Thanks to the local cinema and its terrific membership perks (£4 per ticket) and the fact that they show the newest films, not just films from weeks or months ago, we may find ourselves going to the cinema a lot from now on. Personally, I have been used to travelling by the tube for 20-25 minutes in order to see a film in Oslo (they closed our local one), so this is heaven. I don't have to pay to get there; it takes us just eight minutes to go there by foot! So, anyway, we went there to see Batman Begins last week - we felt we had to since we'd been outside the Leicester Square Odeon on the day of the premiere - and it turned out to be rather good! Now I know it's been given some crap reviews, but I think they must have had a lousy day or something. Luckily the Batmobile looked much cooler on the big screen than in real life, by the way. If you're going to see the film, please note that most of the supporting actors (dubbed by me as those in a film that are supposed to actually act and not just sell the film) are non-American (Morgan Freeman excluded, and he was as brilliant as always) even though it's an American film. It seems to have become the standard lately. Want good actors? Look outside the US! An Hollywood-hating anglophile like me revels in this tendency. Mwahahaah. (A large portion of mY film collection still consists of films produced in Hollywood, though, so I should probably shut up.) Or it could just be because Hollywood finally understands that some of the punters actually enjoy good acting as well as nice special effects, and since many of the American actors enter the business because of their good looks and have no training in drama, they won't even be considered. Those are the headliners, unfortunately, brought in to sell the film. There are some very good exceptions, though. (Why does Tom Hanks always come to mind when I think of this?) I had high hopes for Leonardo DiCaprio after his amazing breakthrough in What's Eating Gilbert Grape, but something must have happened, as he's been back to being just another pretty face ever since.

We may pay the cinema a second visit tonight, seeing as we both want to see Kung Fu Hustle (I for the second time).

Earlier this week we went to a standup comedy show and luckily it wasn't totally crap even though it was free. Three of the comedians were rubbish and I felt like leaving the place, but the other three made up for it and we may come back another time. I'm not used to the waiters constantly walking around the room taking orders during a show, though, so I was slightly put off by that. They must have approached our table five times during the first part (it's a small place), so I finally caved in and ordered my second non-alcoholic beverage. Speaking of which; we "drank in" our pub on Sunday, which meant sitting there having a jolly good time with a lot of Bacardi Breezers (name stricken due to Norwegian advertisement laws, haha). My flatmate promptly blamed me for the whole thing, as she told the landlord that I couldn't stop myself, as she was buying another round. Bitch. Anyway, We both could stop ourselves and didn't even become drunk, before skipping off to the nearest pizza place at around ten fifteen, ordering pizza in time for The History of ITV.

The day before (that would be Saturday) there was going to be 500,000 more people than usual in central London, so we were expecting the worst as we took the tube downtown. I must say that I was a bit disappointed as we didn't see more than the usual amount of tourists trodding along with their travel dictionaries and maps of London. Apparently the whole ordeal took place in Hyde Park. I was equally suprised when I came home hours later and saw the Live8 spectators gathered there on the news. Wow! We stayed away from that area, however, as we were going to see the gay pride parade instead. Oslo had Euro Pride the week before and that parade had been the biggest ever (for Oslo, that is). It usually lasts about twenty minutes, thirty if there are some really slow movers. The one in London took more than ninety minutes. But the funny thing was that the parade had an as unruly crowd as the one in Oslo and didn't look more organised than a children's parade. It just took thrice as long time to pass us. We were standing in the front row, though, so to speak, as we took our positions on the opposite side of Eros on Piccadilly Circus, wondering whether we were in the right place. The crowd on the Eros side looked as if we weren't. They later regretted not having moved to our side when the parade actually started and their area was corded off. Har, har. Well, the parade unfortunately started off with the best bit and going downhill from there, as our celebrity-seeking hearts were more than satisfied to see Stephen Fry (even taller than I had expected) and Serena/Sir Ian McKellen walking up front. Three hours, a lot of walking and a lot of throwing away of flyers later, we found ourselves in Trafalgar Square listening to Serena again, begging for world peace and an increased awareness of gay rights across the globe. We were very surprised to hear that the crowd were cheering and applauding when he said that all the three biggest TV channels had shown some interest in the parade this year. I realise more and more that my home country is among the most liberal ones, which is sad, as I don't think it's liberal enough. I mean, the news can't even show a glimpse from the parade? Jeez... Of course, we realise many things are quite backward over here - people keep asking us why on earth we would move from such a technologically advanced country, and even though I'm never going to ask myself why I wanted to move, I know that things are rather old-fashioned here. "Can you issue a cheque?" (pause) "Uhmm...we stopped using cheques years ago. Do you take VISA? Have you even heard of it?" (Naughty, naughty...) But seriously, did they only just issue credit/debit cards to normal people over here? It seems like they haven't quite learnt how to use them yet. In a normal cashpoint/ATM queue it takes them up to four minutes to figure out which buttons to press. This happens a lot. Fair enough, I've had my card for ten years now, but I was never that slow, was I? These are people my own age, too, supposed to have been brought up in a computerised environment. I wonder.

I'd better post this now and download some work. They just rang from my old job and said they'd sent me some work to do if I could find the time. Well, it could be a bit difficult between playing The Sims on PlayStation and watching that new drama series on BBC2 tonight, but I'll try... *winks*

Current track: Mel Blatt - Do Me Wrong

Labels: comedy, film, gaming, name-dropping, personal, technology, TV