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For another year, I failed to get myself to the IAHC for March shenanigans. It wasn't just that I can't face it sober and I'm less eager to drink than ever. Usually I start listening to Irish tunes a couple weeks before, but I hardly did that this year. So my celebration of my Celtic heritage was reduced to playing "Óró, sé do bheatha 'bhaile" for the Seanduine at dinner (which didn't even feature potatoes!) and watching Neil Jordan's Michael Collins afterwards.
It's a somewhat uneven film. Neeson is terrifically cast in the lead (even if he was a bit long in the tooth to play the youthful Collins once Jordan finally secured funding) and Rickman does a good job with a fairly negative portrayal of de Valera. But Aidan Quinn and (lord help us all) Julia Roberts make the love-triangle subplot almost unwatchable. It doesn't dominate the film, as with some biopics, but I would've rather seen more of the cat-and-mouse game between the IRA and British intelligence. Because of the foreshortening required to keep the film to two hours, there's barely time to introduce the Cairo Gang before leaping to their liquidation six months later.
I'm not making great progress on my reading either. I only just today reached the midpoint of Borstal Boy. Not because it's not fun and easy reading, I'm just not pushing myself on it. I spend as much time on the shuttle mooning at the cloud formations or chatting with my neighbours as reading these days and I can't say I'm worse off for it.
It's a somewhat uneven film. Neeson is terrifically cast in the lead (even if he was a bit long in the tooth to play the youthful Collins once Jordan finally secured funding) and Rickman does a good job with a fairly negative portrayal of de Valera. But Aidan Quinn and (lord help us all) Julia Roberts make the love-triangle subplot almost unwatchable. It doesn't dominate the film, as with some biopics, but I would've rather seen more of the cat-and-mouse game between the IRA and British intelligence. Because of the foreshortening required to keep the film to two hours, there's barely time to introduce the Cairo Gang before leaping to their liquidation six months later.
I'm not making great progress on my reading either. I only just today reached the midpoint of Borstal Boy. Not because it's not fun and easy reading, I'm just not pushing myself on it. I spend as much time on the shuttle mooning at the cloud formations or chatting with my neighbours as reading these days and I can't say I'm worse off for it.