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This is a post! Pretend I didn't say I was going to do it on Friday! Or pretend it still is Friday! That one might be even better.

My life continues to be weird and stressful, but I'm not helping myself by being disorganised and procrastinating. I seriously need to sort out my time-management skills.

Like, for instance, why did I choose to stay up until nearly 5am last night to watch the Oscars? It wasn't even a particularly good show. Its very strangeness was somewhat entertaining in an awkward way, but I am now regretting watching it live.

Anyway.

Just over a week ago (see - I lack prompt posting skills) I got the chance to see Submarine at the Glasgow Film Festival. It's the directorial debut of The IT Crowd's Richard Ayoade and (spoiler alert!) I really loved it. And I now totally and utterly adore him.

Submarine is probably being described over and over with the words "coming of age story" and "teenage romantic comedy", but I don't think they quite cover its offbeat qualities. It's kind of like a British Napoleon Dynamite as directed by someone from the French New Wave movement. It is very, very funny, and really quite sweet in how it captures the awkwardness of being a teenager. I felt it tread a really nice line in being quirky without becoming annoying, and being hilarious without making me cringe with secondhand embarrassment. And for such a low-budget feature it looked gorgeous.

The teenage leads are played by Craig Roberts (recently seen as Adam in Being Human) and Yasmin Paige (who was Maria on the Sarah Jane Adventures, which took me ages to realise and then promptly made me feel very old), and they both give fantastic performances. We'll be seeing more of them on our screens. Paddy Considine is also fantastic in it, but Paddy Considine is never not fantastic so this is a redundant sentence.

But here's the part where I stop being coherent about the film and just start fan-girling over how much I love Richard Ayoade. He introduced the film and gave a Q&A at the end, and I don't know that I learned much about the making of the film from him, but I did learn that he is the cutest thing I ever did see and I want to keep him in my pocket for ever and ever. He's clearly a bit shy and only doing this sort of stuff to help promote the film, but his coping mechanism seems to be self-deprecating humour and he is a very, very funny man. Even though he barely answered a single question put to him, I think every person left the room slightly in love with him. (I feel this interview he gave earlier the same day best sums up his adorable randomness.)

Look, even the lady from the GFT can't help gazing at him! (More pics here).



In summation, awesome man makes awesome movie. Submarine is released in the UK on the 18th of March and I'd recommend you go see it!
( Mini IT Crowd gif party )

So, More Joy day seems as good a time as any to commit myself to participating in Pay It Forward 2011:

I promise to send something handmade to the first 5 people who leave a comment here. They must in turn post this and send something they make to the first 5 people who comment on their status. *The rules are that it must be handmade by you and it must be sent to your 5 people sometime in 2011.

I'll mail to anywhere, just leave a comment and I'll contact you for an address. Anon commenting is on, so if you aren't an LJ user give me a twitter name or some other way of getting in touch. I won't chase anyone to pass it on, but it doesn't have to be much, and I'm sure icons or banners or fic are in the spirit of things if you're not a crafter. And if you know someone who needs some extra joy in their life, feel free to comment and nominate someone else to receive a free wee something or other! And here's my disclaimer now - I give no guarantees of when I will find the time to do this, but I promise it will be done this year!

ETA: Between here and fb I've got five people now. Thanks for getting involved!

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And if you want to help spread joy to those who aren't seeing much of it at the moment, please consider donating whatever you can afford to the Australian flood relief appeal. ETA: Or help out at qldfloodauction

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And on a totally unrelated note (apart from the fact that it gives me much joy) Richard Ayoade is directing an episode of Community. Am dead. Am dead from awesome and joy and the fact that I am running out of appropriate gifs of joy for Community news. Yaaaaay! *runs around with flaily Kermit arms*



Spread some joy today, my dear flist!