Date Archives: Sunday November 3rd 2002

After said Krazy House merryment, a very late night and emerging from bed just a bit hung over we needed a jolt to the system to avoid throwing the day away.

This came in the shape of a cycle along the Mersey all the way in to town and back again. It’s been some time since we’ve been out on the mountain bikes – indicated by the fact that both of us are walking a little on the John Wayne side this evening!

That said – if the weather here can be kind enough to deliver dry Sundays I think it’ll be the perfect way to clear the cobwebs. I actually miss being out on the bike too – having a ridiculously expensive one it really is a crime to let it gather dust when it just screams to be chucked down a hillside somewhere.

I suspect at some point in the future they will actually recognise the condition known as PlayStation ass!

Must get out more. :o)

The Hallow’een party at the Krazy House in Liverpool made for an entertaining evening. As awful as the place is, in a nice sort of way, it’s one of the few places you can go where you can be sure you’re not the weirdest person in the room by a long chalk!

Everywhere you looked there were people draped in chains with thick black make-up walking around like the undead. And those were the people who hadn’t dressed up for Hallow’een!

The Krazy House is one of the most enjoyable places I’ve found for a good night out and that includes places in Glasgow and London. The three floors of varying music make for a unique venue where you can move between the levels as your mood takes you on the night.

Not for everyone, but fun once in a while – and on a night where the undead are supposedly roaming the Earth it made perfect sense! :o)

This evening I watched Tomb Raider for the first time. I had avoided going to see it in the cinema due to the fact it was universally panned by the critics. Kind of takes the motivation out of it when you’ve already been assured by every tabloid and its supplement mag that the movie is a turkey.

What was interesting was the amount of hard work that Angelina Jolie put in in order to look convincing on screen. On the flip side it’s amazing how a director who is so far out of his depth can convince the studio that he has some kind of vision that will be in the best interests of the project.

This is where Dominic Senna and Simon West have more than one thing in common. Both have directed the talented Angelina Jolie in Gone in Sixty Seconds and Tomb Raider, and neither could direct their way out of a paper bag. It’s just something they cant hide from – it spews forth from the screen, even embarrasingly so on the extras on the DVD for each movie when it becomes quite clear that each of them is convincing no one.

Tomb Raider suffers, for me, because it has so clearly been hacked to death as the movie went along. This has to fall at the feet of the director. The amount of material in the deleted scenes that if left intact would actually have given the story more depth and a little more credibility than the mish-mash of set pieces that it turns out to be.

A shame, really, as Tomb Raider does look great for the most part and the effort that Jolie put into the movie was not matched by the director. With Jan de Bont at the helm of the sequel it will be interesting to see if the franchise can be saved, although I suspect that given the slap-dash treatment de Bont usually delivers (Speed, Twister, et al) it’ll take some doing.