The Golden Compass

The Golden Compass is the first installment in a new children's movie trilogy based on the His Dark Materials novels by Philip Pullman. This first movie is based on the novel called Northern Lights, although it was re-titled for the US market to The Golden Compass.

The story takes place on a parallel universe where everyone possesses a dæmon, a shape-shifting animalistic manifestation of their soul. Our tale begins when young Lyra Belacqua (Dakota Blue Richards), an orphan residing at Jordan College, Oxford, secretly enters the Retiring Room, despite resistance from her dæmon, Pantalaimon (Freddie Highmore).

Hiding inside the room, she espies someone attempting to poison her uncle, Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig), and stop him revealing the existence of mysterious elementary particles called Dust. Lyra warns her uncle, preventing his murder, and he tells the scholars about his findings.

When her friend Roger is kidnapped by the mysterious Gobblers, Lyra vows to rescue him and gets her chance when Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman), a powerful figure in the Magisterium, offers to take Lyra away from Jordan College to become her apprentice. Before she leaves, the Master of the college gives her an alethiometer, a mystical device resembling a golden compass and which he says can give the answer to any question posed it. But the Magisterium and Mrs. Coulter know of the existence of the alethiometer and have very definite plans for both it and Lyra.

I was a bit wary about going to see yet another children's novel made into a film as we seem to be being flooded by them lately. However, this isn't quite as silly as the first Harry Potter movie and it has a fairly decent story behind it. Besides, it was the Christmas break so it's kind of expected.

It's always difficult transferring books to film because of the time constraints but it comes with a pretty good cast including Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Sir Ian McKellan, Tom Courtenay, Ian McShane, Sam Elliott and Christopher Lee and, along with some very good CGI visual effects bringing the dæmons and the ice bears to life, it tells a very watchable tale. I wouldn't recommend it for very young children though as there is a fair level of violence

I haven't read the books but, going by this film, the story seems capable of holding an adult audience as well as any Harry Potter book did so they may be worth checking out as well. Hopefully the sequel will be as good. It's called The Subtle Knife and is due for release in 2009.

Genre: Adventure, Drama, Family, Fantasy, Thriller
My Rating: 7/10

Hogmanay in Fort William

Faced with a dismal menu of TV programmes over the New Year break, not having tickets for the Glasgow Hogmanay celebrations and the weather across the central belt looking very bleak indeed, we headed north to Fort William and potentially better weather, maybe even some of the white stuff. Setting off just after lunch, we arrived at about half past three, just as the sun was starting to go down.

Loch Linnhe Sunset On Hogmanay

Accommodation

As usual we left it to the last minute to decide on going. That and the fact that our wireless router had given up the ghost left us with very little choice of accommodation and not much in the way of a means to locate more options.

Anyway, Lorna ploughed though her pile of old business cards and tourist information brochures and called one we'd stayed at some years before, Blythdale, and which we'd remembered as being okay with some pretty good views out over Loch Linnhe, but they didn't have any room and suggested we try their neighbour at Balcarres. Luckily they had a room but, being the New Year and with them touting the fact that they had a four-star rating from the Scottish Tourist Agency, it wasn't that cheap but we took it anyway.

Unfortunately we couldn't really recommend Balcarres to anyone planning on staying in Fort William. Their web site makes it look not too bad and the owner was pleasant enough but the accommodation is definitely in need of a bit of renovation. The decor looked like it was last done in the 1980s, there were damp patches in one corner of the room, the bathroom radiator didn't work at all, there were mould stains round the shower and the TV was so old, the remote didn't work very well at all.

I've no idea when they got their four-star rating but it's in serious need of re-evaluation. We've stayed in two-star B&Bs with better facilities, etc. We even had to ask for fresh towels on the second day. These comments have been passed on to the tourist agency.

Eating Out

We booked a table at the Highland Star Chinese restaurant on High Street as we'd eaten there before a few times and it had always been pretty good. It was quieter than we'd expected but that could have been because of the time of year. It's usually packed during the main summer season.

Still, the food was good as usual and the service quick and friendly. The menu is pretty straightforward Chinese fair with nothing extraordinary on offer but it's always been good in the past and it's happily free of MSG as I usually get a pretty severe headache next day after eating anything tainted by it. If you fancy a Chinese meal in Fort William, then I'd recommend it.

The Entertainment

So, well fed and looking for some entertainment to see us through the bells, we wandered down High Street to see what was on offer. We already knew that there was a Hogmanay Ceilidh on at the Nevis Centre but it was ticket only and was predicted to be a sell out as it had been the previous couple of years. If we'd known we were going to Fort William earlier in the year, then we might have tried to get tickets. However, there were quite a few lads wandering around town in formal Highland Dress, obviously heading for the Ceilidh so it may well have been too posh for the likes of us.

With quite a few of the local bars staying open over the bells, we opted for the Ben Nevis Bar. It certainly seemed the liveliest and we've spent a few good nights in there before with some good live music acts as well. This time it was a disco and I know that sounds bad, almost as bad as karaoke, but it was actually quite a good night. I think we called it a night about one thirty and trudged wearily, or was was that wobbily, back to our bed.

Cold Turkey Spell Over!

Well that's me back online again after almost a week. I woke up on the 29^th of December to a wireless router showing no wee blinky lights at all. It was deid!

Talk about Christmas Cold Turkey! Finagle's Law strikes again so, just when I'd be settling in to doing a bit of surfing over the holiday period to pass the time, I couldn't. Even buying a replacement wouldn't be simple - no internet to check prices, models, etc. and, it being the holiday period, no guarantee of quick delivery.

We were planning to go away for a few days over the weekend and the new year so it wasn't a huge deal but it is very, very unsettling to have no connection to the net. Anyway, I'm back online again now. The problem was the the power supply, which was easily replaced.

The Illuminatus! Trilogy - by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson

The Illuminatus! Trilogy is a compendium of the three books (The Eye In The Pyramid, The Golden Apple and Leviathan) in one volume.

The story begins with an investigation by a couple of New York City detectives into the bombing of a leftist magazine called Confrontation and the disappearance of its editor. The two discover that it was currently looking into the John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinations and, following a trail of memos that suggest the involvement of powerful secret societies, they become drawn into a web of conspiracy theories.

Who really shot the Kennedys? Why is there a pyramid on a one-dollar bill? Can dolphins really talk? All this and the mysteries of of the lost city of Atlantis are answered within.

Unfortunately, for all the back cover hype, this was perhaps the most disappointing book I've read in a long time. There were so many occasions that I thought about just giving up and reading no more but I persevered just in case something could resurrect my interest. Sadly it was not to be and I ended up finishing the book with no more satisfaction than I had after the first 100 pages.

The writing style is atrocious! There is literally no structure to the work. There are no chapters and sentences can run on from one to the next with no breaks or punctuation. What's even worse is the fact that, within a paragraph, you can be reading about one character's exploits and in the next sentence the focus switches completely and there's no indication that anything has changed at all until it dawns on you that something doesn't seem right.

How anyone can rate this as a "cult masterpiece" or a "devilishly funny work" I'm not sure. There's very little in the way of humour in it and most of the story is either just confusing or absolute waffle. Okay, they've seeded it with a few hard-core sex and drug scenes to appeal to the pulp-fiction junkies but even that gets a bit tedious after a while. Most of the main characters meandered through the story while high on drugs so I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the authors were in a similar condition when they wrote it.

If you want to retain your sanity, then give this one a miss!

Genre: Mystery, Science-Fiction
ISBN: 978-1-85487-574-7
My Rating: 3/10

ScotRail Strike Again!

We wanted to go into town last night to see my son's band Room 13 play a gig but when I checked the times of the trains online, I was shocked to discover that we'd been stuffed yet again by ScotRail. There was no service at all on our line on either the 27^th or 28^th due to track improvements and maintenance taking place between Glasgow Central and Paisley Gilmour Street.

It's the Christmas and New Year break and just when you'd prefer to use public transport rather than drive but ScotRail, as ever, have little consideration for us lowly passengers. Fair enough, there's no train service on Christmas day and Boxing Day but when that drags onto the 28^th, it's too much.

What's worse is that they don't even consider this a disruption of service. At least not if you've subscribed to their JourneyCheck service, which is supposed to alert you by e-mail if there are any problems with your selected routes and times. It's useful for checking if there are going to be problems getting into work but all I got today was "There are no disruptions reported at this time affecting services between your selected stations."

Bah! Humbug!

Enchanted

Faced with an evening in listening to our upstairs neighbour fitting a carpet, we decided to head into town for dinner and a movie. We had a nice meal in Viva Ristorante in Bothwell Street and then headed up to the Cineworld to see Enchanted an animated/live action movie from Disney.

The tale is set in the fairytale land of Andalasia where the evil Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon), scheming to keep her throne for as long as she can, has kept her step-son Prince Edward (James Marsden) well away from any marriagable fair maidens.

However, when fate (and her singing) causes the prince to encounter the fair Giselle (Amy Adams) while out hunting ogres in the forest, the pair of them fall in love and plan to marry the next day. Not to be so easily thwarted, Narissa, disguised as an old hag, persuades Giselle to try the old wishing well in the castle gardens but, when the girl has her eyes closed, she pushes her in, banishing her to a world where there are no happy ever afters - New York City.

In New York, Giselle meets divorce attorney Robert (Patrick Dempsey) and his 6 year old daughter and tries to come to terms with life in the real world while absolutely sure that her true love Edward will come to her rescue. Of course Narissa has plans to make sure that she never returns.

I suppose it was only a matter of time before Disney once again milked the success of movies like Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Cinderella but it works quite well here. Giselle is an amalgam of all three Disney heroines and the tale mixes in many different characters and story elements from all three movies - a damsel in distress, a handsome prince (or two), an evil witch queen and her nasty henchman, lots of friendly forest animals, a fair smattering of magic and a dragon.

The visuals are excellent. From the two dimensional, cel-animation land of Andalasia, where everything looks like those classic Disney animations of old, to the three-dimensional animations when some of the characters and effects reach through into the real world. As for the cast, Susan Sarandon is nastily good as the evil queen Narissa and Timothy Spall does a good job as her besotted servant Nathaniel. James Marsden plays the perfect fairytale prince with lots of gusto and Amy Adams is spot on as Giselle, a maiden who believes happy ever after is for real. Patrick Dempsey does the down to earth lawyer role very well even if he doesn't get any laughs.

It's all very cleverly done and, with a goodly amount of visual gags that will appeal to kids and adults, it's an ideal movie for the Christmas break and well worth catching in the cinema with the kids for the big screen experience.

Genre: Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Romance
My Rating: 7/10

Why Doesn't IKEA Deliver?

We've just had the kitchen done - new units, tiling, etc. so thought we'd get some stuff from IKEA to help finish it off. I had a bit of a browse on their site and spotted a circular dish drainer that would go well on our new semi-circular sink drainer. The IKEA web site's not bad, it gives the dimensions, images, etc. and you can even check if an item is in stock at your local store.

So, off we headed to IKEA the other night to find those items that the site had said were in stock. Note: Never, ever go at the weekend, especially a wet one, as the place is crammed full of hopeful and probably disappointed shoppers. Anyway, we wandered around the maze of twisty paths, ignoring the impulse buys, and hunted high and low to no avail and, not having had the foresight to remember the ridiculous names they give stuff, we couldn't really ask anyone where we could find them. We even got hold a catalogue but that only lists their main lines.

However, here's the killer. Before you can shop online with IKEA, you have to check if they deliver to your postcode area. Not unreasonable you might think but they seem to have different rules for delivieries for goods bought instore and for those bought online.

I know my local IKEA do deliveries as I've had some wardrobes and storage units delivered in the past so imagine my shock to find that I can't get a delivery from them if I order the goods online. What kind of system is that? The store is only a few miles away in Braehead so it's not like we're on the Outer Hebrides.

Now we're going to have to go back to the store and get hold of one of their very hard to find assistants and get them to tell us where the stuff we want is. Wish us luck!

It's no wonder there are a stack of blogs and sites out there listing people's gripes about IKEA. Here's a few worth reading…

• This Blog Sucks: IKEA
• I hate Ikea
• Sunday reflection: The 10 stages of IKEA
  
• Danielle Crittenden: Why I Hate Ikea
• I Hate Ikea!
• Retail Torture - Swedish Style
• Why I Hate Ikea