Entries Tagged 'TV and movies' ↓

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!!

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?!

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’.

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.

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

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.

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.

Just realised there are only 3 episodes of ER left. Ever. This week. Next week and the week after. Waaaaaaaa.

After thinking they weren’t going to, we discovered that Sky had a re-run of the Oscars so we could go ahead with the planned Oscars picnic of left-overs and new things made from left-over ingredients from the birthday dinner last night. Bit of a hotch potch and all entirely made up – a great picnic.

We saw the last hour of the Oscars – it’s like it’s gone all PC or something – having little speeches made to all the nominees in the best actor and actress categories. It’s not that they don’t deserve it but have they changed the format because there’ve been bad losers? Or did they have to put something in place so that Kate Winslet got some specific acknowledgment in case she didn’t finally get an Oscar? The Mister was puffing and moaning that it was all a love fest … perhaps that was our last Oscars picnic.

If there’s an outside chance you’re a crybaby, don’t go to this movie. Like you’re quite manly but admit to feeling a bit teary at the end of Return of the King. Even if you’re not a dog person, don’t go. It’s great we go to a movie every Sunday but sometimes, because of scheduling we have to go to ones we might normally give a wide berth.