Rob, Rambling - A lot of things interest me...

You can prove anything with statistics, they say. An apt example is the Edinburgh Festival’s crowing this week about the highest ticket sales in the event’s history, an astounding 1.95m tickets this summer.

(Unfortunately, this year none of those tickets were mine, as I didn’t have time to get up there, but I’ll be going again next year. I’ve had such a blast over the last couple of years that I’m disappointed not to have had the time this August to have even just a few days in Edinburgh. It’s a crazy place, and just buzzing 24/7.)

Anyways, what the press release and subsequent media coverage failed to point out, is that whilst ticket sales were up by 5%, the average number of tickets sold per performance had dropped off quite dramatically:

• In 2009, ticket sales were 1.85m for 32,000ish performances. That works out as 57.8 tickets sold per performance.

• In 2010, ticket sales were 1.95m for 40,000ish performances. That works out as 48.8 tickets sold per performance.

That looks like a fall of just over 15% in average attendance per show, which doesn’t exactly strike me as a blinding success.

The sheer growth in terms of the number of performers and shows is what accounts for the growth in ticket sales as a whole, but each individual performance is actually seeing a reduction in ticket sales, which in turn is making it harder for productions to break even.

Of course, the Edinburgh festival organising committee wants to put a positive spin on things, and it’s just a shame that none of the journalists writing about the festival’s ticket sales have done any simple maths to show that all might not be quite as rosy as is claimed…

Sitting in the dentist’s chair earlier, I noticed that she had Classic FM on in the background, and it made me think that if I were a dentist, I’d be so tempted to drill in time with the music.

Dun dun dun dun dunn, drilldrill, drilldrill and so on.

One of the best things about my job is that I speak to people from all over the world, and get to meet them. One of the guys I was out to lunch with today was from Georgia (as in the country, not the US state), and it was really interesting to talk with him about the so many differences in culture and language from us Brits.

What really threw me though, was the couple of times he began a sentence with “I was out bear-hunting this one time…”.

He even told a story of how one of his best mates had to cut open some animal and sleep practically inside it because it turned so cold one of the nights they were out hunting. Like Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, seriously!

Interestingly, he said that the Georgian language was pretty much entirely self-standing, and completely different from any other. It is over 2,000 years old, and has a written script that isn’t at all Cyrillic or Latin. I’ve looked it up on Wikipedia this evening, and linguistic historians have not been able to find any connections to other languages in the European or Asian area.

Apparently the closest is Basque, which is odd because the two regions are over 2,000 miles apart. What is even stranger is that the eastern part of Georgia used to be called Iberia, and the Spanish-Portuguese peninsula is the Iberian peninsula. Coincidence, or were there some very well-travelled Georgians in Roman times? I find this kind of thing fascinating.

Anyway, I’m going to make it a goal of mine in life to be able to start a sentence “I was out bear-hunting this one time…”.

I got round to watching Salt last night, the spy-action film with Angelina Jolie in the title role. It filled a gap, and there’ll definitely be a sequel, but it ain’t anything too special.

I don’t know whether this is damning it with false praise, as I thought the Bourne films were over-rated, but when it finished I was left with the impression that it was essentially “The Bourne She-premacy”. It’s almost identical in tone, style, attempts to make the plot needlessly complicated, and a slight feeling of unease that surrounds the main character’s identity.

I thought that the car-based action sequences were among its strong points, and that Angelina Jolie is better than she was allowed to be in terms of developing her character. Hell, Mrs Smith had more depth!

Definitely a popcorn film, and not even a particularly brilliant one at that. Maybe the sequel (guaranteed!) will be better.

Suffice it to say that the ‘Whitney Houston’ at Cino’s on Leather Lane is an absolutely fantastic sandwich. Serious munch.

And I’ve no idea why the menu is stuck in the early 90s, with the other specials being:

• Robert De Niro

• Al Pacino

• Prince Naseem

• Madonna

• And a couple of others which I can’t remember.

Even though it’s only been a 4-day week, I am bushed. Evidently 3-day boozefests are beyond me nowadays, and I seem to have picked up a cold to boot. Excellent!

Thankfully, I’m off to my parents’ place for some R&R on this 3-day weekend, with the girlfriend heading off on a hen do and me left on my lonesome for a day of sport on the Saturday. There’s nothing like being on the sofa for eight hours, with a laptop on one side and the TV on the other (or, ideally, with both in front of you so you can watch both without having to turn your head. I have previous on this matter).

Then it’s round to a mate’s house for a barbecue on Sunday, come rain or shine, and back to London on Monday. With any luck the girlfriend’s sister will have cleaned our flat whilst she’s staying there in our absence!

I watched Splice last night, and this morning all I can really think about it is a resounding “meh”.

It had its moments, some particularly shocking and nasty, others pretty touching, but it was awkward in that it didn’t really know what it wanted to be. It was torn between an outright sci-fi horror film, and something entirely different exploring what it means to be a parent and a family.

In particular, the ending seems out of kilter with the rest of the film, as if the director thought it needed some added action and gore, but didn’t know where it could fit in elsewhere. It very much felt tacked on, although earlier in the film I found myself willing something similar to happen.

This is because it plods along a little in the middle section, especially if you’d been expecting something more exciting and scary, as the trailer had led me to believe. In fact, the film is more about moral and ethical dilemmas, which I’ll grant is harder to get across in 60 seconds…

Even those moral issues are relatively quickly glossed over, with a “fuck it, let’s do it anyway” attitude present for most of the time. Adrien Brody is pretty good as the more sceptical of the two scientists, with more questions as to the correctness of what it is they’re trying to achieve.

Not a bad film, all told, but one that is undersold by its trailer. Don’t expect violence and scares aplenty, but do expect to see some good ones when they do turn up.

With some inopportune planning, I’m missing the first home game of Arsenal’s season tomorrow, by virtue of being up in Newcastle for a mate’s stag do, which will no doubt involve adding to the general level of punishment under which my liver exists.

The plan for the weekend seems pretty open: a whole lot of drinking on Saturday, with some mystery “fun activities” thrown in. I know we’re going to a cricket match on Sunday, but don’t have a clue what the obligatory fancy dress will be, and then Monday is theoretically for recovering. Although our flights aren’t until the evening, so there’s opportunity for a beer or seven in there as well…

Wish me luck!

[EXPLOSION]

[FIRE]

[EXPLOSION]

[RUNNING]

[EXPLOSION]

[GUNFIRE]

[EXPLOSION]

[FIGHTING]

[EXPLOSION]

[CLOSE-UP ON ACTOR’S FACE]

[EXPLOSION]

[EXPLOSION]

[EXPLOSION]

There’s a 10-minute section of The Expendables in which the above is pretty much the entire script, with barely a word uttered shouted during a thoroughly intense action scene. The screen is practically shaking with the amount of explosions and gunfire, and everywhere you look something is either burning or blowing up (or both!).

And it’s not as if I expected anything different. Expendables is an action film in the truest sense of the word. Very few scenes are wasted on such niceties as plot or character development. Why, when you can have another explosion/fight/car chase (delete as necessary)?!

The action is over the top, tongue in cheek, almost comically gory, but pretty bloody amazing to watch. These aren’t the biggest action stars in the world for no reason, and they know how to make things look good on camera.

Whether they’re engaged in hand-to-hand fighting (complete with nasty bone-breaking), or shooting the fuck out of a bunch of soldiers (including heads and bodies literally being blown apart), they’re doing so in style. The physical combat scenes are fantastic, particularly those involving Jet Li and Jason Statham.

Stallone is a half-decent writer/director, and isn’t afraid to tackle some pretty nasty material. The torture scene here is brutally realistic, and you can’t help but remember that these techniques were used on hundreds of prisoners by the CIA. It’s uncomfortable viewing, that’s for sure.

Mickey Rourke’s character comes the closest to expressing some kind of depth, whereas the rest rely on chirpy one-liners to give them the merest hint of being something other than an automaton. It’s all banter between the boys, with plenty of piss-taking and gratuitous swearing.

The subplot with Statham’s character and his ex seemed entirely unnecessary, as if it were planted to give him some more screen time? This is sort of acknowledged with Jet Li’s character talking about a family that he has and everyone else asking when he managed to find the time to find one.

Thanks to the trailer, we all know that Bruce Willis and Arnie have cameo roles, but thankfully the best line of their scene wasn’t spoiled. It’s a genuinely funny tongue-in-cheek moment, and played joyously straight by all three of the action film superstars.

I walked out of the film with a massive, massive grin on my face. It was ridiculous, of course it was, but it was entertaining. Sometimes you just need to see 90 minutes of shit getting blown up, of the good guys going after the bad guys with a ridiculous combination of weaponry and fists, of the token inclusion of a female character.

It’s better than any action film I’ve seen for a long time, and it shows that you don’t always need a convoluted plot to be a good film. Or any plot, really.

Disengage your brain, engage your love of explosions, and go see The Expendables.

• Craig Bellamy in June 2006, on signing for Liverpool: “The fact that it was Liverpool made it impossible for me to turn them down. As I’m a fan, it doesn’t matter what club I was at. I could never turn Liverpool down.”

• Craig Bellamy in August 2010, on signing for Cardiff: “I’m thrilled to be coming back home to Cardiff and am excited at the prospect of wearing the shirt and playing for the club I’ve supported since I was a boy.”

And they say that footballers are mercenaries who will play for anybody that’s prepared to pay them stupid amounts of money…