Sam and the twenty, what could possibly go wrong?

Two and a half hours later, the driver is still sorting through change – doesn’t have any notes. Oh nooooooooo! I end up buying Sam’s ticket (got paid back later, cheers!)

Still has the twenty AND a bus ticket, well done!

SHAKE HARDER BOOOOOY!!!

Feelin’ fine. That is all.

At the start of the year I was genuinely looking forward to the Nightmare on Elm Street Remake. So much so that I curious enough about the retelling of the original story that I was at one point considering venturing into the cinema to see it. Unfortunately as the release drew nearer I became a bit shallow minded and took into account the reviews from the movie press along with the diehard Freddy fans, which killed my enthusiasm for the movie and therefore I never saw it in the end.

Knowing the Blu Ray/DVD release was creeping up for a Halloween release my interest in the movie was still at an all-time low until I learnt of the existence of a Nightmare on Elm Street box set. This box contains a copy of the remake and the original for just a few pounds more than buying the remake by itself. I gave it a bit of thought and decided to go ahead with it, if I hated the remake then I have a copy of the original, if I liked the remake then cha-ching!

I watched the remake first dreading the worst and actually ended up pleasantly surprised. The new Freddy Kruger is not the clown Robert Englund’s character turned into as the original series progressed. This Kruger is an incredibly sadistic bastard, who even appears in micro naps (where you are so sleep-deprived that you begin to dream while awake). At one point just after a character meets his demise we are taken back into the dream world where Freddy has said character hung upside down while he is reminded by Mr. Kruger that it takes 7 minutes for the brain to die and that they have another 6 minutes of play time. Very good, very good indeed!

I think I enjoyed this movie a lot more because I watched with low expectations. I find it also helped to stop drawing comparisons between the originals and this movie, which at times was very difficult due to the number of references and tributes scenes being thrown about.

Anyway, enough on the remake. What about the original? It’s basically the 2006 DVD release with a HD makeover. I believe (though I can’t be 100% sure) the extras have also been upgraded to high-definition, which is a big plus.

I was disappointed to find that after all of these years the Tina death scene is still cut. Yup after all these years we still can’t see her hitting the bed with blood splattering everywhere yet it’s perfectly acceptable to see the girl in Hostel having her hanging eye cut off (complete with puss spray, yum!) or another helpless victim die at the hands of one of Jigsaw’s traps in the Saw series. If you’re willing to overlook this, the movie is as good as ever and at points looks like it could’ve been filmed in the last few years.

Overall this is a good little box set and in my opinion is definitely worth a purchase if you’re skeptical about the remake AND you’re lacking the original movie from your collection.

I’ll be making further changes over the coming days as there are a few more bits I want to change here and there.

Unfortunately today it’s a little cloudy out (it’s meant to rain later), but at least I can see a tiny bit of blue sky. Hopefully the weather will stay fairly nice.

In unrelated news, I now want to see Scott Pilgrim Vs The World.

See, what happened was at around 7pm this evening I thought I’d try and watch the Inglourious Basterds Bluray I bought at Tesco today but PowerDVD had other ideas. After three quarters of an hour try to mess with the bastard thing (and trying alternatives) I admitted defeat and retired to bed while watching Robot Chicken on DVD. The only problem with this was I was out cold for the next 6-7 hours and now I’m wide awake.

I’ve already been looking into this but I am definitely in the market for a dedicated Bluray player now. I can’t put up with PowerDVD’s crap.

At first I thought “hmm, I’ll disable it once just for this page” but no it continued to have a hissy fit about Adblock being installed. It was at this point where I decided that the website could go and fuck itself. I am not being dictated to by some twerp on the Internet about what software I have installed on my PC. And to be honest, if this happens again, I’ll go elsewhere for what I’m looking for.

The page was probably packed with enough ads to kill my PC anyway.

Anyway it looks like we’re gradually going back to normality, after a week’s worth of shorter days due to the weather I am now back to working 9 – 5. What a nice start to the year especially when your permanent contract kicked in! I’ve also already got nine and a half days worth of holiday booked off *squee*. I had 66 hours to claim before the 31st March, so I’m taking a couple of long weekends between the end of the month and March.

One of them covers Aliens Vs Predator’s release and the other will allow me some quality time with Battlefield: Bad Company 2, this of course is assuming their release dates stick!