rewind

Saturday I watched three and a half movies at a single sitting. Yes, I was flying long haul.

First was "The Last King of Scotland", an initially light and increasingly chilling portrayal of Idi Amin's brutal rule in Uganda. Intense performance by Forrest Whitaker as Idi Amin and a good counterpoint with James McAvoy as a Scottish doctor who whimsically travels to Uganda and then through naivety and recklessness gets caught into the racheting events. Great and immersive cinematography, use of colour and shape, sharply produced soundtrack make this an excellent (though sometimes harrowing) film.

Next up; The Departed: A Scorcese crime pic with Leonardo di Caprio and Matt Damon. I missed the start of this and was somewhat confused initially because I thought it was clever cutting between two diffreent timeframes (cop and cop as undercover villan), before I realised that di Caprio and Damon were really two different people. Not the smartest casting, or maybe the gin was working by this stage. Anyway, a taut cops vs bad guys movie with lots of subterfuge and 'tough guy talk' and a pretty high body count. The film had around three endings as well, in order to tidy up all of the loose ends from the various scanarios. Great Jack Nicholson menace as "Mr Bad" and twists and turns expected of the genre to the very end. No doubt will become a classic of the genre.

Then; a few minutes of Jackass 4; Nope. Not my thing. So I watched the Devil wears Prada without sound whilst I listened to my ipod and enjoyed afternoon tea.

Then; Snakes on a Plane; Totally inappropriate to watch this whilst flying on a 747, whilst a time-bombed box of non indiginous and somewhat indignant snakes get messy with a planeful of passengers. Mad mayhem - but I suppose it delivers what it says on the label. I only seleected it because I knew we were near to the destination and didn't care how much of it I saw.

And now, touched down in Las Vegas, with all eight hours of the film viewing recovered to spend again.