Films!

Just thought I'd write a quick review of some of the films I've been watching.   Firstly, Planet of the Apes.  The original one.   Just another one of those films that I really should have seen, but never quite got round to watching.   So I thought it was about time I filled the gap in my education.   And I have to say I really enjoyed it.   It was very compelling.   I'm not quite sure why, but the style reminded quite a lot of 2001 Space Odyssey.   Of course, I knew the story already, it being rather a famous film, so the twist at the end came as no surpirse.   I imagine to a naive audience it would have been gripping stuff.   I enjoyed the harsh landscapes and Charlton Heston's cynical, world-weary performance.   And all the topless men, of course.   Although it has mostly aged very well, with the make-up and special effects still being pretty impressive, there are bits of it that are pretty dated.   The attitude to the women in the film is a prime example.   At one point one of the apes remarks: I didn't know man could be monogamous.   Charlton Heston casually replies: On this planet, it's easy.    Good old-fashioned casual sexism!

     



Next up, Kill Bill, Volumes 1 and 2.   Not being a Tarantino fan, I didn't really expect to enjoy these.   Just another gap in my education to be filled.   But I have to say, they were great!   Unusual and interesting.   The storyline wasn't really that original, being a fairly typical tale of revenge, but the way it was done made these pretty unique films!   There is probably an awful lot that can be said about the filmography by clever people who know about that sort of thing.   There's the way the heroine's name is beeped out right up until the end, and the random switches into black and white at certain points, the lady with the eye patch, the bright yellow outfit, the way a lot of the important conversations in the film are in Japanese with no subtitles so that we don't understand what's going on, the very unrealistic and old fashioned way of showing bleeding, and the unrealistic portrayal of Japan as being all sushi and katanas and kimonos and getta...   I have to say that I don't really understand the reasons behind most of those things, but i loved it all the same!   It interested me.   Being a Tarantino film there was obviously a lot of gratuitous gore and blood, but somehow it wasn't as offensive as I usually find it.   No picking bits of skull off the backseat of a car in this.   I very much enjoyed the soundtrack as well, and the performances.   I especially liked David Carradine as Bill.   The other little touch that I liked was how these hard, deadly women could instantly be tamed by the appearance of a child.   I'd like to believe that's the truth.

 

And Finally, A Nightmare on Elm Street.   Not really a fan of this, but I can definitely understand why it's so famous.   It doesn't hold back, and it's pretty damn scary for a horror film of its age.   There's some pretty iconic imagery in it, like Freddy Krueger's red and green jumper and metal claws.   I can see why these memorable images turned the film into a franchise.     I did enjoy the way the boundary between dreams and reality were blurred and I would have liked to see a little bit more of this to be honest.   I also enjoyed watching an early performance of Johnny Depp's as well.   It's always interesting to go back and watch really big stars when they were just starting out.     

Curtains!

The biggest project I've done lately has been my home made curtains.   A couple of years ago I made curtains for my bedroom at home with a LOT of help from Mum.   And apart from doing a couple of squares for a patchwork quilt for Mum when I was little, that's pretty much all the sewing machine experience I have.   So I was a little surprised when I got given a sewing machine a couple of Christmases ago.   Quite frankly I didn't think I'd even be able to get it here.   But in the Autumn Mum drove it up here for me, and bought me some fabric to make curtains for this room too, as the curtains I had were old, faded, cheap Ikea ones that were unbelievably thin and didn't close properly.   I was surprised at how much the fabric cost.   Over 300 pounds for the fabric, thermal lining, curtain tape and thread.  

                                                               Sewing machine

                                                                       Fabric

                                                                  Thermal Lining


So the first challenge was setting the sewing machine up.   This was done with the help of youtube.   The instruction manual was all in Italian, and while my Italian is pretty good, names of sewing machine parts is not my strong point.   Insert the something into the something and then do....something to something else.   Hmmmm.   Ok, so sewing machine all set up and ready to go.   The next step was cutting the fabric.   I had vague instructions from my mother about where to cut, but seeing as I am prone to brain farts I had a friend check it for me before I picked up the scissors.   She pointed out that I was Doing It Wrong.   Good thing I checked.  

So, with my fabric and lining cut, I just decided to crack on with my very limited experience, and see what happened.   First I pinned and sewed the widths of fabric together and sewed them.   so far so good.   Then I did the same for the lining.   The next step was sewing the fabric to the lining and hemming the sides.   Again, no disasters.   Next came sewing the curtain tape to the tops of the curtains and hemming them.   Well, this stuff was like no curtain tape i'd ever seen.   Youtube to the rescue again.   Before I could hang these curtains I bought a new curtain rail, and then got thoroughly confused by it and couldn't work out how to put it up.   Another friend to the rescue.   I owe him one!

I then inserted curtain hooks into the curtain tape and hung the curtains.   They were about a foot too long.   Being very lazy it took me a while to get round to ripping the excess fabric off the bottoms of the curtains and pinning them to hem.   Mum told me to hand sew the bottom hems, but I got bored very quickly and took the curtains down again to machine sew.  

                                                                The finished product!


What I learned from this project: 

- I am very bad at choosing curtain fabric.   They don't look at all like I thought they would.
- I hate sewing, whether by hand, or by machine.   I ended up doing this in stages over many days so that I didn't get too bored and grumpy.
- How to change a sewing machine needle (I broke four).
- I don't understand my sewing machine.   It keeps throwing tantrums at an alarming frequency.
- Curtains are much more complicated than they look!
- I can make curtains!   :)

I have to say it is very nice to finally have decent looking curtains that keep my room nice and warm.  

                

France

So back in August I had a lovely holiday in France.   Being in the middle of nowhere the photo oppurtunities could have been really good but sadly the weather was not on my side.   It was lovely and warm, but often hazy as is so often the case in the height of summer.   Still, I got a few good shots out of it.   Here are a few favorites:

                                                          

                                                                French countryside

                                                                   Thistle Macro

                                                 And a couple of night sky pictures


I took advantage of being in the middle of nowhere to take a few night shots.   Obviously for photos like this a tripod is a necessity and not an optional extra.   A remote release is good too, to minimise camera shake.  Seeing as stars move, it's possible to use a long exposure and capture their paths across the sky.   The above photo had an exposure of about 15 minutes.   For a stationary night sky shot it's a bit of a fine balance between freezing the stars and getting them to look bright.   I find that as long as the stars are frozen you can brighten them up a fair amount in photoshop afterwards.  The biggest problem with getting shots like these (especially with an older camera like mine) is noise.   Long exposures mean that the sensor heats up and you get hot pixels.   There are also problems with night pollution creeping in, hence the rather drastic crops of both these photos.   Still, overall I'm pretty happy with both of them.   :) 

Homemade Hummus

This is something I'd been wanting to make for a while.   Up til now I'd always got as far as cooking the chick-peas, adding the other ingredients...and eating them.   Back in the mists of time before I had a blender I think I once try mashing them with a fork.   It didn't really work.   SO for my hummus you will need...a certain amount of dried chick peas, soaked overnight, good quality olive oil, lemon juice, plenty of garlic, sesame oil, salt, pepper and a bit of water.   Yes, I know you're meant to use tahini, but what would I ever use it for again.   So I substituted sesame oil in there instead and it seemed to do the job.  :)  

                                                              soaked chick peas

a lime sneaked in there as well as it was left over from the weekend's cooking project.  


Boil the chick peas for...a certain amount of time until they're done.   Add some olive oil and lemon (plus lime) juice and blend.   The blending process wasn't as easy as I'd thought it would be.   I had to add some water to the mixture to help it along, but I got there.   Add all the other ingredients to taste.   Serve with lots of crunchy veg.   Delicious! 

The amount of chick peas I used made a whole cereal bowl full up the top of hummus, so I put half of it in the freezer.  It seems to freeze and thaw very well.  Enjoy!

Films and TV

Thought I'd do a quick review of some stuff I've been watching over the last couple of months.

Firstly the cartoon Avatar, The Last Airbender.   I loved this!   I borrowed all three seasons off a friend and really enjoyed it.   It's an anime style cartoon series about a boy who is destined to save the world from the evil Firelord by controlling the four elements.   The animation is impressive, the characters are all fantastic and there are some very funny lines.   In the earlier episodes the storylines were pretty simple but by the end of the series the storyline was pretty complex and constantly used elements from past episodes which I imagine might make it pretty confusing if you didn't watch all the episodes in order.   I quite liked how the break-neck pace of the story was broken up every now and then with a heart warming episode just about various characters just hanging out and being themselves.   It made it playful and a bit quirky and not all business.   Though my favorite aspect of the show wss definitely the characters.   They are all really well written and have oodles of personality.   And Princess Azula is one of the scariest villains I have ever come across!

Next, the film Into The Wild.   This was about a young man who leaves his home, family and money and sets off on a journey around North America by himself, taking very little with him.  He eventually starves to death in the Alaskan wilderness.   I very much enjoyed this.   Again, this was full of interesting characters and was a bit different.   It was well written and there was something very peaceful and compassionate about it.   The soundtrack was just lovely and altogether the film made me want to run away from home and have an adventure myself.   The only part I didn't really enjoy was the end.   I have nothing against killing off the main character at the end of a film.   If it's done right it can be great, but in this case I just felt that it didn't really fit with the rest of the movie.   But then I looked it up and the reason they did it is because the film is based on a true story.   Oh.

      


And finally, the King Kong remake.   I'm sure it goes without saying that everybody already knows what this is about: a giant gorilla who falls in love with a woman and eventually dies falling off the Empire State Building after being shot down by planes.   I have to say I enjoyed this a lot more than I was expecting to!   What I enjoyed most was that it was very true to the 1933 original, both in plot and in feel.   Although not a particular fan of the original, with its ridiculous plot and gratuitous fight scenes (I had to play Angry Birds while watching to get through it), I cannot stand it when remakes simply use the name of an old film and then proceed to tear it apart.   This remake seemed to merely expand on what was already there.   At three hours it is a bit of long slog, but I have to say I very much enjoyed the additions.   The heroine has a lot more personality in this version and they've thrown in a little Stockholm Syndrome for good measure.   I did think that Fay Wray might have made the wrong choice in the original, as Kong saved her from all manner of dinosaurs and giant beasts and all the hero ever saved her from was one very distracted gorilla.   In this version there are some very touching moments between woman and gorilla and it is genuinely upsetting when Kong is killed at the end.   The only really big change made to the original story is that Ann falls in love with the thoughtful writer, rather than the pretty boy actor, whic fits very well with her added personality.   I also quite liked how they just took the ridiculous plot of the old film and went with it, rather than attempting to come up with some sort of credible explanation for it all to satisfy modern audiences.  Being an Andy Serkis fan, I enjoyed his performance (both of them) and I thought Jack Black made a very good Carl.   Perhaps an odd choice, but it worked really well.   And after all, when have I ever not enjoyed something Pete Jackson has done?