I read Bone this week. It was pretty great.

I watched the Counties-Hawkes Bay game. It had some pretty exciting moments, but it was primarily lost by sloppy play on the part of Hawkes Bay. Made me appreciate the All Blacks game more, as I saw some tactical things I don't usually see.

Vettori seems to think Sodhi is promising, though to me it just seems like the NZ selection committee desperately want a legspinner. Williamson, on the other hand, has the knack.

I think Captain America is the best of the pre-Avengers Marvel movies (though for some reason I haven't seen Thor yet). I just think the tone of it is great, the musical number is great and I really wish they had fleshed out some of the WWII stuff (maybe if it was half an hour longer). It's not perfect, but it's very…

This week I ended up watching mostly cult films, mostly from the 1970's. Westworld, Logan's Run, The Fog, Joe Dante's version of Runaway Daughters and Truck Turner.

Are You Now or Have You Ever Been is probably the first truly great episode of Angel, and season 2 goes from strength to strength.

Those data clusters are addictive. Especially as with each one you get you move just  little bit closer to flying (though you never quite get there).

It certainly wasn't the worst aspect of that season. Just push through because season 3 is instantly better.

I watched Heavenly Creatures in my legal studies class in high school. Seeing as I was in Christchurch, my teacher kept on pointing out where the locations were (which do a great job of re-creating Christchurch in the 1950's). I love the fantasy scene in particular, but its all good.

This week I watched Life is Sweet, Sudden Fear, The Sound of Music, Grabbers and Wild at Heart.

I hadn't read your response to Myles McNutt's comment when I wrote this.

I agree that a lot of TV shows have more latitude now, but they still have to establish the rules of their specific approach to editing and cinematography within a couple of episodes. For example, you wouldn't mistake an episode of Buffy for an episode of Angel (even if they both often feature the same sewer set)…

Great to see someone applying Bordwell stuff to TV. I think it's especially interesting because TV shows have to set up their visual rules within the first couple of episodes and then follow them pretty closely (unless it's a deliberate, format-breaking episode), whereas a film is likely to have more freedom to bend…

I haven't seen Raising Arizona in a while, and I'm thinking of re-watching it because I didn't like it that much and I'm wondering if I'd like it more now that I've seen all of the other Coen Brothers movies. I think Blood Simple is a very assured first feature, though their style still hadn't quite came together yet.

I kind of hate Tree of Life, but love Holy Motors and kind of like Upstream Color (though I much preferred Primer). I think interesting dialogue is a far more important element in film than most people give it credit for, but I find the occasional self-conscious "visual storytelling is king" movie is worth watching.

Start of my mid-trimester break at uni, so a big week for pop-culture. On the movie front I watched Tucker: The Man and His Dream, Equinox Flower, Au Revoir Les Enfants and Iron Man 3, while finding time to re-watch Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and The Simpsons Movie.

For the first time in a while I started reading a book, Empire Falls by Richard Russo. I'm about halfway through it, and so far I've been really enjoying it. Russo has a knack for giving the reader vivid character portraits through both prose and dialogue, and he's done a great job of laying out the town and its…

I thought Cruden's charge-down was pretty well-done.

Jazz is good, but just a little too interested in telling a politically correct history of jazz. Bill Evans hardly gets a mention in it.

This week I watched Michael Powell’s Herzog Blaubarts Burg, filmed for German TV in 1963, Autumn Sonata and the first two seasons of In Treatment.