There’s something about a Tuesday.

It’s not a Monday, so it’s not the accursed beginning of the work week. If it were a Wednesday you’d know it’s the middle of the week and the end is nigh. A Thursday is a mere day away from Friday. And Friday is of course Friday.

If I were Tuesday I’d be suffering a major identity crisis.

I saw a movie yesterday.
Among other things:
1. The hero spends a large-ish amount of time dancing around, oblivious to his surroundings
2. The heroine does, as someone else pointed out, little other than scream and fall
3. A clearly high end scientific facility is unsecured and very easy to enter
4. People get amnesia and recover from it just like that.
5. One of the bad guys is a bad guy because he needs money to pay for his daughter’s medical treatment
6. Said daughter gives him a locket with a photograph of her inside it and said locket constantly provides inspiration through adversity
7. There is more than one bad guy
8. Two of the bad guys get together to destroy the hero, through the girl
9. The other bad guy seeks to do the same through the same girl, by forcing her to sacrifice her love for the hero in order to save the hero from him (third bad guy)
10. There’s a climatic action sequence at the end -
a. In the course of which, the hero gets beaten so badly people are ready to start mourning him
b. A couple of frames later however he’s back to normal
c. All because his friend, once bad guy no. 3 has opted for the redemption path and decided to help him
d. Bad guy no. 3, who is also a potential cog in the wheel for hero’s romance, and also as mentioned above in need of redemption for past misdemeanor, conveniently does get injured fatally in the course of the fight.
11. At the end of the fight, bad guy with locket and hero have profound conversations way up top of a building on crime, reasons for crime and forgiveness while hero’s best friend is dying way down below
12. Said best friend considerately hangs on till hero can finally make it down to him, allows for conversation and then dies after declaring hero best buddy again.
13. The climatic action sequence towards the end is interspersed with moments of comic interlude that involve a precocious child.
14. Immense amount of property damage takes place in the form of broken windows, walls and vehicles.

Standard Bollywood fic?

Nah.

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Archie and Riverdale get a new look

It’s not that I dislike progress in the fictional world. Yes, I still think Agatha Christie and JRRT rule, and The Three Investigators grown up and with girl troubles don’t make half as interesting storylines as they did when they were just solving mysteries.

But there’s a lot of new stuff I do like - Harry Potter for one. And there's much I like more now in comic book world. I like DC now much better than I liked them in the 80s when I’d started them. And I do think the old Phantom comics were very desperately in need of sprucing up - purple costume against dark jungle background may make for good camouflage but not for easy viewing.

But – Archie comics! No! Archie was good as it was. Whatever was wrong with it? And why change the artwork? The artwork was good in a functional sort of way. Right, so it wasn’t ‘realistic’ but neither is this! If I wanted to watch 'real' schoolkids in school get into silly situations and just wheeze their way out of trouble, I'd watch Disney channel or something. And that wouldn't be very realistic either would it?

I’m disappointed. I actually used the old comics to help with line drawing.

Edit: I'll admit though that I'm glad they switched from the rounded, thick lined look of earlier to the sleeker, more fluid look in the 90s. Those were pretty books.

It had its educational moments though, so that's fine.

There is a very important lesson to be learnt from Casino Royale - answering your mobile phone can distract you and make you vulnerable to unsavoury incidents.

As movies go, this one was better than expected, primarily because Daniel Craig was much better than expected. He grows on you. He also does a good cynical smile. From the stills in the newspapers, it appeared he would do the Bond female walk out of the sea in a swimsuit. That didn’t really happen though.

There was other good stuff too – all the regular Bond movie stuff, minus the gadgetry as promised, lots of popping sounds and lots of leaping around gracefully, and running around, good locales, the car (I think I ooh-ed when it took off), and lots of phones.

But a couple of patchy places too - the lovin’ moments of togetherness bits in Venice though seemed overextended. You think the movie has come to an end, but then it goes on, and you wonder if it has, and nearly start yawning.

Ooh! And speaking of phones - New phone!