Allow me to draw your attention to a comment by Peter Travers in reviewing The Prestige:

Nolan directs the film exactly like a great trick, so you want to see it again the second it’s over. I’d call that wicked clever.

And now this, from Scott Foundas on Casino Royale:

What’s appealing about Bond is precisely its unhip classicism — its promise of clean, crisp excitement delivered without the interference of whiplash-inducing camera pyrotechnics, attention-deficient editing patterns, gratuitous color tinting and/or ear-splitting rock ballads.

Both of them quite accurate in my opinion.

The night before last I slept really really well. Like, the way new parents would expect a baby to sleep, given the overworked cliché “to sleep like a baby”. Eight hours of blissful unconsciousness, to awake to a bright new week before my alarm rang. Monday morning and I was rested!

However, last night I did not have so much sleep. Six hours, not quite so rested before turning in, and I awake this morning with not a little displeasure at the sound of the Buzzing Sleep Interrupter.

Here’s what I realise now: tired is the new black. I am so used to being under-slept that being the opposite actually feels foreign. For probably the last five years I have been operating on the assumption that a certain level of tiredness was normal, particularly given the amount of stuff I need (prefer?) to achieve each day.

I think I’ll shoot for more than six hours’ slumber per night from here on…

Of all the unlikely people to come up with a quotable quote of great depth, Monty Panesar would have to be close to the most unlikely.

For when he was asked what he would do with his last 10 quid, he replied: “Give it to someone who needed it.” I applaud you Monty.

EDIT: Shame about The Ashes though, ay…

I just used the word “smidgen” [smidgeon/smidgin] in a sentence with a client. Shortly thereafter, I actually referred to myself as a “noob” [newb/n00b]. Oh my.

I fear that, with only a little encouragement, my reputation could become my façade. The identity I have striven to project now burdens me with the effort required to continue it into perpetuity. Life has that banal exhausted edge again, and I’ve already been down this road once or twice at this time of year in ones previous.

Failure to thrive is a pronouncement of death.