Entries Tagged 'TV and movies' ↓

Truckload of carrots

I smile when I see this flatbed truck piled high with carrots – it’s the current Honda ad on TV at the moment – I’m sure carrots aren’t really transported free and easy like this but they look cool and very orange in the ad 🙂

Screen Shot 2012-10-29 at 2.15.48 PM

Here’s the add on You Tube.

I’ve been there!

Went to see Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps yesterday. Cousin Grant had told us when we had a tour of his office on 3rd Ave that parts of it were filmed in his offices and on his trading floor. OH MY GOD! I nearly squealed in the movie when I recognised parts of the set that I’d stood in – they’re the Zabel office scenes.

I can’t find pics online for everything we recognised but definitely this meeting room with The Lipstick Tower out the window

wallst2meetingroom

Any trading floor scenes

wallstreet2trading

And when you see Jake in Zabel’s office – that’s Cousin Grant’s office!!! We saw that desk and big clock and TV streaming CNN!! And the view! In fact here’s a photo Cousin Grant emailed from his office window a couple of weeks ago.

grantsview

Very exciting 🙂

Topp Twins

Had a lovely unexpected evening out on Thursday at the premiere of the Topp Twins movie Untouchable Girls at the LGBT Film Festival in Chelsea. We realised we’d been completely remiss in contacting our Chrysler photographer friend Brian since being here, and when we finally made contact he invited us as his company’s guests to the film. Turned out he was the twins’ manager for a few years back in the 80’s and his company had been the independent financial backer on the film. We also didn’t realise the Topp Twins would actually be there!

There weren’t many New Zealand accents in the crowd, but they were certainly distinctive. We had an entire row of the theatre for Brian and about a dozen guests – we felt quite honoured! The twins came out to do a waiata before the film which was beautiful – they really do sing as one voice and a waiata is usually fairly beautiful anyway. The film was great! A mix of their lives growing up, their political stance in New Zealand in the 80’s, their being openly gay and Jools’ breast cancer.  We laughed, sang, cried and cringed (just a little) at some of the small town New Zealand footage – kids riding sheep at A&P shows and the twins busking on Queen Street – I wondered what end of the earth New Yorkers would think New Zealand was at!

The film received a standing ovation and during the question and answer session after the film there were a couple of questions about how they managed to have the lives they have in New Zealand, how the country accepted them and held them up as heroes and national icons ‘despite’ being gay – the American crowd were very much in awe of the acceptance. We felt quite proud to be Kiwis!

They tried to teach the crowd to yodel then Linda showed us how it was done! (See the video on my Flickr site.)

So I was feeling quite star struck by the end of the film – silly really because I’m sure I saw the twins live at some point, but when I got out and saw the throngs of people crowding around waving CDs and t-shirts and post cards to be signed I just had to get in there. They were lovely! Took a few minutes to chat about what we were doing in New York and pose for a picture. Their film t-shirt is black with an orange print on it but by the time I decided I just HAD to have one there were none left that would fit me … fingers crossed for another print run.

Us & the Topp Twins

It was great to see the film – we missed seeing it in New Zealand as it was constantly sold out! Days later and I’m still singing Untouchable Girls (well the that phrase at least).

The Julie/Julia Project

Just saw the movie Julie & Julia – I read the book a few years ago and really enjoyed it and the movie was fantastic. The story is of government agency temp Julie cooking her way through The Art of French Cooking by Julia Childs in the year of her 30th birthday. It’s a great story of cooking and how Julia Childs became the household name she is.

Must have a rat through Mother’s stack of cookbooks to see if she has a copy, I don’t think she does, but I probably can’t consider myself any kind of cook if I don’t try something from the book. And the recipe I should try should probably be boeuf bourguignon although all the red wine and mushrooms puts me off. Perhaps I’ll do it for The Mister.

The story was lovely. Meryl Streep always does such a brilliant job of taking on the characters she plays and her portrayal of Julia Childs was wonderful. Had me in tears a few times and now The Mister and I are doing our best Julia Childs impression every time we make eye contact “Helloooooooo!” Which turns out to be fairly often!!

Child friendly car

So we all know the Mister’s dream car (well one of them) is a Porsche. I’m not keen. Watched an episode of Top Gear last night in which they drove the new 4 door (yick) Porsche Panamera (yick) and now the Mister is *very* excited because he thinks we can get one. The way to my heart? Has to be quote of the year …”LOOK! Now we can get a Porsche because Aidan can fit into the back of that one!” What?!

The F word

We don’t watch regular telly much but it’s on now while I’m tapping away, the movie Blade Trinity is on. They must flip a switch at 9pm to allow the F word to be said out loud. Not long after the movie started at 8.30 we heard an FBeeeep (and queried it, not sure that TVNZ usually blocked it), and then in the last 20 minutes it’s been fuck fuck fuck fuck everywhere. Must be someone’s job to scroll through any movies they’re going to play and beep out the occurrences that are going to occur during ‘family time’.

Sunday movies

Just about every Sunday afternoon we go to a movie. Today it was Boat That Rocked. It’s been on a while here but we kept finding other things to see instead of it. However when we looked at the list of movies today it was down to the only one we hadn’t seen, other than ones we’re definitely not seeing (like the Iron Maiden one). It was great! Funny in that dry way that the English do so well. Bill Nighy is a laugh and Philip Seymour Hoffman did a great smoking drinking 60’s rocker DJ … always thought he was English but he’s American! Great friendships as well. Makes me think I need more friends and makes me miss my very close friends – you know who you are – why do you have to live somewhere else. Sniff.

Star spotting

OMG – just saw Laura, the Wellington girl on the current season of NZ’s Next Top Model in our building lift!

Patricia Cornwell fans out there

The Mister just found on one of his geeky film sites that Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta series is being made into films. I’ve often had conversations with other fans about who’d play the various characters in the books, and nation, it’s Angelina Jolie! I am NOT pleased about that one! Not that I was certain in my mind who would play that role and I know these things are left open to interpretation but Kay Scarpetta is older, with a grown niece and a very grown up job. I had other older characters in mind for Benton Wesley and Pete Mario as well … being Tommy Lee Jones and whatshisname from NYPD Blue … Dennis Franz. As far as I know, no other characters have been cast yet … will have to get the Mister to keep an eye out for me.

End of ER

Well it’s done. ER. I’ve just watched the final of the show. I was in tears by the end of the opening credits!  Several years ago they swapped the original green credits with theme music and montage of actors for much quicker blue credits which only had a couple of bars of the theme and no pictures – for the final they brought back the original theme music and used a mix of old and new actors to reproduce the original credits. For die hard fans this was such an amazing trip. The final show was great. People all saying goodbye in ways befitting the story, a few things left unfinished but you were left imagining nothing but a good outcome and the lights went down on a huge trauma involving everyone running about and loads of ambulances, business as usual which is how it had to be. And a nice reversal of Dr Carter and ‘Dr’ Greene. I thought the last scene that faded to black was perfect – I don’t think in the entire series we’ve ever seen the hospital in location – the ambulance bay, entrance, hospital sign, L running around the front and Chicago buildings behind. God I can’t believe I’ve been hooked on the show for 15 years.