Bloody Brilliant!

A Quick Browse Through Life

I subscribe to Life.com's weekly photo gallery, which just recently featured a great collection of photos of King George VI that seem all the more poignant after having seen The King's Speech (see previous post):

Hopeless Hollywood

Yes, I see a lot of movies.  So sue me.  God knows my husband would like to, since I drag him to most of the flicks I want to see.  We attend movie screenings at The Hospital Club, a members only club that is literally across the street, so the saving grace is that we aren't paying for them as we would in a cinema.  Even so, we have wasted precious hours of our lives recently which we will never get back.  I'd like to share my pain:

Gulliver's Travels.  Jack Black annoys me to bits, I'll say that, and the movie just looks bad.  However, I am a HUGE fan of both Billy Connolly and Catherine Tate, so I thought there may be some redeeming value in it.  Oh how wrong I was.  I very rarely walk out of movies, but I wasted no time escaping the torture of this one. 

Season of the Witch.  Just when you thought Nicolas Cage couldn't do any weirder hair, he does.  The first scene starts out very promising, and it is totally downhill from there. Something ridiculous to do with a demon who needs Nicolas Cage's help to transport him up a mountain, but once he gets there he reveals himself to be all powerful which begs the question, what the hell did you need Cage's help for?  I am usually pretty forgiving when it comes to sci-fi movies ad am prepared to engage in the fantasy of it all, but this movie deserves not one benefit of the doubt.

Morning Glory.  I love Harrison Ford, even if he is an actor of zero range (scowl, anyone?), and Diane Keaton always makes the best of a situation, but for some reason it doesn't totally work here.  It wasn't a bad movie by any stretch, and Rachel McAdams is good, but we have seen this movie a million times before.  Both Diane Keaton and Harrison Ford look their age, which is a huge credit to them and is very refreshing to see - they actually look normal, not freeze-dried.

So let's end on a high note:  The King's Speech.  I absolutely cannot say enough amazing things about this movie.  Yes, Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush are incredible actors, but the entire construction of this movie is superb.  I'm no cinematographer, but I found the way they framed the shots to invoke a sense of claustrophobia so effective.  The film built up to such a crescendo, not unlike a sporting movie when there is a big championship game and the skinny kid who came in for the last three seconds and throws a touchdown.  I almost stood up and cheered at the end (although Peter would have been mortified).   It's such a fascinating story.  I'm now going to read his biography,as well as that of his insipid, useless brother.

Clever little library...

I subscribe to the email called the Very Short List. I've posted some of those emails here before and I am going to do it again because I really love what they find.  While it's a bit lazy of me to simply cut and paste, here I go:

"...take a quick break and head over to the Noun Project: This website has tons of beautifully designed, easy-to-download symbols, icons, and illustrations—and more than a few would make perfect greeting-card or thank-you-note covers. The Project itself is a partnership between Los Angeles entrepreneur Edward Boatman and Scott Thomas, a graphic designer best known for his work on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

Their mission is to “collect and organize all the symbols that form our language into one easy-to-use online library that can be accessed by anyone.” And while the Project’s still a work in progress (a Kickstarter fund drive more than met its goal early this morning), the archive is already stocked with an endless array of images. We’ve put it right at the top of our bookmarks."

I love things like this - clear, simple and classic.  Did you know there was a universal symbol for moose and bomb?  Now if only I could figure out how to cut and paste the darn things...