As part of BJK&E’s new monthly culture events a group of us went to the Vue cinema in Leicester Square to a preview of the new Coen brother’s movie – No country For Old Men.
 
The film was scary and amusing in just the right amounts, never losing our attention. A masterly tale of the good, the deranged and the doomed, it was a definite throwback to the brilliant original Coen brother’s work such as Fargo and Miller’s Crossing. They loaded the film with realistic touches and achieved an action film with a serious philosophical undertone – a winning formula.
 
The end did leave a few questions and left you wanting more, but it wouldn’t be a Coen brother’s film if they didn’t end it like they did.
 
This was the first of many culture evenings I hope to enjoy in future, and I’m sure all who went would like to thank Milly, Fabio and Mark for organising it!

When facebook first launched everyone jostled to be invited by someone. I could pass someone in the street and I’d be friends with them on Facebook the next day. Popularity could only be recognised by how many friends you had on Facebook. Stalking became a daily event, cheating even harder to orchestrate and logging onto Facebook took priority over logging onto work email.

Things have calmed now and the first flushes of excitment at a new toy have wained. I can only speak on behalf of my own peer group when I say this social network now provides a handy forum for sharing holiday snaps and arranging get togethers.

But I still could not help but feel a sense of dread when my mother announced she had joined Facebook! That sinking feeling I recalled having as a 16 year old teenager who has just had her cigarettes found by her parents!!!

I may be 30 but there are always things you don’t want to tell your Mum, right?

She now has access to my portfolio of (162!!) friends worldwide. (We have become friends on Facebook as I could hardly refuse). So quizzes me on how I know each of them and offers constructive commentry like ‘he looks like a nice chap, why don’t you go out with him’. With friends in Australia there is no control over the southern hemisphere hilarities that appear on my wall and suddenly its imperative to keep a close eye on friendly banter. Dodging photos on nights out has been perfected to a fine art as ‘tagging’ could invite my mother to witness antics she doesn’t need to be privy too!

In contrast mum only has 3 friends, myself, my sister and brother who are equally as panic stricken. So it’s hardly fair that we are not offered the same voyeuristic advantages. Although drunken photos of my mother on the world wide web I can probably do without.

“In Rome you long for the country; in the country oh inconstant! you praise the distant city to the stars” – Horace 

Clearly Horace was a fan of this Holy of Holy cities, where; on a festive weekend break, I savoured the many sights and sounds on offer including the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain and of course the Sistine Chapel.  Each a fine example of architectural brilliance though all pale in comparison to St. Peter’s Cathedral which is simply breathtaking, and an obvious proof of the sheer might of Catholicism.  One thing is for certain, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Pretty buildings aside the next thing you’ll notice about Rome is the food.  Superb pizza and al dente pasta available on every corner, or should I say Piazza… you see Rome’s topography can best be described as a string of good-looking piazzas (or squares to you and I) linked by busy roads filled with gawping tourists, which incidentally are covered in graffiti (the roads, not the tourists).  Owing much to the lack of CCTV cameras and a less than zealous cleaning routine, I imagine that every Roman kid for the past 10 years has tried their hand at tagging the various streets, subways, trees, pavements, cars, trains…… you name it, its been claimed by the local yout’dem.

All in all it has to be said that Rome in my experience was a bit tacky.  The “fashion” is terrible unless you’ve gone for haute couture, the subway escalators are slower than walking speed, and the locals seem terse to say the least.  My advice would be to go with an agenda.  We used TimeOut’s guide to Rome which served us well and found that walking was the best mode of transport.

Essentially it was a great trip, and certainly one off the list.  Don’t go with massively high expectations if you’re not on an equally high budget, and I wouldn’t extend your stay beyond four or five days unless you have a particular penchant for architecture.

Most of the UK knows about all the racism issues brought up in last year’s Celebrity Big Brother. Amongst fears that people lost faith in the show and decreasing viewing figures the show’s producers decided to give the format a bit of a shake-up. This time, the celebrities act as ‘Big Brother’ by setting tasks, controlling shopping budgets and basically doing what they like. Another change is the contestants had to have at least one talent to be in the house – in other words these are people who wouldn’t have been allowed in the house in previous years. This was probably due to talentless schmucks being more malleable and you can make them do just about anything.

Thankfully, the show has not taken up any space on Channel 4, but has instead been pushed onto E4. This has resulted in the expected decrease in viewing figures. The performance of this show will probably determine the future of any other Big Brother shows. I, for one, hope it doesn’t succeed. I admit it – I used to watch Big Brother in the early years. It was interesting – a social experiment if you will. But all it seems to be about now is watching a group of people argue all the time and getting drunk so they come out of the house famous. Shove a whole family there at Xmas time and that could be interesting!

There are also rumours that the celebrities will be put in the house and voted off soon, but I won’t be watching to find out.