Film: Hacksaw Ridge

Yeah, I know. Not as advertised.

See, I had this Wowcher for the annual Magic Lantern festival. Bought it ages ago - and as usually happens with these things that aren't date-specific, my days gradually got booked up, until yesterday was the only day I could make it before the festival ended. From last year, I knew I wouldn't be able to enter before 8pm with the wowcher - ok, and yesterday evening I finally thought to check what time of night the festival finished, so I could see how long I'd have there.

And discovered it doesn't run on Mondays, Tuesdays or Wednesdays.. apart from last week, which was half term..

O for goodness' sake. I'll have to stop buying event Wowchers, I never end up using them! I don't have another day free for that now. Plus I had to come up with a Plan B for last night. Well, as so often happens, Plan B was a film - cue rapid redoing of film list, rechecking IMDB ratings. Happily, it was unusually quick, what with multiple showings of the same films, and not many new ones. Still, it took me three hours, and I despaired of getting it done  in time to get to anything.

8:40pm I finished, and started to check what was on where and when. The films right at the top of the list were all excluded - they either weren't showing at all yesterday, or one was showing during the day. Which left me with two at the top for yesterday - Hacksaw Ridge and John Wick: Chapter 2. (Huh?) Pardon my French, but WTF? What's John Wick doing that high? Waiting with anticipation to see that rating fall..

So, Hacksaw Ridge. Fair enough - at least I'd be seeing one of the big-hitting Oscar-nominated films. The two closest cinemas to me where it was showing had already started their last showings of the day, but I got lucky - Vue Piccadilly was showing it at 9.20, and is 10 minutes' walk away. I grabbed a couple of slices of toast at the office, and off I went. Met a persuasive beggar on the way, but not persuasive enough - I've been conned enough, and am unlikely to give anything any more.

Popped into the Tesco next door for cheap snacks.. Made it to the cinema at about the time of the start of the programme. Ah yes, this is the cinema with the dazzling, blue-lit stairs down to the screens.. proceed with caution. With no ticket machines evident, I had to head down to the basement to buy a ticket - and felt quite out of place, amongst all the folks buying booze! Special offer on mini bottles of prosecco, it seems - others were on wine. I passed - at just under £15 for the ticket, I figured they were getting enough of my money.

Gotta say this for the place - the seats are gorgeous. Plush upholstery, reclining - all I needed was something to put my feet up on. Of course, that didn't bother the folks in front of me, who just rested their weary legs on the backs of the seats in front of them.

Fully half an hour of ads followed - I was beginning to wonder what time I'd get out of there. And finally the much-lauded feature started, with an Oscar factoid - (a) this has been nominated for Best Director, and (b) the only female winner ever in this category was Kathryn Bigelow, for The Hurt Locker. So, Mel Gibson has directed this, described in the opening credits as a "true story" rather than "based on" one - the story in question being about Desmond Doss, the first conscientious objector to be awarded the Medal of Honor. The man himself is played by Andrew Garfield, with Hugo Weaving as his dad. Vince Vaughn shows up as his sergeant.

Goodness me, this was a strange one to watch. Long, for a start - approaching 2.5 hours, much of which came across as being of the Ladybird school of film direction. It started with the lighting, and the colour scheme - it was just so.. I dunno, pretty. We meet the tall, skinny, doe-eyed Mr. Doss in his picturesque Virginia hometown. And lordy, the boy almost never wipes the smile from his face. See Desmond save the boy from under the car! See Desmond take the boy to hospital! See Desmond smile at the pretty nurse! See Desmond enlist!

Moving on to boot camp.. See Desmond meet the usual jolly crowd of compadres in the barracks! See the likeable rogues we're obviously supposed to start caring about before they start losing bits on the battlefield! See the sarge bark at them! A more cliched bunch of recruits you'll never find. Similarly, the script is predictable, the characters' reactions by-the-numbers. It wasn't for this that Gibson got an Oscar nomination for Best Director.

Nope, it was obviously for the battle scenes. I expected no less - and I had my prediction confirmed. When our boy finally saw action - it was kind of like that old cinema gimmick, where they used to jiggle the seats to mimic what was happening on screen, you know? The mayhem that accompanied the opening battle scene was such that I literally did feel part of it. The ground shook, the guns roared. The flamethrowers were used to great effect! Stunning stuff, and I have never seen better fight scenes.

But hey, that made for a very unbalanced film, I thought. So, please no Best Director for Mel Gibson this year, no Best Picture either - not sure about Andrew Garfield, I suppose he did as well as anyone else in the Best Actor category! It's also nominated in the technical sound categories, in which - I think - it would be a worthy winner. Anyway, as I say, I'm glad to have seen one of the more famous nominated films this year.. And although it was after midnight when it finished, well, so what? I could walk home..

Tonight, unusually, London European Club is taking us to some storytelling - up in Cambridge Heath! Now, on Friday my boss rescheduled our weekly Tuesday evening meeting for this week to 6-6:45pm (most of the team is based in California, you see). She has some hope - I have to be in Cambridge Heath by 7! I've told her I'll come, but have to duck out before 6:30..

Tomorrow, I'm headed, with London Dramatic Arts (LDAM), to The Cherry Orchard, at the Arcola. And I caught an interesting conversation in relation to that evening - seems someone who's booked can't go, and posted in case anyone wanted his ticket. Whereupon the organiser was right on to him to explain that that's against the rules. Yes, ok, he doesn't get a refund if the ticket isn't sold on, and he can't sell on the ticket directly - I get that. But me oh my, it seems her anti-blogging page isn't the only page of rules she - or someone she knows - has come up with - take a read of the rules against reselling. I mean seriously - the ticket can't be passed on until the day of the event? And forget about a refund - at best, you can get credit. You have been warned..

Thursday, the Crick Crack Club is back at Crouch End, with The Fate We Bring Ourselves - finally advertised on their Meetup page! Ben Haggerty standing in for Claire Muireann Murphy, who's having a knee operation, it seems. Then I'm back to Ireland for the weekend.

Monday, the Man with the Hat and London for Less Than a Tenner are off to Two Man Show at Soho Theatre. I've seen it before, but it's worth seeing again. And so is the group!

Next Tuesday, Let's Do London - for less! is off to Sleeping Beauty, at the Opera House.

Wednesday 1st March - well lookee that, the same group is off to Roundelay, at Southwark Playhouse. Three in a row for the Man with the Hat - we'll have to carry him off on a stretcher. About time we got back to Southwark though - we've missed it!

Thursday 2nd, I was thinking of free comedy in Hammersmith - this time with London Live Comedy, Free Comedy Nights in Hammersmith Wimbledon and Farringdon, and Random London. But then Walk, Talks and Treasure Hunts (and Walking Victorian London) announced a walk called True Spy Stories! So I thought that sounded more interesting, and booked.

Friday 3rd, again, Crick Crack is telling stories - Daniel Morden and Hugh Lupton are performing Metamorphoses at Rich Mix. However, the Rich Mix website doesn't seem to have heard of this.. The independent Crick Crack Club website now has a link to buy tickets from Rich Mix though, and at the moment they're being sold at a discounted preview price. And now that the link is available, their Meetup group is advertising it too.

Saturday 4th, Let's Do London - for less! is back to see Sleeping Beauty - and so am I. Honestly, this was a mistake on my part - I was booking a lot at the time and forgot I was already going - but hell, I'd rather be doing this anyway than not. Amphitheatre, this time - it's been a while since I was there.

Sunday 5th, London for Less Than a Tenner is advertising "Soho: the Roots of the Swinging Sixties - guided walk"! Now, this confused me, before I read deeper.. I do recall the Man With the Hat saying that, while he was interested in guided walks, he wasn't interested in actually guiding them. Turns out someone else is doing the actual guiding.. Anyway, count me in.

Monday 6th, I'm off to see Russell Howard at the Albert Hall.

Tuesday 7th, jeez, the Man with the Hat is back again! Hard to keep up these days - so I'm going with Let's Do London - for less! to The Diary of a Teenage Girl at Southwark Playhouse.

Wednesday 8th, I finally get to go to something with the Post-Apocalyptic Book Club - not a book discussion this time, instead they're off to a play called The Machine Stops, at Jacksons Lane Theatre. Suitably post-apocalyptic. Then I'm back to Ireland for a long weekend.

Monday 13th, I'm with LDAM at the Royal Court, for The Kid Stays in the Picture.

And to complete the tally, that rescheduled talk on Brexit Vs. Trump from last Tuesday is on Tuesday 14th. Unless I decide to go to a film instead - being Funzing, I can get my money back if I cancel at least 48 hours in advance.