On Looper And A Couple Of Recent Reads

Following our long walk around Loch Leven on Wednesday we did indeed sleep well and our bones were aching as we rose in the morning to head to Edinburgh for the day. We had a few presents to buy and we needed to get some bits and pieces to finish off the bathrooms in Framlingham (toilet roll holders, towel rings – you know the sort of thing).

We always enjoy our visits to Edinburgh. It’s the perfect sized city; everything is within fairly easy walking distance but there’s loads to do - good shops, museums, restaurants and galleries and much more. We went into Harvey Nicholls to look for a present. It’s a super shop and it would be easy to spend hours browsing in there. We just bought the present and enjoyed a cup of coffee but we’ll make sure that we have plenty of time next time we visit.

We debated which film to see with the last few pounds remaining on our VUE gift card that we got for Christmas but hadn’t spent due to the lack of VUE cinemas near St Andrews and Framlingham. It was a toss up between The Perks Of Being A Wallflower and Looper. Each scored about the same on the IMDB website but Looper came out slightly on top with the critics.

It’s one of those films that creates a grim, dystopian view of a future where half the population appears to be living in abject, lawless, poverty while the remainder is involved in a hedonistic, drug fuelled life of relative luxury. This future is 2044, only just over thirty years away so I hope that it’s way off the mark as I wouldn’t want our grandchildren living in it. It seems that thirty years ahead of that it will be impossible to dispose of a body without being caught so the criminal mob, who by then have mastered time travel, send their victims back thirty years where they are unceremoniously disposed of by hit-men known as loopers.

It’s a complex but interesting idea, which becomes even more complicated when the time traveller turns out to be an older version of the assassin himself and sees Joe ( Joseph Gordon-Levitt) sitting down to steak in a diner with his older self (Bruce Willis). Throw in a kid who is a sort of six year old medium with one hell of a temper and his sexy mum to create a love interest and you’ve got a plot that doesn’t make a lot of sense but is nonetheless an entertaining couple of hours with plenty of action.

I enjoyed seeing what happened to one of the loopers who travelled back and escaped his younger self. The mob exact violent revenge on his 2044 version but we don’t witness the violence and instead watch the older man metamorphise before us – a clever idea. The romances between the lead character Joe in both 2044 and in the future are unconvincing but they aren’t central to the film, which is essentially a sci-fi shoot em up,  and I’ll forgive them.

I haven’t written about what I’ve been reading lately. The WIFI here at the caravan is so poor that I struggle to upload the blog but I’ve enjoyed Caroline Flett’s Separate Lives, Meg Rosoff’s What I Was and  I also read Summer’s Lease by Charles Mortimer which is entertaining but very dated just thirty years after it was first published. I am currently reading The Quincunx by Charles Palliser as part of Scott Pack’s internet social reading group – see the link to Meandmybigmouth blog over to the right. This is a monster of a book at over 1200 pages and not something that I would have normally picked up. However, it’s surprisingly good so far and not at all what I expected – and owes more to Charles Dickens than any 21^st century writer. I’ll let you know what I think after then next 900 pages.

It's a quiet week this week with no trips to Sufoflk planned so I hope we can get to a couple of films in Dundee, take granddaughter Rose and daughter Sarah to Edinburgh and also have a day out with the detector. After that we're really excited about seeing the progress on the house in Framlingham on 24th October and even more excited about seeing this little lady again on  25th. She'll be almost three months old.

Win Win

I'm on a bit of a roll today. Firstly, I got an email this afternoon from Scott Pack (he's "Me And My Big Mouth" on my blog list recommendation over there on the right). My name came out of his hat after I left a comment on his blog to receive a copy of a book he has just published - The Evolution Of Inanimate Objects. I'm really looking to reading it. Scott's also running a project to send handwritten notes to anyone who asks for one so I've asked him to put one in with the book. It seems that there's an upsurge in reviving the art of handwriting letters at the moment and the Guardian highlighted this in an article today. Scott's project gets a mention there too so I imagine his pen will soon be smoking. I'd offer to write a personal note to any blog readers who want one if I thought anybody would be able to read it. 

My second bit of good news came to light when I checked the UKDetectornet Forum to find that my Roman gold clasp did top their Artifact of the year poll when it closed last week so I'm in line to receive a subscription to a detecting magazine. I'm giving a talk to a village society near one of my favourite detecting spots on 15th February so that will give me something to mention. I've done a power point presentation - never done one of those before so I hope I don't fall flat on my face. Okay so it's not exactly winning the lottery but maybe it's an omen for me to get my entry to that novel competition I mentioned the other day posted.

We're looking forward to hearing Caroline Smailes talk at Birkdale Library tomorrow. I read Black Boxes last week. After the excellent In Search Of Adam and Like Bees To Honey, I wondered what surprises Caroline had in store this time and was not disappointed. She has to be one of the most original authors writing today. Black Boxes is possibly even grimmer than In Search Of Adam but it's extremely hard to put it down. There's fascinating use of words as almost an art form on the page together with the only example of sign language in a novel that I've ever come across. It's highly recommended reading as long as you aren't feeling depressed and, as someone who once helped on a suicide helpline, I found the tone very authentic. She will be talking about Like Bees To Honey tomorrow; although it has death as a central theme, it is a walk in the park compared to Caroline's other novels.

This week's Orange Wednesday trip was The Descendants. As you might guess from the title it's all about family and the film entwines several relationship threads around the story of George Clooney's wealthy Hawaiian  lawyer Matt King whose wife is in a coma and about to be disconnected from life support. Clooney's tearaway seventeen year old daughter Alex (brilliantly played by Shailene Woodley), difficult ten year old Scottie (Amara Miller) and Alex's friend Sid (Nick Krause) make up the heart of the cast and I loved the way that the characters evolved in response to the situation the family finds itself in. The extended family is involved in a multi million dollar real estate deal involving inherited land and King as the last surviving trustee has the final say on what goes on. Throw in an affair, an alpha male father-in-law and Alzheimer's suffering mother-in-law and you've almost got a full house of relationship issues. Director Alexander Payne handles these well and Clooney gives a beautifully understated performance which I found touching. I'm surprised that the film didn't rate higher with the critics (only averaging three stars in most of the broadsheets) but perhaps it was just a bit too nice. It is classed as a "comedy drama" and, although it did have some of the audience laughing, I felt that the laughter was out of place.


And the subject of family leads me seamlessly to an opportunity to leave you today with this wonderful little family video.