Latest Movie Review for May

I have watched a few movies this last couple of weeks mostly through boredom really. There was only average run of the mill stuff but one movie did stand out by a long way and i will start with that one, Wolverine

1), X-Men Origins, Wolverine, 9/10, probably the best movie I have seen since the second Hell boy movie, It had a great intertwined plot with a love story and lots of funny stuff and mountains of Action as you would expect from this movie, The special effects were just spectacular. A thoroughly great movie and left me wanting more, now that is something that doesn't happen very often. Also a great ending that is obviously left open for a follow up. Like what did happen to the brother??

2) Night at the Museum 2, 5/10, a normal sequel type movie all very predictable and tame, took some doing to watch it all the way through. a very average movie and I cannot understand why it has taken so much money at the box office.

3)Angels and Demons, 4/10, a very silly plot as a follow up to the Da Vinci Code, the plot was so silly that I could not get into the film properly, I wanted to believe but it was just rubbish, the fact a history professor was showing the police how to hunt for some very dangerous anti-matter was just laughable. very poor and left me sad that a great movie led to this crap. Sequels don't always work.

4) Fast and Furous 4, 6/10, some very silly stunt work and a silly plot but somehow I was carried along by the story, I actually enjoyed this and expect a sequel out next year sometime.

5)State of Play, 7/10, some great acting and a sort of interesting plot that was thicker than a thick pea soup had me watching all the way through, but afterwards it was a less than thick and a bit thin, I enjoyed it but I was expecting more than the final fizzle out of the plot, but I did enjoy this movie

6) Next Day Air, 4/10, I had seen a trailer and had expected more from this movie, it was a silly sploitation movie with some very average acting by black actors, all stereotype silly stuff, like all blacks do drugs and have guns and have lots of sex, steal everything they see and touch, all mexicans sell drugs and have silly accents, all very predictable, I had to force myself to watch the end. Poor rubbish but if you have an afternoon to kill with nothing at all else to do or to watch, then Ok watch it.

7) Saw 1&2&3 4&5 to go, 0/10, all rubbish but since i have then i will watch them all, just to say I have seen them, really rubbish, all gory stuff, not even average acting, just crap. but better than the pink panther.

8) Punisher(2008), 1/10, I watched this as it came along and it was the goriest movie I have seen ever, really crap story but if was almost a comedy, a black comedy but just rubbish acting just real rubbish

9) Terminator Salvation, 4/10, Very dark and moody movie, when actors whisper to give the movie atmosphere you know they are dealing with weak material, I hate whispering actors, The plot was just too silly again, and the fact the resistance were able to break into the centre of the skynet manufacturing centre was beyond movie magic, just rubbish, nothing but dreary atmosphere and no humour, acting was pretty poor and it tried to focus on the special effects which were OK but didn't compensate for the poor directing and production, Arnold Schwarzeneggar please come back!

Marsh Harriers In Lake "Las Cañas"

I travelled out today to do some bird watching as the weather has finally turned summery, I did a search and found a reservoir about 50 miles away near Logroño, that seemed good enough to go and have a walk around, It was easy to find and when I arrived it was completely deserted apart from some silly old farts who were walking the "Camino De Santiago", following in the footsteps of some saint who walked 800 km a long time ago and devout followers of the Catholic doctrine now think they will get to heaven if the put themselves through this purgatory, so I didn't drive over the old farts and parked up and was alone, the reservoir was down the hill in front of the national park building and seemed to have a circular footpath, it didn't actually have one it was my imagination, but there was a small path that led to the fencing around the lake, I found that all i could see from most of the walk was very large trees in front of me and in between was just reeds, I didn't mind this is typical bird watching, you see nothing all day and then you may just find a gem, but today started so differently. I saw 200 sheep that were being used to eat down the grasses around the waters edge, this is very environmentally friendly and also helps the birds, I saw something i never expected, there were Cattle Egrets riding on the sheep, just waiting for flies or other flying insects to come to them and the sheep didn't mind one bit, not just one or two birds but about 40, the egrets were running in front of them and behind them, flying up to get a "Birds eye" view of the area and then landing either on the sheep or in front, it was very amusing and really interesting, the shepherd didn't seem that excited but when you have been moving them around for the last 40 years, the novelty must wear off, I carried on around the lake and saw nothing at all, I then arrived at the concrete retaining wall confirming to me it was all fake, from there i could see some large birds of prey flying around the centre of the water and then landing in the reeds, this is not normal for birds of prey, I realised i had seen my first Marsh Harrier, but there were many of them, flying here and there around the lake, I was excited inside, not jumping for joy but still excited, A park warden arrived and was standing beside me with his big birding scope and I asked him how many of them were at the, in very poor spanish, he told me there were about 10-12 breeding pairs, this is probably more than the whole of england, this was my day made, i bade him adios and started my walk back, again without seeing anything at all, pretty miserable if you had kids to entertain but for me it was enough, but i have since found out from the internet that even closer is a lake of international importance for its Marsh Harrier population, Lake Pitillas and it is close to where I am working, so funny, so that is my trip planned for next weekend.

The Site in the Hills of Pamplona ( Sangüesa)

This site here in spain is about the prettiest I have ever worked on, it is in the mountains and quite remote, there are pine trees all over the hills and some bare patches of what look like volcanic ash, these are full of wild flowers as the farmers leave them alone, there are also lots of butterflies here and we heard a cuckoo this morning, plus the Vultures that live only 5 Km away are always flying over and looking for dead bodies, if one particular guy doesn't stop irritating me with his jiberish he is going to become Vulture food, I dont mind working here, it is quiet and with lots of fresh air and not far from a nice truck stop restaurant with very typical Spanish food. At present we are working a long day and so i am not doing much and last weekend i only managed to walk into Pamplona itself for some exercise and not go anywhere. So hopefully this weekend someone may take me out or I may have to drag out the Limosine and drive out myself, not very entertaining on your own but better than just watching movies in your hotel room.

The Site




The Hills




The windmills, hundreds of them

The Pictures of San Sebastian

That old sea port town of San Sebastien, I thought i should finally blog the pictures as it is almost a week, also tomorrow we are planning to go out to Zarragosa, not sure what that town has but all the guys are making the best of the time and good weather as this project is now coming to a close, unit 1 is finished and we have about 6 or 8 weeks left of installing all the replacement broken equipment when it arrives.
I recommend San sebastian as part of the tour of northern spain, it is very pretty and the old part is perfect for tourists, easy to get to and parking is free on sunday. I refused to eat seafood even though this part of spain seafood is the speciality, I have been so ill with food poisoning so many times on seafood that I am now totally paranoid about it, I immediately think of the vomiting when i look at seafood, I have eaten some smoked salmon and othe bits and pieces when it is the thing i think of first but i will rather go without than eat it,

One of the very nice large houses that lined all the streets of downtown




The old part of town, where we bumped into the Naked Frenchman, those guys, Huh




The Cathedral




Fancy old Bridge across the river that splits the town

Nude Frenchman in San Sebastian

It was sunday day off so we went for a drive to San Sebastian which is about 70 Km away, it was a nice sunny day and the traffic was light and San Sebastian is a very nice pretty town with some nice boulevards and very attractive buildings, it must have been a very prosperous town at some point in the past. we walked around the coastal path and into the old fishing harbour and then into the old town, it has narrow streets and lots of little shops and bar, a very pretty place to walk, but in the middle we were confronted by a very tall naked man walking along doing his shopping, you could tell by the colour of his tan, which was total from head to toe that he was a regular nudist, he was smiling and very happy, I am not usually shocked but i was taken aback. We carried on with our tour, we had a beer a sleep in the park and a coffee before we drove home and a relaxing evening watching movies, I checked Google for the naked guy and sure enough he is a pretty famous guy for his naked activities including cycling as in a screenshot of this video. Good luck to him but the local spanish are all upset, i just laughed.

Long Live the Bull and Death to The Bullfighter

I said i would do a post about bullfighters, yes i think they should all be gored to death by the bulls, the bulls have no chance, they are mutilated to make them weak and defenceless, this isnt a sport more like ritualistic torture, but every now and again the bull gets lucky and gores the Matador ( "killer" in translation ). I like it when this happens and for many years i had a picture of a bullfighter with a horn being rammed up his ass on my desktop, so here is a collection of my favourite shots of the bull winning for Once





This is my all time Favourite






This guy fighting even though he was injured in all his last fights, hurrah

Pamplona , City of Hemmingway and Running Bulls

I had a slow walk round Pamplona Sunday and to be honest, most of it is just like any other big ugly city, but the older parts have been preserved to an extent. Plus the other very important aspect is they have made it totally car free, so all the main boulevards are pedestrain only. This made the walking nice and relaxed, the old part is pretty nice but this isn't Florence and it wasn't so pretty. I managed to get to Hemmingways drinking hole and it was just a miserable little bar where he would do some drinking and writing. There was the nice town hall, old and pretty and there was a church, I don't do much with churches really but other than that it was pretty disappointing. Perhaps watching young guys getting a 12 inch horn rammed up their ass would be more fun as i feel the running of the bulls should be banned along with Bull Fighting, I feel so strongly about bull fighting i may blog just about that and cheer all the dead bull-fighters and celebrate the bull that kills their tormentors. Possibly not worth the effort to travel to and probbaly too far away from other more worthwhile places to Visit like the gorge with nesting Vultures.

The Town Hall




The street where the bulls are run




Oscar my work Colleague and Very Good Friend




Statue of the Running Bulls Killing People, Wonderful




In Full Charge, Hussar

Castillo De Javier and Foz De Lumbier

I went out for a drive on sunday and we were told that the coast would be wet and windy so we went inland to a castle we were told about, it is very close to the work site and it was a quick drive, wehn we arrived I was intrigued at the small size of the so called castle and when walking up to it it was apparent it wasn't a real castle and was tiny and probably a rich mans garden ornament. We decided not to go inside as they were charging money for it, we left feeling cheated but isn't this all the same with most attractions. We then headed for the large river gorge which is directly across from the site and we drove to the main car park and found we had to walk along a nice road to the actual gorge, it was very interesting to find that the route was originally a train track, the first actual electric train in spain and a could of tunnels had been blasted through the cliffs to allow the trains access. the cliffs are very impressive and maybe up to 300 meters tall, the cliffs were also full of nesting birds, many different species, typical cliff birds, Jackdaws and martins but this is a special site for the amount of nesting Vultures, there were at least 10 pairs of nesting Griffon Vultures but without my bins i couldn't identify is there were any lammergiers or other smaller species, it was spectacular and well worth the trip, we had to walk for about 3Km out and then 3 Km back wich took us about 1 1/2 hours, a really nice end of the day-

Crappy fake castle




Amazing vulture display on the cliffs




Fantastic Cliffs along the Gorge

Coto Doñana, The Most Amazing National Park in Spain

On my last weekend before I was due to Fly to Equatorial Guinea, i decided to take Jenny and the little girl to the beach but also near a giant national Park called, Coto Doñana. it is a huge estuary and has many birds associated with Africa as it is so close, we had booked a large tourist hotel in the main town called Matalascañas basically translated as "Kill The Canes". Very odd for a place name. the weather was sunny but the wind was cold. We went for a walk to the beach and to find some food shops and bars and restaurants but soon found there are virtually none there, This is the most bizarre place i have been, the town was built around a golf course and as such all the homes are just for holidays, no people live there just holiday, so we had to go back to the hotel to book in for all inclusive, which was OK as i could drink myself silly for 3 days but after bird watching of course, The next morning we went out to drive to the visitor centre and found a fantastic set of walks around some small ponds and found the place was alive with Storks, nesting everywhere, on buildings and chimneys and every electric pylon the big pylons had 3 nests on them, fantastic, also many other birs which were all new to me. the walks were great and the place was full of flowers and was very peaceful and tranquil just perect for my rest before work. we then went drinking all afternoon and night not much happened in the hotel other than watching lots of other people get really drunk on the non stop pouring of drinks to people who didn't have to pay for each one.

The next morning we went to a local town where the Flamingoes were feeding, the lake was big but the town next to it was even bigger and full of old farts coming to look at the "birdies", i hate that mentality really, stupid people who dont know any better, why didn't they stay at home and stop making pollution just because they want to spend some money before they die. Die at home quietly and leave the "birdies" to us birders and stop getting in my way, They had a very interesting attitude in the town to the Swallows and House Martins, they actually did nothing to stop them form making their nests on the buildings, the nesting areas had nest 5 or 6 or 7 nests deep, amazing to see, it is probably what you need when you live in a swamp and need to keep the mosquitoes away and from biting you and giving you giant puss filled wounds like my buddy Slyght, how he managed to find every Dengue and plague infected mosquito i will never know.

So we were just driving away to the hotel and we saw a sign for more bird hides in the park, so we spun the car around and drove into a far better park than we saw the day before, it had Spoonbills and we saw even more storks and the hides and lakes we laid out just brilliantly, we had a great time and as we were driving away we saw another sign for a palace, so i had to just find out if it was a real one, it wasn't but on the 5 Kms to the place we saw maybe 20 of the most amazing Bee-eaters just sitting on bushes and catching bees probably and just looking like streaks of Rainbow flying about, the palace ws a 1960 attempt at a recreation of a rich persons house but the drive to see it was amazing,

The drive




From the Roof




It looked great but it was probably a ruined shell when the park took it over and it was far smaller than you think, maybe only space for 4-6 bedrooms upstairs honestly, Palacio Acebuche




The Gardens had gone wild but were interesting, Like the enchanted Garden




This is the Church near the Flamingo Lake and you can see all the Mud nests from the House Martins on it




Around the Flamingo Lake with the two Tinkers




This is the main Visitor centre and it was free and very good, plus it was free, did i mention that.




This is my hotel the one with a yellow line across the top, spoiling the view actually, somebody must have taken a huge bribe to allow a golf course and crappy toursit place to be built in a pristine national park, corruption gone mad.

Paris "Charles De Gaul" Airport, It just got Worse

I hate Paris Airport and this last trip i flew through it just made a leap into far worse for me, I hate the way they have designed the airport to look nice but be totally hopeless for people to move around in it, and i had to catch a connection with only 25 minutes in between, I suspected i would miss it and I saw a terminal i had never seen before 2H, so i followed the miserable signs and it took me out to a bus stand, i got on a sat for around 15 minutes as the bus just left the airport and went for a run into the country, i was shocked and arrived at a large tin shed, like a Walmart but without anything worth looking at. this was Terminal 2H, maybe 5 Km away and still part of the airport and this is where the regional aircraft have to fly from, it was shite in the extreme and luckily for me the flight was late and i didn't miss my connection but what a piece of crap to call a terminal, no wonder they keep losing to Germany they have surrendered to anything called common sense.

Genoa, The city of Merchants

I have driven passed by Genoa once but this was my first trip ever to stay, even if it was for one night, I arrived at mid-day and took a taxi directly to the Equatorial Guinea Consulate, it was a little difficult to find as it was basically a converted house and hidden in a poor part of town. The first person I encountered was a miserable old fart who needed oxygen to breath and it was probably something to do with the 100 cigarettes he smoked a day, he was complaining like a short-changed hooker, going on about how it was lunch time and nobody had informed him I was arriving and i didn't have the paperwork to say I had paid the money for the Visa and basically threw me out of the place, just as I got out of the door he chased after me the best he could and then told me they would do it right there and then, better than a normal appointment as that usually arrive before lunch and pick it up after lunch, it is all bullshit as it takes the young kid all of 5 minutes to hand write out a sticky label, so much for my 200 Euros. I then went to a nice hotel i found on the internet and it was probably one of the cheaper ones at 140 Euros a night and it was on a wharf in the old harbour and rightly named the marine hotel. It was new and was nice and clean and pretty nice, all in a nautical style. There was a fake galleon in the water besides it and from what i could see looked like a converted fishing vessel. I had a quick walk around the old area and my first impression was the town has suffered from inappropriate development and there is a raised highway around the harbour which destroys all the nice views of the old buildings and take saway the atmoshpere. there are some very nice old buildings including the cathedral and all the old apartments, must be a nightmare for decorating and remodelling a 600 year old building.













I liked the place but it is too busy for me and to be honest i have been spoiled by spending so much time in Florence and Sienna and Luca, all very perfectly preserved and peaceful with no traffic but it was a nice all paid for trip