The Cat invented a new game yesterday.

She drops a hair clip at my feet. I have to pick it up and throw it across the room for her. She pounces on it, then picks it up in her mouth, pads back across the room and drops it at my feet. If, by any chance, I don’t promptly pick it up and throw it again, she starts eating and scratching my papers.

Cats take the business of training humans very seriously.

Being a list of films viewed during 2005

· Howl’s Moving Castle, Hayao Miyazaki
· Finding Neverland, Marc Forster
· Possession [DVD], Neil LaBute
· The Edukators, Hans Weingartner
· The Nightmare Before Christmas [DVD], Henry Selick
· Constantine, Francis Lawrence
· Star Wars IV: A New Hope [DVD], George Lucas
· Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back [DVD], Irvin Kershner
· Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi [DVD], George Lucas
· Final Destination [DVD], James Wong
· Donnie Darko [DVD], Richard Kelly
· Men In Black II [DVD], Barry Sonnenfeld
· The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Wes Anderson
· The Gathering [DVD], Brian Gilbert
· Insomnia [DVD], Christopher Nolan
· The Bourne Supremacy [DVD], Paul Greengrass
· Scooby Doo 2 [DVD], Raja Gosnell
· Horus [Taiyo no oji: Horusu no daiboken] [DVD], Isao Takahata
· 3-Iron [Bin-jip], Ki-duk Kim
· Steamboy [DVD], Katsuhiro Ôtomo
· Spiderman 2 [DVD], Sam Raimi
· High Fidelity [DVD], Stephen Frears
· Ghost World [DVD], Terry Zwigoff
· Bandits [DVD], Barry Levinson
· Collateral [DVD], Michael Mann
· Stars Wars III – Revenge of the Sith, George Lucas
· A Simple Plan [DVD], Sam Raimi
· Sin City, Robert Rodriguez, et al.
· No Blood No Tears [Pido nunmuldo eobshi] [DVD], Seung-wan Ryoo
· The Mummy Returns [DVD], Stephen Sommers
· Time And Tide [Seunlau ngaklau] [DVD], Hark Tsui
· Wonderful Days [DVD], Moon-saeng Kim,
Park Sunmin
· Oldboy [DVD], Chan-wook Park
· Chronicles of Riddick [DVD], David Twohy
· A Series Of Unfortunate Events [DVD], Brad Silberling
· Kung Fu Hustle [Gong Fu], Stephen Chow
· Matilda, Danny DeVito
· Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Tim Burton
· War Of The Worlds, Steven Spielberg
· Identity [DVD], James Mangold
· Hostage [DivX], Florent Emilio Siri
· Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets [DVD], Chris Columbus
· Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Doug Liman
· The Island, Michael Bay
· Die xue shuang xiong [The Killer] [DVD], John Woo
· The Jacket, John Maybury
· Danny The Dog [DVD], Louis Leterrier
· The Transporter [DivX], Louis Leterrier
· The Brothers Grimm, Terry Gilliam
· Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Steve Box, Nick Park
· Equilibrium [DVD], Kurt Wimmer
· The Corpse Bride, Tim Burton, Mike Johnson
· Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow [DVD], Kerry Conran
· Free Zone, Amos Gitai
· The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Tommy Lee Jones
· Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Mike Newell
· The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Andrew Adamson

Oops. That was fifteen days being cut off from the net, just when I wanted to put up all my end of the year information. No thanks to my ISP for thoroughly ruining things there. The time to disentangle myself and get a new provider… Here I am again.

Even so, I haven’t posted for some time.

Let me reassure my reader. I am here. I am still, more or less, alive. And I have news.

I’ll probably post some small pieces in the coming days, just to fill in and catch up. But here’s the new year material.

First of all, best wishes to all for the coming year. As it’s already upon us, you already have an idea of the flavour, I just hope that it will be full of good warm things if you like that sort of thing (and cold slimy stuff, if you prefer that).

For myself, the end of the year means reviewing the goals I set myself for 2005, as well as archiving my reading and movies lists.

Goals

Probably the most important was getting something published. This I didn’t get done. I did have hopes that the (non-fiction) idea that I floated would come to fruit. It didn’t. After being hummed and hah-ed for about two months, I was told that the project didn’t fit in with the publisher’s planning schedule. Fine. I’ve put it aside, and might come abck to it later. For the moment I am too occupied with ZeBigProject to work on it. ZeBigProject will become public in about two weeks, so I’ll say no more for the moment.

Reads

I see that I managed to read about 120 books this year. These varied in size from Philip Pullman’s Lyra’s Oxford, to Philip K.Dick’s complete short stories in 2 volumes. I didn’t count books that I started and abandoned—there were a couple. Nor books that I read more than once. For example, I read the last Harry Potter four times [looking for clues—coming soon], as well as a couple of Ian Rankin books. I also read online, magazines, and what not. As well as some of Kim’s books. All in all, it means I managed at least 2 books a week. This is a good thing, and I plan to keep to the rhythm of two a week. I’ll archive 2005 soon, and set up the 2006 list.

Films

This year’s offering was dominated by Fantasy and Asian movies I think. Fantasy I think reflects the renewal of this genre as special effects have made more things possible. Asian movies seems to reflect that that is currently where the good new cinema is happening. Quite frankly, this year no French film has stirred me to say, Hey I’d like to see that! But a lot of Asian cinema has. And I haven’t been disappointed. There’s also a good mix between blockbusters and art films—thanks to our local cinema’s very reasonable prices, 3,90 a seat, sometimes cheaper for children’s films.

This Year

Well, we have ZeBigProject launching in a couple of weeks, and that means lots of preparation and work. But I would also like to finish another novel this year. It’s only in writing them that I’ll get better… Died keeps floating back, Pirates is half written, and I have another— Dragon’s Teeth—sitting as notes on my bedside table. Perhaps if I decided to get up a hour earlier each day, and just write for an hour each day, and see how it goes.

[to be continued]