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In a very last minute decision, Phil and me went to see “Spider-Man 2” last night… Erika and Adam were in the pool while we were watching The Simpsons, and Phil says “I’ve got a very bad idea that will piss those two off,” the local cinema was showing it at 8:30 pm but we decided not to go, so we watched Stan Lee’s Mutants, Monsters, and Marvels instead. Erika and Adam came in and Erika said if we wanted to go see Spider-Man then we could go see Spider-Man, of course the local cinema showing had long since past so we had to go further afield, all the way to the Cobb Galleria by the Perimeter…

We had to rush to make the 9:15 showing, but an insane amount of red lights on the way hampered our progress, so we made the 10:00 showing, with the queue out the door…

So the story picks up 2 years after the last movie, Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) is still down on his luck, still in love with Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), still taking pictures of Spider-Man for the Daily Bugle and still living the double life as Spider-Man. But something seems to be wrong, his web slinging abilities, while a lot more graceful than the first movie, is cutting out at the most inappropriate moments. Plus a new villain is in town, Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina), who is hell bent on finishing the experiment that created him, add in Harry Osborn (James Franco) who wants Spider-Man to pay for the death of his father in the first movie and life for Spider-Man isn’t so easy…

That’s as much of the story as I’m telling… But if you liked the first one, you will love this. The effects are simply jawdropping, especially in the fights between Doc Ock and Spider-Man… The way they bring Doctor Octopus’ mechanical arms to life is very well done, to the point that they almost show emotion.

There’s plenty of laughs throughout the movie, mostly from J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons), and we’re introduced to a few more characters from the Spider-Man universe, Dr. Conners (who eventually becomes The Lizard) and John Jameson (who becomes Man-Wolf) as well as a hint towards HobGoblin (or Green Goblin 2), so it’s really a movie for fans of the comic book series.

Spider-Man 3 is already a given, infact it’s already scheduled for a Summer 2007 release, so this movie leaves a lot of loose ends that’s surely going to be tied up in 3 years time. Otherwise this is highly recommended, especially if you enjoyed the first movie…

I was able to go see the Braves play the Marlins again at Turner Field last night, yes, same teams as before, this time it was a night game… Literally…

Atlanta has been in monsoon season for the last few weeks, and we (Robyn and myself) were hoping, nay praying for a dry evening at the old ballpark, and for a while it looked favourable, until 10 minutes before the 7:35 pm opening pitch when it began to rain heavily. Where we were sitting (Lexus Level 1st row y’all) offered a little bit of cover from the rain but the wind changed for the worse and we had to move a few rows back to be completely covered. How long the rain delay would last, well no one knew, weather reports flashed up on the big screen saying the rain was moving away to the south but after an hour the rain was relentless, so we went inside to see what the Lexus Level had to offer, and it’s quite a nice area of the ballpark, shame it looked like a refugee camp with everyone inside hiding from the elements.

And thus it went on, it looked like we’d be having a game at about 9:30 when the ground crew came out to rapturous applause and began to lift the covers off, but they got half way before the rain came on again and they got booed out the park.

By now a lot of people, families mostly, had decided to cut their losses and head home as no one knew when, or indeed if, the game would be played. Eventually at 10:30 the rain ceased and it was anounced that opening pitch would be 10:55, the few who had remain were also told that they could sit in any free seat available, so those in the upper deck rushed down to the seats behind the dugouts and home plate. The ground crew came on and made the surface playable and opening pitch was right on 10:55 pm, some 3 hours 20 minutes late…

The game was a pretty speedy one, I guess even the players didn’t want to hang about at that time of night. J.D. Drew hit a two run homer in the third as the Braves cruised to a 6-1 victory in a game that ran until 1:25 am. During the game we had a few close calls with foul balls off Julio Franco’s bat, three or four came extremely close to us only to hit off the nearby scoreboard or drop down into the seats below…

Anyway, here is a few of the 150 odd pictures we took of the game

Quite a few huh? Also… A Turner Field panorama (this time at night…)

Before I begin, I’ll refresh your memory about the controversy surrounding the latest documentary by Michael Moore… “Fahrenheit 9/11“… Basically Miramax were producing it, but parent company Disney didnt want them to release it, so it was sold off to Lions Gate by Bob and Harvey Weinstein, same as what they did with Kevin Smith’s “Dogma” in late 1999, it went on to recieve top plaudits at the Cannes Film Festival in May. This brings us up to this weekend where it opened in the States and, supposedly, raked in $8m in ticket sales on it’s opening day, easily beating the previous record, Moore’s “Bowling For Columbine“.

Now be warned, this is your typical Michael Moore film, don’t be expecting an unbiased view on world events, the man does not like George W. Bush and everything he stands for… That aside it’s actually quite an enjoyable film, though I liked “Bowling For Columbine” and his books “Stupid White Men …and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!” and “Dude, Where’s My Country?“, both recommended to me by my dad…

It explores everything he wrote in “Dude, Where’s My Country?” which I expected, that being the stealing of the presidential election, his family links to the Saudi Royal Family and the Bin Laden family, his links to Haliburton and Enron, the pointlessness of the war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq… You know the deal surely.

I would advise most everybody go see it, it’s the first film I’ve been to see that got a standing ovation at the end (I kid you not) and that’s the highest recommendation you can get, not just from me, but a theater full of paying patrons in Marietta, GA. who stood up at 9:30 pm on Sunday 27th June and gave this film a worthy round of applause…