It has been a while since my last blog, but with the changing
of my job, Christmas, training for a marathon and spending time with my wife
and baby boy, writing has taken a back seat.
But with the new job being a lot closer to home, with less commuting and
less hours I expect to be back writing.
I’m still ploughing through the Mars Trilogy, which is very
epic in scope and ideas, however it is very long winded and technical in
places. The writing though is nothing
short of brilliant and as I type this I am only 200 pages from the end of the
third book. I believe I am in the
process of a very rewarding experience – but it is definitely not a trilogy to
read when tired with a new born in the house!
The wife and I thoroughly enjoyed the Christmas Dr Who and
the last appearance of Matt Smith as the iconic character. Although, I still feel David Tennants’
regeneration was done better due to being very emotional in places. It seemed a little rushed at the end but the
build up was very good and the way they dealt with him reaching his maximum
number of regenerations was everything I wanted it to be, although I still
don’t think they should have counted David’s hand becoming a copy of him as a
regeneration!
The actual episode did occasionally go into Christmas story
territory, which they seem to do too much for my liking. I appreciated its on at Christmas, but does
The Doctor always have to have a Christmas adventure? The highlight though was undoubtedly the
aging of Matt Smith as he protected the planet he knew he would die on, over
hundreds of years. I don’t know if it
was intentional but he seemed to look a lot like William Hartnell when he had
aged.
Ultimately Matt Smith will go down as one of the very best
actors to play the part. He brought a
lot of energy and slapstick comedy, whilst appearing to be a very wise man in a
young mans body. But as I have said in
the past, I am very much looking forward to Peter Capaldi who from the few
seconds at the end appears to be going old school on the part and channelling
the doctors of old.
On my birthday we also watched Elysium, the Matt Damon
staring movie. It is set in a future
where Earth is ravaged by war, where society is divided into two classes – the
rich who live in a huge habitat orbiting Earth and the lower working class who
live in an Earth where petty crime is rife and medical care is near none
existent. Matt Damon has a terrible
accident leaving him with days to live and has cyborg parts attached to him to
do a job for a local gangster and he has one goal, get on to Elysium (the name
of the habitat).
When this was initially released, I wasn’t sure, mainly due
to a strange dislike for Matt Damon in any kind of action movie (well the
Bourne movies) and also due to the mocking of him in Team America !
But I have to say I very much enjoyed it.
There was some kind of irony that the habitat looked like a smaller
version of the orbitals from Iain M Banks culture novels, a series of books
whereby the culture live in a Utopian existence, and nobody is poor, yet in
Elysium, the majority of Humans are poor and in need of help and the privileged
minority live in luxury. The very
liberal Iain M Banks would have probably found similarities in todays society
if he had seen this movie!.
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