Well, I think I may have just been in my first earthquake*. I thought it was a rumbling gust of wind outside (today has been very windy) but it went from a noise to a vibration to the whole house groaning. It was short, lasted only for a few seconds but I'll swear the earth moved. (Story of my life). Ironically, the last time Leeds even got a slight shake, I was in Los Angeles. Okay, these last ten minutes were hardly San Andreas, but that's not my fault.


* The BBC just confirmed it WAS an earthquake and it was felt from London to Leeds and beyond. It was a 4.7 and centred on Hull (also in Yorkshire). I'm oddly excited. I mean, that's nearly a 5, which is a smidgen off a 6. However, I shall now go to bed and hope the walls don't come a tumblin' down on me.

As usual, I stayed up and watched the Oscars. There's been varying quality over the years, both in the winners and the show itself, but with the field wide open and with lots of material at his finger tips, there were some genuine surprises in the winners and Jon Stewart did a fine job of blending politics and cinema ("... usually when there's a female or black president, there's a asteroid about to hit the Earth").

Having missed a couple of the big hitters this year, my attention was on the smaller films vying for attention and - lo and behold - they did themselves proud. Once - a film that will either restore your faith in romance or at least in film-making on a budget - won the Best Song with the exquisite 'Falling Slowly' which was prformed live by the film's two leads Glen Hansard and Irglova (only losing a little without the context of its place in the film). Hansard was quite visibly stunned by the little-film-that-could's win and graciously thanked everyone (Stewart quipped 'The arrogance of the man!'), but the 'get-off-stage' music piped up before Marketa got to say anything. Stewart, ever the professional, brought her back on stage so she could finish. A very clasy move. It was one of those lovely moments that make the evening. Later Juno won for best Original Screenplay, further proof - if it were needed - that this was the year when the awards were about imagination and style rather than big budgets. Which is nice.

(The Once album is so good that I've replaced the one left behind in Denver. Buy it now. No excuses.)

Picture (c) A M P A S

It's been a busy couple of days. I haven't been down to London in some time, but the chance to do some press with the likes of Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson (for In Bruges) and Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson and Eric Bana ( for The Other Boleyn Sister) was enough to get me up at an ungodly hour on Monday morning and head down to the Big Smoke (or rather the Little Smoke since the law changed on cigarettes).

The train trip down (and indeed the one up, on which I'm currently about 30 minutes outside of Leeds) has been weird in the sense of changing scenery. Leeds early Monday am was bright and beautiful if also chilly-to-the-bone cold. Travelling down the east Coast line we went from bright sunshine to fog, cloud, a frost that looked so deep it could be measured in cemtimetres and fields that looked like those cheap white fake trees you get at Christmas. It's the same again on the way back from London. Truly, looking out of the window...it looks like I'm in Siberian Suburbia (right now, it's actually dull Doncaster, but at times it's hard to tell).

London was good, the Hollywood stars glittered convincingly; Molly, Dina, Jan and Co. were on fine form and the only bad point was heading back to my room at a very civil hour and being sick after a pub evening meal which didn't taste dodgy at the time, but obviously disagreed with me. When anything disagrees with me, no good will come of it...

Brrrr...

Usually, when it comes to journalism, I'm on the safe side of the tape-recorder or printed page. I'm a great believer that the subject of the interview is much more important than the person asking the questions - as long as the questions are good and the replies more than a grunted 'yes' or 'no' (which, yes, does happen on occasion and, no, it's not pleasant).

I can honestly say with hand on heart - and yes, I appreciate the irony of that - that I'd completely forgotten it was Saint Valentine's Day this week. I'm not an unromantic person when I put my mind to it and I've seen enough people fall madly in love and not kill each other to know that it can happen and it can be wonderful, fluffy and wuvvy-duvvy and that Cupid can be one hell of an archer when he puts his little cherubic mind to it.

The WGA strike is over. Well, no it's not really. For the last week or so various industry types have been procaliming as such, but in reality the last bits of the current deal weren't even hammered out until this past weekend and even now, the details have to be agreed by the members. However, yes, the WGA management appear to be saying to their members that they recommend the deal as the best one available at the moment. A vote on whether to go back to work immediately (well, Wednesday) is underway and a vote on formally agreeing contract terms should be done within ten days. So, ok, it LOOKS like the strike IS over. Yay! Writers get what they want, which was always only a fraction of what they deserved. Yay! I gets me my House, Bones, NCIS and others back - though it looks like series such as Life and 24 won't be back until the Autumn. Peh. Follow the updates on http://www.unitedhollywood.com/

And the dreaded list of chores is getting shorter and I'm chugging my way through the various things I have to get done. Various invoices have been sent out (but, of course, the cheques and payments will take their sweet time coming in), some bills have been paid as well. Need to crack on with the HLWW designs for further DVD sleeves and update my CV/resume, but it's all going okay.

Off to top and tail interviews with Len Wein (X-Men), Robert Hall (Terminator) and a review of [REC] which is a classy Spanish horror movie... and maybe sleep.

Today I finally took in my laptop to PC World. It's been wonky for months, with the space-bar giving up the ghost a few months ago and I've got by with a spare keyboard attached. With my parentals going away, I'm now using theirs until I get mine back. The guy at PC World says it could be several weeks... and it would have been quicker if I'd just let someone come and pick it up rather than bringing it in. *sigh*