Film star, driving a car, propping up the bar, it looks so easy,
Film star, propping up the bar, driving in a car tonight!
What to believe in it's impossible to say, what to believe in?
When they change your name, wash your brain, play the game again (yeah, yeah, yeah)
Suede, 'Film Star'

Saw The Minority Report last night. Was decent. Tom Cruise was average at best but saved by the minimal requirements of his role (or maybe he just made the requirements appear minimal). The plot was brilliant and twisty (or 'maddeningly convoluted' in the words of anti-intellectual, blinkered and moronic West Australian film reviewer Mark Naglazas) and based on an interesting premise. Film lost its tone a couple of times. In science fiction there is often understated humour of the 'people treating weirdness as normal' variety. Crucial to the success of this humour is that it be played perfectly deadpan - that the characters involved give no sign that they realise they're being watched. In several of the efforts this film made at this sort of humour, it was far too obviously knowing. Special effects were predictably excellent (barring the now-ubiquitous slight failure of the CG in certain scenes), prop design was consistent and stylish and made you crave the material wealth of the future (in the form of noiseless, emissionless sleek cars for example). If anything, the failure of the film was in its desire to be decide what it wanted to be: thinkpiece, love story, spiritual journey or action extravaganza. Plus the ending should have been cut off. Anyway, I won't talk further for fear of heading into annoying spoiler territory. Oh, yes, there were a couple of eye-opening (har-har) plot holes.

Currently playing Tekken like there's no tomorrow. Scarily, if there were no tomorrow I might well spend my last hours playing Tekken. Raised a laugh by saying 'I feel like Tekken tonight' yesterday evening. I'm putting down this extended period of ignoring my vow to mental weakness brought on by the exam period. This excuse is feeble at best but remains kindly unquestioned by those around me. Speaking of which, I suppose I should put in a pleasant word or two of gratitude to recognise the various people who said supportive things to me prior to my exam yesterday. I know I'm not always the most demonstrative person, but I do appreciate it.

When cycling into university today, I ran across an old man on the cemetery side of Loch St station. He was wandering around muttering 'Loch Street' in a thick accent which I later discovered to be Arabic. Stopping to see if he was OK, I engaged him in conversation for about ten minutes by which time it was apparent that he had no idea where he was or where he was going. I eventually dragged his surname out of him, went to the nearest service station and found his address in the phonebook, and took him there (it was about a block and a half away). He was utterly humiliated by the experience, I could see, although I was trying to be nice. It must be awful losing your wits to such an extent. In any case, had a strongly samaritan-esque feeling after this random act of humanity. I could get into this whole 'nice' thing if it didn't always have strings attached.