Is That Rain I See?

It was a typical English summer’s day yesterday, i.e. wet and cold! Today is no different, and it has been much the same story ever since mid-July. It seems that nowadays we no longer get hot and sunny weather in July and August, instead we have to deal with floods and downpours. The best weather, such as it is, appears to be more likely to appear in April or September than in the summer months!

Anyway, as the day was a wash-out, and since we hadn’t been to the movies for a couple of months, Dori and I made the decision to head on over to the multiplex and catch a film in the afternoon. Now, as we are both big kids at heart we were quite keen on seeing Toy Story 3, but it is still the school holidays over here, and we thought that it might be a little packed out in there. So, instead, we plumped for “Salt”, starring Angelina Joile and Liev Schreiber.

If you don’t already know, Jolie plays a CIA agent and the film follows a “Bourne Identity” type line, with her character on the run and the audience left to work out if she’s actually a good guy or bad guy. It won’t be winning too many Oscars come next February, but it was certainly an entertaining and diverting way to while away a couple of hours on a wet Wednesday afternoon :-)

In other news, I forgot to mention that I became a great-uncle a couple of weeks back. I mean, I already was by virtue of marriage, but this new arrival was to my brother’s eldest son. They are calling their little bundle of joy Macy, or possibly Macey – the lines of communication have been a little fuzzy! Baby and mother (and even father!) are said to be doing well. I can’t quite believe though that my brother is a grandfather – it only seems like 5 minutes ago we were both in school! Time, as they say, does indeed fly.

Bank Holiday Films

As Dori mentioned in her post earlier, it is a Bank Holiday here today. It is the last Bank Holiday until Christmas here, and marks the end of the summer. It doesn’t seem like five minutes ago when we were making plans to go to Trooping the Colour, or to the Summer Solstice at Stonehenge, but here we are fast heading towards Autumn.

We have had a lazy day today as it is also the last day of my time off from work. For much of this afternoon we had the TV on in the background showing a countdown of the “100 Best Family Movies”. How they decided on this list I have no idea - it has seemed very arbitrary at times. I mean, how can “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” not be in the top 10, when "Pirates of the Caribbean" is? For the record, the Top 10 Best Family Films, as suggested by this programme, are:

10 – Wizard of Oz
9 – Star Wars
8 – Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
7 – Back to the Future
6 – The Lion King
5 – Toy Story
4 – Pirates of the Caribbean
3 – Mary Poppins
2 – Shrek
1 – ET:The Extra-Terrestrial

A lot of the films that were mentioned brought back a lot of memories for one or both of us, such as “The Amazing Mr Blunden” which used to be shown here almost every Christmas but which I haven’t seen for years now. But what this show really made us think about was why don’t they actually show these films anymore rather than just having interminable countdown lists about them?!

Anyhoo, what are your thoughts about the final list? What would your favourite family film be?

A Time Travelling Tuesday

This week is my last bit of vacation time for a few months. As seems usual for the times when I am off work, the weather has been a bit dodgy all week. In fact we are “enjoying” the last remnants of Hurricane Bill as I write this – nothing too extreme, it’s just been a bit windy with constant drizzle all day long. So, as a consequence we have been spending most of our time pottering about the Yellow House rather than going on days out.

Yesterday, however, we did venture out a little, and decided to go to the movies. We went to see “The Time Traveler’s Wife”, the film based on a novel by Audrey Niffenegger. Dori had read the book a couple of years back, and was keen to see how they would adapt it for the movies. The premise of the story is of a man who suffers from a genetic disorder which causes him to involuntarily travel through time. He has no forewarning of when this will happen, and no way of controlling it – he just disappears from one time period and appears in another. The focus of the story though is, as the title would suggest, the wife of this time traveller and the effect that his random disappearances have on their relationship.

This is certainly not a sci-fi film - it is a romance story and an examination of how this unusual “illness” affects the life of those around Henry (the time traveler). Starring Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana, it is a wonderful picture that I enjoyed thoroughly. This could have been a real mess of a movie, with all the different timelines involved, but director Robert Schwentke has done a superb job in keeping the audience aware of when they are and the pacing of the plot is absolutely perfect.

I won’t go into any more detail regarding the storyline, as I wouldn’t want to spoil it for anybody who has yet to see the film – or read the book. I will, however, highly recommend this movie if you fancy going to see a grown-up love story that will have you searching for your tissues by the end. As I mentioned earlier, Dori had read the book previously, which can sometimes colour your perception of the movie when it comes out. But she tells me that she was in no way disappointed with the film version. And as for me, I enjoyed it so much that I have already lined the book up as my next read!