Hello again everybody. Occasionally flicking through your posts (especially Laura's - you mentioned Storytelling, I'll come to it later), still looking for a placement and generally messing about with an odd job in between. How else can I describe my current situation? It's not exactly an all-time high, so the title I'm using for this message gives the second best way of describing it. Still, few won't realise that the title's a lame 007 pun (the Roger Moore season on ITV finished just days ago). Anyway, last month there was Tunisia. It was great while it lasted (one week, that's all it was). The place we stayed, Port El Kantoui (I'll never remember how to spell it) seemed to have been purposely built for tourists! Not that that's a bad thing for us visitors (I encountered many English people there, and even a few Irish) but I wonder how the natives must find it. However, no matter how cynical I am about the tourist aspect, you shouldn't let it detract from the enjoyment of the place. There was plenty of chances to go swimming (either in the Med or the hotel's pool), an arcades room (even though most of them were ancient and me and my brothers preferred to play pool) and even a discotheque (I only went there one night though). There was also the chance to play many sports, but I think what really stood out for me is the activities you could do at the beach. Especially paragliding. The thought of it may scare some of you, but if you get in the right seating position and hold on, you are sitting comfortably while you float up high in the air, and the view is tremendous. Enough about that. Now, my last post before I left suggested how "excited" I was about seeing Storytelling. Well...having seen it now I am very divided over it. Now that I know how Todd Solondz treats the characters in his films I'm not so convinced that I want to see Welcome To The Dollhouse or Happiness, no matter how highly they've been rated.

From what I've been reading about them, Welcome To The Dollhouse makes you glad that you're still an adult, rather than back in high school, and Happiness just seems like American Beauty.

But Storytelling...well, what was the point of it? The fiction act made more sense than the non-fiction act, but in my opinion the whole film was virtually directionless. Some of Solondz's characters may live long in the memory, but you don't really want them to. Nearly all the characters in this film are dislikable or warped (with the possible exclusion of Selma Blair's Vi). That little kid in the non-fiction act - now I know most kids in films are brats, but this one is more so than any other one I've seen. I can understand now why you all thought Storytelling "sucked", but are Solondz's films meant to be attractive viewing anyway? A few scenes are disturbing. There's some things in that film which you really don't want to see again, and other things which are just boring. What gets me, though, is that Belle & Sebastian's music seems out of place in a film such as this. I did like the end credits theme (sung by Isobel) but doesn't it seem a little too cheery for the setting? And I was glad when the film ended, even though it's only about 80 minutes. Apart from Storytelling, the only other film I saw recently was Austin Powers 3 - and there's very little to say about that. I avoided Men In Black II on a friend's advice - have any of you seen it? Enough for now. Take care, Psi __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+