You've Tried Once & Failed Miserably. The Lesson Is: Never Try

After attempting to build the PC by myself on Friday evening, I resigned myself to the fact that I needed help and called Ian to see if he could pop over tomorrow afternoon and have a look at it. I then did the only honourable thing required of a quiet Friday night in by myself [Lou was out with friends] which was to get drunk and watch some new American Dad and Family Guy. And at this I am a King. Sozzled and rapidly blinking off my hazy vision around 1am, I decided that it would be a good time to go to bed.

As I cannot sleep in on weekends, not through lack of trying, I usually watch the Saturday Cook Show slumped on the sofa sipping coffee. This week had a great recipe for Jambalaya by Charita Jones which I intend on making sometime in the near future. I used to rack my brains for a meal to cook on Wednesdays and now I have too many good ones to choose from but no complaints about that.

In the afternoon, Ian called round to have a look under the bonnet of computer. Everything looked to be in place but unfortunately it just wouldn't boot up. At first he suspected that the RAM I bought might be too good for the motherboard or else the graphics card was a dud. Unfortunately we had no way of testing out the theory as he didn't have an SLI machine. "I think Don has a new SLI machine" I said. "Really?" replied Ian. "Yes. Yes he does."
A quick call later, Don was more than happy to bring his PC around for swopping parts but Ian had to leave as Suzy and Ricky were suffering from flu-like symtoms. We tried the graphics card to no avail. Then the RAM. Whhrrrrr! It's booting! Turns out the RAM is to good for my motherboard! Luckily Don had 2 sticks of gig RAM and is currently lending me one until I get my own. The good news is that it runs new games at full specifications with no slow down. Huzzah! Victory, at last, is mine.

After a high five, we decided it was time to get some wine and watch a movie whilst the new PC was formatted and XP installed. I'm part of LoveFilm and this weeks choices left us with Evil Dead 2 or Audition to watch. We settled on the latter.

Audition is a very strange concept for a film and is part ROM-COM/Horror/Thriller/Drama. It is directed by the esteemed director Takashi Miike. The basis of the story revolves around a bachelor who, since his wife died and is egged on by his only son, decides to remarry and explains his situation to a friend in the movie industry. An audition is set up for a non-existant film and single females are called in to, well, audition. The bachelor, having looked through their CV's, already has made his decision and he invites his choice out to dinner to talk about the film but obvioulsy chats her up instead. They begin to date but she is not as she appears and there is a cavalcade of secrets and a dark past to unearth as the film progresses.
The plot is fairly straight forward until an hour in where it gets decidedly obtuse and difficult to follow until the secrets are revealed.
The film is certainly engaging and sets it apart from other films of similar nature due to it's merging of genre's that are not normally compatable or indeed made by Hollywood but this is Japanese film-making and this is Takashi Miike.
If you are looking for an off-beat and interesting film, I suggest tracking this down.

I would give it 4 needles out of 5.

As you can imagine, Sunday was spent tinkering with the new PC until the evening when The Wedding Crashers was popped into the DVD for the weekend wind-down. Unfortunately the film was a bit of a let down. The romance aspect is formulaic and the humour is sporadic and clichéd. Nevertheless there are some hilarious momments especially from Vince Vaughn and some [typically] great acting from Christoper Walken but not enough to keep this film afloat or worthy of a re-watch.

I would give it 2.5 hamptons out of 5.

Hope you all had a great weekend. See you tomorrow!