28 Days Earlier

I took this to be a covenant that if I survive this term, never again
will God destroy my spirit with a flood of Tripos questions.

Exactly 28 days remain until my final exam. I mention it because number may hold more significance later in this entry. Exams notwithstanding, life goes on. Unless you are a journalist, that is, in which the case the only thing happening the world seems to be the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. I hesitate to label it missing white woman syndrome but the coverage does seem somewhat disproportionate, with celebrities getting in on the action by waving around rewards. The sheer level of parental idiocy required to leave a three-year-old alone in a foreign country seems to have been entirely overlooked. Meanwhile our dear PM has finally announced his actual retirement date (rather than the date of the announcement of his future speech about when he’s considering thinking about discussing retirement, perhaps taking a leaf out of Bungie’s book). The strangest thing is seeing a cheerful Gordon Brown on TV and in the press. It suddenly dawned on me that in the past 9 years I don’t think I’ve ever seen him smile…

I finally got round to another incremental update to the site in the form of the menu bar of this section (it will shortly spread to the others). Aside from the minor aesthetic change to its appearance and rollovers, it has also been recoded to use a single image file which ought to remove the lag that some were experiencing with slower connections.

I was unable to join the group who headed out to see 28 Weeks Later, the follow up to the acclaimed British zombie flick 28 Days Later. The film has certainly polarised audiences, an unsurprising occurrence that tends to accompany sequels that have been handed over to a new cast and crew. Although director Fresnadillo has little experience, his short list does include the superb Spanish film Intacto, about gambling with people’s luck and fortune. Yet the main criticisms do seem to be directorial, specifically regarding the action sequences that are allegedly akin to swinging a camera around on a rope as fast as possible and then editing the sequence so that no shot lasts more than a second. Motion sickness is a genuine concern, and actually following the action is laughable to the point where more than one person did not realise a character had been killed until afterwards when they realised the person was no longer present. However the sheer destructive force unleashed upon London may be worth seeing in itself. I share this now only because there is a good chance I won’t be able to see the film before it disappears from the big screen. If you have seen it, please do offer your thoughts in the comments. Now if the franchise follows the Batman/Superman model, I’d recommend skipping the next two films but 28 Decades Later ought to be a belter!

EDIT: Sparkie has offered four important rules if you plan on watching the film yourself. Ignore them at your peril.