Uptown Downtown
A while back I complained about an advert with a faux American accent promising that a sale was strictly limited. This was then superseded with an advert using that same irritating voiceman but saying that the sale (while extended) would still end soon. This, duly, ran forever. And made an enemy for me of the store that it was advertising. Thankfully this run has finally ended. To be replaced by yet another advert with the same incredibly bloody annoying voice. So it shall come to pass: when he flies into a rage his enemies shall be struck dumb by his anger. And possibly incontinent.
Speaking of mad regimes, I felt proud to be British for the first time in a good long while yesterday. Too long, truth be told. The Ayatollah (I don’t know how to write or pronounce his last name, but it is not dissimilar to “ham and cheese”) has singled out Britain for particular scorn in a speech he made about how his country men should all stand behind his good buddy the mad holocaust denier in the cheap suit. You can judge a man by the quality of his enemies. Or country.
Bradford’s town hall clock continues to be a source of particularly inaccurate time. This week it was wrong on three of the mornings I went into work, stopped at midnight and two in the morning (or possibly afternoon). I live in a city where the council doesn’t even know what time it is. And possibly run by people so ugly their faces can stop clocks.
Up is bloody brilliant. Not as good as the Incredibles or Wall-E, but head and shoulders above most films. It’s genuinely touching, depressing and uplifting, beautifully animated and terse and pacy. Once again Pixar have opened up a gap on their competitors when it comes to quality of animation, knowing when to hit us with incredibly detailed textures and polygon rich scenes, and when to use the simple quality of their design. More than ever they seem to perfectly realise their vision, and their only limitation if their (very high) standard of writing.