a lovely day…

I mentioned over here, after having seen my third or fourth meh film in a row, that I couldn’t actually remember the last time I saw a film that really wowed me. Well, it finally happened a couple of weeks ago when Susan & I had another “girls’ Saturday night out”. Except this time we started with lunch …

benjamin button

Banal, boring and waayyy too long …

As I have mentioned here on many occasions, there is only one cinema here in Sevilla that shows films in their original version (not dubbed into Spanish) so there is usually a very limited selection of English films. So imagine my surprise when I saw that there were four films in English showing this weekend that I’d heard good things about: Benjamin Button, Revolutionary Road, Frost/ Nixon and Doubt.  And then early yesterday afternoon I got a message from Flor, inviting me out to a movie and asked me to choose between Benjamin Button and Frost/Nixon (she’d already seen the other two) … and, just like always happens with supermarket queues, I chose the wrong one!

girls’ night out

The other day I saw that there was a chick flick on at the cinema – in English! – and asked Pipocas if she wanted to see it. So we made plans to go on Saturday (last night).  Then it occurred to me that not only was I going out to the cinema (something I don’t think I’ve done since before my first operation last May) but I was also going out on a Saturday night and that it was going to be a girls’ night out…

surf the channel

The other day my friend Kristin suggested I try out surfthechannel to find a new tv series she had recommended. So I checked it out yesterday and it looked like a fabulous idea, but upon using it I have found a few annoying glitches.

STC doesn’t stream videos or host content and so the videos available are hosted and shown from sites such as Y! Video, Tudou & Megavideo. I’ve tried all three. Tudou has massive subtitles in Japanese that take up almost a quarter of the screen, Y! Video has serious buffering problems and Megavideo limits your viewing time to 70 minutes – if you want to continue watching you either have to wait an hour or else pay a monthly fee (10€ a month). Also, if you click to full screen on any of them the image goes all pixillated. It’s a shame because STC has a massive library that includes films, cartoons, sports, etc.

Has anyone else tried STC?

Looks like it’s back to adding to my Amazon wish list …

it was 20 years ago …

. . . that I first saw this film.

A very charming ‘coming of age’ film about three teenaged girls (played by Julia Roberts, Annabeth Gish & Lili Taylor) in the small town of Mystic, Connecticut. And I had vague memories of really loving this film a lot.

Got to watch it again yesterday as it was being shown on tv on Sunday afternoon . . . and I loved it all over again.

But something really niggled. which I know is one of my pet niggles . . . and that is about how women portrayed in films twenty years ago actually got away with having real women’s bodies. I mean, okay, Mystic Pizza was a small indie low-budget film and not a big-time Hollywood film, otherwise this may not have been the case. But man, there was ole Julia (I think it was her first film role) showing a lot of big sexy butt and voluptuous curves, and Annabeth and Lily also looked like … well, like normal women do when wearing trousers. Like, no three inch gap between their thighs. And all scenes showing any of them in a sleeveless top or dress also showed quite attractive and normal looking upper arms, not pencil-thin sticks protruding out of bony shoulders… it was really refreshing to see this for a change.

Well, refreshing and also sad to think of how things are now. Ah well…

An excellent film – does anyone else remember it?

oscar quiz

Are You Red Carpet Ready?

You answered 31% of the questions correctly.
Well, you made it to Hollywood.Unfortunately, your map to the Kodak Theater just blew out the window.

Oh dear!
I think I’m going to have to borrow Archie’s quiz dunce hat.

How about you?

things I miss…

I came across this old post from last year on Letters Home the other day. Oh how I wish everyone had a ‘recent comments’ widget for people just passing through or for when I’m just having a quick look around a few blogs without using my feedreader. In fact, I probably would have just read the comment to this post on my feedreader without clicking on the post itself. But seeing it on ian’s sidebar I clicked on the comment and saw the original post. Anyhoodle … it was all about things ian misses from the places he used to live after having moved on to somewhere else.

Like ian, I’ve lived in a few different places since leaving my birthplace Winnipeg, Canada (aka Winterpeg) at age 25. Since then I’ve lived in Toronto, Bristol in England, and Salamanca & Seville in Spain. Here is my list of things I miss …

good books, bad films

20 Good Books Made Into Not-So-Good Movies

Do you agree with the AV Club’s list? Are there any more titles you’d like to add?

1. Slapstick (Of Another Kind) (1982)
2. The Bonfire Of The Vanities (1990)
3. Bicentennial Man (1999)
4. The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)
5. The Scarlet Letter (1995)
6. All The King’s Men (2006)
7. The Human Stain (2003)
8. The Hours (2002)
9. Stardust (2007)
10. Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)
11. Portnoy’s Complaint (1972)
12. Tropic Of Cancer (1970)
13. Bee Season (2005)
14. Stuart Little (1999)
15. Even Cowgirls Get The Blues (1993)
16. The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy (2005)
17. The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising (2007)
18. The Black Cauldron (1985)
19. Breakfast At Tiffany’s (1961)
20. Stephen King’s The Shining (1997)

And here is another possibly scary list … this one of Books Into Movies that have release dates in November and December.

women in film

Two videos in one day!

Something rather poignant (and also somewhat creepy) about this one . . .

what’s your movie genre?

The Movie Of Your Life Is An Indie Flick

You do things your own way – and it’s made for colourful times. Your life hasn’t turned out how anyone expected, thank goodness! Your best movie matches: Clerks, Garden State, Napoleon Dynamite

If Your Life Was a Movie, What Genre Would It Be?

~ found at raincoaster’s ~