Rented a bunch of movies recently -

I was actually after the Acid House and accidentally picked up this instead. It wasn't to bad. Possibly a little to artificially 'hip' for my liking but a pretty funny look at people escaping the drudge of their 9 to 5 McJob's for a hedonistic clubbing weekend.

By the same guy that did Akira - Steamboys animation is of a similarly high-standard but the storyline isn't as good. Essentially its a kind of 'steampunk' sci-fi story set during the industrial revolution of the 1800's. Not bad but not great.

I'm not a fan of rom-coms so my impressions of this will always be biased :-) basically its just a super cliched story of a woman meeting her partners super-tight family for the first time. Intimidating for sure but the feeble attempts at humour and romance through cringe-worthy embarressment fall pretty flat. The plot line as usual is telegraphed halfway through the proceedings and there are no redeeming special effects or performances to carry the movie either.

The first three episodes of the Christopher Eccelston helmed Tardis were a pleasant surprise. I never watched it on TV because I figured it would be terrible. Turned out I was quite wrong and its actually a pretty good adventure show with plenty of tongue in cheek humour to keep both adults and children alike happy. It's a shame Chris decided to give up this role, he was on a par with Tom Baker, as I'm not sure I like the new guy - then again he may grow on me.

Another Anime - this time about the crew of the ship 'Cowboy Bebop' as they hop from planet to planet collecting (or attempting to collect) bounties on various nefarious criminal types. Unlike most Anime this is more about the stories and characters than the usual 'giant-transforming-robot' plots prevalent in many similar shows. I'll definitely be checking out the next in the series.

And at the movies -

Excellent Swedish 'feel good movie' about a sick conductor who returns to his tiny home town to recuperate. The town has a choir in need of some professional assistance and you can pretty much tell what will happen from here on in. This doesn't stop the film from being a refreshing alternative take on the traditional schmaltzy Hollywood fare (any number of 'famous-guy inspires the little-guy to rise above their modest beginnings' movies). Recommended.

* Neal Stephenson - Quicksilver

This is a good read and my first introduction to cult author Neal Stephenson - not quite the very first as I had already read his geek monolog on the joys of a command line interface. Basically a historical drama set in the 1600's following three interconnected story arcs with a common element of discovery and change (hence the mercurial reference of the title). Lots of links to famous historical figures that leads to interesting wikipedia lookups as I try and get a handle on some of the characters and locations visited by the characters. About the only downside is that the density of information and sheer size of this book makes for really really slow going. The storylines are good but not compelling enough for me to plow through the next two similarly sized books in the series. However if you really enjoy historical fiction and have some big chunks of time to dedicate to reading then it may be of interest.

* Charles Stross - Accelerando

This is much more my speed - I picked it up 3/4 of the way through 'Quicksilver' as some light relief from Stephensons tome. Charles Stross is turning into one of my favourite authors - this collection of three stories (available in free pdf/etext as well as commercial dead tree format) follows one of Stross' favourite themes - the impending Singularity. It touches upon many popular ideas and technologies but pushes them just a little further into the very near future giving it a very realistic feel - wether it will age well is another story. Highly recommended.