Almost a big nothing

Alas, I have no Doha update today. For reasons I am not yet aware of, Mirinda wasn’t able to talk tonight. I have, however, seen a photograph of Ben (on Facebook) on a camel, so their trip to the desert obviously happened. More news as it comes to hand.

In Britain, a Nicktor Night was had – first time for a few weeks – and I managed to discourage Nicktor from driving to Cambridge to watch Aldershot lose 4-0. Instead, we popped down to the Albion for dinner then sat and watched two pretty mediocre films.

The first film held a bit of promise. It was about football violence and featured Stephen Graham, an actor who seems destined to just play hard men with diction problems. We gave the film a very low score.

I think the problem was that it was trying to tell too many stories in as muddy a way as possible. Too many threads were started, almost developed then dropped. Because of this thinness, it was hard to find a character to actually like or even relate to.

The film was Awaydays and is based on a novel which, hopefully, explores the motivations of these young lads in a little more depth.

One highlight (actually, the only highlight) was Holliday Grainger, who played the main character’s little sister. I spent most of the movie trying to work out where I’d seen her before. Her thick Liverpudlian accent didn’t help. I had to cheat and look on imdb.com. She was the delightfully played Lucrezia in the TV series The Borgias.

In Awaydays, Holliday was a faint ray of light in an increasingly dim view of life on Mersyside in Thatcher’s Britain. Sadly, the ray was all but extinguished by the awful script, diction and lack of actual football.

Films about football violence are always a bit hit and miss (excuse the pun) but we thought the second choice, Big Nothing, would prove a better option. It starred Simon Pegg and David Schwimmer, so we thought it might be okay. It wasn’t…really.

To be fair, the film had some lovely comedy moments (the axe bit was hilarious) but, on the whole, it was trying too hard to be funny and Pegg and Schwimmer didn’t really cut it as a comedy pairing.

I thought the best person in it was Alice Eve as the feisty “Miss Teen, Oklahoma” Josie.

Still, the movies may have been bad but the company more than made up for it and we had the usual enjoyable night…regardless.

Oh, and a big thank you to the Cansfields for the perfect birthday present: a bottle of Fettercairn wrapped in pink birthday paper. Perfect indeed.