Right, so today I went on a crazy bender. A crazy bender which, in my opinion, tells a lot about what kind of person I am.
/>For starters, this crazy bender was with my father.
It was in Dorset.
It was soundtracked by Dusty Springfield, Rufus Wainwright, Joni Mitchell, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Nina Simone, Scissor Sisters and Amy Winehouse. Yes, I made a playlist.
And here's the clincher.
It was a book binge.
Yes, my father and I, Book Bandits of the West Country, drove all around buying second hand books with crazed abandon, piling them on the back seat until we'd accumulated fifty. Quite an absurd number of books.
And surely we should hate ourselves? But how could we when they're so darned pretty, all red and gold and lined up tidily, in pristine alphabetical order, on the book shelf? They are be-yoo-ti-ful. I stared at them in dazed joy for about five minutes after I'd lined 'em up all nice, and they simply bowl me over with their loveliness. I want to cuddle them.

Afterwards, I watched Juno.

Okay, so I have to admit that I wasn't too bowled over by it from the first five minutes. It was actually Juno's first line 'Shut your friggin' gob' that annoyed me, although I'm not entirely sure why. And then there was all the fake cartoon stuff, the annoying bloke at the pharmacy who insisted on talking in ridiculous rhymes, the consciously teenage slang dialogue between Juno and her mate, the bloody sodding hamburger phone, all that jazz. On the whole, I thought it was simply too conscious of itself; the script seemed more focused on getting in as many quirky turns of phrase than making it believable or good, and I found the result to be slightly overbearing. Same goes for the soundtrack; to me it all sounded very samey and frankly a bit hackneyed. There's only so much mellow, trippy indie acoustic crap that I can take, and I'm just not a fan of the whole lyrical style of those things.

However, it wasn't without its good points. Yes, Ellen Page annoyed me, but she did give a very convincing and detailed performance, and Jennifer Garner was typically lovely. She was the one that really shone, in my opinion. Even when she couldn't quite articulate herself in the script, the emotion and love and hope was always there written across her face. Thingy thingy - y'know, that nice boy from Superbad - he was very sweet as Juno's hapless boyfriend, although it'd be nice to see him playing a different part to the one he's always cast in - i.e. the nerdy idiot. The stepmum was brilliant too - was she the smut writing secretary from 10 Things I Hate About You? Well, whatever, I thought she was great. The rest of the performances were nothing special, and like I said, I found the script contrived, but it wasn't an evening entirely wasted. Decent effort.