Real Estate Tip Number 1

Never buy a house with a pool, it doesn't matter if your wife or child thinks it's a good idea or if your real estate agent tells you it adds value to the property and if you do make sure you get in writing that they are willing to clean the damn thing other wise you'll will spend large amounts of time topping up water levels, checking the chemical balance of the water and cleaning all sorts fishing all sorts of crap out of the water.

The thing is it rarely gets used and I personally aren't into swimming at all so why is it I've got to maintain the damn thing ?

Fido

It must be a couple of years now but I can recall when there seemed to be a lot of anticipation for Black Sheep and Fido, two horror comedies that were going to be released around the same time, both movies had trailers that looked like fun and I was looking forward to seeing both of them.

I saw Black Sheep on DVD around a year ago and to be honest I was pretty disappointed, it had a couple of funny moments but overall the movie just wasn't very good.

Today I was sorting through some DVDs only to discover I must have bought Fido at some point, I don't remember buying it but sure enough there was the region 2 DVD with Billy Connolly's decaying face on the cover and since I was looking for something to watch this afternoon I though that should do the trick nicely.

It was an interesting movie and I did enjoy it, Fido wasn't as funny as I'd hoped but it was a quirky little film and I liked the whole 50's vibe it had going on, I think I was expecting things to go wrong ( and they did ) and then you'd have a comedy more in line with Shaun of the Dead with moments of horrific gore along with laugh out loud moments and that didn't really happen, this was more like Stand By Me with zombies, I did expect that the Billy Connolly zombie would be revealed as the boy's dead Grandfather and that was why he / it was looking out for him but they didn't do that and upon reflection I guess that would've been a little obvious.

I enjoyed Fido and it's certainly worth a look if you haven't seen it and get the chance.

Dark Water

This was an OK movie, to be honest I expected more of Hideo Nakata, I worked out what was going on and why pretty early on in the film although if you think about it the opening credits pretty much give it away.

The thing that nearly spoiled this movie for me was the 10 years later epilogue, the movie should've ended on the final shot of the water tower.

I have the American remake of Dark Water somewhere so I might check that out sometime soon just to compare the two, to me this felt like a movie that was trying to appeal to an international audience and so a lot of the horror aspects were diluted in order to appeal to the broadest audience.

An OK movie with a lot of untapped potential.

Colour Me Kubrick

This movie was ( loosely ) based on real life events where a con man was impersonating Stanley Kubrick, it must be said I'm a bit of a fan of Kubrick's films so I had fun spotting various references and music cues used in Colour Me Kubrick and I was aware of the man who impersonated Kubrick and some of the events around him being discovered.

A couple of years ago I saw a trailer for the film that made it look like a comedy which I thought was odd at the time but I'd eventually check out the film, Colour Me Kubrick is no comedy, it has a couple of  funny moments but it's certainly no comedy, this is a movie about celebrity ( something Stanley Kubrick never wanted ) and someone who was unhappy with his life so he tried to become someone else

John Malkovich gives an outstanding performance as Alan Conway, the openly gay Stanley Kubrick impersonator who looked nothing like Kubrick and it seemed knew only the basic facts about his work but somehow still managed to convince people he was a talented movie director.

This was a bit different to the things I've been watching lately and I really enjoyed it, it's not a movie I'd buy ( well recommend buying since I did in fact buy it ) but if you can catch it on TV it's certainly worth a look.

The Corpse Bride

I've had the DVD for about three years but today I finally got around to watching The Corpse Bride, I was hoping that this movie would capture the magic of A Nightmare Before Christmas but honestly it didn't which isn't to say the movie was bad because it wasn't, it just wasn't anything special.


I don't know where Tim Burton would be if he wasn't making movies, The Corpse Bride like most of his movies was rather unique both in terms of story and visual style but that is to be expected of Burton.

One thing that did really impress me was the cast of voice actors that worked on this movie, especially Christopher Lee, we don't see enough of Christopher Lee in movies these days.

The Corpse Bride like all Tim Burton movies is worth seeing for yourself, it's not one of his better movies but it's nowhere near as bad as his remake of Planet of the Apes either.

Today, your diary entry will read - "Took a prozzie hostage, and then got shot by three armed bastards!"

Over the last couple of days I've been re-watching the first series of Ashes to Ashes, not sure why really I just suddenly had the urge see it again, I still thinks it's a little weak for the first couple of episodes while Keeley Hawes finds her way as the series lead but as usual it's Gene Hunt that makes the series worth watching, some of his dialog in Life on Mars ( the proper original UK version ) and Ashes to Ashes is just hilarious, it's hard to believe we won't be seeing anymore of the Gene Genie.

A horse with no name........

Well the man had a name but I'm pretty sure the horse didn't, I've spent a rather large part of the last two days replaying Red Dead Redemption, a recent video game release and the closest I think we'll ever come to an interactive Sergio Leone movie.

It's been ages since there has been a decent video game based on the western genre and this has been a blast, the game world is gorgeous, the game play is smooth and there are plenty of different side missions and mini games to keep the player amused.

I guess the western genre won't appeal to everyone but this is works for me, I keep expecting to see Clint Eastwood ride out of the hills and open up a can of whoop ass on the local bandits before riding off into the sunset.