Worst films list is updated

Last week I saw this vomit inducing cacophony of bullshit, which prompted a conversation about mine and Amys worst films. Amys was Eyes Wide Shut, which also makes my top (or bottom?) five- we saw it a while ago, but it burned a hatred in ours minds so deep, it will never be forgotten.
Some notable atrocities according to Josh that don't make the list are Tremors 3, Titanic (obviously), Coco before Chanel (not really as bad as the rest, but pretty damn shit considering the hype),
Also in there would be:

1) Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason
2) The Postman
3) Save the last dance
4) Eyes Wide Shut
5) House of Wax (remake, still in the bottom 5, despite having Paris Hilton stabbed in the face)

Possible updates or additions to come, when the defences to the darkened forgotten region of the back of my mind are breached, and I remember them.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

If you even slightly follow fiction, or film, or even just have your eyes open, you will might well have realized this book and film are everywhere at the moment.
That's because its insanely good.
Lisbeth Salander is a shit hot freelance P.I- despite being young, having tattoos and piercings and stuff. She meets journalist Mikael Blomkvist and together they try and unravel the mystery of what happened to 16 year old Harriet Vanger, who disappeared from the secluded island 40 years ago.
This is the first part of The Millenium Trilogy, and I've just bought the second and third parts. The film comes out I think in March, and its cast with all Swedish people, so its not some crappy American interpretation or anything.
It kinda remind me of Insomnia with Pacino mixed with The Wasp Factory...but with loads of sex violence.

Your pulling my Legg

Today Sir Thomas Legg's report regarding the expenses scandal came out (it seems to have 'come out' every week for 4 months), and MPs are told to repay £1.12m. Good, no problems there, obviously in terms of politics its not a huge amount, but on principle, its great news.

But, about half way down this BBC article it casually mentions "Some MPs have criticised Sir Thomas's audit - which itself cost £1.16m".

I'm not one to moan about politics much, I leave that to my colleague Chris's blog. But after months on scandal, the one thing at the back of my mind was, at least we're (taxpayers) getting a bit of money back, whatever it is. But it turns out, the whole thing has cost us another £400,000 or so.
Yeah, we've probably saved future money that would have been stolen, the principles are great, but it leaves a sour taste in my mouth to know the whole thing has left taxpayers even further out of pocket.
Right, thats the first and last time i'll mention taxpayers. promise

Spanglish

Anything featuring Adam Sandler now comes with the obligatory banter between me and my girlfriend. "Um, okay. How about this? Adam Sandler is like, in love with some girl, but then it turns out that the girl is actually a golden retriever, or something" routine by South Parks Eric Cartman.
Basically the suggestion that anything with Sandler is shit, and this is no exception. The plot is basically some Mexican (?) house cleaner comes and live with Sandler and his atrociously acted wife (Tea Leoni should never have been hired again after this, its amazingly awful) and Sandler and the Mexican get it on.
It took me about an hour to realize it wasn't Penelope Cruz, and instead was Paz Vega who mysteriously learns English mid way through, presumably while the camera was watching Sandler piss around trying to act annoyed with his stupid wife.
I hated this film, and have no idea why I sat through it, let alone why i'm writing about it.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

I have just finished this 1006 page monster by Susanna Clarke which has taken almost all of January. I generally have a problem with a lot of female authors, whether I have only read crap ones I'm not sure, but I have found many to be the over-descriptive and prone to getting sidetracked (an enormous generalization, but it has made me wary of some books); so I entered this with trepidation.

Its about 1840, and Mr Norrell, an aging magician sets his sights on restoring magic to England single-handedly, something that has been lost for around 300 years. After expelling almost all other magicians due to his opinion they were lame, he takes on what becomes to be his genius protoge- Jonathan Strange.

Strange soon becomes England's darling after his work with Wellington in helping defeat Napoleon, but tensions between the two magicians grow increasingly, with Strange's bolder use of magic and desires to house a school of magicians not fitting with Norrells more conservative use.

The book is written as if it were an actual history of magic pre-Daniels- the rewriting of history is becoming more common in art (something I practice in painting) and literature, and it is done to great extent throughout, Clarkes frequent footnotes (sometimes a few pages long) helps to annotate a subject that has been stripped clean of its actual history, and reinterpretated by Clarke.

I found this thoughly enjoyable, I kinda wished the history Clarke wrote about was real, because not only was it much more exciting than I would imagine magic's real history is, but it was so well described, I would have felt I knew the full ins-and-outs of magical history. It definitely could have been shortened, a few paragraphs, and even characters were reasonably pointless, but on the whole, damn fine.