Last week I watched The Brave One, an unremarkable but enjoyable revenge thriller starring Jodie Foster (and her awful hair) and directed by Neil Jordan.
CAUTION: What follows probably constitute minor spoilers. If you know the film’s premise, then they’re not going to harm your viewing pleasure, but I feel obligated to warn you just the same.
As is my habit, I went home and read a few reviews of the movie. Roger Ebert’s review features this line:
One day she buys a gun and practices on a shooting range where you can see fear turning into anger in her eyes.
In the version of the film I saw, there was definitely no shooting range.
Later, there’s a scene where Foster’s character goes after a guy on the roof of a parking garage. He ends up on pavement six floors below. In the film I saw, they exchange a couple of blows, Foster goes at the other guy with a tire iron and the film immediately cuts away. I was surprised by the cut–it seemed out of sync with the scene’s pacing. Plus, I was left puzzling over how she hauled him over the railing–she’s not a big woman.
If you saw the movie (somewhere other than Gozo, obviously), did this scene conclude differently?
I’m aware that films get edited differently for different countries, but it’s a little frustrating to not know what I else missed. I’m not sure if this qualifies as censorship–I think it probably does if the film is edited to suit a particular nation’s (apparent) morality.
When Julie and I travel, we like to bring back a piece of artwork or old map or something to remember the place by. They make for unique, functional mementos and fond reminders of our travels. We’ve been wondering what we’d bring home from Gozo–it’s a tiny island and the local crafts (lace-making and glass-blowing) aren’t really to our taste.
This summer, a Coca-Cola rep blew through our village and gave free Coke-branded signs to two or three local business. Among these was Rangers, our local hangout. A week rarely goes by in which we don’t eat at least one meal at Rangers.
I asked Tony, Rangers’ proprietor, what he was doing with his old wood and iron sign. He didn’t have any plans, so we acquired it in exchange for a donation to the local football club (Rangers does not refer, as I originally though, to an owner named Ranger, but to the Gharb Rangers).
And here it is:
It’s about two-and-a-half feet long by two feet high, and (as you can see) has this big iron hanging bracket. We don’t plan to actually hang it in our future home, so the first order of business is cutting the chains that connect the bracket to the sign (they’re behind the sign in the photo). Then, of course, we need to ship it
I thought we might get it turned into a table. Do you have any bright ideas for bar sign re-use?
This morning I had the peculiar experience of watching a Canucks game in Malta. Courtesy of the NASN, I was able to catch last night’s Vancouver/Calgary game (not live, thankfully) while eating breakfast at our local bar.
And the Canucks won. Considering their early season play, that was a nice bonus. They took a 3-0 lead and then, in classic Vancouver fashion, made it interesting by taking the third period off. Happily Luongo played the full sixty minutes. They did look like a team missing three of their regular defencemen.
This will probably be the only hockey game I ever watch serenaded by the clanking metal-on-metal sound of a blacksmith across the street. When I say ‘blacksmith’, I’m serious. Change this guy’s clothing, and he could be living in any of the last ten centuries. He’s got an anvil at the centre of his workshop, an open fire, and every surface of his workspace is covered in black soot.
There was a serious rain storm on Gozo this morning. It didn’t last long, but it was tropical and torrential.
For the third time in four days, we found ourselves trying to redirect a small stream. It entered the house via the kitchen cupboards and exited out the back patio. There’s been some recent changes to the local drainage system, and we drew the short straw.
I moved over 300 litres of water from my clever collection system (yes, it featured another towel dam) in the dining room to the back patio. I counted the buckets.
November, it turns out, is going to be our busiest month of the year, work wise. I wasn’t keen on spending three hours swabbing the decks when we should be gettin’ paid.
Once the flood waters had receded, I had a stern discussion with our landlady about her anti-diluvian strategy. Happily, she also owns the farmhouse next door (in fact, I think they used to be one big building and got subdivided).
So, until the drainage system gets sorted, we’ll be cooking and eating on the main floor of her other house, and living and working on the upper floors of our own. It’s a risk of renting an old stone house, but I’m just glad not to be facing more bailing.
As we occasionally do, Julie and I spent a couple of hours today working in the lovely bar at the Kempinski Hotel San Lawrenz. I think it’s the only five star hotel on Gozo, and despite its peculiar location (there are no views of the sea), it’s quite posh.
I wasn’t using the web, but I happened to visit the hotel’s portal page for its wifi service. Here it is:
That looks pretty weak, doesn’t it? Why does a five-star hotel, with its spa smelling of sandalwood and lavendar, it’s beautifully-tiled pools and gorgeously-appointed rooms, have such a crappy-looking login page? The Kempinski isn’t unique in this peculiar disconnect–I’ve seen worse in plenty of four and five-star hotels.
It’s a tiny thing, but swish hotels aspire to get the tiny things right. The five-star devil, after all, is in the details. On the other hand, at least I wasn’t presented with an image of some kind of fruitophile.
Incidentally, I took that screenshot with a great little OS X program that Monique tipped me off on. It’s called Paparazzi, and all it does is make a full-length screenshot of any URL you enter. It saves you the trouble of stitching screenshots together.
One of the hot topics among locals here on Malta is the building boom. They often speak about how there’s too much supply for the current demand. And, indeed, there seem to be new houses and small apartment blocks going up at the edges of many villages, even on Gozo. Often the construction is happening next to a couple new but vacant buildings.
The census shows that the number of vacant dwellings now amount to about 53,000, an astonishing increase of 17,000 since 1995. In percentage terms, this means that 26 per cent of dwellings are vacant. Moreover, only 10,028 of these properties are holiday homes…
With a landmass almost eight times as large as Malta’s and about 100,000 more residents, Luxembourg has some 20,000 fewer dwellings. While there are 53,136 vacant properties in Malta, Luxembourg has only 4,000. Ireland, with a total stock of 1.4 million dwellings has only around 7,000 vacant dwellings or 0.5 per cent of the total stock.
That’s 53,000 empty residences on an island with about 400,000 people. The article goes on to say that Greece and Portugal are actually worse off.
What’s the cause? One reason, apparently, is that there’s no property tax in Malta. So it doesn’t cost owners anything to simply leave their properties alone. I suspect there are many cases of Maltese people living abroad whose parents have died and left them (often unwanted) property on the islands.
Those guys need to learn how to pass the ball rubgy-style.
Speaking of North American sports, I’m pleased to announce that tomorrow morning I’m going to hit our local pub for lunch and, thanks to the North American Sports Network, watch Toronto play New York. At ice hockey. Amusingly, the pub is called “Rangers”, so I’m going to Rangers to watch the Rangers.
James and I were walking down the lane outside our farmhouse on Gozo, and I happened to glance at a bag of garbage awaiting pickup. Look a little closer–what’s that inside?
It’s been occasionally windy here on Malta, and we’ve had a couple of storms. But last night was serious, which winds gusting up to 75 km/h. The back patio is covered in debris, and there’s a sizable tree limb on our balcony. I was surprised that our sun loungers ended up in the pool. They’re plastic, but they’re reasonably heavy:
It’s no wonder all the houses are built of stone here.
Last week I watched The Brave One, an unremarkable but enjoyable revenge thriller starring Jodie Foster (and her awful hair) and directed by Neil Jordan.
