I know 2009 is a few days old now, but Happy New Year anyway!Well, we had a nice relaxing Christmas and New Year break, and got a lot of film and TV watching in, and relaxing by not going to work! I managed to stay awake and watch the impressive fireworks from central London (launched from and around the London Eye) which was broadcast as part of the usual crappy new year show BBC1 puts out around midnight. Amazing feat that, as the cheap wine from earlier had gone to my head and I was really tired! The Mrs. saw some of it, but she missed the end.
I also got a chance to visit my parents for a weekend in the holidays. It was a long drive, but the roads were generally ok to deal with in both directions. Shame I had to drive in the dark on the way back, but at least the weather was ok. When I was there, I got them a digital TV set top box, so at last they can get channel 5 without the speckles, and watch repeats on ITV4. Also, I went around to see my pal Kevin and he showed me his spanking new Panasonic Blu-ray player and TV setup. I have to say, the demo he gave me by playing the end sequence of the "2001: A Space Odyssey" disc was amazing. With the lights off, that stargate did my head in a bit. You don't need illegal drugs to trip when you have this!! :)
Oh, as for Christmas presents, Carla got me a fab gift, the "Starsky and Hutch" series 1-
4 DVD box set. So far, we are about a third of the way through series 1. Great stuff, I really love that series, it's definitely one of my favourites. Funny, action packed, and the stars David Soul (Hutch), Paul Michael Glaser (Starsky), and Antonio Fargas (Huggy Bear) are really cool to watch, even if it's all a bit camp. I joked that we should get our little Ford KA re-sprayed in that 1975 Gran Torino red and white as seen here!
I got some other cheapish DVDs recently, the first was a box set of Doug McClure family adventure films from the 70's: "The Land that Time Forgot", "At the Earth's Core", and "Warlords of Atlantis". All fun B-movies that have played on television loads of times (in fact, the latter two were on over Christmas!) I love the rubber monsters and bad back projection, the unconvincing fist fights, the minor British TV stars acting in character roles, and the ample cleavage on show from starlets of the time such as Caroline Munro and Lea Brodie. Well, I watched the first one I grabbed out of the box and that happened to be "Atlantis". I'm looking forward to seeing the other two films soon, and picking up "The People That Time Forgot" as well. I'll write about my other recent DVDs in the next posting.