A few thoughts on film and television (and one on music)

These are some ranted ramblings opinions I couldn't keep in my head.


1) You cannot replace the word 'boring' with 'mature', 'clever' or 'artistic'

Something I griped about in my Harry Potter review is that it seems common that people define the term mature as dark colours, scowling expressions and slow plodding plot lines. Whilst there's no doubt there is some element of truth in this transition from childhood to adulthood this isn't so much mature as it is acting mature, like a teenager calling their parents by their first names because the words "mum" and "dad" don't seem grown up enough. This kind of design in Harry Potter is essentially trying to make you overlook the overall ridiculousness of the story, which is still extremely childish, but the characters are just as limp as they've always been. 'Lord of The Rings' had the good sense that whilst it left the fate of the world in the hands of the least mature characters, the hobbits, it allowed them to grow and get fucked up by the situation, essentially mimicking an audiences transition into the intense nature of the world (be they reading or watching - I'm going to assume more people have seen than the films than read the books, sign of the times I guess), so I'm not saying it's impossible, it's just the lives of the Harry Potter trio are too boring to pull it off for as long as they have been.

This is a character issue rather than a story one, I like plenty of artistically slow paced films, films whose stories don't really go anywhere but who always have interesting characters or visual style and more often than not only exist to show you a turning point in the characters lives rather than a beginning-middle-end that the character just happens to be caught in. These can be great, but making a slow paced film where very little of anything happens doesn't automatically make it an artistic masterpiece, it's just as likely to be a boring piece of crap.

2) You can't replace the word 'old' with 'classic'

There's a reason "we don't make them like that any more" and it's because mostly they were shit. Don't misunderstand I'm not some popcorn inhaling adrenaline junkie who can't focus unless something explodes every five minutes, I love the haunting atmosphere of old classic as much as most film geeks, but just because films are old doesn't mean they are somehow superior to the modern form. Film is an evolving process and regardless of what anyone says it's better now than it's ever been. The true old masters were masters because they experimented and pushed the boundaries, but when you break away from that it took quite a while for cinema to find it's feet and really understand what it could do. For quite some time all a lot of film makers knew how to do was produce plays and film them so they're pretty visually dull but that's just because they didn't know any better. Film is genuinely better now, there was no golden age of cinema and for every good idea produced back then ten crappy ideas were produced as well, just like today, the difference is out ideas look prettier.

Now this point is particularly bizarre though considering how 98% of all remakes are fucking terrible. It's ridiculous how bad remakes are. I mean for crying out loud all you have to do is make the same film again but with better equipment, better techniques and more money, how can you fuck that up? Logically a remake should be a better version of the original. Fair enough some people hate remakes simply because they're remakes, but I hate them because they're largely crap. The few good remakes, let's say 'Miracle of 34th Street' (it's nearly Christmas after all) people tend to forget are remakes, and that's because it's a version of the film made on better equipment with better techniques and more money, and it made basically the same film but better looking.

Isn't that the point? Isn't the reason to remake an old film because actually whilst the story of the film was really good it wasn't made particularly well simply because it's old and they didn't have the resources and techniques we have now. Tron is a good example, not technically a remake, but I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that whilst the original's a great film having a version of 'Tron' that doesn't look like it was designed by pointing a camera through a kaleidoscope is a brilliant idea. It's technology finally catching up with ideas and that's what should be happening, so maybe modern sequels are a good idea, or at least a better idea than remakes. 'The Thing' is one of my favourite movies and I for one am going to switch of my remake hating brain and look forward to the upcoming prequel.

3) I don't understand why I'm supposed to care about the poor little rich girl

This seems to be a predominantly American television thing to feel the need to make dramas out of how difficult it is to be rich and successful and never have any real problems, and I don't get it. I especially don't get it when the more raw dramas like 'The Wire' blow everything else out of the water anyway, and the Oscars love a bit of grit so why is American television so afraid of it?

This is the only real reason I would consider British drama superior to American drama, because when you have an unwed teenage mother crying her eyes out because her step father won't stop molesting her in 'Eastenders' or some other soap and you change the channel to see an American teen who is too beautiful to possibly be a real person crying her eyes out because daddy bought her a porsche instead of showing up at her birthday party on 'The OC' or some nonsense I just think "FUCK YOU AMERICA!". Every time an American show tries to create drama by having the parents of some spoilt brat try to teach her a life lesson by cutting her off from the family fortune and she's all distraught because basically now she has to live like a normal person, slumming it down here with the rest of us, it makes me want to reach into the television and beat them to death.

4) Musically there's a difference between having a distinctive style and making the same song over and over and over again

Not much more I can say about that last point. Even bands I like sometimes only have a few good songs and everything else just feels like filler which creates maybe one albums worth of songs when they've actually produced three or four. This is a bigger gripe of mine in regards to current pop music, as Caley listens to radio one and I genuinely can't distinguish one song from the next and that's only if I manage to tell the difference between the singers themselves.

Magic - where do you draw the line?

This thought has been spurred on partly by my seeing Harry Potter for the second time because Caley (my girlfriend for the uninformed) absolutely loves the series and a short conversation held under a friend of mines status on facebook a while ago.

The friend in question was Adrian Wilson and he said this ... well, not exactly this because I couldn't find the actual post but I'm fairly confident it was Adrian and he said something very close to this about the trailer for the newest Potter film.

"Why do they poly-juice a group of people to look like Harry? Wouldn't it be easier to give Harry the potion to make him look like someone else?"

Now I don't know if the above idea would have been easier but it certainly would have been about the same, and Harry makes the very good point that he doesn't want everyone risking their lives for him as since they'll all look like Harry they'll all be targets, so logically if nobody looked like Harry then nobody would be a target other than the fact that ultimately the death eaters want to kill all of them so it's mildly irrelevant anyway as whoever you are you're probably going to get attacked.

Perhaps more curiously though is as this minor argument progressed I felt the need to ask the obvious question of "why use the poly-juice at all? why not just all wear masks?".

You should let that last thought sink in because seriously speaking would that not have been exactly as efficient as what they actually did and involve no magic whatsoever (aside from all that flying malarkey of course). In fact it begs the question as to why Harry doesn't just drive away in a car. If they're trying to disguise him then surely acting as unwizardly as possible is the answer and flying around doesn't really do it. If anything that just draws attention to you.

Another problem is, exactly how powerful is magic? Because Voldermort and his cohorts seem intent on ruling or killing us poor mortals and to be honest with you if a group of wizards showed up I'd pretty much hand over whatever the hell they wanted so I'm not entirely clear what's holding them back. Yes there's some sort of good wizard resistance but they seem about as militarised as a cream slice trying to fight of a swarm of ants at a picnic. Okay there's a whole load of magical maguffins doing nothing except drive the plot forward and Voldermorts questing for them coupled with his desire to kill Harry seems to be the only thing holding him back from taking over the world so you kind of wonder why he bothers.

Anyway, the problem of the title of this entry is trying to have a secret world intertwined with the way we understand the "real" world.

Here's basic plot for you, one option - the secret world is smaller and thus weaker than the "real" world so when the real world learns the truth of it's existence they misinterpret it, try to control it and ultimately screw everything up. It's the better off not knowing approach, think The Initiative in 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'. Second option - the secret is so big and powerful it's actually in control and we people of the "real" world are merely tiny ants too insignificant to bother with. This ranges from literal godly beings watching over us in a 'Clash of the Titans' kind of way to a relatively more simple political conspiracy controlling our lives like say the 'X-Files'. Third option of course is the 'Toy Story' approach which is a little of column A and a little of column B, full of plot-holes but the secret world is a relatively minor detail in the story as a whole.

There are a few options that don't fit into these categories I'm sure and these are very simple breakdowns that massively oversimplify but you get the idea and you can probably see that Harry Potter doesn't fit into any of these. The secret world is too big and powerful to be considered weaker than the "real" world so I don't think we're a threat to it. Alternatively the world of witches and wizards apparently have absolutely no control of the "real" world at all and go to great lengths to avoid it, and since Voldermort doesn't simply seize control it's obviously not that simple a task so they're certainly not our lords and masters. In addition to those problems with these two ideas the addition of magic would greatly enrich the lives of the "real" world, especially medically, and keeping it secret if they're a kindly force is shockingly selfish and far more sinister than Voldermorts simple power trip, and if magic is a malevolent force then why go to such great lengths to pretend otherwise.

As a final note there's a comedy sketch called the Harry Potter puppet pals which concludes one of it's episodes with Ron having the clever idea of arming himself, Harry and Hermione with machine guns and gunning Voldermort down and I'm not entirely clear why that would be a such a silly idea, because magic in the Harry Potter universe actually seems a bit inconsistent. I remember there was some big reveal of the killing curse along with some other unpleasant things you can do with a wand (don't get dirty thoughts now) and it was all built up to be very scary but in retrospect isn't a gun basically just as efficient. Actually it's more efficient, it's quicker, considerably. And if you're in range to use a wand the odds are that you're in range to do basically the same thing with an everyday object, a wand just keeps you from having to carry around lots of different tools.

And didn't Hermione have something that allowed her to turn back time in one of the stories? Why don't they use that all the time? Yeah there are consequences for mucking it up but shits going down anyway so who cares. I could pick apart every element of the damn story but I can't be bothered and I did't really have a problem with the physics of Harry Potter when I was reading the books, it works well enough in a harmless childish way although the films keep trying to convince us they're mature and clever, this is more of a general complaint, Harry Potter just happens to be the nearest target right now.

This kind of adds on to my review of the film, these kind of feeble plot elements only really work in a fun slightly extravagant kind of way and turning all serious makes the errors stand out all the more clearly.

An Unpopular Review - Harry Potter: Deathly Hallows Part One

Having just seen the film I remain, as usual, relatively unimpressed but not particularly disappointed. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that extremely cryptic comment is not enough to really explain what I'm talking about so let's go into a little more detail. The narrative is choppy and jumbled, seeming in places to make random asides and not really know why it's doing it, in fact on more than one occasion I think that if I hadn't read the book I would have been a little unclear what was going on as the film was in no rush to explain itself.

On the positive side it's pretty faithful to the book whilst still cutting it down in all the right places and it kept me enthralled enough that it didn't feel as long as it actually is. It's all very watchable if a little plain, it certainly kept me entertained enough to keep me in my seat. It didn't excite me into wanting to watch the next installment though I imagine I will anyway. Huh ... I guess I ran out of positive points earlier than I thought I would.

It's easy enough to predict that most people will love the dark imagery and how mature the series has gotten and blah blah blah ... but I don't. It works fine but it doesn't strike me as creative it just strikes me that they do it because they don't know how to do anything else. This is punctuated by how flat most of the comedy falls in this film, and indeed that's true of the previous two, also directed by David Yates and not a problem the other Potter directors had. Yates has mistaken being dull for being grown up, a common mistake but for me a greater sense of fun and more lovable characters makes for a bigger heart wrenching experience when that world goes sideways.

Visually it looks really rather average, no particular image stands out for me and the story is even more focused on Harry complaining how much having to be a hero sucks making him a somehow less endearing version of Peter Parker. I can't be the only person who finds being repeatedly beaten over the head by a mallet with the words "HAVE SYMPATHY" written on it extremely annoying. The biggest mistake of the series as a whole is somehow assuming that Harry is the most interesting character, even pushing Ron and Hermione into the background so he can vomit his feelings into our eyes. Ironically he's probably the most boring character though to be fair the "hero" often is (Bruce Wayne anyone?), and once you understand the idea that "parents dead, Harry sad, magic real, Harry confused" you've pretty much got him down. He's the tortured hero who was never very tortured and doesn't really want to be a hero, so I suppose he's not really a tortured hero but they're certainly trying to drill it into our brains that he is. In short I feel that his emotional problems are getting a little old now considering the support network around him, but  maybe that's just because I have a soul filled with cynicism and evil.

It's not a bad film but it's Harry Potter for fucks sake, it's a global phenomenon, if the films aren't every bit of awesome imaginable then something very wrong is going on, and in short something very wrong is going on. If it wasn't for the attached name of Harry Potter then 'Deathly Hallows' (another David Yates installment) would be just as forgettable as the jumbled nonsense that was 'The Half-Blood Prince' (another mistake by David Yates) would be, when compared to most any other fantasy series. Bizarrely Yates' Potter directorial debut, 'Order of the Phoenix' was fairly good, still a little jumbled in the narrative but the fight between Dumbledore and Voldermort at the end was a highlight of the series if only for the visuals and choreography, and on the strength of this he seems to have tricked the franchise into signing him up for the rest of the films, cunningly hiding the fact that he is simply not a very good director.

For more specific points the music is bad and even when it's not the cues and it's placing is terrible. The last time I remember being so distracted by bad music was in 'Van Helsing', granted 'Deathly Hallows' is nowhere near that level of terrible, but this is the last example I can think of. Bigger problem is that unlike the other films the very fleeting cameos by the seasoned professionals populating the older cast (they have maybe two or three scenes each if they're lucky) meant we spent the majority of our time with Harry, Ron and Hermione and those three just aren't cute any more. They're not kids trying their best who can be forgiven a few minor indiscretions, they're adults whose inexperience stands out like a sore thumb against the more experienced famous faces surrounding them. They aren't terrible, they've been playing these characters long enough to be able to do it competently but whilst Yates' bland directing style works fine with the experienced cast who know what they're doing these three desperately need a good director to take them by the hand and as I've already stated, they don't have one. I was very much aware that I spent most of this film stuck watching the three weakest characters trundle along.

On the whole the film looks fine, the acting ultimately is fine, the writing is fine, it's just ... fine. It's okay, it's average, and that's the problem because it should be great. They really screwed up by making a run of the mill distinctly British movie and I really hate to say it but I think it needed to be way more Hollywood. I have nothing against British film but Harry Potter should be big and flash and fun (even when emotions are running high) and this isn't any of those things. Harry Potter is an imaginative though relatively unoriginal, somewhat cliche fantasy story designed to amuse the young and young at heart, which is perfectly capable of having all the entertainment value of most any other action blockbuster and concentrating on the characters and emotion of this world is a bit of a mistake, even more so considering the only really interesting element, Voldermorts backstory, has been almost completely overlooked. The only characters I find with any believable depth are the Malfoy family, in fact I'd much rather watch Draco's story arch than Harry's any day. Actually maybe that's it, maybe focusing on the characters is fine but they've just focused on all the wrong characters and missed out the best bits.

This is all largely irrelevant as the film will succeed regardless because it's too late in the day to persuade the fans things aren't as rosy as they think they are, and at this point the haters aren't going to give them a chance. If you're undecided that means you probably won't bother and if you do there's still six films to get through before this one so you'll know which of the other two categories you fit into by the time you get here. It's not great but as it goes we're stuck with this version now and it's all right I suppose.

I don't have a star or points system so assign whatever system you like and give it an average score, dead in the middle, and that's my rating.

Mediocrity thy name is Potter, which I think is a shame.

Thoughts on the London Screenwriters Festival

This is a little overdue, what with the festival having taken place over two weeks ago, but having managed to worm my way into it I do have a few thoughts.

To start I don't think I'll be submitting to the BBC Writersroom any more, at least not with anything I'm currently working on. This isn't because I wouldn't want to work for the BBC under a nice steady writers paycheck, I've just learned to be a little smarter about it. Firstly even though the Writersroom only accepts original material the BBC apparently couldn't be less interested in making something original, which whilst I kind of assumed it was unlikely that it happened very often I thought that there was at least the possibility and that's kind of been crushed now. Your best bet is treat the Wrtiersroom as a job interview, write something good but relatively generic (save your great original ideas for yourself) and imagine that your auditioning your skill as a staff writer in whatever department/genre you write in.

My second thought and a slightly more comforting one is that the array of professionals freely admit that they are just as clueless as the array of nobodies in the audience as to how to succeed, Elliot Grove who gave the 'Writing For Low Budget' talk said as much himself. Personally I quite like the almost random nature of the industry I'm trying to work in, with nobody really knowing what works and what doesn't, it makes it slightly easier to take rejection when you can think that it's just as likely to be the failing of the clueless person judging the script as much as the clueless you writing the thing in the first place. Basically it's important to stay positive as a rejection doesn't necessarily mean your work is bad it just means that person didn't like it.

Thirdly I learnt a very important lesson that I have to pass on to anyone else starting out, consult an accountant as soon as you're working. Once you have work and are intending to register as self employed you need to know your rights, particularly the array of things you can claim for, a list which I was amazed by. Other than the obvious, travel and the like, as a writer you can claim part of your rent or mortgage as work space, cinema tickets, theatre tickets can all be claimed as research as can your TV bills bizarrely, as well as any related books or magazine subscriptions. I can't go into full details, and it's pointless registering as self employed until your making some decent money, but definitely check this out.

The last piece of good advise I want to share with you I got in the comedy writing talk, or rather after it when I was talking with Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil (writers - Black Books) and in short it's this; make a name for yourself doing something else and writing work will come looking for you. This applies perhaps more easily to comedy than other genres where you can perform stand up or sketches on stage somewhere, even making a name for yourself on YouTube or the like isn't a bad plan. These things aren't easy to do of course, it's hardly a foolproof plan, but it's still a pretty good idea and if you can reach a point where opportunities are looking for you then your power within those opportunities increases greatly.

These are the thoughts that linger with me from the handful of talks I was able to attend whilst at the festival, it was a good event and I'll more than likely try and get in next year as well, hoping of course to have achieved something between now and then.

To all the writers out there reading this keep at it and good luck.

Rifts - New West Campaign (Part One)

Quick intro - Rifts New West concerns the area of American that after the cataclysm returned to a martial law, "cowboys and indians" type state, but with all the modern technology, magical creations and alien monsters thrown in. It's 'Firefly' meets 'Star Wars' meets 'Lord of the Rings' and add in most any other sci-fi or fantasy element you can think of. Rifts is something of a jack of all trades of the sci-fi/fantasy world, I haven't read every world or dimension book but I'd say it's fair to assume most anything you can imagine is covered and if it's not you can always make it up.

Anyway I'm something of a fan of the sci-fi/western setting of the New West book so that's where I tend to set my campaigns but this is a somewhat unique example. I'm not going to go into any real detail regards the playing of the game or the Rifts books themselves so if you're interested then look it up, all I will be writing here is the story of the players. Backstory:

What's different in this campaign is that the objective in this campaign is that there is no objective. I created a relatively enclosed county, drew up a map and planned out a number of settlements, I then brainstormed a whole mess of characters and threw them around the county. This is the extent of the writing I did before the players made their characters and we played an introductory session which I'll go into below. The intention is that in all the previous games I have run I keep the plot so open the players can more or less do whatever they want and I always end up having to improvise heavily, but it works really well, so this new campaign would be an entirely improvised game, throwing the players in at the bottom rung and leaving them to figure out what they want to do, even if that means they want to lead a normal boring life (which is relatively impossible anyway considering the setting). Aside from the map and the handful of characters this was going to be a 100% improvised scenario, the players have total control over their own destinies.

It quickly descended into chaos.

Below is the introductory session, the only session I wrote a scenarios for which brings the players into the world and allowed them to get used to the dynamics of it and their characters.

Session One - Reset To Zero:

Here's what you need to know, because this isn't technically on the New West map or in any of the Rifts books: the county the game takes place inside of is enclosed in a valley, essentially trapping the players as traveling outside of this area is far too dangerous. There are two ways out of the valley aside from up one of the many cliffsides, and those are a train line to the north or overland to the south but that territory is owned by the CS, the heavy military force that likes to think it owns the place. The only other option is the crater. You see the valley is just a crack that was created by something much larger, a massive crater several hundred miles across of unknown origin with a nexus point in the middle. It's best avoided but that doesn't stop people traveling there.

The players begin their lives living in a small town in the north-west corner of the county, a place simply called 'Valley Station' rather obviously because it's the valley's train station. The train itself is of techno-wizard design and travels along ley lines linking up the various counties in the surrounding states. Our players live relatively simple lives, a farmer (Alan), a mechanic (David), a smith (Andy), a truck driver (Ian) and an officer of the law (Liam). However, in order, they are a necromancer with a collection of undead workers running his farm (Alan), a psychic whose mechanical skill lies in the power of his mind (David), a supernaturally strong Russian alcoholic with the power to create magical weaponry (Andy), a professional daredevil/deranged stunt driver with a knack/desire for causing and surviving serious road accidents (Ian) and a gunslinger whose skill doesn't so much lie in his ability so much as his collection of brain implants that give him unnatural speed and heighten his senses (Liam).

We open on an average day in the lives of this oddball group with them all going to work, with the exception of our truck driver Ian who has just come back from an overnight delivery. As their day begins  Liam is at the sheriffs office watching over some prisoners, David goes to his workshop, Andy is at home getting ready for the day, Alan watches over his zombie workers and Ian arrives home and prepares to get some rest. Liam is alone at the sheriffs office as the sheriff and his deputies were called away to deal with a cranky old man chasing children off his lawn with a shotgun. Essentially it turned into a hostage situation which turned worst when the cranky old man revealed that he had a home made tank in his garage and proceeded to have a dangerous shoot out with the sheriff until they managed to break into the tank and arrest him. This event was witnessed by several of the player, it was hard to miss after all.

Meanwhile a storm is rolling in, and I don't mean that metaphorically I mean an actual storm is coming. Heavy rain cloud, thunder and lightening are approaching fast, not a common occurrence around here but nothing too exciting, until it arrived overhead with surprising speed. The town could do little but watch as the storm increased in intensity until the lightening came, lightening that tore through buildings and blew the townspeople into tiny pieces. The storm attacked the town ferociously sending its citizens and our unfortunate players running for cover.

The storm launched Alan's tractor through his kitchen, flattened David's workshop, tore Andy's house in half and killed all the prisoners Liam was watching over. Ian attempted to flee in his car and forced to drive north by the chaos around him he joined the train line and followed it away. Unfortunately he met a train coming the other way and whilst trying to avoid a collision flipped his car which was dutifully rammed out of the way by the train, although he managed to escape. Even more unfortunately the train proceeded onwards into the storm and was derailed and destroyed by it.

In the ensuing chaos it became apparent that there was something in the cloud attacking the town, but it was impossible to tell what it was. With few other options one of the players took control of the cranky old mans tank and began firing wildly into the cloud. Perhaps because of this the cloud dissipated and whatever had been up there fled leaving the town either destroyed or on fire and a mass of dead behind it.

This disaster leaves our players at a loose end. With most of them homeless and/or jobless and the town a wreck they are forced to venture out into the relatively unfamiliar county to try and rebuild their lives.

The players are now free to do whatever they please.

More to come ... Session Two - Accidents in the Workplace

To Blog or Not to Blog

Well here I am, blogging for the first time and the only real thought on my mind is what to blog about ... and that I really hate the word blog, it just sounds stupid.

Anyways, I've been running it round and round in my head and realised that the odds are this would turn into an endless rant about things that annoy me, mostly movies and the like. The problem is that I am now in direct contact with several of those things that annoy me so ranting about them in this way could come back to bite me in the arse, as they say. That's not to say that there aren't plenty of things I could rant about without having to worry, and I certainly have plenty of venom to spray around. Other than that I'm occasionally up to something interesting in the world of film and I'm sure something worth blogging about will happen sooner or later.

All in all this blog will probably end up with it's fair share of opinion but there's a few other things I figured I'd write about, the first being the not particularly original concept of writing up the story of a game I'm currently running with my friends. The game in question is 'Rifts', more or less, and the reason this idea appealed to me is because it's actually pretty funny and when relaying the story in the pub it usually gets a laugh.

For non-gamers when I saw gaming we're talking about 'Dungeons & Dragons' dice rolling nerditude rather than sitting in front of the TV without a controller in your hand. In short 'Rifts' is essentially the same design but set in a future where a nuclear cataclysm has taken place and thoughtfully rather than wiping out all life it tore holes into infinite dimensions which caused all manner of bizarre creatures to spread across the world as well as creating magic, psychic powers and mutations as well as the range of advanced technology available. Basically rifts has most everything.

That description is probably not particularly accurate and in no way do I claim to be particularly knowledgeable in regards to the mythology of the game, in fact I barely know it at all and could very well have just made all the above up, but none the less I run a game that a handful of my friends play and the reason I think it will interest people is that we don't really know what we're doing. We don't particularly know the rules and the party spends a fair portion of its time stabbing each other in the back, mugging old ladies and generally ignoring whatever it is they're supposed to be doing in favour of getting drunk and causing trouble. In that design I've tried to write a game for us to play that basically a big open world where they can do whatever they like, and they generally do.

If it entertains us it might entertain you so I will start posting the story of the game, starting with my next post which will explain the characters and the setting. It won't be especially regular as we don't play to any strict schedule but it'll crop up amongst the rest of my posts.

Keep an eye on the next post to begin this story, and plenty else will be going up assuming I don't forget all about this like I did my MySpace account, and more recently my Twitter. Fingers crossed this will continue.

Thanks for reading.