Spiderman. Hmmm… Mixed thoughts on that one. Very noisy. Fantastic stunts. Great scenes where he’s swinging through the streets of New York from long stringy cobwebs stuck to buildings and cranes. Sure, there was the odd bit of dodgy computer animation here and there, but the speed at which you’re dragged through the scenery behind him is awesome.

There’s a fantastic set-piece in Times Square, which looks far nicer than it does in real life, and some great comedy moments, but I have to agree with the critics who say it is the most violent film ever aimed at children. It sits rather uncomfortably between two camps: too childish for most adults, yet too gruesome for most children. The scene where he first ejaculates web across the city looks positively obscene.

The BBC Spiderman site has a very short interview with Tobey Maguire, the guy who played Spiderman, where he talks about preparing for the film:

I had to work out six days a week up to four hours a day for five months… I had a nutritionist and I was eating a very specific diet.

All sounds very unpleasant, but the results were certainly worth it. Who wouldn’t work out six days a week for a body like that?

For anyone who wants to see effects, and can put up with the one-dimensional, irritating baddy, it’s a great film. (Yeah, yeah, I know his alterego was wracked with guilt, but as the two halves of his character never meld it doesn’t count). I looked at it as a night out with friends, so it was fun. I’m not sure I’d have been quite so happy if I’d had to pay for it, though.

It finished not long before eleven, and we were all glad to get out of the sweltering cinema. I don’t know whether the air-con was broken or it was just having difficult coping with a full house, but by the end it was like a sauna.

It was still hot on the train home. I could easily have left my coat in the car, and it wasn’t easy getting to sleep. About three this morning, though, I was woken by heavy rain on the window, quickly followed by a massive clap of thunder as the good weather finally broke. Normally I love to lay awake, burrowed down under the duvet, and listen to the rain on the window, but it was too hot to stay covered up, and I was too tired to stay awake for more than a couple of minutes.

Of course, after that I didn’t make it to the gym. Monday nights out and late trains home always knock me out the following day, and I dozed on the train in this morning. I’m using that as my excuse for forgetting about the storm until I’d been sitting on the grass in Soho Square with Mark for ten minutes and felt the wetness seep through my jeans. Dried out slowly through the afternoon while editing a couple of features and sorting through a load of invoices.

I tried to go to the gym on the way home. Really I did. Very, very hard, but I just didn’t make it. I snoozed off on the train while listening to a German lesson and now I don’t know how to ask someone to wait for me in Berlin. I went to Sainsburys instead and drifted aimlessly from aisle to aisle, eventually finding some glasses to replace the ones I dropped in the sink at the weekend and smashed. I bought the thickest ones I could find - I’m far too clumsy for the dainty little things they sell in Woolworth.

Early dinner then early to bed, I think. Gym in the morning.

Need to clean my windows.

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