Revolution

Another disturbed night, with my stomach churning like a dodgy washing machine on a spin cycle. Not sure if it was the Subway sandwich I had for lunch or something else, but whatever it was was not exactly conducive to a restful night's kip.

Last night's movie was 'The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus' which turned out to be rather good. Gilliam is a somewhat uneven director, with his imagination and ambition notoriously outstripping both his budgets and the technology required to put the contents of his brain on screen. Fortunately in this film CGI has been used alongside some fantastic production design to good effect to tell a somewhat rambling tale of a travelling sideshow, an immortal storyteller and a wager with the devil.

The other thing that Gilliam is known for is the legendary bad luck that his productions seem to be cursed with and this one was no exception, with the death of leading man Heath Ledger part way through filming. However, Gilliam rescued the picture by drafting in Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell to play Ledger's character in different dream sequences, and this audacious bit of cinematic sleight of hand actually works rather well.

Worth a watch, but expect to spend a fair bit of the film scratching your head and wondering exactly what is going on.

Today has been a fairly laid back day, with a bit of catching up from my tutorial yesterday, submishing the first part of my first TMA and watching some of the live streaming from TAM : London. I was rather amused by PZ Myers response to the call to skeptics to 'Don't be a dick' with the alternative suggestion being 'Do be a Richard' (as in Wiseman and Dawkins).