Monday, April 5
Catch-Up
Where did I leave it last time? Oh yeah, 'twas the night of Phase, the fateful Phase.
That Saturday (the 27th, I'm working a hell of a lot in arrears) I didn't hear from Girl, because she was working all day, and then went to Turnmills in the evening for an all-nighter. I resigned myself to collapsing in front of the TV, watching too much sport and basically lounging around all day. What, it was the first day of the Easter holidays, I was entitled to do fuck-all.
I was dragged to the cinema (well, it was more of a suggestion by me, to be honest) by Pete, one of my housemates, to see the new Dawn of the Dead film that evening. We'd watched the original 1978 version only a few weeks previously, and I'd read a couple of good reviews of this new one ("slick" was the word that kept cropping up, if memory serves). The film certainly lived up to these reviews, and made a good attempt at recreating the drama / suspense of the original. As the reviews said, it is certainly a hell of a lot more slicker than the original, and the special effects departments have improved since the late 70s, resulting in some very gruesome deaths this time round.
My particular favourite was the "poker-through-the-eye" killing of this fat old woman zombie. I have this weird fascination with eyes, for reasons that I don't understand. I love pictures of eyes in art, but they're also the only body part I get a bit squeamish about in films and on TV. I can watch any other body part get blown off or cut into without batting an eyelid, but with eyes I get weirded out. The definitive occasion for this disturbance coming to the fore was in a film called May, which I saw last year. It's a very slow-burning horror film, about this girl who eventually builds a Frankenstein-type friend. She realises that it can't see her, and so she decides to give it her own lazy eye. The next shot is of her, sitting on a chair in front of a mirror, with a pair of closed scissors in her hand. You know exactly what's going to happen, but it doesn't for a good minute or two. Eventually she screams and violently swings the scissors up into her face (the camera is looking over her shoulder from a little distance away), with a sickening 'squelch' sound. That is the only time that I can remember having to watch a scene of a film from behind my fingers. *shudders at the memory*
But yeah, Dawn of the Dead, go see it.
The funny thing about that evening was the amount of little scallies in the o2 centre. The o2 centre is a big entertainment complex in North London on the Finchley Road, and is about 5 minutes walk from my flat. It's got a few bars, loads of restaurants, a multiplex cinema and a Sainsbury's, and is a great little place. The problem with it on Friday and Saturday evenings is that it is full of 15-16 year olds, dressed up to the nines, but with nowhere to go.
They all hang round inside in huge groups, and it's very funny to walk through them, head and shoulders above them all, watching the young girls trying to show off themselves to the older end of the teenagers wandering around. You can tell that they think they're very cool because they're "out" on a Saturday night, but why bother going out at all if all you're going to do is hang around and do nothing? I swear when I and my friends were that age, we just grabbed a few beers from our fridges and went to each other's houses to watch videos and drink there. I really couldn't (and stil can't) see the attraction in hanging around, all dressed up with nowhere to go.
Teehee, stupid little scally kids.
OK, so that's Saturday dealt with. Now I'm only 8 days behind in my writings here. Next!
