4 January 2007

Low cal beer, Children of Men

Well that last post created much excitement. I was particularly touched with the reli nutters reply.
I've recently picked up some of Macs breweries new Low Carb beer, SpringTide. I like the new Macs packaging, it's cool. Anyway a quick beer review: for those of you looking to get tanked it's still 4.5% so thats a tick. Tastewise: very dry sharp lager taste on the first sip. The after taste seems quite nice too. The problem is that its missing the middle. The beer itself is quite quaffable, and definitely better than many of the 'lagers' that get inflicted on the NZ public. But it's not great. The good point is, I guess, the low carb rating. My recommendation: drink a few good quality brews then hit this if you are settling in for a decent drinking session.

Saw Children of Men the other night with my blonde bit (as she's been called). This is really really good movie. I thought the premise was cliched, and the shorts looked crap. Oh how wrong was I. Excellent story, very funny in places, interesting, thought provoking - all the good stuff that movies should be, but so often fail at. Clive Owen was his usual brilliant self. And special mention must be made of Michael Caine. I think he's crap as an actor, but he was good here. Very good in fact. So that makes a sum total of two movies I've liked him in (The Quiet American is the other). The story is basically the world is sterile and no babies have been conceived for 18 years, and then someone gets pregnant. Owen's gets sucked back into the resistance (the British government has become more totalitarian - nice crossovers with Nazi propaganda), and ends up trying to get the pregnant chick to her destination. That summary doesn't do justice to the movie. Watch the backgrounds and settings, very very good - in fact overload of subtle references. And even more impressive it had Deep Purple and King Crimson (21st C schizoid man) in it! Woohoo!
Do yourself a favour, go see it.

Research is rocking along at the moment, wrote a paper detailing human telomere hybridisation to reptiles last week, with some lovely sexy pictures in it.

me xx

3 comments:

Amanda said...

What!? Michael Caine is fantastic as an actor. See the Quiet American and also that British film where he is a gangster type (if only I could remember its name).

Amanda said...

Oh I do now... Get Carter.

Mr A. P. Salmond, esq. said...

Caine was also good in The Prestige. Best Caine quote, upon receiving an academy award for Cider House Rules (rubbish): "I've made a lot of crap. And I've made a lot of money."

As for Children of Men, it stood as one of my favourite films of last year. Mainly I think for being so much more than I thought it would be. Particularly impressive is the attention to detail, with all the little incidental environmental tweaks really selling their vision of the future. Not flawless by any means, with a couple of terrible stage-acting sequences, but well worth your bucks.

Oh, and if you're a film geek, the genius of the extended tracking shots will have you squirming in your seat.