The Dark Knight, Drabbling and Seasons Greetings

After finishing "Hanging Around", I decided to treat myself to a film night and a few hours of random web surfing. During this time I managed to learn quite a few things.

Being the first... Even cynical, film-savvy souls like myself can be reduced to quivering in the afterglow of a multiple nerd-gasm by the sheer, mind altering brilliance of the late Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker.

I rarely go to the cinema anymore, finding the expense, the travelling (the nearest convenient cinema to where I live is fifteen miles away. I don't drive. This makes it a Day Out rather than a spur of the moment thing.), the uncomfortable seating and the sheer irritation of a bunch of strangers coughing, belching, whispering and rustling sweet wrappers during the film to detract too much from my enjoyment of the particular film I've gone to see. I usually wait for the DVD. Since I have a good imagination, the big screen doesn't really add that much to the experience anyway.

This being the case, I waited until after The Dark Knight was released on DVD on the 8th of December. (I think I missed an email, since that appeared to be national geek day in the UK. TDK, Hellboy 2 and Star Wars: The Clone Wars all being released simultaneously) Anyway... I put in the DVD and sat back with my arms folded, figuratively speaking, expecting not to be blown away by the performance of Mr Ledger. I still remember clearly the artificial outpourings of faux grief for the death of Princess Diana, and honestly thought that a similar vein of Respect-For-The-Dead sycophancy was responsible for the endless stream of superlatives thrown at his portrayal of the The Joker. To say that I was wrong is to go far beyond understatement. If you haven't seen this film already I can't recommend it highly enough.

Secundus... During my random web surfing I learned of a thing called the Drabble. This is a form of writing that was particularly popular in the genre scene of the late eighties. The basic idea is to tell a complete and coherent story in exactly one hundred words. (The title is exempt from the word count, read the full wikipedia entry here) The Drabble seems, in my eyes at least, to get to the very essence of storytelling. All that is extraneous must stripped away, leaving nothing behind but the briefest of brief descriptions of what happened. With luck, the story that remains resembles poetry, the verbose, prosaic equivalent of a haiku. My own attempt at this will be posted as this week's entry on Wednesday. (It's the holidays, I'd like to spend at least some time with my loved ones.)

C. It turns out that I do have an ego about my writing. I googled the name of my blog and found myself disappointed that I wasn't even original in naming the thing, let alone the idea behind it. On the bright side, I seem to be the only one who is carrying it through (up until now) by posting a story once a week. Go me! (week one is here, two is here and three is here)

iiii. That I've run out of things to post, but like the gag of labeling each thing on the list from a different listing convention.

5... See, what I mean?

Merry Christmas!