But it was so gorgeous that I just feel the need to share it with the world:
Done by my wonderfully talented mate Hannah.
Done by my wonderfully talented mate Hannah.
Aww.
Monday, July 07, 2008
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Some movies I has seen recently.
Practically sentence-long reviews, because I’m not feeling too articulate.
- Wanted
Angelina. James. Lotsa guns. Kinda sexy. Kinda fun.
- Sex and the City Movie
Yeah, so it was shallow. Yeah, so it was predictable. Yeah, so there were a lot of labels. But I like all those things. Anyone who willingly chooses to sit through SATC will enjoy it.
- Dear Frankie
So underrated and beautiful, with some amazing acting from Emily Mortimer, Gerard Butler, and mostly, the young lad in the movie. And they played Spiegel im Spiegel! ♥
- Evita
Entertaining. I like musicals now.
- Bigga than Ben
Ironically, my problem with the film is that it wasn’t “big” or overblown enough. But it’s a sweet little black comedy in its own right with an amazing soundtrack. One of the better films of 2008 thus far.
- Fantasia 200
Pretty, but I prefer the original.
- Peter’s Friends
Brannagh! Laurie! Fry! Thompson! Staunton! And the result is, thankfully, equal to the sum of its parts, a thoroughly charming and witty Britcom. ♥
- Wanted
Angelina. James. Lotsa guns. Kinda sexy. Kinda fun.
- Sex and the City Movie
Yeah, so it was shallow. Yeah, so it was predictable. Yeah, so there were a lot of labels. But I like all those things. Anyone who willingly chooses to sit through SATC will enjoy it.
- Dear Frankie
So underrated and beautiful, with some amazing acting from Emily Mortimer, Gerard Butler, and mostly, the young lad in the movie. And they played Spiegel im Spiegel! ♥
- Evita
Entertaining. I like musicals now.
- Bigga than Ben
Ironically, my problem with the film is that it wasn’t “big” or overblown enough. But it’s a sweet little black comedy in its own right with an amazing soundtrack. One of the better films of 2008 thus far.
- Fantasia 200
Pretty, but I prefer the original.
- Peter’s Friends
Brannagh! Laurie! Fry! Thompson! Staunton! And the result is, thankfully, equal to the sum of its parts, a thoroughly charming and witty Britcom. ♥
Friday, July 04, 2008
Four brief book reviews.
I’ve been a bit behind on the whole “a book a day” thing, as well as reviewing them for the blog. But anyway, here’s four books I read this week:
Memories of My Melancholy Whores (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
Underwhelming, to say the least. It was turgid, dull and extreeeeeeemely unsexy (I don’t want to hear about a 90-year-old man’s waning libido, cheers). Marquez, you can and have done so much better.
Dumb Witness (Agatha Christie)
One of my favourite Agatha Christie mysteries. Not quite up there with The ABC Murders and And Then There Were None, but certainly one of her finest, in terms of plot, character development, and narration. The idea - of Poirot investigating the murder of a woman who sent him a letter long before she died - is ingenious, and there are various twists and turns throughout.
Star Struck (Val McDermid)
Emma 4-xing loves this book!!! After I ploughed through my own “script” of Butterfly, I thought the two words “crime comedy” would instil nothing but a shudder in me. I was wrong, for Star Struck has got crime and humour in spades. It’s about Kate Brannigan, a P.I. in Manchester who has been hired to be the bodyguard of famous TV star Gloria Kendel, who has been getting death threats. But once she takes on the job, it's more than just scary letters that she has to contend with as a celebrity mystic-meg type gets murdered.
Memories of My Melancholy Whores (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
Underwhelming, to say the least. It was turgid, dull and extreeeeeeemely unsexy (I don’t want to hear about a 90-year-old man’s waning libido, cheers). Marquez, you can and have done so much better.
Dumb Witness (Agatha Christie)
One of my favourite Agatha Christie mysteries. Not quite up there with The ABC Murders and And Then There Were None, but certainly one of her finest, in terms of plot, character development, and narration. The idea - of Poirot investigating the murder of a woman who sent him a letter long before she died - is ingenious, and there are various twists and turns throughout.
Star Struck (Val McDermid)
Emma 4-xing loves this book!!! After I ploughed through my own “script” of Butterfly, I thought the two words “crime comedy” would instil nothing but a shudder in me. I was wrong, for Star Struck has got crime and humour in spades. It’s about Kate Brannigan, a P.I. in Manchester who has been hired to be the bodyguard of famous TV star Gloria Kendel, who has been getting death threats. But once she takes on the job, it's more than just scary letters that she has to contend with as a celebrity mystic-meg type gets murdered.
The book encapsulates all of Kate’s life, from her employees who are getting arrested or hooking up in cyberspace, to her brooding boyfriend, to all the eccentric people she meets on the job. Kate Brannigan is an amazing role model. Honestly, with the influx of wags and empty-headed glamour models that we're seeing in the Media, reading about Kate, with her Thai-boxing, Chinese food eating, fast-talking ways was an absolute breath of fresh air.
Star Struck is very clever, well-written and insightful, it played a bit like an episode of Jonathan Creek as written by Sophie Kinsella. I absolutely adored it. (And I've just found out that there are about 5 more Kate Brannigan books written! *is happy*)
The Lady and the Unicorn (Tracy Chevalier)
If anyone can make the process of painting and creating and weaving a tapestry interesting to a complete art-phobic like me, it’s Tracy Chevalier.
The Lady and the Unicorn (Tracy Chevalier)
If anyone can make the process of painting and creating and weaving a tapestry interesting to a complete art-phobic like me, it’s Tracy Chevalier.
Girl with a Pearl Earring was one of the most beautiful and underratedly sexy books I’ve ever read. TLATU is a little less subtle in its characters’ carnal desires, and I for one couldn’t see what all the women in the book saw in Nicholas (who didn’t sound that fit, imo) and why they were willing to run the risk of getting pregnant by him.
That said, the narration, which jumps from character to character, is really well done – their inner monologues are completely believable and it’s refreshing to hear a story from different angles. And a tapestry of a unicorn sounds sublime.
Friday, June 27, 2008
The Tesseract (Alex Garland)
Thank the lord for audiobooks. If it wasn’t for Martyn Reed’s voice reading me Alex Garland’s second book, The Tesseract, I would have died of boredom this past two days tidying my bedroom. As it was, with the convoluted plot being read to me whilst I did my summer cleaning, it was actually a pleasant experience.
I’ve not read Alex Garland’s debut, The Beach, but I’ve seen the film version of it, and, whilst I loved all the shots of Leonardo DiCaprio with his shirt off, I thought the film itself was ploddy and at parts, unintentionally hilarious. That said, it was still fairly thrilling, and thrill is something that The Tesseract offered from the start to finish.
Told in four parts, The Tesseract begins with Sean, a sailor on the shipping waters of Manila, waiting in a run-down motel for the gangster, Don Pepe to pay him a visit. Next, the story shifts to a doctor, Rosa, who is waiting for her husband Sonny to come home, as she reminisces about her first love, Lito. The next story follows two young Filipino hustlers, Vincente and Totoy, as they wander the streets of Manila in search of some easy dosh. And then there’s the finally, so climactic, so wonderfully clever in weaving the three threads together, that it makes Magnolia look like Little Britain.
The ambitious plot device made The Tesseract are hard story to write, but Garland completely succeeds. His modulates tone perfectly; from the nervous panic in Sean’s strand, to the romantic and bittersweet telling of Rosa’s romance of Lito, to the philosophical musings of Alfredo, a psychologist who Vincente and Totoy go to to sell their dreams to. At times, the pseudo-science gets a bit grating, and the flashback-within-flashback strategy left me a bit confused. I liked the novel most when it played things simple; and my favourite plot of the three was by far Rosa's, the tale of her and Lito was handled very beautifully.
Towards the end, Garland ran the serious risk of running himself off at a tangent, but luckily, he kept the story in control. The finale is as interesting as it is satisfying, tying in all three plot strands with one denouement, like the converging Tesseract of the title.
Oh, and the book was read aloud by Martyn Reed, who has a lovely voice; very deep and enigmatic.
I’ve not read Alex Garland’s debut, The Beach, but I’ve seen the film version of it, and, whilst I loved all the shots of Leonardo DiCaprio with his shirt off, I thought the film itself was ploddy and at parts, unintentionally hilarious. That said, it was still fairly thrilling, and thrill is something that The Tesseract offered from the start to finish.
Told in four parts, The Tesseract begins with Sean, a sailor on the shipping waters of Manila, waiting in a run-down motel for the gangster, Don Pepe to pay him a visit. Next, the story shifts to a doctor, Rosa, who is waiting for her husband Sonny to come home, as she reminisces about her first love, Lito. The next story follows two young Filipino hustlers, Vincente and Totoy, as they wander the streets of Manila in search of some easy dosh. And then there’s the finally, so climactic, so wonderfully clever in weaving the three threads together, that it makes Magnolia look like Little Britain.
The ambitious plot device made The Tesseract are hard story to write, but Garland completely succeeds. His modulates tone perfectly; from the nervous panic in Sean’s strand, to the romantic and bittersweet telling of Rosa’s romance of Lito, to the philosophical musings of Alfredo, a psychologist who Vincente and Totoy go to to sell their dreams to. At times, the pseudo-science gets a bit grating, and the flashback-within-flashback strategy left me a bit confused. I liked the novel most when it played things simple; and my favourite plot of the three was by far Rosa's, the tale of her and Lito was handled very beautifully.
Towards the end, Garland ran the serious risk of running himself off at a tangent, but luckily, he kept the story in control. The finale is as interesting as it is satisfying, tying in all three plot strands with one denouement, like the converging Tesseract of the title.
Oh, and the book was read aloud by Martyn Reed, who has a lovely voice; very deep and enigmatic.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
The silence of the lahms.
I actually cannot get a pun that Gary Linekar made on Match of the Day last night out of my head. Basically, it was Germany 3 - Turkey 2, and the scorer of the winning goal was Philipp Lahm, the left back (cute in an aww bless kinda way). Anyway, when it was all over, Linekar signed off with "In the end, Turkey were silenced by Lahm". Now, even, if you don't like football, you have to appreciate that's quite amusing!
So, I'm now actually addicted to plays on the word "lahm". So far, I've also heard:
- Lahm chops down Turkey (double metaphor with food in there!)
- Tasty lahm the toast of Germany
- Lahm Kebabs 'Em (The Sun, you wouldn't know, would you?)
And here's my own contribution, inspired by this picture of the Germany captain Michael Ballack holding Lahm like a little pet:
Michael had a little Lahm.
Yes, OK. I'll go back to watching the football silently.
So, I'm now actually addicted to plays on the word "lahm". So far, I've also heard:
- Lahm chops down Turkey (double metaphor with food in there!)
- Tasty lahm the toast of Germany
- Lahm Kebabs 'Em (The Sun, you wouldn't know, would you?)
And here's my own contribution, inspired by this picture of the Germany captain Michael Ballack holding Lahm like a little pet:
Michael had a little Lahm.
Yes, OK. I'll go back to watching the football silently.
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