Songs: Con Te Partirò

Here's something beautiful and powerful for your weekend.

Shopping: Camden Market

Camden Market in London is one of my favorite places in the world.   Here are some of the awesome purchases I've made over the last couple of years:

 Awesome watch pendant

 Leather jacket.   Love it!

 Military jacket

 Pretty halter neck dress.  Please excuse the lack of ironing.

 Lovely rockabilly dress.   the skirt is sooo big!

 World's most enormous skirt.  It's wonderful.

Funky gothy coat

Songs: Fooba Wooba John

Have you seen Fantastic Mr. Fox?   Odd film.   Really interesting animation though.   And a kick-ass soundtrack!   This is Fooba Wooba John:

Photography: Rome, Day 6

The 6th and final day of my Roman Holiday included going round St. Peter's and the Castel Sant'Angelo.   The latter is a fascinating building.   It was built as the emperor Hadrien's mausoleum, but was later turned into a fortress!   How odd.   Anyway, here are my favorite photos from the day:

 View of Castel Sant'Angelo from the top of St. Peter's

View of Piazza San Pietro from the top of St. Peter's

 

   Tricolore by Castel Sant'Angelo

Songs: Chinese and Who'd Have Known

I've gone from really disliking Lily Allen to really respecting her as a singer and liking her stuff.   Here are two less well known tracks from her second album.   I like them because they're simple and talk about everyday things we can all relate to.

TV Reviews: Planet Earth

Planet Earth is a truly impressive David Attenborough documentary.  Everybody knows and loves David Attenborough, and I think this offering is definitely among the best things he's ever done.   It takes us through some of the most interesting habitats on the planet and has some really extraordinary footage.   Each episode deals with a different type of environment, such as mountains, caves and deserts, and takes us to different kinds of each across the planet.   Each episode also has a charming little section at the end which gives us an insight into how some of the filming was done.   It's fascinating!   Some highlights for me include seeing Ethiopia's amazing volcanic landscape, snow leopards, the Pantanal, the Lechuguilla Cave, the Borneo rainforest, a baby humpback whale and undersea volcanoes.   Gorgeous and all very interesting!

Show Reviews: Matilda

Yes, I know there have been a lot of show reviews lately, sorry.   So today I'd like to talk about Matilda, which is quite a new show.   It's based on the book by the amazing Roald Dahl, and was written by the wonderful Tim Minchin.   It was a great show!   It's about a little girl called Matilda who has horrible parents and magical powers.   She uses them to help her lovely teacher get her inheritance off her horrible aunt, who is also the headmistress.   The headmistress, Miss Trunchball, is played by a man in drag, which works really well.   The cast includes a lot of children, and they were all very impressive!   Bruce Bogtrotter especially was a great little performer.   Matilda's family were also excellent.   Really ignorant and vapid.   The sets were great as well.   Really clever with lots of bits to climb.   I have to say though that I wasn't that much of a fan of the changes Tim Minchin made to the story.  For example he made Miss Honey the teacher's parents circus performers.   I don't get it.   As for the songs, there are some great ones.   The cleverest is the song when the kids start school.   The older kids sing about what a terrible place school is, and you don't realise until the final chorus when they start using props that the entire alphabet has been incorporated into the song!   Amazing!   And I love Naughty.   It's so empowering.

Some of the best songs:

     

Book Reviews: Traction City

Traction City is a short story, written for World Book Day 2011, by Philip Reeve, one of my favorite writers.   It was published along with some short horror stories, called The Teacher's Tales of Horror, by Chris Priestley.   Philip Reeve wrote a series of books called the Mortal Engines Quartet (which is brilliant!), and this little story takes place in that universe, and uses some of the same characters.   It's about a policeman hunting a Stalker aboard the moving city of London.   A Stalker is a piece of ancient technology, a half-mechanical, half-organic warrior.   It's very well-written, and even though it's only very short it manages to be very exciting and scary.   For fans of the series it's a very interesting look at some parts of the universe that weren't explored in the books, but it works as a stand-alone story too.   The Teacher's Tales of Horror is worth a read too.   Some genuinely creepy stories.

        

Songs: Odds Are

I love the Barenaked Ladies.   I've seen them live twice and their songs are so catchy and happy with clever lyrics and some seriously impressively fast rapping.   And it turns out their new stuff is awesome too!   This is odds are.   It makes me happy.   Also, Ed is a sexy sexy man.

Show Reviews: War Horse

I've seen this play twice in the past year: once in London and once in Edinburgh.   It's based on a Michael Morpurgo book about a horse called Joey.   Joey is raised and trained by a boy called Albert who is heartbroken when his father sells Joey to the army.   Albert joins up and goes to France to try and look for Joey.   Both the horse and the boy see horrible things, but eventually, miraculously, find each other again, though both are in bad shape.   Unlike a lot of other Micahel Morpurgo stories, this one has a happy ending.   What makes the play so special is that the horses in it are portrayed by the most incredible, complex, lifelike and beautiful puppets.   They take three people to operate them, and it's so well done that you forget that you're watching puppets at all.   I really enjoyed the singing in it as well.   It was bittersweet and beautiful.   It was interesting being able to compare the two performances too.   I thought I was going to enjoy the London show a lot more than the Edinburgh one because the London theatre was so much more intimate and I was much closer to the stage, which was also bigger, but actually it travelled surprisingly well.  Recommended.

Show Reviews: Wicked

I went to see Wicked in London last year.   I think it's one of favourite musicals of all time.   It's based on the character of the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz, giving her a background story, and presenting her as misunderstood, not wicked.   I love the soundtrack and I listen to it all the time.   So I already knew the music when I went, and I knew the story as well, from reading the book (stupid book, don't bother).   Happily they did change bits if the book though, taking out the more gruesome parts and changing the ending so that the witch doesn't die.   Anyway, I loved the performance I saw.   The sets and costumes were gorgeous!   As for the singing, I think I prefer the recording I have with Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, but the singers in this one were still great.   I can't wait to see it again in a few months!

        

Some awesome Wicked songs: