Odd Thomas Odd Blog

Breakaway Theatre 's production of The Tempest was an eye opener for me.  After my Aunt took me to see a production of Shakespeare's play back in the late 1990s, I had come away wondering exactly what it was I had just seen; it was loud, overly dramatic and hard to follow.  By contrast, Lesley Cowland's interpretation of the well-known classic was fun, entertaining and relatable ... in part, due to the space theme, which had more than a few nods to both Star Wars and Star Trek! Above all, I actually understood what was happening! Presented in the grounds of the Inn on the Park , St Albans, this was also my first open-air theatre production, which meant very little set design by necessity, proving - to me, at least - that over-indulgent sets really aren't required if you have a strong performance. Luckily for you, there are still more performances later this week, so you haven't missed out yet!  Even if you are one of those people that "doesn't do Sha...

Well, that's it. All done. Finished. Finito. I must admit that once again I have mixed feelings about the play being over. On the one hand, its great not to have intensely-jangled nerves every night, but on the other hand ... I'm now a bit lost! The great thing about a drama group like The Centralian Players is that it is a good little social circle to join. Rehearsing twice a week means you get to see more than just work colleagues and potentially the odd new face or two (in some cases, very odd). Its also an excellent distraction from work which, lets face it, we all need from time to time. I certainly do with what is going on at the moment... Anyhoo, you're probably wondering how the whole thing went? Well, the feedback we have had from each night is that it was excellent, which gave us all a huge boost, as you would expect. Bearing in mind that the hall generally seats 100 people per production, we were looking at 96, 93 and 101 people in the audience for each n...

If you ever want to see a movie without being disturbed, see if you can get into a late night showing! I really fancied seeing The Golden Compass and figured it would probably be really busy. However, the local Vue cinema had a late night showing I thought I'd try out ... at 11:20pm. Perhaps not the best time to watch a film if you're already tired from the week's activities, but better than being surrounded by noisy, jabbering, spotty little oiks who can't keep quiet for longer than 30 seconds. Figuring that since there was a late show it was anticipated to be quite busy, I headed there a little early to get the good seats ... from which there was a helluva selection as there was nobody else there! As it got closer to the movie starting, I started to realise it was pretty much going to be a private showing: by the time the film started, there were only seven of us watching. Either the film isn't as popular as they were expecting or people really don't lik...

Last night, I took a break from studying and went with my mates Foshie and Smithy to see the new Transformers movie. I have to confess that I was skeptical about it, and figured it would be another Hollywood big-bangs-equals-big-bucks approach to movie-making that seems to have been hitting the silver screen these past years: take Spiderman 3 as a prime example of Hollywood crassness *shudder*. However, a fair few people I know had already been to see Transformers and said it was like being 8 years old again. I have to confess that I wasn't the coolest kid at schoo l, having a tendency to bury my nose in an Enid Blyton adventure rather than gluing it to the TV, so it wasn't going to be possible for me to feel like a kid again watching this ... but it did grab my imagination! Despite my reservations, I thoroughly enjoyed the film. The humour was spot on, as was the action and, according to Smithy, so was the voice of Optimus Prime , which was a deep gravelly voice that suited...