Sunday. My I-don't-have- to-run-day.

Food Festival

Everybody loves free samples. Even if they're on teeny weeny little shreds of bread or pieces of cracker. We love 'em.

The stink things about samples at supermarkets is that they're pushing products and you know the poor old lady with the rice risotto is going to get all excited if you stop to sample her wares.... so you feel bad if all you intend doing is the old grab-and-run sample.

That's the beauty of the food festival. You're in a hoard of samplers. You move in packs and the sales-people don't have time to hone in on you. You can happily move along the row and try six different variations of dips and not get spoken to once, if you keep a low profile. You just happily bounce like a ping-pong ball across the aisles from one stand to the next, picking up tiny cups of wine and sausage-on-a-toothpick.

There are, of course, certain etiquette rules you must abide by. Me and my crew were critical of the people who sampled-and-stayed. When there is a queue behind you, you sample-and-move-on. Get your handful and then return to the centre-aisle. Do not block the flow of the line. We all want our cracker with pesto, buster! Middle-aged ladies are always the prickliest of queue hoppers. Meet them on a dark street and they'd be no competition, but get between them and a piece of free Cadbury chocolate and you have a battle on your hands. There may be handbags and elbows thrown.

I got some stuff.

* * *

Zodiac

Me and Ben went to Zodiac last night. We'd both been looking forward to it, it being the first Fincher film since the disappointing Panic Room (following his gritty and clever Fight Club and Seven films).

I'd say I was disappointed, but not in the worst way. I came out of it more bewildered than critical. It's certainly not a passive film. It starts off almost cheesily, in the innocent era of the 60s and gets slightly darker as it moves on. I liked that Ruffalo kid - he's born to play well-intentioned cops.

I suspect it had kind of an art-house ideal of not wanting to package itself neatly. It reflected the messy world of trying-to-find-the-killer in the middle of hundreds of dead-ends and grey areas. I guess that went against the grain of your usual action movie. Rather than the shoot-out at the end there was an understated scene where the protagonist and killer exchanged eye contact. And then he walked away. How very un-Hollywood. Where were the police and the helicopters and the chase scenes or the confession-which-reveals-the-motives???

I have enough faith in Fincher to suspect I missed some of the subtleties and would appreciate it after a second viewing or reading some background on it. The fact that I didn't like its open-ended bits probably reflects on me as a lazy-viewer (I will take the blame for that and again, hope that Fincher was doing it more purposefully than I appreciated). Man, I sound like a Fincher Disciple. I have blind faith in his decisions. Let me sign up for the cult....

Anyhow, I liked it without wanting to add it to my top ten list of movies. Probably won't go around whole-heartedly recommending it to people - not an easy one to predict