Bright Star at Ashford??

YEEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHH!!!

FINALLY. Bright Star is showing at Ashford's Cineworld for 5 days as of Friday 20th November. All is forgiven.

Pity I have no money to go and see it (grrrr... car bill). Where's a hot date when you need one.. a knight in shining armour.. a noble gentleman who wishes to woo me by taking me to the cinema..??

Oh Solitude, if I must with thee dwell.....

Another blog

Just a quick announcement to introduce you to another blog I have created that is more about social commentary and less about my own journey.

The last posting I made on this current blog made me realise I needed another blog to vent my social issues etc, plus it also helps me focus my writing a bit more.

So eyesonthesky will continue to have my personal updates, pictures and stuff, whereas rabadash will have more general venting about life and society etc...

I'd be honoured if you followed both! (even if you don't entirely agree with the commentary on the new one..)

Culture, movies and a whole lot of crap

Bored as I am during my days of waiting for responses to job applications I decided to look at the movie listings for our local cinema on the internet, thinking it might make a nice distraction to go and watch a movie. I've been dying to see Bright Star, the period movie about John Keats, one of my favourite poets. Even more so out of rebellion after reading a pretentious review in the Sunday Times Culture Magazine, written by an equally pretentiously named correspondent called Cosmo Landesman who clearly can't separate 21st century (lack of) morals from 19th century manners and decency. Criticism such as "Their kisses are chaste, their conversation reserved" is poor argument for a couple who wouldn't have exactly pulled a tonsil-tennis moment, mostly because, in general, unmarried couples didn't do that back then, not to mention the possibility that Campion (the Director) was trying to achieve an innocence in their relationship. Anyone who has read Keats, particularly his letters, would see a young, passionate poet who was better at crafting words on paper than in person, "whose words are images of thought refin'd" (Oh Solitude); a man who read of love and dreamed in greek mythology but when confronted with the real deal himself, may have found conversation a challenge, unlike the willful, impetuous and, let's be honest, seriously hormonal Romeo and Juliet, who were all about the wedding night. No comparison really. Oh wait. Landesman did compare. Sigh. Therein lies the source of my rebellion. Romeo and Juliet, John and Fanny aren't. And that's the beauty: the former are fictitious, the latter were real people. Cold shower, Cosmo?

But I'm getting ahead of myself here, since I haven't even seen the movie yet. Anyone who questions the sweet tragedy that is John and Fanny's romance is going to push a few buttons with me. The greater tragedy here is, as it turns out, it's only on in selected cinemas, of which the nearest is about a 2 hour drive away. Oh how perfectly philistine my local town is. All these attempts to up the game of what was formerly deemed to be a dump and they can't even show a wonderfully cultural and literary period movie for longer than a week, apparently. The patrons obviously prefer what I consider to be lesser movies such as Saw VI (oh puh-lease... stop flogging a dead horse... was the first one even necessary?!) or Jennifer's Body (horror/comedy? I gave up on those after the first Scream decided to make a super franchise of such rot).

In fact, what is happening to the movie industry? Previously horror movies were generally shown on and around Halloween. Now we seem to have at least 3 different ones being shown at any one time all year round. Come on, people. Do we have to endure Horror as part of mainstream now?! I must sound terribly prejudiced against this one particular genre but I'm of the opinion that the world is horrific enough without the indecency of movie makers exploiting such graphic scenes of violence for general entertainment. Call me old-fashioned...

Actually I prefer to take the french view of such subjects. Sex and nudity is generally celebrated in film, whereas violence and gore is less acceptable and therefore more heavily restricted. Hurrah for the french. Not that I'm a big fan of too much sex and nudity in film either, but it's better than the other. Make love not war and all that...

So there it is. Today's two-cents' worth.

My pictorial weekend

Gotta love my life. Really. I may complain about it going nowhere right now, but if I was to use hot air balloons - my great passion - as a metaphor for my life, it wouldn't go anywhere particularly fast, but just gently and majestically grace the skies, turning heads and drawing great intrigue as it floats overhead. A thing of beauty. Just look at these photos. I took them with my cell phone. The daytime shot of Purple Haze was taken at the airfield where I currently work. This is the view from my office. The night time shot of Muu was taken at the airfield's unofficial fireworks night on Sunday, the day after Purple Haze cruised in for an easy retrieve for the crew. It's our tradition to do a night glow for the aviation community and we were lucky with the weather this year. It looked pretty hit and miss at sunset with the wind strengthening from the northeast - a direction notorious for not slacking off much. But two hours later we were surprised to see the winds ease and the sky clear, so out came the balloons and this was one of the shots. A great evening. A great weekend.
Times like these make me realise how privileged I am to have this unique opportunity right on my doorstep. I've always been interested in aviation and to be able to be a part of something like this is incredible. I may be in debt and have little opportunity to recover it right now but there are moments like this weekend that make life seem so much brighter.