Barbenheimer: Which is better?

It is very rare to get a week like this in cinema. With 52 weeks in a year, it shouldn’t really be necessary for a film with a $100+ million budget to open against another $100+ million budget film in its opening week. This week though we’ve had Oppenheimer going up against Barbie in one of the weirdest cinema events I can imagine.

And if the evidence of my two trips to the cinema are anything to go by, it is proving to be a highly lucrative cinema event for everyone involved. Barbie was clearly drawing the bigger crowd but both of the mid-afternoon midweek screenings I went to were sold out, and I suspect the novelty factor of watching such vastly different films convinced a lot of people to watch both who perhaps would only have watched one of them had they been released a month apart. But which is better?

Obviously this is like comparing apples and oranges, or perhaps that should be pink grapefruits in the case of Barbie. Despite being released in the same week, it is more relevant to compare them to other films in the same genre rather than each other. That being said, both films boast an absolute abundance of acting talent in their respective casts, particularly Oppenheimer where you’ll find Academy Award nominees and winners who only appear in one scene in the entire film. Both look and sound fantastic too, albeit in very different ways.

I’ll start with Oppenheimer since I saw it first, and in terms of genre, it is tempting to put Christopher Nolan films in their own genre. And yes, there is non-linear storytelling here, albeit for the most part that is very easy to follow. In terms of a broader genre, this is a biopic, and a very good example of that genre too. The challenge for any biopic is how to build tension if it is a story the audience is familiar with, and with this story, even if you had never heard the name of Oppenheimer before going into the cinema, you most likely still know what the outcome of World War II was. I knew rather more of the political and scientific story than that going in, yet was still gripped for the first 2 hours or so at least. The final 40 minutes or so does drag a bit, albeit I was still interested as it covered parts of the story I was less familiar with. I could very much see myself watching this film again, which often isn’t the case when the subject matter of the film is so heavy and bleak, which I think speaks to the fine balance which is struck between a personal story and how that played into incredibly significant world events.

Barbie is a slightly harder film to define in terms of genre. At times it is a comedy. I did find myself laughing at most of the jokes, and there are so many references scattered throughout that I’m sure I missedsome of them. However, definitely don’t go into this thinking there will be jokes every minute, because they certainly aren’t that frequent. This isn’t a musical either, even though there are a few song and dance numbers which I enjoyed a lot. It’s not a kids’ film, and is probably aimed slightly more towards adults than kids than would be the case with something like Toy Story, with which there are obvious similarities.

I think this touches on what I liked most about the film. It would have been so easy to do something obvious and by the numbers, like so many other films which trade heavily off their IP have done in recent years. But this definitely isn’t obvious, and many of the choices the film makes are quite weird. Weird in a good way though. It doesn’t feel like it was put together in a boardroom, even though the reality is that it would have gone through as many boardroom meetings as any other big budget Hollywood film.

Which is better? Who cares. Go see both.

Taking A Beating From A Bee Sting

Sunday’s bike ride had been going so well. It was my first opportunity to do a normal ride for a while, with all of my other bike rides being commutes of one form or another. I put in a few hill efforts, enjoyed a few fast descents and took things nice and easy on the flat. I was almost within sight of the first Kenilworth signpost on my way back home when out of the corner of my eye I spotted something flying towards me. A fraction of a second later, I felt it smack into me, about an inch away from my right eye. I’m still not sure whether it was a bee or a wasp, but one thing I can be sure of is that it stung me.

The remainder of the ride wasn’t particularly pleasant, but thankfully I didn’t have far to go and once I was home, I felt confident I was over the worst of it. I was able to apply some antiseptic cream and for the rest of the day, I felt okay. It was therefore a bit of an unpleasant surprise to wake up on Monday with swelling across most of the right side of my face.

Thankfully I am on annual leave this week, and had nothing booked other than my car service. I was slightly worried about that as there was quite a bit of swelling around my right eye, but thankfully it never got to the stage where it restricted my vision. I was able to visit a pharmacy to pick up some tablets, and spent much of the remainder of the day icing the swollen areas and getting plenty of rest.

I had been planning to train on Monday, but having run on Saturday and cycled on Sunday, I was content to move forward my rest day given the circumstances. I really wanted to train again on Tuesday, however the short walks I did whilst waiting for my car to be ready to collect confirmed that wasn’t an option. I only did around 5000 steps, but I felt as drained as I usually would after a 2 hour run. It was an easy decision not to run, and again used the remainder of the day to rest and ice my face.

By Wednesday morning the swelling had almost completely gone. It was barely visible when I put my glasses on, having been so swollen that it was uncomfortable to wear my glasses on Monday. I tried to go for a run, but the stiffness in my hip flexor was back so I aborted within one minute. Instead I did yoga, a bit of strength work, some foam rolling and some gardening, and my energy levels felt good.

I was therefore confident that if my hip flexor was okay, I’d be able to run today. A few strides were enough to confirm that it wasn’t fully okay, but definitely better than yesterday. Given I was only planning a short and steady run, I decided to go for it, and the hip did get better throughout the run. It’s now a couple of hours after the run, and the stiffness which has immediately followed some of my recent runs has been absent, so I’m optimistic it should feel okay the next time I try to run, which I’m planning to be Monday.

Despite the somewhat positive news about my hip flexor, today’s run was awful. Sometimes the numbers from a slow run tell a mixed story, but today they aligned to tell a tale of one of the worst runs I can remember. For context, I chose the same route as I did for my first run after having COVID last year. It is 5.44km, and last year I did the route in 31:26, with an average heart rate of 153bpm. Today I did it in 32:54 with an average heart rate of 155bpm. Or to put things a different way, more effort to go slower.

I’m not too concerned with today’s run. I know the context behind the numbers, and by the end of the week I’m pretty confident the after effects of the bee/wasp sting will be behind me. It’s just a frustrating setback at a time when I really didn’t need one. The issue with my hip flexor was one I potentially could have avoided had I spent more of the Winter and Spring concentrating on building strength in that area, given I had the same issue last Summer. This issue was quite literally out of nowhere. There was nothing I could have done to avoid it, and nothing really I could do to speed up the recovery either. I just have to allow more time, be cautious with my training over the next few days and hopefully feel better for a bit more rest from full training.