Tired, tired, tired...
Mar. 2nd, 2004 06:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gervase_fenHow on Earth did I used to cope with weekend closes?
It's all the fault of the annual
A low key affair this year, with no Lisa, Graham or baby Savannah. Debuting this time round was Chris the projectionist, who I shared a hotel room with at Rachel and Tris' stag/hen festivities. He's a thin, under-nourished studenty type - imagine Jarvis Cocker on a starvation diet.
When it became clear - round about an hour in - that LOTR:ROTK was going to sweep the board, we all lost interest (and some of us nodded off). I guessed the documentary winner and the Foreign Language Film winner correctly, got all the acting categories right (they all went to the favourites), and got the Screenplay winners totally wrong. LOTR : Best Adapted Screenplay? As Billy Crystal said, "Return of the King has got eleven nominations - that's one for each ending of the movie".
Highlights this year were the opening movie montage (Michael Moore lambasting the hobbits for taking part in a fictitious war, and then being promptly trampled by a War Oliphaunt) and Mitch and Mickey's performance of "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow". Julia Roberts was toe-curlingly awful introducing a tribute to Katherine Hepburn : was Meryl Streep too busy or something? Hasn't Kate Mulgrew got a window in her schedule these days?
UCI gossip included the slightly scary news that there have been over 600 tickets sold already for "The Passion of the Christ", including at least one block booking from a church in Maidenhead. We agreed that during the last reel the projectionists should fade the soundtrack down and play in "Always look on the bright side of life" instead.
For the record, Chris won the night, with 15/21, but most of us did respectably thanks to the LOTR sweep (14/21 for me and Tris).
After being away since Wednesday, there were 200 odd titles to re-order and a little bit of gossip to catch up on. Duncan the outgoing ROM had been highly impressed with everything on his visit. He replied to my letter, and even seemed a bit apologetic about his return to the North (triggering our 6th or 7th ROM change).
JC collected his belongings on Thursday night, supervised by Duncan. I'm now at the stage where I'm finding blackly comic possibilities in book titles. We've just received Charles Bronson's "The Good Prison Guide" ; I was also struck by Harlan Coben's last three crime thrillers, which are, "Tell No One", "No Second Chance" and "Gone for Good".
Post-JC I'm now starting to get some of the buying training I should have had eighteen months ago. Exploring the software today I found the provisional cover for "The Wheel in Space" (and learned that someone's optimistically subbed in four copies of it), and also discovered the BBC casting round slightly desperately for any Alan Bennett title to release. Unless there's been a petition to release "Kafka's Dick" that I don't know about...
It's all the fault of the annual
A low key affair this year, with no Lisa, Graham or baby Savannah. Debuting this time round was Chris the projectionist, who I shared a hotel room with at Rachel and Tris' stag/hen festivities. He's a thin, under-nourished studenty type - imagine Jarvis Cocker on a starvation diet.
When it became clear - round about an hour in - that LOTR:ROTK was going to sweep the board, we all lost interest (and some of us nodded off). I guessed the documentary winner and the Foreign Language Film winner correctly, got all the acting categories right (they all went to the favourites), and got the Screenplay winners totally wrong. LOTR : Best Adapted Screenplay? As Billy Crystal said, "Return of the King has got eleven nominations - that's one for each ending of the movie".
Highlights this year were the opening movie montage (Michael Moore lambasting the hobbits for taking part in a fictitious war, and then being promptly trampled by a War Oliphaunt) and Mitch and Mickey's performance of "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow". Julia Roberts was toe-curlingly awful introducing a tribute to Katherine Hepburn : was Meryl Streep too busy or something? Hasn't Kate Mulgrew got a window in her schedule these days?
UCI gossip included the slightly scary news that there have been over 600 tickets sold already for "The Passion of the Christ", including at least one block booking from a church in Maidenhead. We agreed that during the last reel the projectionists should fade the soundtrack down and play in "Always look on the bright side of life" instead.
For the record, Chris won the night, with 15/21, but most of us did respectably thanks to the LOTR sweep (14/21 for me and Tris).
After being away since Wednesday, there were 200 odd titles to re-order and a little bit of gossip to catch up on. Duncan the outgoing ROM had been highly impressed with everything on his visit. He replied to my letter, and even seemed a bit apologetic about his return to the North (triggering our 6th or 7th ROM change).
JC collected his belongings on Thursday night, supervised by Duncan. I'm now at the stage where I'm finding blackly comic possibilities in book titles. We've just received Charles Bronson's "The Good Prison Guide" ; I was also struck by Harlan Coben's last three crime thrillers, which are, "Tell No One", "No Second Chance" and "Gone for Good".
Post-JC I'm now starting to get some of the buying training I should have had eighteen months ago. Exploring the software today I found the provisional cover for "The Wheel in Space" (and learned that someone's optimistically subbed in four copies of it), and also discovered the BBC casting round slightly desperately for any Alan Bennett title to release. Unless there's been a petition to release "Kafka's Dick" that I don't know about...
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no subject
Date: 2004-03-03 03:54 pm (UTC)I liked the segments of the opening film that were shown on Jonathan Ross's highlights programme, particularly the Moore sequence. I thought of watching some of the programme live, as I was awake at various points in the night thanks to my cold, but as I was aiming (successfully) to get to work in the morning, I concentrated on dousing the symptoms and on getting back to sleep.
I'll probably manage a journal entry of my own tomorrow, so I can tell the whole presentation training saga. I can't compete with your workplace for high drama, though.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-03 04:46 pm (UTC)(This seems an appropriate moment to say thanks for introducing me to the joys of lj - I've been able to rehearse and refine some useful arguments and ideas, let alone write up something that seems to be unique in my employer's recent history).
I've just had a look at jane_somebody's thoughts : she might be reassured to know that my former work colleagues were sceptical about the UK cinema-goer's tolerance for subtitled Aramaic, Latin and Greek, and were predicting mass walk-outs and demands for refunds.
Finally, I know I should have been writing down some REG-related stuff, but I've been spending the evening watching the first seven episodes of "Press Gang". The last time that I enjoyed seven consecutive episodes of TV so much, they were written by Aaron Sorkin...
no subject
Date: 2004-03-04 02:15 am (UTC)