Treats to brighten up January

It's post-Christmas, and January is cold and miserable. By February there'll hopefully be snowdrop gardens to visit, crocuses flowering, and Spring to look forward to, but January is in my opinion the dullest month of the year. So, armed with my 'Christmas money' I've been treating myself.


As a small child, when toys were always fun, I never really appreciated being given money instead of something I could play with, (also, I was so often made to put some in my post office account) but as I turned into a teenager I realised that having what seemed like a considerable amount of money to spend just as I pleased was a great idea. I still feel the same. Don't get me wrong, I love prettily wrapped presents from my nearest and dearest, something chosen with care and love, but sometimes it's nice to be able to go out and treat yourself, without having to justify the expenditure - and, admit it, January is full of tempting sales bargains.



I started, as many of us no doubt would, with new clothes - some tops, a new dress, which is too tight and I REALLY need to slim down to get into, but it so gorgeous and was an amazing bargain.


Then I got tempted by an on-line yarn sale ... Since my grandson's been born, I've been gradually getting back into knitting (particularly when binge-watching box-sets) and I thought it was time to make something for myself so, despite the mass of odds and ends hoarded away, I treated myself to some half-price wool to make a cardigan - it's also the perfect colour to go with some of my newly purchased tops.







On a trip to the DIY store for paint, I found myself bringing home a few plants from the 'reduced to clear' rack  - a carnation, six wallflowers and 24 pansies - all for £1.50!

For now they're living on the work surface in the porch waiting for the weather to improve but in spring I hope the garden will be a mass of colour.












My one trip in deliberate search of sale bargains nearly failed. I went looking for shoes or boots, and couldn't find any to suit, or at least that I thought were reduced enough in price. But the day was saved by (half-price) chocolates! I love Hotel Chocolat goodies but they're a special treat and I'd never buy them for myself at full price. Remembering the newly-bought too-tight dress, I also picked up a dieting book in a sale.

Having shampoo to buy I found myself close to make-up counters so ... some 'Twitter blue' nail varnish and a luscious plum lipstick. Both were from teenage 'pocket money' brands but treats don't need to cost a fortune.








A joint treat to share with my husband (along with the chocolates). I'm a fan of Martin McDonagh (In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths) and saw this at the cinema. I wasn't sure my husband would enjoy it, but he did.











Those 'sale' e-mails just keep coming throughout January, don't they? I have one Emma Bridgewater mug with a pattern of oranges in, and this one makes a perfect, complementary but not matching, pair for it.








And, last though not least, having failed to find what I wanted in the shops, brought to me by the power of the internet, shoes!






Time to stop spending for a while now. Like a good little child, I shall save some money, for adults always have bigger treats they need -  new kitchen cupboards, a room or two in need of decoration - but they can wait till Spring.

One Day - book versus film

 Emma and Dexter meet on their last day at university, at a graduation party. The next day they go their different ways - who knows where they'll be in a year's time? David Nicholls' story charts their lives through 'snapshots' of each 15th July.

 When I first heard of this I expected something rather like the Alan Alda/Ellen Burstyn film Same Time, Next Year but whereas that has a couple promising to meet on the same day every year, Emma and Dexter make no such promise - sometimes they're together, more often not. Partly because of the assumed similarities I didn't hurry to either read the book or watch the film. Then it was shown on TV and someone bought the dvd so I've now seen the film several times. To be honest it's not my favourite rom com; Hathaway and Sturgess turn in adequate but not spell-binding performances and it's all pleasant enough but not anything special.



 With that in mind, and having heard a lot of praise for it, I expected the book to be better...so.. I saw it in the library one day and borrowed it. The first thing that struck me was how alike book and film are, but then I started to feel that the book dragged. Being used to seeing the whole story unfold in 1hour 40minutes, 435 pages seemed a long, slow read. There were actually points early on where I nearly gave up. Then came some little story-snippets that never made it to the film, so I carried on, but still found it rather flat. Admittedly, knowing the ending takes an edge off a first read-through but it's not a book I'd pick up a second time.

This time, the film wins - mainly because there's no time to get bored with the characters - but, as I said, I'm not a huge fan of that. So 3 stars to the book; 3.5, maybe a grudging 4, to the film.

 

Before I Go To Sleep - book versus film

I've read S J Watson's novel Before I Go To Sleep not once but twice and been eagerly waiting to see the film adaptation for what seems like years! The release date seems to have been pushed back time and again, but at last it's here on the big screen and I've seen it!

Firstly, if you don't know the plot, it's the tale of Christine, a woman who wakes every morning with no recollection of the past 18 years. It isn't all sweetness and light and cuteness like 50 First Dates though, this is more about the ways in which a person with no recollection of yesterday can be manipulated. Pretty early on, the reader discovers that her husband isn't being entirely honest with her about the past, and from there the tension builds with doubt as to who (husband or therapist) is misleading Christine and why..

So how did the adaptation do....
well, surprisingly close to the book. I always worry that a director will take a book I've loved and turn it into something hardly recognisable but fortunately Rowan Joffe didn't. I just think at times events moved too quickly, placing more emphasis on the action and violence than the psychological tension (perhaps that's hard to show on camera though).
Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth played their roles as I'd expected - Kidman looking less glamorous than usual and pulling off the Mrs Average look, while Firth turned in a surprsingly-good 'bad guy' (the ladies in the row behind us were shocked!). The only puzzle was the rather odd change to Mark Strong's character Dr Nash that made him older and altered the dynamic of the relationship between him and Kidman's Christine.

I think the thing most missing from the film was how terrifying it must be to have no memory of so many years, to have no way of being certain that people are telling you the truth

My main criticisms were actually niggly little things - I'd imagined a different sort of house, maybe on a London street near the Outnumbered TV family, not out in the countryside; I didn't understand why change the hotel's location from Brighton to an airport. On the other hand, I did like the change of Christine's notebook diary into a video recording - definitely worked better on screen, though a diary could have been shown as flashbacks.

Overall a great adaptation although I still prefer the book. I missed Christine's internal monologue which gives the reader a better guide to her thoughts and the terror she feels at haven't no memory and no way to be certain of what she is told. The film is only 90 minutes long, so maybe it could have taken a few extra minutes and explored this area more.

5 stars to the book, 4 for the film.

6 Moves DVD Challenge - winding down.

This is the final update for our '6 Moves' dvd challenge. We sort of lost momentum in summer when we started watching the box-set of all 7 series of The West Wing, and never got back into the swing of this - though John Amos does tie it nicely to the last film Die Hard 2.
Still, 46 films in total, sometimes with some slightly dodgy links that took some research through IMDB to find. We never included the out-of-the-way DVDs in our collection but stuck just in action films and romcoms, which oddly seem to link together easily.
Now we have new DVDs for Christmas and the Teen has a book entitled "1001 movies to see before you die" that we might try to work our way through next year.

 LOVE, ACTUALLY    - (Sarah)  Laura Linney (Randi)
 DAVE   - (Dave) Kevin Kline  (Hampton Roth) 
 DEFINITELY, MAYBE   -  (Maya) Abigail Breslin (Nim)  -
 NIM'S ISLAND   -  Gerard Butler
THE BOUNTY HUNTER  -    Jennifer Anniston
THE BREAK-UP   - Justin Long
HE'S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU   - Ben Affleck
SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE   - (Wessex) Colin Firth
ST TRINIAN'S   - Anna Chancellor
FOUR WEDDINGS + A FUNERAL   - (Charles)  Hugh Grant (William Thacker) -


NOTTING HILL   - (Rufus the thief) Dylan Moran (David)  -
SHAUN OF THE DEAD  - (Ed)   Nick Frost
HOT FUZZ   - Simon Pegg
HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND ALIENATE PEOPLE   - Kirsten Dunst
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND   - Jim Carey
THE TRUMAN SHOW  - Ed Harris
THE ROCK  -(Marvin Isherwood)  Todd Louiso (Dick)  -
HIGH FIDELITY  - (Rob)  John Cusack  (Eddie) -
AMERICA'S SWEETHEARTS   - (Kiki) Julia Roberts (Anna) -
CLOSER    -  (Dan)  Jude Law (Alfie)    

       
ALFIE -    (flower shop owner)  Paul Brooke (Mr Fitzherbert)   -
BRIDGET JONES' DIARY - (Daniel Cleaver)  Hugh Grant (George Wade)
TWO WEEK'S NOTICE   - Sandra Bullock
SPEED     Keanu Reeves (Nio)
The MATRIX  Hugo Weaving
The MATRIX RELOADED  (Trinity) Carrie Anne Moss
CHOCOLAT  Judi Dench
SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE  Gwyneth Paltrow
SLIDING DOORS John Lynch
THE SECRET GARDEN  Maggie Smith


HARRY POTTER And the PHILOSOPHERS STONE  (Mrs Weasley)  Julie Walters
MAMMA MIA - Meryl Streep
JULIE AND JULIA -  Stanley Tucci
The DEVIL WEARS PRADA  - (James Holt) Daniel Sunjata  (Brad)
GHOSTS OF GIRLFRIENDS PAST - Matthew McConaughey
HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN TEN DAYS- Kate Hudson
BRIDE WARS - Michael Anthony Coppola
27 DRESSES - Krystan Ritter
CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC - Leslie Bibb
LAW ABIDING CITIZEN - Gerard Butler

PS I LOVE YOU - Kathy Bates
RUMOUR HAS IT - (Blake Burroughs) Mike Vogel (Jason)
CLOVERFIELD - (Marlena) Lizzy Caplan (Janis)
MEAN GIRLS - Amanda Seyfried
LETTERS TO JULIET - Franco Nero
DIE HARD 2

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Walter Mitty is a dull sort of guy with a dull sort of job. To compensate for it, he fantasises about a world in which he is the hero - whether just being the guy to come up with the funny put-down or a full-blown comic-book super-hero. But his world is about to change... his job at Life magazine is under threat following a takeover and when he mislays an important photograph, intended to be the cover shot of the last-ever edition, he decides to take real action. Tracking down the photographer in the hope of recovering the negative leads Mitty on a hazardous journey to Greenland, Iceland and Afghanistan. It's the stuff that his dreams have been made of, but can he really become the sort of guy he's always longed to be?
I vaguely remember, long ago at school, reading the original short story, and it didn't seem half as much fun as this version directed and starring Ben Stiller. The tag-line really says it all - "Stop dreaming, Start living" - and that's what Walter Mitty does. He's always taken the sensible but boring course through life and now he has the chance to re-invent himself. He goes from sitting behind a desk all day to jumping from a helicopter, skate-boarding down Icelandic hills, fleeing from an erupting volcano, trekking through snowy mountains and catching a glimpse of the rare snow leopard; a message to us all about not giving up on our dreams.
I'm not a huge fan of Ben Stiller and his humour but I really enjoyed this. It's not trying to be as laugh-a-minute as some of his other work - and, for me, is all the better for that.
I saw this at a free early evening screening and was surprised that there weren't more kids in the audience - it's PG rated and with a lot of thrilling but not violent action I'd expect it to appeal to younger viewers.

4/5

Summer in February

 "A true tale of love, liberty and scandal amongst the Edwardian artists' colony in Cornwall."

Florence Carter-Wood, an aspiring artist, joins her brother Joey at Lamorna Cove, in the far west of Cornwall, home to a group of bohemian artists. There she meets the charismatic, womanising painter AJ Munnings and his close, but far more reliable and steady, friend Gilbert Evans, the local land agent - and is attracted to both.
This is the starting point for a moving love-triangle story set in the early 1900s against a backdrop of raging seas and quaint Cornish villages. Summer in February is beautifully shot in and around Lamorna Cove using the actual places where these artists lived and worked; the costumes are lovely, the scenery wild and dramatic and every scene beautifully lit but it's much more than a quaint period drama - an intense exploration of tangled relationships.
There's great acting from the whole cast, especially the leads - Emily Browning, Dominic Cooper and Dan Stevens - but it was Cooper's performance as AJ that really stood out for me. Although I've seen him elsewhere, I mainly think of him as Sky from Mamma Mia so the depth and breadth of his acting surprised me. Proves you shouldn't judge a man on how well he can sing dressed in swimming trunks!
A great film on lots of levels. Whether you love Cornwall, period drama, romance, 'true' stories or all of them it ticks so many boxes. I saw this courtesy of free tickets on Sunday. Monday morning another ticket offer arrived - and I nearly went to see it again! If anyone offers tickets for next week, I'll be there like a shot!

5/5 - a must see film.

The Big Wedding

Sunday morning cinema time again! This time something a lot lighter - The Big Wedding.

Diane Keaton and Robert De Niro play a divorced couple, Ellie and Don, meeting up for the first time in years for the wedding of their adopted son, Alejandro. To further confuse matters, Don is now living with Ellie's former best friend, Bebe (Susan Sarandon), and Alejandro somehow didn't bother to inform his real mother that his adoptive parents got divorced. As she's arriving from Columbia for the wedding, he'd like Ellie and Don to pretend to still be married - just for the duration of his wedding. Will they re-ignite their old spark? and where does this move leave Bebe?
Throw in some further romantic difficulties for Ellie and Ben's two other children and you've got a multi-generation rom-com - sort of It's Complicated meets Mamma Mia.

The Big Wedding is just about as star-studded as you could get - you might even spend more time thinking "Where do I know s/he from?" instead of actually watching. Robert De Niro wouldn't have been my first thought for casting in a romcom but he pulls it off surprisingly well. It's fun and light, everyone looks gorgeous and if it is a little predictable, so what? It's a romcom not deep psychological drama.

Would I watch it again? Probably when it turns up on TV - not one I'd dash out to buy the dvd of.

3/5 stars

New Year's DVD challenge - 4 months in

Remember the dvd challenge the Teen and I set ourselves? A sort-of 6 degrees of separation style thing -  basically, the dvd we just watched and the next one to be watched must have an actor in common. It's a very geeky way to chose what to watch, but whatever!
Last time I commented on it we'd watched 5 dvds. Well, we've now reached 36. The full list with linking actors is on the separate 2013 '6 Moves' DVD Challenge page.
We've only watched one dvd twice - Shakespeare In Love - and only used one actor - Hugh Grant - more than once as a link. Good going so far I think
Curiously we've found that it's often not the stars that make the connection to the next movie but the supporting cast - the guy playing the lead's best friend or the next-door neighbour. Least significant "linking" roles have to include Dylan Moran's brief appearance as a shoplifter in Notting Hill or maybe Paul Brooke playing a flower-shop owner in Alfie and publisher Mr Fitzherbert in Bridget Jones' Diary.
And the strangest move so far is Sliding Doors to The Secret Garden via John Lynch.

Olympus Has Fallen

Sunday morning isn't my favourite time to go to the cinema but when ShowFilmFirst are offering free tickets to see Gerard Butler it would be rather rude to refuse, wouldn't it?

When the White House is attacked by Korean terrorists, the only person left alive to save the President (Aaron Eckhart) is Mike Banning (Gerard Butler), former presidential guard now reduced to a desk job. While President Asher and his staff are held hostage in an impenetrable bunker beneath the now-ruinous White House, Banning must find the president's son before he too can be captured and used as leverage to make his father give in to the terrorists' demands, oh, and then shoot and punch his way to the bunker and save the President and the world. This is the main failing of the film - that it's so obvious all along that Gerard Butler will save the day. I know that this is the role of the all action hero but it would have been a better, more re-watchable, film if occasionally it had appeared that Butler might not pull it off.
It's all jolly fun in an action-packed, explosive way. The terrorists are appropriately ruthless, prepared to kill without hesitation just to make a point and rather topical being intent on influencing American naval and military deployment in Korea. Butler gets to flex his muscles and show off his unarmed defence moves - though at times I did wonder why he didn't just pull a gun and shoot the bad guys instead of insisting on battering them to death. There aren't as many laughs and one liners as in Die Hard - mainly because Banning kills first and asks questions later! - which is something I missed and there were moments when the action slowed and my attention drifted.
All in all though a good couple of hours worth of entertainment and definitely worth giving up my lazy Sunday morning for - I'm just not sure it's one I'd watch over and over again.


4/5 stars

New Year's DVD Challenge

When we sit down for an evening of watching dvds, the teen and I can never decide which to watch - sometimes we seem to spend as much time making up our minds as actually watching!
So, here is the cunning plan to reduce that decision making time - we pick Film A at random (Love, Actually as it turned out) then Film B must have one actor in common with it (Dave - with Laura Linney in common); a different actor (Kevin Kline) makes the link to Film C (Definnitely, Maybe) ; another (Abigail Breslin) from C to D (Nim's Island). etc etc
I think it just mainly proves how nerdy we are! - and that possibly we spend too much time watching DVDs.  I don't know how long we can keep going through our dvd collection this way without having to repeat something - and how we're ever going to make a link to the House of Flying Daggers. We tried to work it to include films as shown on TV but even one week in that's proving too difficult so they're excluded.

Anyway, so far we've watched

Love, Actually - linked by Laura Linney to
Dave - linked by Kevin Kline to
Definitely, Maybe - via Abigail Breslin to
Nim's Island - via Gerard Butler to
The Bounty Hunter

Tower Block

'Not the worst Sunday'

Yesterday, courtesy of free tickets via ShowFilmFirst, we all went to see Tower Block - "we" being myself, hubby, teen and a friend.
The residents of the top floor of Serenity House are waiting to be re-housed by the council and refusing to move. Me, I'd be out of there like a shot as the film opens with a 15 yr old boy being beaten to death outside their doors! The story jumps to a few months later; the murder is still unsolved, the residents are still there and now a gunman is taking potshots at them.
Starring Sheridan Smith, Russell Tovey and Jack O'Connell, Tower Block has a feel of your favourite TV characters being transported into a new situation, a cross between Die Hard and Phone Booth, so being used to seeing her in Two Pints of Lager... Smith's character Becky didn't feel right taking charge of the situation. Lumped together there were a lot of holes in the plot, a lot of things that in retrospect I thought 'why didn't they do such and such' or 'why on Earth did they try that? It was bound to fail'  and the action wasn't quite riveting enough to not let some of these doubts surface while watching. I still enjoyed it and would recommend it as a good evening out, though Sheridan Smith isn't going to replace Bruce Willis.

Then afterwards the Teen started raising a whole new set of questions... She'd enjoyed it immensely and wants the dvd the minute it comes out ... but she thought it was meant to be a comedy!!

Now, I'd seen a short trailer of shootings and screaming and people in fear for their lives plus checked it out on IMDB which describes Tower Block as a 'thriller' so that's what I went along expecting - and that's what I saw. The Teen and friend had no expectations and decided quite early on that they were watching a comedy. There were certainly a lot of funny one-liners  - "Not the worst Sunday I've had" says Tovey's character about being shot at and preparing to jump off the roof - but surely these were in the way of Alan Rickman's Die Hard quips? No says the Teen, even the shootings and all the blood were funny. Funny?? Not to my mind.
We've decided the only thing to do is watch it again. For now 4 stars as thriller, 5 stars from Teen as a comedy!

ChipLitFest

This weekend saw the launch of a new literary festival in the small town of Chipping Norton. I signed up a while ago for the mailing list and was automatically entered into a ticket prize draw - of which I was one of the lucky winners!!




Unfortunately due to distance, time and family, I couldn't make full use of my prize and attend EVERYTHING! I would have loved to have caught a lot more than I did - particularly the drinks reception on Friday evening, which I was allowed to attend as a prize winner, and Jasper Fforde on publishing unconventional novels on Sunday - I caught him briefly last summer at Edinburgh Lit Fest and he was hilariously funny.







We decided to go to a couple of events, held on Saturday, of special interest to our teenager and after a brief stop-over for lunch at Charlecote Park near Stratford,
we arrived with plenty of time to spare before the first of our picked events - Guy Browning's talk entitled Making A Living Without Any Serious Work. It's easy to see why a talk with this title would appeal to a teenager but it was a fascinating and funny account of how chance, luck and the letter 'K' had played such a large part in Guy's career - from allowing him to leave his advertising job to producing a film, Tortoise in Love, along with his whole village and premièring it in Leicester Square. In many ways, his life seems very like a feelgood movie and I hope it continues that way. As a special treat for his audience, Guy had brought along copies of one of his books, The Lost Pond, to give away. He must be a very modest chap though and not expecting a large crowd - as he only brought 12!





Our next event followed on immediately so we had a dash across town to the Chequers Inn for Emma Lee Potter's workshop - How To Break Into Freelance Writing. This was a more practical talk, full of useful advice for aspiring journalists - which I'm not going to pass on! Emma was very helpful, answering lots of queries from the audience and pointing them in the direction to find out more. The Teen certainly came away inspired and more confident of how to progress in this field, and hopefully others did too. Emma is one of many people that I've 'met' through Twitter and I'm a regular follower of her blog, so it was lovely to be able to actually meet her.





Meanwhile Emily Barr had been holding an event Bringing your Characters to Life in the Jaffe & Neal bookshop just down the road. I discovered her novels by accident through a Twitter give-away and was pleasantly surprised to discover more grit and depth in them than might be expected from their covers. So I couldn't pass up the opportunity of stopping by to say 'Hi' and get my copy of The Life You Want signed.




 After that, it was time to head back North up the motorways, accompanied on the way by rainbows.

 Hopefully, we'll be back to Chipping Norton festival next year - though I'd hope to make it a longer stay.

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes: a Game of Shadows

A series of bombings is shaking Europe and Sherlock Holmes believes the mastermind behind them is Professor Moriarty, intent on creating instability and starting a war - purely for his own profit. Despite his intentions to leave crime-fighting and settle down to quiet married life, Watson finds himself dragged rather forcibly into the quest to expose Moriarty.

I haven't seen the first Guy Ritchie-directed version of Sherlock Holmes, so I wasn't sure what to expect - and now I'm still not sure what to make of it. Certainly it's an adaptation like no other, but I'm not sure that's a good thing. Holmes, as portrayed by Robert Downey JR is no longer a quiet thinking man but one of action, parading around in a variety of bizarrely comic disguises and beating up all his enemies. Jude Law, meanwhile, who normally has such amazing screen presence was incredibly self-effacing as Dr Watson.

I wasn't at all impressed with the constant use of "bullet time" in action sequences. In The Matrix it seems appropriate and integral to the plot, in The House of Flying Daggers it beautifully captures arrows flying, turning a fight sequence into a ballet - but here it just seemed to be used for the sake of using it. There was definitely too much rapid panning and swirling with the camera - as we had seats quite close to the front, I was left feeling dizzy from it all.

I think BBC's Sherlock wins. If it's not going to be a close adaptation of Conan Doyle it may as well have a contemporary setting and re-worked plots.

Acid test - would I buy the DVD? - No

- watch it on TV? Maybe, if nothing better was on. It was entertaining but just not Sherlock Holmes.

Machine Gun Preacher

Machine Gun Preacher is the true-ish story of Sam Childers who, after a life of drugs and violence, having found Jesus, travels to Africa and is appalled at the situation in war-torn Sudan. To help the children caught up in the conflict, particularly the boy soldiers, he sets up an orphanage with the hope of providing somewhere safe and secure for them.

The film starts with Childers' release from prison, his slipping back into his old drug taking and selling ways, despite his wife's efforts to dissuade him. Unfortunately Gerard Butler didn't really seem to pull off the character of drug dependent criminal. Mainly I think because he looked too good - too healthy, too tanned, basically too all round nice guy.

The story moves on to Uganda and Sudan with many harrowing scenes of violence but, even so, somehow they failed to touch me. A film that certainly highlights the plight of children in such war-torn zones. The stories of boys kidnapped by soldiers, coerced into fighting for them, sometimes forced into killing their own families, is heart-rending but the overall feel was of a publicity stunt, maybe an awareness raiser, rather than a movie.
Sadly, as entertainment, not even Gerard Butler could save it!

Would I recommend it? Only as a informative documentary-type film.