After watching more of the Vietnam thing while eating, the evening's entertainment proper commenced with Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, being the sequel to the other one. I said after watching the other one (n.b. link won't work if you've set the forum to display more than ten posts per page, as the vBulletin people broke permalinks in version 4) they made a mistake when trying to be humorous, as they weren't very good at it. In this sequel, they did nothing but try to be humorous for at least the first hour, and then from time to time after that, and they haven't got any better at it. So it was a bit of a washout really, though you could still see the bits where the good film they might have made pokes its head out out when the filmmakers aren't being too clever for their own good 
After that disappointment, I resorted to something you can always rely on: misery, in the form of a Swedish crime drama. Tonight's Nordic wretchedness was Jägarna 2 , or False Trail in English (though it actually means "The Hunters 2" in English, being a sequel to one that apparently hasn't been subtitled in English yet). This was suitably bleak, giving the impression that life in the more rural areas of Sweden is a hotbed of violence with undercurrents of passion and torment, and generally interesting to some degree if a bit horrid. It reminded me of the Swedish woman who spoke at the Interesting conference last year (not to be confused with the Boring conference) who explained that these noir-ish dramas give a wrong impression, as life in Sweden is generally exceptionally dull, and absolutely nothing happens in most places almost all of the time. She didn't expand on this (the main focus of her talk was about how they all still believe in various supernatural beings that need to be placated in rather homely ways, while pretending to be very modern and not believing any such nonsense, but they really really do) but I got the notion that the reason they're so good at dreaming up these rather weird scenarios involving horrific crimes in communities of a few dozen people is that they are so bored all the time. Anyway, if you like bleak, it was very good
And after that, some more of The Americans.
I have nothing needing to be done tomorrow, so I'm not setting an alarm
Goodnight all
After that disappointment, I resorted to something you can always rely on: misery, in the form of a Swedish crime drama. Tonight's Nordic wretchedness was Jägarna 2 , or False Trail in English (though it actually means "The Hunters 2" in English, being a sequel to one that apparently hasn't been subtitled in English yet). This was suitably bleak, giving the impression that life in the more rural areas of Sweden is a hotbed of violence with undercurrents of passion and torment, and generally interesting to some degree if a bit horrid. It reminded me of the Swedish woman who spoke at the Interesting conference last year (not to be confused with the Boring conference) who explained that these noir-ish dramas give a wrong impression, as life in Sweden is generally exceptionally dull, and absolutely nothing happens in most places almost all of the time. She didn't expand on this (the main focus of her talk was about how they all still believe in various supernatural beings that need to be placated in rather homely ways, while pretending to be very modern and not believing any such nonsense, but they really really do) but I got the notion that the reason they're so good at dreaming up these rather weird scenarios involving horrific crimes in communities of a few dozen people is that they are so bored all the time. Anyway, if you like bleak, it was very good
And after that, some more of The Americans.
I have nothing needing to be done tomorrow, so I'm not setting an alarm
Goodnight all
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