My Week

Things I did not do this week:

I did not get stranded on a makeshift life raft, almost starve to death and then have to give myself a makeshift enema from the only non-salty fluid which I was able to gather up, consisting of fish blood and other less savoury ingredients.

I did not have any time off sick. In contrast to the beginning last week, when I was still recovering from my near-death experience of catching one of Helena's colds.

I did not manage to find a way to emigrate to Greece without going bankrupt. Though I'm not giving up hope. Perhaps they'll consider sending me there as part of some future EU recovery programme. "We're sorry, Mr Papandreou, but we don't have €22bn in ready cash to bail your country out right now, but Brian says he's worked out a way to beat your deficit." Admittedly my idea of acquiring a time machine, going into the future and back and then making a killing on the horses isn't the most original, but it's still pretty sound, I reckon. Certainly more sound than the stock market these days...

EU Rescue package

Things I did do this week:

I did get my car taxed and insured for another year. This always seems to happen at a time of year when my finances aren't great, so I've had to make some tough economic sacrficies. A bit like the Greeks. However by making sure I ate something every other day, I've managed to avoid that enema thing.

I did book my car in for its annual service and MOT. Which means that I won't be eating that well in March, either.

I did waste many hours playing "The Feasibility Experiment". That's one of those 1980s text-based adventure games, which I never had the patience for when they first came out. I think I'm almost there with this one, though.

I did finish reading Agatha Christie's "They Do it with Mirrors". I correctly guessed the murderer's identity, which makes me wonder if I've read it before, years ago.

Thing I almost did this Week:

I almost bought the American remake of Taxi on DVD. It was on special offer in one of the shops, but before I parted with my hard earned cash, I had a look on IMDb. Not all of the reviews are bad, but here are some of the comments:

Its a mess, a real mess.

If you're thinking of seeing this movie and haven't seen the French one, please, do yourself a favor. See the original.

Avoid this film at all costs

A major disappointment

We just caught with it thanks to a borrowed DVD and we are so happy we didn't have to pay to watch this "masterpiece".

Like Roger Ebert once stated about a movie, I'll use his words to state this one: (This movie)isn't even the bottom of the barrel, it doesn't even scrape the bottom of barrel. It doesn't even deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as barrels.

I make myself believe that I've seen worse but I have doubts.

WHY??????

This film is one of the worst films i have ever seen

Perhaps if people boycott movies like this we may be rewarded with originality rather than attempted cash cows.

If you've any sense at all then you'll run a mile from this hugely disappointing waste of your time.

I'll start by saying that this movie is one of the worst movies if not THE worst movie I've ever seen.

This is not a movie. This is a crime against French cinema.

I got this as a free rental, and even then, I felt ripped off.

This is truly one of those remakes that never should have been made.

The overall marking is 4.2 out of 10. It's that high because not everyone marked it with 1 - someone gave it 10 because "everyone else gave it a 1". I wasn't persuaded by this argument and decided to spend the money on alcohol instead. Consequently, this evening I sipped claret and watched the original French Taxi film, which gets 6.8 on IMDb.


It's very funny, and the driving sequences are amazingly realistic. Nothing looks speeded up and the roads seem convincingly busy. The Franco-German rivalry stuff probably loses a bit in the translation. In the end, the French taxi driver in the Peugeot beats the German criminals in their Mercedes, but the hot-policewoman-love-interest is German, and the French police are totally incompetent, so it's not all one-sided.

Next week, I have plans to do at least as many exciting things, not to mention hopefully solving "The Feasibility Experiment". And as always, I'll keep you posted...