Finished my most recent edit of book 2 of my 4-book series today. I'm taking a break from the editing for the next couple of weeks. I'll be popping over to London during the week to celebrate my birthday with all sorts of treats, and then I have an event in Bantry in Cork which I'm looking forward to -- I did a school event in Bantry back in March 2000, during my very first month of touring to promote Cirque Du Freak. It went very well from what I remember -- if I recall correctly, I spoke to a group of girls, who were highly enthusiastic. I haven't been back since then, so it will be nice to return to a very old stomping ground!!

I watched The Wild Bunch again last night. What a stunner of a movie!! Some films don't age well as you get older -- I've seen lots of films in recent years which I was wild about as a teen or in my early 20s, but which left me decidedly unimpressed when seen again as a man in his mid 30s. It's the same with books and music -- some things are tied to a specific point of your life and best left moored there and never revisited. The Wild Bunch, however, thrilled me as much as ever. It's a magnificent film in every respect, especially the editing -- Peckinpah would later fall back on his quick-cut editing style a bit too heavily, to the extent that sometimes it seemed like he was making a parody of his own films, but in this one it feels fresh and innovative. The Wild Bunch didn't actually impress me that much the first time I saw it, which was in The Everyman Cinema in London (I think). I saw it as a part of a double-bill with Once Upon A Time in the West. It was the second film in the bill, and while they're both absolute classics, they're best viewed independently of each other -- I was mentally exhausted by the time West had finished, not in the state of mind to appreciate anything straight after it. I saw WB again not too long after, and second time round it blew me away -- as it was been doing ever since. It's violent and bloody, to be sure, but never in a cheap, nasty way -- this is a film about bad men with nowhere else to go, and what they do when they reach the end of the line, and every bullet fired and spray of blood is there for a purpose.

I saw a far less well known film this afternoon, called The Sadist. It was made in 1963, a B movie about a psychopathic serial killer who sets his sights on a trio of teachers. Virtually everyone involved with it was a talentless nobody (with the exception of the cameraman, Vilmos Zsigmond, who would go on to work with Spielberg and a whole host of other greats), yet somehow things clicked in this picture and, while no classic by any means, it ticks along nicely and features some true surprises and memorable scenes. It just goes to show -- if the spirit is willing, sometimes you can overcome any sort of odds, even your own limitations!!