What a rip off!

Or so I thought, after watching the first five minutes of the Swedish film Storm. It seemed as if the director was going to copy Simon Pegg's rapid fire sequence shots (in this case, making coffee) throughout the film. Instead, he (or she) employed a lot of different visual tricks copied from numerous films from the past decade or so. That eased my mind a bit. Shaun of the Dead is a classic and I really didn't want to see it maligned by any derivative knock-offs.

Instead of spending my evening watching that, I should have concentrated on getting caught up with the goings on in Portwenn. The first series of Doc Martin is available on Netflix, but so far the second two are unavailable in the U.S. , so I had to order the whole thing from Amazon UK. Netflix provides a great service in introducing me to wonderful British series that I might not otherwise have had the opportunity to see, but they invariably only have part of the episodes available. Doc Martin is a very funny series about a London surgeon who suddenly develops a fear of blood (I can sympathize) and decides to move to the village of Portwenn to become a family doctor. Presumably, anyone who might be prone to projectile eruptions of blood would choose to go to the hospital rather than the local doctor's office. Unfortunately, Doc Martin (or Doctor Ellingham, as he ineffectually instructs the locals to call him) has an extremely rude and abrupt manner and manages to offend absolutely everyone before he's even opened his office. The villagers are an amusing bunch, ranging from the lazy receptionist Elaine to the inept plumber Bert Large. While watching the first series, I was thrilled to see many actors that I recognized, including Ben Miller (The Worst Week of My Life), Caroline Catz (Murder in Surburbia) and Celia Imre (Calendar Girls). Now that I have all three of the seasons, I am starting over at the beginning to enjoy it all from the start.

Now that's a look you don't want to see on your plumber's face ("Bert Large" in Doc Martin)!

I should finish listening to Morality for Beautiful Girls today. The series is keeping me entertained. I should have some more audio books to pick up at the library today. On the book front, I'm still slogging through Remember Me? It's just not "grabbing" me for some reason. Oh well, the new Ruth Rendell novel should arrive this week, and she never disappoints!