Monday, December 31, 2007

So that was 2007

Well, let’s be honest, it was utterly awful, absolutely lousy and I hope to never have another year like it. I’ve been depressed, fallen back into bad habits such as over eating and not exercising, I’ve not done half as much drawing as I hoped and I’ve barely written a thing.
It’s never going to be a good year when it starts with your wife being diagnosed with cancer and you worrying if you’ll end up being a single parent.
Luckily the good has outweighed the bad. My wife seems to be as healthy and wonderful as she was before her treatment. My daughter’s wonderful, I adore her more than I can describe and I’ll be forever grateful to her for helping us get through the year with some degree of happiness.
2008 has to be better, and I’m looking forward to it with the kind of positivity I had for 2007 before it came crashing down. For myself, I’m going to be better, which is what all my New Year’s resolutions boil down to. I’ll break all my bad habits for a start, but most importantly I’ll be committing myself to writing and drawing in a way I just haven’t done before now. I intend to not just be productive, but to actually do something with my work, no more finishing something and putting it in a drawer marked ‘I am crap, stop wasting everyone’s time.’ From now on I’ll think like a creator with a future rather than a sub-par amateur.
I feel very hopeful, it’ll be a hard year, if it runs to plan I’ll always be doing something, but I’ve realised that as much as the old Paul wallowed in his bad habits and bad attitude, the present Paul just doesn’t like them.
Tonight will be an incredibly low key New Year’s Eve for me, Rebecca’s at work so I’m at home baby sitting on my own. I’ll watch telly, maybe even something from the Hammer Horror box set of films I got for Christmas, and have a glass of single malt. Not the best NYE, but not a bad one. Hope you all have a good time, and I wish you all the best for whatever you want to do next year.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Christmas

Wishing all the best to everyone who's dropped by, hope you have a fantastic Christmas!

Monday, December 17, 2007

Sunday, December 16, 2007

The Golden Compass

Me and Rebecca went to see 'The Golden Compass' last night thanks to a friend offering to babysit. As we went into the cinema we saw the poster for 'Enchantment' and a said something about how we might be better off seeing that, Rebecca agreed, but we both stuck with our original choice. So we're just as much to blame for the average evening.
I'm a big fan of Philip Pullman's incredible 'His Dark Materials' trilogy' and have been nervous of the adaptation, but two words kept entering my brain as we watched 'The Golden Compass'. Pedestrian. Ordinary. I really hope we've seen the last of these big budget fantasy films that have quickly become interchangeable. Stripping the story of it's religious content (leaving some unsatisfactory vagueness about what's going on) and picking key bits from the book and belting through the story at breakneck pace may be the worst crimes here. The actors may be great but we don't see much more than whats on the surface of them. Miss Coulter is particularly disappointing, yes, Nicole Kidman is inspired casting, yes, she is excellent, but only at being aluring and creepy. But Miss Coulter had much more depth to her than just that. It's left to a couple of unsatifactory scenes to give her more depth. It doesn't work.
In the end I didn't hate 'The Golden Compass', I just didn't care, I didn't get involved and I didn't once get the same sense of wonder and awe I got from the book.
About the only really good thing I can say about the film is Sam Elliott is as cool as only Sam Elliott can be. So, insead of youtubing 'The Golden Compass' trailer, here's a brief bit of Sam being cool in what has accurately been described as the best worst movie ever. I give you 'Road House'.