If at first you don't succeed...

My mate Jev hosts the occasional film night on his home cinema system. Not any ordinary home cinema system, oh no. Jev doesn’t do things by half. This is a fully-fledged, self-contained, velvet curtains, 1000 inch, 1,000,000-watt sound system home cinema.

The Old Thatch Cinema society (that’s what we’re called) meets up every so often Chez O’Neill and the first film we watched was American Gangster, a film by Ridley Scott starring Denzel Washington. A highly entertaining film which scored highly amongst us in the post-film vote.

Last Friday we were treated to Withnail & I, a 1987 film by Bruce Robinson starring Richard E Grant and Paul McGann. Jev introduced the film as one which you either love or hate, but to be honest I was neither. It was entertaining, but I think as a non-film buff I missed some of the subtleties of the film. It was good, but I won’t be rushing out to see it again (sorry Jev).

We watched City of God a couple of months ago. This film, by Fernando Meirelles (the same guy responsilble for the recent movie ‘Blindness’) is at Number 18 in IMDB’s list of greatest films of all time, and is about two boys growing up in a violent neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro who take different paths: one becomes a photographer, the other a drug dealer. I think I must have had too many pre-film beers that night because, again, I didn’t rate it that highly. It is a fast moving, subtitled film which you need to work hard at keeping track with and, frankly, I just think I wasn’t up to it the night we watched it.

However, I acquired the DVD of the film last Friday from one of the other guys, Dave Jones, and treated myself to a second viewing over the weekend. At well over 2 hours long, I had to watch it in 2 halves but, boy oh boy, what a masterpiece! I was completely ‘up for it’ and so was able to keep with the story and I am so glad I did. This is an absolutely incredible film and I can’t believe that I will ever see anything better. Prior to this, my current favourite was ‘Babel’ – a film by Alejandro González Iñárritu and in similar gritty style – but City of God has surpassed that. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend that you do so. But don’t go expecting any religious hymns or prayers, because you’ll be disappointed.

It just goes to show, in the film world at least, if at first you don’t succeed, try again.

I need to try again at my training schedule at the moment because I still can’t seem to get back into things as much as I should have. I have skipped swimming and cycling for a couple of weeks and done just a few runs. I am happy with how my running is coming along, but I need to HTFU and get out on my bike in the wind and rain.

There is a phrase which Jev uses – ‘ironmen are born in winter’ – and I think I need to adapt this a little to ‘world-sprint wannabees don’t wimp out of training just because it’s a bit wet and cold’. I do have an excuse though and that’s that work has been very busy this week, so I am not going to beat myself up about it too much.

This week we have my tri club’s Monday night social night (meets every first Monday of the month after swim training), and on the agenda for discussion is the new kit design (see previous blog). I think the ‘get rid of sharky’ brigade will have a difficult job of succeeding, and so it looks like a new design is on the horizon. Let's hope less 'Shark's Tale' and more 'Jaws' please guys, the latter surely being worthy of The Old Thatch Cinema Society. More news about this next week, no doubt.

Cheers

C