Alcohol related sleep deprivation

I woke up extremely tired this morning. Fortunately I didn’t have to drive to Gloucester for a meeting like poor Nicktor. In fact, the meeting was originally scheduled for 8:30! This almost meant the cancellation of our Nicktor Night for it doesn’t take a genius to work out he’d have to leave here very early in order to arrive for that time of the morning. In fact, he’d probably not have slept at all, which is not good when copious amounts of alcohol are involved.

His contingency plan was to drink less and have an early night. Not exactly what a Nicktor Night is about. I suggested we shift it to Monday night. After a bit of clever rescheduling on Nicktor’s part, the meeting was moved to a more reasonable 10am and so our night could proceed as usual.

Nicktor generally hasn’t blipped when he gets to me and so he tends to just take a photo relevant to our night, usually before we start any serious film watching and drinking. Last night he decided to blip me banging our new gong as it was a nice counterpoint to my earlier blip from when I hung it.

Chinese takeaway is served

Here is another blip he took of a Nicktor Night a while back. In fact, blipping has taken the Cansfield clan by storm. They all do it! Here’s one from each of them: Dawn, Matt & James. I think they’re blip mad!

Meanwhile, back at the Nicktor Night, we had the usual choice to make over our viewing options. While the number of DVDs tends to remain constant, the choices change each time we view them. This does mean that the less appealing movies get left each time. There are two movies that have been around for quite some time. Last night we didn’t watch either of them again so they’ll still be there next time.

Our first film was not very good. it had moments and a good cast but basically it was rubbish. It featured Colin Farrell with an awful English accent (he’s actually Irish) and the hopelessly untalented Keira Knightly playing a celeb we’re supposed to feel sorry for but can’t help but find odious. Ray Winstone is also in it and turns in an awful performance. Seriously, why was this made?

The film is called London Boulevard and was made in 2010. It sort of wants to be a Guy Ritchie ‘gangster’ film and sort of wants to be a social comment. It is neither. As far as I’m concerned, the only good thing in it is Anna Friel who is as delightful as only she can be.

But don’t just take my word for it, here’s an excerpt from a review I found on the imdb:

It lacked any real tension or suspense, the story felt underdeveloped with too many subplots and a lot of it just fails to convince. Many parts of the film are just not believable enough. (mattquigley1978 from imdb.com)

The second film was a VAST improvement. We (I say ‘we’ but Nicktor actually had me choose) decided to watch another Coen brothers movie. This time it was Miller’s Crossing. Brilliant, as usual. The Coens are amazingly creative and you’re never too sure what sort of film you’re going to get except that it’ll be amazing.

Miller’s Crossing is about prohibition America and gangsters and floozies and hats. It’s not for the squeamish although there’s no blood, no swearing and no sex. In fact, if anything, it’s very funny…in that typical Coen fashion.

It’s hard to pick out any single actor as being a stand out because they are all so believable but I loved the cameo by Steve Buscemi as Mink. He just cracks me up. He has ever since I saw him in Reservoir Dogs as the indignant Mr Pink. He has one little scene in Miller’s Crossing and he talks at 100mph right through it.

Also worth a mention is the hat belonging to the main character, Tom (played by Gabriel Byrne). It deserves a credit all of its own. A character pretty much central to the plot. My favourite part was when he had to quickly jump out of the window to head off another character. He was just out of bed and just had an undershirt and trousers with braces on. He reached out and grabbed his gun and then, before leaping out of the window, grabbed his hat as well. He may have had no shoes or shirt on but he had his hat. Genius.

Actually, it’s just occurred to me that one of the characters, a gangster boss keeps accusing people of treating him like a ‘high hat’. I’m sure there’s probably more references to hats in it as well. Quite apart from the fact that nearly all the characters in the film wear hats. Maybe it’s just all about the hat.

Of course, we followed the films with our usual dose of Ronnie Corbett in Sorry, finishing series two. It is such a silly show and we laugh all the way through it.

We ordered in Chinese for dinner, drank lots of beer and some delicious whisky (thanks Nicktor) before retiring about 20 minutes before getting up again.