Oh my God has it snowed today. What with living on the fifth floor, I think the snow will soon reach our window. It’s getting a bit mental. Can’t see anything but white. Lose direction of where you’re going. Can’t really get ahead anyways, as you’re knee-high in snow, and you feel like you’re just treading water. Ridiculous I tells ya. I’m really rather surprised we made it home just now.
Despite the weather, we went to the cinema. The point of the exercise was to use up our free tickets, but of course we forgot those at home. As you do. So, The Last Samurai. Ahh yes, I was a bit weary of it to start with, Tom Cruise as a Samurai… honestly. Well, Tennispalatsi (the big theatre with big soft comfy seats) was all booked so we had to go to Forum (the old theatre with seats like church benches and a draft problem), which wasn’t the best of starts. Before the film started we for some weird and wonderful reason got to enjoy a er.. ‘performance’ by Kendo (I think) Master Christian. There were a lot of stifled giggles in the audience. I was rude enough to snap a few pictures…
The film itself was alright in a Dances with Wolves in Japan kinda way. Tom wasn’t bad, albeit he did look constipated throughout. You might want to spare a thought for Stu who sat through quite a lot of japanese conversing with finnish subtitles. Aww. Most enjoyable moments for me were the 6 or so lines Billy Connolly got to deliver before getting killed by a big bad samurai.
The scenery was beautiful and Tom looked quite statuesque (ahh now we clocked why he wanted the role) among his japanese fellow actors. So visually it was a pleasing experience, and all in all, it was quite enjoyable until my butt went to sleep (because of the torture seat) and a lot of yawn-inducing war scenes ensued. Don’t get me wrong, I know some people appreciate battle/war scenes, I just find them… boring. And as futile as war itself. Get a load of men into one place and get left with a whole bunch of bodies. What is the point again?
Anyways, I’m not exactly converted to the Church of little Tom, but I think he did an alright job in an alright film. That’s about the long and short of it.