A full week back at work. Been quite busy though.

Monday night Tom and Marty dropped by. Hadn't seen Marty for quite a while and he was sporting a rather impressive beard. We did the only sensible thing given the circumstances and went to Nando's to eat delicious chicken. Stopped by the video store, the collection of which was sadly pretty lacklustre. However, managed to pick up 7 weeklies and headed home to watch a DVD.

Tuesday night was Laura's birthday. It involved lots of vegetarian food, playing the 'Glee' soundtrack loudly and drinking countless bottles of wine. And then watching 'Man vs. Wild'. It was obviously a good night.

And last night? Well, met up with Mike in Camberwell to watch a film. Then stopped by Sofia's for some dinner and said "Hi" to Omar who was working.

What else is new? I finished reading a book, 'The Visitor' by Lee Child. It was good, a real page turner. I'll read more of his stuff I reckon. Also, turns out I'll have lots of work in Jan and Feb which will be handy money-wise. I'd like to try and balance that work with a couple of writing projects that I'm developing though. One is a feature length zombie film, quite dark but may have comic elements. The other is a TV show idea, a comedy-drama focusing on a middle aged man and his family. My focus at the moment is really getting the structure right before I start writing dialogue and action and stuff.

'Look Both Ways' (2005) directed by Sarah Watt

Well acted, good characters, some cool animation. Felt pretty slow though, the pace of it was quite drawn out and given the film's focus on death, it felt pretty heavy going. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, still a good film. Just not a lot of action, more of a character piece.

'A Serious Man' (2009) directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

An incredibly complex film despite it's fairly simple plotline. It's full of mysterious loose threads, unexplained subplots, compelling peripheral characters and brief vignettes. It really feels like a Coen brothers film. I found it engaging and well put together but ultimately it was a little dissatisfying. I guess there were so many elements that I would have liked to have been carried through more but having said that, that's also part of the charm of the film. Not everything is spelled out or developed as you might expect, most of the really interesting stuff is only hinted at. There is no real conclusion to the film either, it kind of stops short, leaving things ambiguous. I'm still thinking about this film though, definitely thought provoking.