he's a big softy, really

Darn that starmadeshadow. After years of me shrugging and going "Que?" while she and various other female friends swooned over Vin Diesel, I have succumbed to the frenzied fangirling so far as to admit that he's quite watchable. And, of course, a D&D player and mad sf fan, which has to count for something. This revelation probably sparked by re-watching Chronicles of Riddick, which is utterly cheesy in all the right ways, and pushes all my buttons in terms of sweeping space opera with a good dose of fight scenes, fantasy symbolism and the correctly medieval-retro costuming. I'm a simple creature, when you get down to it. Also fun to watch a muscle-bound dude with Attitude in spades who manages to subtly send himself up more or less continually (especially viz. the ridiculous Steaming Riddick scene, quite my favourite in the film for sheer deliberate over-the-topness). Irony in the Hollywood star, so a dying art. Jury as yet out as to whether the vague approval rating will lead me to go and watch The Pacifier. It has kiddies in it. Yetch. There's always Boiler Room, in which I believe he wears designer suits more or less continually. There's not a man on the planet who doesn't improve a thousandfold in a suit.

Just had a rather good evening having supper with aforementioned starmadeshadow (who is turning into a mall rat), thereafter watching Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Pleasantly surprised by the film, actually. Intelligent and playful use of the marriage-as-violence, violence-as-marriage trope, or theme, or whatever (paradigm?), and very little condescension to the audience; some quite subtle and nuanced moments where you had to be quick to catch the implication. Plus one of the great tango scenes in recent cinema. And lovely moment with Brad Pitt intimidating a hostage who's wearing, as far as I can make out, a Fight Club T-shirt. Also, of course, a rampantly negative view of marriage, given that the Happy Couple shoot up both their house and a home-store. Death to domesticity. All the more pointed in that the violence is a sex-substitute; the great orgasmic fireball as the house collapses had me giggling helplessly. So one up on the Renaissance sonnet-writers.

The meeting this morning was, amazingly enough, quick and efficient, and I was not forced to bludgeon anyone to death with the collected works of George Bernard Shaw. Campus has a certain serene charm without students - great empty spaces, lots of parked cars but no actual people, since it's only students who really wander about between buildings. One developes a niggling feeling that one has accidentally come to work on a public holiday, or after the rest of the human race has unexpectedly been abducted by aliens. Restful. Roll on the alien abductions, say I.