Winning Crime tickets and DVD reviews

Yesterday I received a tweet from Theakstons Crime to tell me that I had won a pair of tickets to their Crime on Tour in York tonight at 6.30pm in the Explore York Library and Learning Centre.  Peter Robinson will introduce David Mark and Steven Dunne and I am very excited at the prospect of attending.

We watched The Vow, The Rum Diary and 2012 on DVD and I thought I would share with you a potted review of each:

The Vow is a story based on true events about a happily-married couple who are involved in a car crash, resulting in the wife suffering a head trauma.  She forgets the previous few years, including meeting and marrying her husband.  Needless to say, it is a tearjerker and you really feel for the husband and begin to loather her family and ex-fiance for interferring and helping ruin her happy relationship.  I think it can safely be said that this film is firmly in the 'girlie' category, but not just for adults as my daughter and her friends saw it at the cinema and loved it.

The Rum Diary is a different prospect entirely.  I would say it is a man's movie and this even though Johnny Depp is the main character!  The storyline is so disjointed that I think the characters on screen weren't the only ones getting help from the bottle and the drugs, but again it is based on true-life events.  The only scene I can say I enjoyed was the one where they were driving the vandalised car using the back seat and his friend to reach the pedals.  I was very disappointed as having read the blurb and seeing that the film was based on the life of a writer, I thought I would enjoy it.

We watched 2012 on our new blu-ray player (yes, that's right, we finally decided to join the 21st century) and I really did notice the difference.  2012 is probably the perfect film for watching a blu-ray for the first time.  The effects on-screen of the earthquakes, tsunami-ravaged cities and lava flows were spectacular and who cares if the storyline was unbelievable - the whole world was being destroyed, yet the has-been writer, a russian mobsters' sons and a small dog manage to survive!  It felt like the longest film I have watched in a while, but it was a rollercoaster of action.  I recommend.