hearted and fun, and surprisingly didn't make me feel sick with all the god talk. The boys in it do a good job, and the story is both entertaining and, um, educational? Maybe a little simplistic and obvious.
You'll have a bit of fun if you see this, and is probably not too bad to take kids to.

Some Nerdy (thanks Elton) math humour

check out this Redhanded Post, it talks about a conerence involving fractal applique. And don't forget my link at the bottom to fractal vegetables - it's awesome!

MOVIES : Strings

I think I was looking forward to this one a little _too_ much. It is the combination of a Danish master puppeteer and Danish mythology. I suppose I was excited about it because they were drawing on the puppets as part of the story, as opposed to a gimic, and mythology is often a good place to get good stories - as they've had to survive countless generations of weeding out of crap ones.
But that doesn't mean that your particular retelling can't be boring as bat shit, with little to no connection with the various characters (except maybe the 'innocent sister who sacrifices herself').
Sure, the puppets were beautiful, and their handling exquisite; there was more acting by these lumps of wood and string than any of the actors in Sin City managed....
A couple of guys in front of me actually left, they were that bored (I think they were also a bit drunk).
So, if you are intrigued about the venture, get it on DVD and have a look, but otherwise steer well clear.