Comedian and television personality, Russell Brand has a cameo role in Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End - playing Jack Sparrow’s long-lost twin brother, Tobias.

This is, of course, an April fool thought up by yours truly. But surely I’m not alone in thinking Brand looks a tad Jack Sparrow?

The At World’s End trailer released today has got me all excited. This year is shaping up to be an excellent one for big screen treats. Wizard! (And pirates! And spiders! And turtles! And… erm… John McClane!)

I’ve just got in from another night of many a laugh with Lisa - this time in the form of a fine pub meal followed by a viewing of Hot Fuzz ont’ big screen.

The portion was large (ooer!), the film excellent and company adequate. Ha ha, no Lisa was as delightful as ever - and the night was the boost I needed after my hellish penguin play of late.

It’s taken over two years to resume Star Trek: The Screen Voyages but I’ve now re-visited III & IV in a bid to maintain sane whilst rotoscoping travelling mattes for my animation. It’s such a painful, tedious process and it’s not helped by varying framerates being forced upon individual image sequences. Nay, it’s damned annoying.

Very nearly finished now, but then I have spent the last month living & breathing the blasted thing - the last two weeks of which I’ve been stuck at my desk.

I think I’ve gone a bit peculiar to tell you the truth; I got such pleasure yesterday in decapitating the penguin character models I made for this animation. I even did the cackling laugh.

Over-priced postage & packing is one of the most annoying things I have ever encountered. Along with sales calls on consecutive days from the same company attempting to sell the exact same package you shunned only the day before. Obviously.

I order a lot of things online and am constantly screwed on the p&p - it’s an enemy to us all. If you’re lucky to get a fixed postage rate regardless of the amount of items you’ve ordered you’ll no doubt find yourself adding various other items to the order to get the most out of the handling charges. But when you don’t get the postal service you’ve paid for (1st class/special/recorded etc.) they really are taking the figurative biscuit.

eBay sellers are the worst at this. I always choose recorded delivery for fairly pricey purchases - and ask for it if it’s not a listed method of delivery before bidding. Yet I so rarely get these items sent through recorded. Only the other day, having waited a week after auction end, I messaged a seller asking when an item was going to be sent, as someone needed to be in to sign for it. They replied: “It should be with you in the next couple of days. Don’t worry, it won’t need to be signed for.”

But I did worry - it was a £25 electrical component so I paid for recorded delivery to cover it. I messaged back: “But I paid for recorded delivery.” They never responded.

Thankfully the item arrived the very next day in perfect condition. But the £4 p&p I’d paid for 1st class recorded delivery saw me waiting a week all to find £1.74 had been spent on 1st class standard delivery and they’d made no effort at pretending to have spent money on the packaging. I’m sorry, but wrapping an empty Kellogg’s Coco Pops box - which was no doubt laying about waiting to be binned - around the item then writing my name over the top doesn’t convince me that the p&p was justified. No bubble-wrap or anything.

And you can’t leave negative feedback, as they’ll then leave you negative feedback claiming you took ages to pay. Bastards.

Anyway, I got up very early this morning to save others from darting to the door when the postie called with another item needing signing for. The postage on this was ridiculous at £9 for something smaller than a CD and of similar weight to a fun-size Mars bar - though a large part of this £9 supposedly went on getting the item imported from Hong Kong before being sent on to me.

But that’s not even what this long-winded post has been about. Nay, this has been a fore-runner for saying that I ended up watching Weird Science with dearest father when he too awoke early and joined me in the drawing room.

I picked the film up yesterday after years of wanting to see it ‘one day’ for the John Hughes aspect. Father wanted to see it for Kelly LeBrock’s aspects. Either way, we were in fits of laughter throughout, mainly at how bad the film was in places and/or how it hadn’t aged well. Still, a brilliant start to the day. This weekend is shaping up to be something special.

I watched Four Rooms last night with Lisa. I’ve wanted to see it for years for the Rodriguez & Tarantino segments but it went on that long list (of Things to Maybe Do at Some Point in the Future if Time and Money Are Allowing and Nothing Else Takes Priority™) and didn’t get done. Although, evidently, it did get done - and now I’ve lost the list.

’twas ingenious anyhow. Tim Roth really camped it up, which entertained to no end. And all in all, the film was a masterpiece. I wasn’t too fond of the first segment, but it’d be far better if the ridiculous breath-of-fire was removed; that was just plain silly.

Forgetting the choice of clips and somewhat sloppy editing, I think this‘d make an excellent addition to the scene if Lucas were to release a revised ’saga’ edition. You know, in the inevitable boxset.

This could be incorporated too.

Ha ha, this is fantastic.

I’m ambivalent about Superman Returns. I watched it straight after Clerks II last night/this morning and did see it through to the end - which is a good sign. But I dunno, it felt a bit flat - nothing particularly gripped me.

The trailer looked great and the film was far from disappointing. (Sad, but I especially liked the title sequence, how they’d stayed faithful to the original Superman film(s) - as with the date on the meteorite et cetera.) It just wasn’t quite as KAPOW! as I thought it’d be.

So I’ve finally seen Clerks II - a whole two weeks before it’s officially released on DVD - courtesy of Atul K. Aren’t I the bees knees?

It didn’t disappoint at all. Nay, it was excellent. Very funny. I couldn’t agree more with Randall’s LotR walking speech. In fact, I did a very similar skit three years back (and plenty of times since) and thought I was being pretty original - whereas now I just think I simply acted out what every other munchkin was thinking. Gah.

Anyway newcomer Rosario Dawson, whom I’d feared being a weak link, really shone. And the end of the film was really fitting - incredibly sentimental. I love suture and this film does it brilliantly.

With ass to mouth.