scrunchy

As an added treat at the screening of Idiots and Angels at the Cameo we were honoured with the presence of Bill Plympton himself and his scrunchy face before and after his scrunchy-faced-character-filled and scrunchy-noised cartoonstuffs. He was flogging some artwork in the foyer afterwards but gave everyone who could be bothered to queue a quick signed sketch of the wee dog from the short Hot Dog which was nice of him. The film was of the expected quality/amusingness too.

Shiver wasn't particularly up to much... suffers a bit from the derivative-Spanish-horror-set-in-the-countryside disease which afflicted The Orphanage and even The Devil's Backbone on any viewing after the first despite quite liking it initially. It managed a bit of suspense here and there but completely bollocksed-up the end and is therefore not recommended. If I remember what it was it really reminded me of before the post-edit-deadline I'll add it in.

***

Managed a nice pop to the Elephant House earlier to give my best man his souvenir Moro-chocolate and selected items from the strange and amusing Japanese-product NZ$3-shop in Auckland from which I got the handy and discreet electrostatic equipment-cleaning brush-thing which I keep at work to maintain an oatcake-and-muffin-crumb-free-desk and keyboard. Souvenir-wise I was torn between a few mystery items but eventually went for the set of ten paper smog-masks and what appeared to be (from illustrations on similar products) a sort of stick/scoop device for scraping wax out of the ear canal (obviously at great risk of doing the user permanent damage) although I picked one particular specimen because it had no English instructions on it anywhere and was illustrated with a couple of inanely-smiling people, evidently supposed to be satisfied users of such a device. Unfortunately the recipient's filthy mind suggested that it was perhaps a device for cleaning out an entirely different aperture despite the lack of distinct discomfort on the faces on the wrapper. Every city should have such a shop, anyway. I've not been in a £1-shop in the UK for a while but I don't recall their stock being anywhere near as fascinatingly esoteric.