Category Archives: Film

Christmas holiday ’09

Posted on 6 January 2010 by | Leave a comment

Here are some of the highlights of our extended Christmas vacation. Our camera has been on the blink, so we don’t really have any pictures to share. Just some great memories.

–The funeral service, and seeing family in Oregon
–Looking through scrapbooks and spending time with grandparents in both Oregon and California
–Spending the afternoon in Powell’s Books in Portland
–Observing the sea lions and enjoying a cannonball bowl of clam chowder at Mo’s in Newport, OR
–Ice skating with nieces and nephews
–An afternoon walk through the winter wonderland at Sundance
–Seeing a musical production of A Christmas Carol
–Eating Christmas Eve lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Idaho, followed by a drive through the country
–Great raclette and fondue dinners with family
–Four-wheeling through the snowy Utah hills with my brother
–Cycling along the coast and up Sycamore Canyon in Southern California
–On the first weekend of the new year, basking at the beach in beautiful 74 degree California sunshine!
–Shopping in Santa Monica
–Seeing Invictus and Avatar with family, as well as enjoying many old movies at home
–All the food, music, and fun with family and friends through the holiday season

We have loved our time back here in the States, and wish we could stay longer! Hopefully we’ll be able to visit again sometime soon.

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Posted in Culture, Cycling, Film, Food, Los Angeles, Theatre, Travel

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Another week

Posted on 9 August 2009 by | Leave a comment

This past week included the following:

Sitting at work every day, hearing protestors outside shouting US! US! Shame on you! And variations on that theme. This is a protest related to Iraq and has been going on EVERY DAY for two weeks now.

Falling asleep during yet another movie. We were watching Hitchcock’s 39 Steps at home. I lasted for about 20 minutes before zonking out.

Spreading the word that we’re moving next month, and getting sentimental about leaving and not being able to see our friends from church every week.

In preparation for our move, collecting boxes from work (very easy) and lugging them home on the bus (not easy at all on a crowded bus with two prams).

Lounging around at home all Saturday, trying to convince myself to get organized for our move, but spending the day on the couch reading Nick Hornby’s The Complete Polysyllabic Spree instead. Brodacious was sick and stayed in bed the entire day.

Making two batches of cookies yesterday. The first batch was really crappy, and went straight into the trash. In trying to figure out what went wrong, I realized I had forgotten to add sugar to the dough! And without the sugar, the cookies turned out dry as dirt and were not worth eating at all. It was so disappointing, I had to try again later in the day. I was more focused the second time around, and now we have some good cookies to snack on. The cookies are helping me to resist eating all the birthday candy we still have in the house.

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Posted in Art, Culture, Film, Food, London

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Week in review

Posted on 28 June 2009 by | Leave a comment

Brodacious made the best steak paninis a few days ago. We were trying to replicate the paninis we used to get at the Coral Tree Cafe in Brentwood, and I think it worked out pretty well. He also made some burnt caramel ice cream, which was excellent. And I don’t really eat more than a spoonful of ice cream because it tends to upset my stomach. But the spoonful sure was good.

We went to the cinema to see Virgin Spring, which was part of the Ingmar Bergman Directorspective going on this summer at the Barbican Centre. I felt like I was back in college at the International Cinema. It was great.

These were the highlights of a week that was otherwise consumed by busy, busy days at work. And of course all the non-stop news about the death of Michael Jackson.

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Posted in Culture, Film, Food, Los Angeles

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Just a hard chair to park your pants on from 9 to 5

Posted on 7 March 2009 by | Leave a comment

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This quote about desk jobs is one of many good lines from Double Indemnity that made me laugh. We watched the movie a couple of weeks ago and I thought it was brilliant. Gripping and full of snappy dialogue from start to finish. There should definitely be more movies like it. Also, it made me miss LA a little bit, with its talk about Los Feliz and other parts of the city I could picture in my mind.

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Posted in Film, Los Angeles

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My report for week ending 24 January

Posted on 25 January 2009 by | 1 comment

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Here are a few things that I’ve done this week:

I went to the doctor’s office and had an unusually long wait before being called back to see the GP. As it turned out, my 45-minute wait was due solely to technical difficulties—my doctor couldn’t get her computer to work. Gone are the days of paper files and handwritten prescriptions, I guess. One of my colleagues suggested that maybe the doctor just had to wait until she had access to Google/Web MD before she could see patients again. I certainly hope that’s not the case…

I went to Sainbury’s grocery store, got all my shopping done and was at the cashier before I realized that I had no money with me. No cash, no cards, nothing. Not even my Nectar Card (like the Nectar Card is ever helpful.)! There was nothing to do but run home to get my money and then run back. I worked up a sweat in my big heavy coat and felt like I wasted half the day just running back and forth along the same street.

We’ve been missing Netflix, and so finally decided to give UK’s version (LoveFilm) a shot. It seems like the only things on TV these days are Celebrity Big Brother and old episodes of Friends. We’re hoping to catch up on some movies we’ve been wanting to see. This week we watched The Lavender Hill Mob, which is a 1951 movie starring Alec Guinness that we chose only because we’ve gotten to know Lavender Hill quite well here in London. We both had fairly low expectations since we’d never heard of the film, but it turned out to be pretty entertaining.

We FINALLY got to the British Library. I’ve been wanting to go there since we moved here but somehow it just hadn’t happened. Both of us really liked it, but it was way too dark in there to properly view everything. And I thought it was interesting that there really weren’t many people there, and we could wander through their exhibit of treasures at our leisure, looking at the Magna Carta and the Gutenburg Bible and other old illuminated manuscripts. The only crowd in the room was this swarm of young people gathered in hysterics around Charlotte Bronte’s manuscript of Jane Eyre. I thought it was interesting they could get so excited over this handwritten manuscript (admittedly a treasure in its own right) but ignore the Magna Carta and other old documents on the opposite side of the room. To each his own, though.

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Posted in Art, Film, Literature, London, Media

‘I’ll Be Seeing You’

Posted on 22 December 2008 by | Leave a comment

I’ll Be Seeing You (1944) is the only new (new to us, anyway) Christmas movie we’ve seen so far this year, and it was a flop. Halfway through the movie, Brodacious, who was sprawled out on the couch, started making motions like he was stabbing himself in the chest. I suppose to suggest that dying a murderous death would be less painful than having to sit through this movie. I doubt there will be a second viewing of this one.

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Posted in Art, Culture, Film

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Christmas Movies

Posted on 7 December 2008 by | 3 comments

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I’m rather a sucker for Christmas movies, and sit through even the most cheesy, sappy fare (Snow Wonder, anyone?) in the name of holiday cheer. So a couple of years ago, I conducted a little Internet “research” to find some new Christmas movies to watch through December. We Netflixed, among other movies, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Wow. What an extravaganza—a Technicolor-style musical (every single word is sung) with Catherine Deneuve, a passel of umbrellas, and absolutely nothing to do with Christmas. Oh wait, there was a Christmas tree in the background of the final scene… Anyhow, whoever recommended this has an interesting idea of what a Christmas movie entails.

So, of course, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg has now become our standard. It has maybe permanently lowered the bar as to what qualifies as a Christmas movie. Last weekend, we happened to watch two 1970s Christmas movies: The Conversation, in which a holiday decoration could be spotted here and there throughout the movie, and The French Connection. I can’t even remember how The French Connection qualified, but it did.

I think Brodacious likes this state of affairs. Watching a Christmas movie no longer means sitting down to It’s a Wonderful Life or Miracle on 34th Street.

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Posted in Film

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Jacques Tati

Posted on 11 November 2008 by | Leave a comment

How did I go through eight or nine years of public school/university French classes and end up with zero exposure to Jacques Tati? Ridicule! You would think we could have tempered our class discussions of Camus…Baudelaire….Trauffaut…with a little bit of Tati here and there.

Happily, Brodacious introduced me to Tati. Last year, we watched his movie Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot and last week we happened upon Mon Oncle in a random store we were browsing through after dinner. It was a an impulse buy, but felt justified. We watched Mon Oncle over the weekend and it was a hoot. The dialogue, which seems minimal anyway, is secondary to the physical and situational comedy. C’est tres amusant!

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Posted in Culture, Film

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‘The Skeleton Dance’

Posted on 31 October 2008 by | Leave a comment

Happy Hallowe’en! Enjoy a classic spooky short from 1929.

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Tess of the D’Urbervilles—the BBC version

Posted on 7 October 2008 by | 2 comments

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I watched the last episode of the Tess of the D’Urbervilles miniseries on the BBC over the weekend. Brodacious got to watch the four one-hour episodes with me, and declared it extremely depressing. It was depressing and fatalistic but as I recall so was the book. I read the book probably twenty years ago, and couldn’t remember much from it. Pretty much all I remembered was that Tess was raped and that the book had a tragic ending. The rest came back to me as I was watching this movie.

I liked it. I thought the characters played their parts well, and it was interesting to see the English countryside and Stonehenge as the backdrop for the story. Most of all, though, I liked the movie because it reminded me of Thomas Hardy and what I liked about his books. I loved his characterization, and Tess was the first of several of his books that I read through junior high. The movie paled in comparison to the book, and I’m not sure how much I would have liked this movie had I NOT read the book. I probably would have felt just like Brodacious and not made it past episode one. As it is, though, I like this adaptation and would recommend it; especially to anyone with an appreciation for Thomas Hardy. After watching it, I felt like reading the book again. However, we’ll see if I get to it with all the other good things out there to read.

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Posted in Culture, Film, Literature, Media

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