the result

Luckily, it's quite comfortable. The back doesn't feel as strong as the old one so I'll have to stop sort of falling onto it with one hand on the back in order to reach and switch on the plug behind it when something needs to be switched on. The arms are nice and flat (all the better to support mugs and mice) but the upholstery looks like it develop rings where mugs of hot liquid have been resting for prolonged periods so I'll have to try to remember to stick the Guide bit of the newspaper underneath them at all times.

After a morning sitting about reading things I was picked up by a former colleague and his daughter to pop to finally see Avatar in giant-O-vision at Glasgow's IMAX. As an effects film, it has to be seen, though I suspect it would be just as wondrous in normal-sized 2D as even the scuba-mask-sized 3D glasses provided weren't big enough to cover the whole screen, so some of the IMAXiness was lost through their use. As the glasses are recycled at the end of each performance they were getting a bit scratched and cloudy, which is possibly why the 3D effect hadn't quite settled down by the time the first big action sequence kicked in with the result that a few of the faster whizzing-through-trees bits didn't work very well. Apart from a couple of character-based glitches, the physics was reasonably consistent and not often distracting. There was a bit too much luminescence in the scenery (which sometimes looked as if it had been done to counteract the unrealistic illumination CG occasionally suffers from) but it is again mostly consistent. The music is horrific, but only occasionally gets intrusive. The voices sometimes have the correct echoeyness but sometimes sound like they were recorded on a large stage. The story is utter bobbins. Fortunately, the giant blue people are quite effectively realised, another step on from the second Gollum scene in The Two Towers (the "It burns us! It freezes us!" dragged-by-the-neck bit, up there with the reveals in Jurassic Park when first seen) and the better bits of Cpt. Tentacle-Face in the Pirates films. They sometimes walk a bit funny and their eyes are too bright but the naturalism of facial expression is mostly unfaultable. It might age as badly as T2 (and Robert Patrick, whose face looked scarily melted in The Men Who Stare at Goats) but it seems to have succeeded in achieving picture-wowiness. Hopefully that was its only aim, as the narrative is a bad mix of various extracts from various things including a couple of bits which reminded me of the manner in which the Kwisatz Haderach would be identifiable in Dune.

Although the film is nearly three hours long it doesn't seem anything near that. an encouraging sign. The journey back from Glasgow took about the same time, and did seem as long as it was. Alan's car's helpful dashboard had been telling him how many more mile he would be able to drive at his current averaged rate of consumption and it would only have been enough to get us to Harthill if he drove far more sensibly and fuel-efficiently than he does; I'd avoided being so rude as to verbally comment on his driving on the way there (and had likewise been careful not to swear in the presence of his eleven-year-old) but had accidentally made some sort of comment or invisible-brake-pedal-style gesture which begat a "fuck off!" in response. After leaving the road and driving about six miles in various loops (whilst being told we only had enough fuel for anywhere between ten and zero miles) we eventually found a petrol station, nicely situated somewhere whence it was fairly obvious how to get back onto the motorway. Unfortunately we re-joined it right in the middle of the several-mile-long tailback (seemingly caused by nothing more than the closure of one of the carriageways in preparation for some work) which took thirty milesworths of fuel and well over an hour and a half to get the five miles to the next junction, whereupon I could resume my normal petrified behaviour as we sped back up again in order to get back to Edinburgh in time to pop for some food.