Day 217

After doing the crossword (which didn't go well, needed help for nearly half the clues!):

I went to the GPs for my NHS Healthcheck appointment, which went well, just got to lower my bad cholesterol a tad and lose a couple of stone. Easy peasy! Plus my blood pressure is a little high, so I’ve got to go back next week to see if it’s still high or not.

I then went into town and picked up a few DVDs:

Unlocked is a nice spy story, but despite the stellar cast (Noomi Rapace, Orlando Bloom, Michael Douglas, John Malkovich and Toni Collette) it feels more like a TV episode/film than a feature film. The story has plenty of twists and double-crosses (although the twist with Michael Douglas was obvious, as you don’t waste someone like Michael Douglas in a bit part), but there isn’t anything particular new or unique. 

Punisher: War Zone is the third Punisher film and is another reboot/origin tale and is the second best Punisher film (it might be third if I could remember what happens in the Dolph Lundgren version). The Thomas Jane Punisher is my favourite as it balanced what worked best in the comics with what works best on film. Punisher: War Zone is more comic-booky, some of which works and some doesn’t, e.g. it’s nice having Jigsaw in the film, but Dominic West plays him too OTT, and some of the action seems to have been lifted straight from a ‘80s action film. Also, Ray Stevenson’s performance as Frank Castle/The Punisher is pretty silted, well very little emotion coming through, although there’s a chance that this was an active choice. It might be that the lack of emotion is due to Frank suffering trauma from the death of his family and all the killing he has done or they were setting him up as Michael Myers/Jason Voorhees type, but one who kills baddies and not co-eds.

I'm saving Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Road To Singapore for another day.

I also ripped some vinyl, which is a bit of pain, you’ve got to set up the turntable, get the gain right, then once it’s ripped you got to edit out the silences at the start and end and convert the wav to mp3 (other file formats are available) and then add in all the id-tag information.