I've just been watching "Dodgeball" on TV. This was one of those… - John C. Kirk

12:42 am

I've just been watching "Dodgeball" on TV. This was one of those films that I avoided when it came out at the cinema, because it looked pretty dire, but I decided to record it last week on a whim, and it turned out to be surprisingly good. Basically, it's funny because it's so ridiculously over the top. For instance, one training session involved the team dashing across a busy road: "If you can dodge cars, you can dodge balls!" Similarly, I'd say that the violence falls into the realm of cartoon violence. Admittedly, it's not sophisticated humour, but it made me laugh. I'm still not quite sure that I understand the rules of the game, but people who've grown up with it probably do. Other highlights of the film included some nice cameos (e.g. David Hasselhoff following up on his success in "Eurotrip"), and Alan Tudyk (Wash from "Firefly") as a pirate - y'arr! Between this film, "I Robot", and "A Knight's Tale", he's actually displayed quite an impressive range.

One interesting thing that they mentioned in the end credits - if you subscribe to Sky Movies then you can download the films onto your PC free of charge from their website. I haven't tried it out yet, but I think the idea has potential, as a rival to dodgy downloads. It does involve DRM, with a 30 day time limit on the films you download, but they've done it in a sensible way (downloading the entire thing rather than streaming it), and I think the idea is that while you're a Sky customer you can access their entire back catalog of films rather than waiting for the appropriate one to be shown on TV. Anyway, I'll report back on that later.

On a completely different subject, one thing I've been thinking about at football matches recently is the way that goals are announced. It typically goes like this:
Tannoy: "And that was a goal by Freddy Krueger. Freddy..."
Crowd: "KREUGER!"
That's fine for short names, but I'd be amused to see how well it would work for players with longer names. E.g.
Tannoy: "And that was a goal by Dilip Balasubramaniam. Dilip..."
Crowd: "Bala... Balsu... DILIP!"
(I've borrowed that surname from a girl I went to Durham with - it took me a bit of practice before I could pronounce it properly.)