Meine Woche - Rückblick KW 52

Na, ihr Lieben, habt ihr alle Weihnachten schön verbracht?

Zum Jahresende möchte ich nochmal einen kleinen Wochenrückblick machen. Jede Woche schaff ich es nicht, und es gibt auch nicht immer etwas, das sich meiner Meinung nach lohnt, gepostet zu werden, aber ein bisschen was ist diesmal schon zusammengekommen.

Gesehen: Weniger als die letzten Jahre, würde ich sagen, zumindest was "Live-TV" angeht. Bisschen Erfurt-Tatort, bisschen Snow White & the Huntsman, war beides okay. Und ich hab endlich mal Once Upon a Time aufgeholt. Die 3. Staffel gefällt mir wieder besser (nachdem ich die 2. ja nicht so toll fand). Außerdem  Die Tribute von Panem: Catching Fire auf BluRay. Ziemlich spannend, wenn auch mit abruptem Ende, da es ja Teil einer Reihe ist. Jennifer Lawrence mag ich echt gern.

Gelesen: Das Ende von Unter dem Herzen von Ildiko von Kürthy, damit ich es endlich meiner Tante zurückgeben kann. Den Anfang von Tod im Beginenhaus von Petra Schier, eine Art Mittelalter-Krimi, der in Köln spielt und den mir meine Schwiegereltern geschenkt haben.

Gehört: Sehr viel Rock-Antenne, das immer auf dem kleinen Digitalradio in unserer Küche läuft.

Getan: Geschenke eingepackt, Baum geschmückt, die übliche "Oberfranken-Rundfahrt" am 24. zu meinen Eltern und den Schwiegereltern. Und im Kino gewesen - Exodus: Götter und Könige in 3D. Nach dem vielen negativen Kritiken in der deutschen Presse wäre ich ja fast nicht gegangen, trotz Christian Bale. Aber der Film hat mir wirklich gut gefallen, die 2,5 Stunden sind schnell vergangen und das 3D-Erlebnis war beeindruckend.

Gegessen: Ganz klassisch - Entenbrust mit leckerer Rotwein-Schoko-Soße und Gans mit Rotkraut - natürlich beides mit fränkischen Klößen.

Getrunken: Champagner! Schmeckt mir viel besser als Prosecco.

Gedacht: Dass ich von wirklich vielen Leuten keine Postanschrift mehr habe. Echt schade.

Gefreut: Natürlich über meine Weihnachtsgeschenke. Hab noch nichts davon fotografiert. Mein Freund war wie immer für ein paar Überraschungen gut! Und schon vor Weihnachten (streng genommen nicht in der vergangenen, sondern schon in der Woche davor) kam per Post eine große Überraschung von Rossmann - nämlich eine prall gefüllte Box mit Kosmetik - wohl speziell für Blogger. (Wie die Auswahlkriterien genau waren, weiß ich nicht.) Danke nochmal ans Rossmann-Team! Hatte mit sowas überhaupt nicht gerechnet!

Gelacht: Über Ein Ticket für Zwei, auch wenn die DVD irgendwie defekt war. Und über Arthur Weihnachtsmann, ein Animationsfilm von den Machern von Wallace & Gromit, der echt niedlich und witzig war.

Geärgert: Dass ich kein einziges Mal Drei Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel gesehen hab dieses Jahr.

Gekauft: Eigentlich wollte ich nur den Snowflake Topper aus der aktuellen essence LE, aber am Ende wurden es 3 Lacke und 3 Lippenstifte, und zwar Liphugs von Make up Revolution. Falls man die Namen nicht lesen kann, sie heißen von links nach rechts We have come too far, Keeps the planet spinning und Saviour will come.

Geklickt: Siehe Gekauft, die Sachen waren nämlich aus dem kosmetik4less Onlineshop.

Und wie war eure Weihnachtswoche?

andthatswhoiam - TV & Movie edition

A few days ago I found a post in provinzkindchen's blog consisting of pics taken from this tumblr blog.

I liked the idea, went over to the tumblr page and looked at everything from top to bottom (which took quite a while because there's so much!) - and saved all  those pics I liked, i.e. those that apply to me.

Here are the TV and film themed ones (some with my comments below):

Love both book and movies. Aragorn is my hero.

The later seasons with Rory at college were not so good anymore, but overall it was a fantastic show.

I watch it for the ships, not the doctor stuff.

It's over now, but it was good and kept its quality level until the end, IMO.

My fave TV couple at the moment! Love the whole cast. Rick/Nathan is awesome.

I'm too old for highschool drama, but I like the songs.

New Girl is such a funny show!

 2 unlike friends that have grown on me. And I've always liked shows set in Boston.

 I watch this one for the ships, too, not for the zombies. I've only seen the first season and the beginning of the 2nd one, I think.

Must finish watching the first season.

I love costume dramas.

This is fun. More posts like this to follow.

The Oscars, Part 2

I realized that I forgot some things in my previous post. So here they are:

I was surprised (and in some cases disappointed) not to see certain people at the awards (especially winners from recent years). Maybe they were there, but not shown? Or I missed them because I didn't pay enough attention. Or they were not in any of the nominated films and therefore not invited? I have no idea. But here's the list:

Kate Winslet, Clive Owen, Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Jeff Bridges, Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio.

I'm sure I've forgotten many others, but those are the ones that came to my mind first.

I also wanted to add that I liked the theme of the show. As I've written before in relation to beauty companies, retro is "in". The old-fashioned movie theatre backdrop was beautiful.

And I liked the Cirque du Soleil performance. But was disappointed that only 2 songs were nominated in the best original song category. How is that possible? Usually you have 5 nominees for each, right? Very strange.

What I also liked was that the order of the categories was a little different than in most years. No wonder the guy with the long white hair (I think his name was Richardson) was suprised that cinematography came first. I remember from last year or 2 years ago that the supporting actor/actress categories used to come at the beginning. It's good to shake things up a little : )

And that's really all now (I hope).

Academy Awards 2012 a.k.a. The Oscars

Ha, I'll make this an English entry for a change.

The Oscar ceremony took place this past Sunday. I have some days off so I wanted to watch it live at night (starting at about 1 a.m. here in Germany, or 2:30 or whatever). But I was too tired and went to bed and caught up with the show yesterday and today.

General impression: Billy Crystal did a good job. There were some nice and funny moments and speeches, but not too many highlights or surpise winners that will stick in your mind for years. The most touching moment was Octavia Spencer crying when she won for best supporting actess for The Help. And guess who presented her with that award? Christian Bale! I hadn't expected that, although I guess I should have because many of last year's winners appeared as presenters this year. He looked quite handsome and was well-behaved. Hehe. Not always easy for him. Here's a picture of the TV screen I took with my mobile phone:

As to the ladies' dresses, hm, which one was my overall favourite? Can't really decide. Of the 3 bright red ones that I saw (Michelle Williams, Emma Stone and Natalie Portman) I liked Natalie Portman's look best - not least because of the beautiful jewelry she wore. Here's a picture - again of my TV screen (from the interview in the pre-show):

I also liked Penelope Cruz's look. The colour of her dress (Armani Privé I think she said) looked mauve outside on the red carpet, but "only" grey on the stage inside the theater. That's a pity. Here's a picture of a red carpet interview:

Other dresses/looks I liked were

1. Melissa McCarthy: best known to me as Sookie from Gilmore Girls, now nominated for Bridesmaids, which surprised me. Isn't that like a female version of Hangover? Unusual for a "shallow" comedy to be recognized, but not bad.
2. Sandra Bullock in a dress with a white top, some gold in the middle and a black skirt. Didn't like her simple ponytail too much, but it fits her usual style. Loved that she spoke some German on stage.
3. Jennifer Lopez: silvery, V-neck going down very low, that's all I remember. But I liked it, which is not my usual reaction to most of her looks or outfit choices.

The not so good ones must also be mentioned: Angelina Jolie in that black thing showing off her legs and doing a strange pose. Loved that one of the writers who won the category she presented mocked her by imitating the pose. Hehe. She's too skinny in my opinion anyway. Bony arms. Dislike. And then of course Meryl Streep. I love her, but the dress ... strange gold-black outfit, strange cut. Not flattering or beautiful.

If you're wondering if I was rooting for any film in particular, I must admit that I haven't seen too many of them. I haven't had time to go to the movies lately. Shame on me. I still love to watch the Academy Awards though : ) And sorry for the bad quality of the pictures. As mentioned, I just took snapshots of my TV screen with my smartphone.

Facebook is down : (

A couple of hours ago I logged into Facebook briefly at work. I wanted to post something on a newly added friend's wall but got an error message. Then I tried to suggest friends for him but got another error message. I looked up a radio station and clicked on "become a fan". Nothing happened. I gave up, but couldn't even log out properly. Now I'm at home and can't even log in anymore. This sucks. I guess I'm addicted : )

I've been meaning to post some thoughts on Facebook anyway. Can't remember them now. Great. It was something along the lines of "Modern communication is very strange. It's for people like me who are lonely, but need to feel connected. But in the end it just makes you feel even lonelier." Or something like that. Not very uplifting. Sigh. Whatever.

What else:
Robbie Williams announced yesterday that a new single and album will come out in October and November. Yay, can't wait!

Public Enemies (Christian Bale's new movie) opened today in German movie theaters. Don't have anyone to come along. Hm. Still want to see it on the big screen. Must work that out somehow.

More on Bale

I guess I was the last person to talk about the Bale incident. Apparently, it made huge waves on February 3. So much so that it was even featured on one of the websites in my links section, Mashable. I find that kind of strange cos Mashable normally deals with new mobile apps or online music services or social media in general.

They call Bale's rant a "social media going mainstream" event. Sorry, but I don't get it. What does Bale's meltdown have to do with social media? The audio file was first posted on gossip site TMZ, not by a blogger or facebook user or something similar. I guess what Mashable means is that people talked about it very much using social media such as Twitter. I still find it strange.

A day later, Mashable asked the same questions that came to my mind in the entry I posted yesterday, i.e., was it all a publicity stunt? I still believe it wasn't because this is Christian Bale we're talking about. He's always been a very private person who hardly ever attends awards shows or parties and still hasn't officially released the name of his daughter. Since he became part of the new Batman franchise, he's become a much bigger name than before and has been seen more at movie biz events (at least that's my impression). But I still won't believe that he would have agreed to letting that tape be used to promote Terminator 4 because it really puts him in a VERY bad light. Yes, there are those that say even bad press is good press, but Bale really doesn't need that. He's probably in a better position as far as being able to chose his film projects goes than ever before. And as I said, he's not someone who enjoys the limelight.

What might be possible (as I mentioned yesterday) is that the studio couldn't stop the tape from being put online and forced him to apologize. The standard way would probably be an official statement, but maybe making him call in on a radio station is version 2.0 of that. Hm. I'm not sure, but here, too, I like to believe that Bale wouldn't be part of such a manipulation.

I guess I still care more about him than I thought. But it's not just that, it's also that I don't like to be manipulated by the media and that I'm curious to find out the truth behind stories - which is hard because I'm just a normal person with hardly more knowledge about what really goes on behind the scenes of the media businees than most people.

Rambling mode over. Move along and enjoy your Sunday.

How often can you say the f-word in 4 minutes?

Very often, apparently. So, what am I talking about? Christian Bale totally freaking out on the set of Terminator 4 a.k.a. Terminator: Salvation back in July. One report of the original incident here. I think what happened was that the director of photography walked through the background of a scene they were just shooting and Christian didn’t like that at all, to say the least.

Now, why does this matter more than half a year later? Because now the audio to go with Christian’s rant has become available. It goes on for more than FOUR MINUTES. And as I said, the f-word is in it probably 100 times, if not 1000. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been a long-time fan of Christian’s and am not surprised or shocked because he is known to be very intense. What I find interesting is his accent, which now seems to be a mixture of English and American. Okay, so everybody is appalled by Christian’s behaviour and the incident was even reported on German TV (Exklusiv on RTL). Whatever. Let’s move on to the good sides of the story:

The remix. I find it hilarious and couldn’t stop laughing when I heard it.

The mash-up: Maybe even funnier. It mashes the trailer for Disney musical Newsies (the first film I saw Christian in back in 1992– awww, so cute!) with bits of the remixed meltdown. Simply amazing.

His apology: He actually called in on an L.A. radio show himself and tried to explain everything. Wow. I mean, he could have just made his agent release a statement or something similar. But no, not him. As I said, he’s intense and passionate and real because he’s not perfect and makes mistakes like everybody else. Okay, if I was more cynical than I am I could say this was just a way to promote the Terminator movie because he does say how great it turned out and so on. Or I could say he was forced by the studio to apologize in public. But I’m not that cynical (yet) and I do want to give him the benefit of the doubt and I like to believe that he is genuine. I'm not sure I'd want to run into him on a bad day cos I believe he can be a little scary, but I continue to see him as a good guy deep down. Yup. And his explanation that they were filming a difficult scene where he was trying to portray a certain craziness does make sense. End of my praise of the wonderfulness that in my eyes is CB. : )

Okay, have to add something: there's another clip which I don't find very funny, to be honest (most of all because I don't know who Bill O'Reilly is) but if you scroll down to the comments, you'll find someone saying "Christian Bale has nothing on Klaus Kinski." with a link to a YouTube clip of Klaus Kinski going off against director Werner Herzog back in the 70s (?). Oh boy, it's a small world. Here's why: just yesterday in the office, my boss brought that up. I can't remember at all in what context, but he started walking from his office to his co-worker's office (with my room being in the middle between the 2) and he was talking about crazy Klaus Kinski freaking out on sets and not answering questions on talk shows etc. I think there's a whole documentary feature about Herzog's and Kinski's difficult times on the set of a film called Aguirre. So when my boss brought this up, what came to my mind was of course that CB has also worked with Werner Herzog - on a film called Rescue Dawn. I haven't seen it and it's just been released on DVD here I think. Hm. Small world, isn't it? Everything's connected. Sigh.

End of holiday

It's back to work for me tomorrow. Am nervous. And hope my car will start as it's freezing (-9 degrees Celsius right now). I un-dug it from 15 cm of snow yesterday.

Just wanted to report that I've seen 2 new films in the theatre over the holidays: Australia and Buddenbrooks.

Loved Australia from start to finish. Hugh Jackman is so good. Actually, the whole cast is, from villain David Wenham to Aboriginal boy Brandon Walters. Also loved the scenery and the epic-ness of it all - and the references to The Wizard of Oz which came as a surprise to me. Baz Luhrmann is one of my fave directors and I'll definitely get the DVD when it comes out.

The other film was a German one. Classic stuff, based on Thomas Mann's novel about a merchant family in Northern Germany in the 19th century. Can't say much about it. Good cast, nice costumes, but very depressing towards the end.

The next film I might go see is Twilight cos I've read all of the 4 vampire books by Stephenie Meyer. Am not too enthusiastic about them, though. Movie opens next week. We'll see.

2 fun links

Ha, 3 posts in one day. Must be a new record. Anyway, just found this in the TV section of digg.com

If TV shows had truthful titles from Holy Taco, a site I haven't come across before. The first poster is part of the reason why I stopped watching Lost. Ha. (See older post for more.)
Can anybody tell me what the 2nd show is and the one that is now called Dreamjob?

And a site that looks like fun altogether that I hadn't heard of before:
NothingCorporate.
The film pic shown in the 5 must-see films thing is Equilibrium starring Christian Bale (one of my fave actors). I think. Cool.

Recap of my week off

Monday: Ikea. Didn't buy much and had a major headache in the afternoon.

Tuesday: Some shopping and a movie. Bought a pair of jeans and a purple v-neck sweater, both from Tom Tailor. Saw Mamma Mia! and liked it a lot. Meryl Streep has a great voice. IMO she sounds a bit like Cher (which normally would be bad because I don't like Cher, but here it worked). The men's attempts at singing were very cute. Never liked Amanda Seyfried in Veronica Mars but here she's really good.

Wednesday: Watched the Olympics. Did some laundry.

Thursday: Bought the Mamma Mia! soundtrack and saw The Dark Knight. Hm. What can I say? It was veeery looooong but Christian Bale looked good. I wasn't blown away. I don't know.

Friday: more Olympics, sadly not with a medal for my fave guy, the German pole-vault athlete Danny Ecker. Some grocery shopping and cooking. Never bought so many fresh vegetables before. Love love love the smell of limes (which are fruit, not vegetables, but anyway ...) Girls' night in with 2 friends.

Edit: I've thought some more about Batman / The Dark Knight: I love Michael Caine as Alfred and Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox. They both have the best lines (in both parts, i.e. Batman Begins and TDK). I love the score (also in both films). I miss the Wayne mansion. I didn't like Maggie Gyllenhaal much. Don't know why. I almost wanted Katie Holmes back. Heath Ledger really is excellent as the Joker.

Okay, this next part might contain spoilers so you've been warned:
The kiss between Bruce and Rachel was lame. Bruce kept one hand in his pocket. I mean, hello?? You're kissing the love of your life, can't you be a bit more passionate??
I kept waiting for Harvey Dent to go bad. I kind of remembered it from the old Batman movies, I think, but I wasn't sure.
It felt a little bit to me like they had put too much story into one film. I don't really know how to explain this. There was just so much, the bad guy from Hongkong (Lao or whatever), the Joker, Dent, it just went on and on. I guess this should be a good thing, but for me it was just a little bit too much instead of focusing on one thing.

Christian Bale

Ich wollte eigentlich neulich schon was zu ihm schreiben, und zwar, dass ich ihn mal wieder "wiederentdeckt" hab, da ich endlich mal meine 3:10 to Yuma DVD angeschaut hab. Ich mag ja eh Western und der Film ist echt super. Er und Russell Crowe spielen toll und das Psycho-Duell ist wirklich spannend.

Außerdem kommt bald der neuen Batman-Film The Dark Knight in die Kinos, worauf ich mich auch freue. Ich muss unbedingt vorher noch mal Batman Begins anschauen. In Amerika ist er ja letztes Wochenende sehr erfolgreich gestartet. Aber was muss ich da gestern lesen? Christian Bale soll seine Mutter und eine seiner Schwestern in einem Hotel angegriffen haben. Pfff. Glaub ich überhaupt nicht. Ich verfolge seine Karriere seit 15 Jahren und es gab noch nie irgendwas, dass auf Gewaltätigkeit hindeuten würde bei ihm. Klar, er ist ziemlich extrem, was die Rollenvorbereitung angeht bzw. stürzt sich immer ziemlich intensiv in seine Projekte, aber sowas ... nee! Außerdem ist er eh schon als Teenager von seiner Mutter weggezogen zu seinem Vater nach Amerika und hatte angeblich gar nicht viel Kontakt zu seiner Mutter in England in den ganzen Jahren. Vielleicht ging es um's Geld, jetzt, wo er endlich mal größere Filme macht, bei denen er sicher gut verdient. Wäre ja nicht das erste Mal, dass Angehörige von Prominenten mit abstrusen Anschuldigungen ankommen. Ach, keine Ahnung, ich spekulier nur wild rum, aber ich kann auf jeden Fall nicht glauben, dass er auf seine Familie losgegangen sein soll.

Ich wünschte mir nur, es gäbe mal einen Batman-Start, der nicht von irgendwas überschattet wird. Als damals Batman Begins rauskam, hat sich ja die Presse nur für Katie Holmes und Tom Cruise interessiert. Und diesmal wird sehr viel über Heath Ledger geredet, ist klar, aber das mit den Anschuldigungen gegen Bale hätte echt nicht noch sein müssen.

Grrrr.

English summary: Christian Bale who I've just become interested again, is supposed to have assaulted his mom and one of his sisters in a London hotel. I don't believe it for a minute. ButI'm very much looking forward to The Dark Knight which comes out in Germany in August.

As always ...

... wow, no new post for more than a month, that's really bad. As always, work got the better of me. I could probably work 24/7 and still wouldn't get everything done. Argh. The "new guy" does help, though. And I get along with him quite well.

In my defense, I must say that I did write something new last Sunday but then my internet connection at home broke down before I could post it and I forgot to save the text to my USB stick so I can't post it from the office.

I know that part of what I wrote was a list of new songs I like. Hm, let me see if I can remember them ...

Melee - Built to last. Band's from California but they sound very British. Piano pop rock, similar to Coldplay and Keane, so that's right up my alley. My absolute favourite song at the moment. The chorus goes like this:
So this is real and this is good
Warms my insides just like it should
But most of all, most of all
It's built to last

Newton Faulkner - Dream catch me. British guy with weird blonde rasta hair. Has a unique way a playing/plucking the guitar.

Hm, those are the only good ones I can think of right now. Whatever ...

What else? Went to see Horton hears a Who! at the movies and enjoyed it very much. Very colourful and imaginative (is that a word??) and not just for kids. Cute. And I saw the trailer/preview for Made of Honor (in Germany it will be called Verliebt in die Braut, which means "In love with the bride"), which is Patrick Dempsey's new romantic comedy. It comes out in May. Can't wait. Love the McDreamy : )

And last, but not least: April weather sucks.

P.S.: Damn you, Hollywood!

Last week I was in a bookshop and saw Cecelia Ahern’s novel PS, I love you with a film poster cover showing Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler. I had heard of Ahern before – all her novels have been translated into German and are quite successful here, I think – but had never read anything by her. I had mainly stayed away from PS, I love you because I thought I’d be crying the whole time if I read it. (The story is that a young man dies of a brain tumor and has left his widow a letter and notes for the months to come.) I had no idea they had made a film adaptation and I like Swank and Butler but didn’t buy the book that day.

Then on New Year’s Eve I had dinner with a friend. When I was about to leave we went into her bedroom to the bookshelf for some reason and she showed me some of her books and PS, I love you (in the German translation) was one them. So I told her about the film version coming up and asked if I could borrow it. She said yes and I basically spent all of January 1 reading it. I really liked it and it wasn’t as sad as I’d expected. It’s set in Dublin, which I loved cos I’ve been there twice (and loved it) so some of the street names sounded familiar. While reading it, I tried to picture Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler as Holly and Gerry. Didn’t quite work. And I kept wondering who’d play Holly’s friends and family (who all play important parts in the story).

Anyway, I started to look forward to the film especially because of the location. Haven’t seen a film set in Dublin in a while. But what did I have to find out today when I picked up Filmtips (a free magazine that lists the local movie theatre programmes and has short texts about all the films in it)? The film is set in New York (City)!! Are they crazy or what?! It says ‘autumn in New York’ in the blurb about the film. Even better. The book starts in February or March. Not exactly autumn, I’d say. F***ing Hollywood. Why do they have to Americanize everything? As I mentioned before, Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler do not quite fit how I see Holly and Gerry. Holly sounds more like a petite blonde, not tough girl Hilary Swank. But maybe it could have worked. They do speak English in Dublin, you know. And I’m sure there are Irish or English or Scottish actors who could have played all the other parts (Gerard Butler is Scottish anyway). But transferring everything to New York? Totally different story. Not that I don’t like New York, but shooting this there with a mostly American cast just destroys every connection to the book except for the basic storyline. So guess who does not want to see this movie? Right. Still, I don’t regret reading the book, and I might buy the English version – but only if I find it with a ‘normal’ (i.e. not movie-related) cover.

The usual blah

First of all, I'd like to reply to 2w10's comment to the post below: As I think I mentioned, I need to use the Germain railway next Saturday. As far as I know, the most recent news was that they wouldn't go on strike again until Dec 3. I really have no idea what I'm gonna do if they start striking again after that. Okay, I do have a car ... but I'm an awful driver. And I paid 50 bucks for the train ticket already.
Christmas ... I don't know. I'm not feeling christmassy yet. But I did bake cookies with my mum yesterday. And I just ordered some stuff from Amazon as presents for a couple of people. But as I'm not feeling good today I'm not in the mood for anything. Oh, but I put a kind of Adventskranz on my living room table. It's not really a Kranz, but a Gesteck with 4 candles that my mum made. It comes in the classic Christmas colours green, gold and red and smells good.

What else? 2 movies are coming up that I'm looking forward to: 3:10 to Yuma (Todeszug nach Yuma) starring Christian Bale. I had heard of it but had no idea it is a Western and starting so soon here! Love CB in turn-of-the-century type movies cos I just like the clothes and think he looks good in it. The other one is Elizabeth part 2 - The golden kingdom or whatever it's called. Saw a picture of Clive Owen as Sir Walter Raleigh in a magazine yesterday. Hot. Both films are opening on Dec 13 in Germany. Speaking of Clive Owen, I watched Derailed on DVD last weekend ... oh boy ... not very enjoyable. Owen plays a quite weak character - a man who is blackmailed by a guy who always wants more -
and that just doesn't go very well with my idea of Clive Owen who to me seems quite strong and masculine etc.
Hm, now I sound as if Clive is a bad actor. That was not my intention. I can't really explain it, it was just a strange film.

Need coffee. Only had decaf this morning. Am tired. Can't form complete sentences. Hehe.

Grand Avenue and Jennifer Garner

First thing: just discovered a Danish band called Grand Avenue. Their song "The Outside" was on Bremen Vier (a radio station from Bremen, a town in the north of Germany) and I was almost 100% sure this was the new Coldplay single. Which of course it wasn't. Guess Chris Martin is too busy with his private life (you know, wife Gwyneth and 2 kids). Too bad. Anyway, go check out http://www.grandavenue.dk/ for some sound bites if you need something if you're on Coldplay withdrawal. Hm, hope that sentence means what I want it to mean. What do you call a Lückenfüller in English? If it was a person, I'd say a rebound guy/girl. Hm. Anyway, they sound very much like Coldplay or Keane. Not that that's bad, but a little bit of your own style is a good thing, too.

Second thing: Jennifer Garner will be live on German TV the coming Saturday! She and Jamie Foxx will be promoting Operation: Kingdom or whatever that film's called. The show they will be on is one of Europe's biggest Saturday night shows Wetten, dass ... All sorts of stars have been there as guests (Madonna, Michael Jackson, Hugh Grant, etc.) before and the show always gets a share of 40% and about 12 million viewers (which is a lot for Germany). It's also broadcast live in Switzerland and Austria. The host is a guy called Thomas Gottschalk. Used to like him a lot but I now think his interviews completely lack any kind of substance. Anyway, I still like Jennifer Garner (I was a huge fan of her show Alias and still enjoy watching it) even though I don't understand what she (or anybody, for that matter) sees in Ben Affleck. She's beautiful and seems like a sweet and fun person. So I'm looking forward to Saturday. Even though I might have to tape the show cos my sister wants to go see the new Pixar film Ratatouille that night.

My thoughts on The Prestige

As I mentioned before, I saw CB’s latest film The Prestige last weekend and enjoyed it a lot. Strangely enough, Christian (who’s been in a lot of period films, such as Portrait of a Lady, Little Women, Newsies, Swing Kids, A Midsummer Night’s Dream) to me in some scenes looked like a modern day person walking around in 19th century London. I blame that on the hair. It was quite short and spiky which looked, as I said, modern to me, which was slightly distracting.

The other slight problem I had – as mentioned in replying to continuitygirl’s comment on my entry before this one – was with the twist of the story, which was too obvious for me or, in other words, which I’d guessed pretty early on. I’m not usually like that and Christopher Nolan is IMO a very intelligent director, so I was a bit surprised I got it right. Ha, does it make you crazy now not to know what I’m talking about? As I don’t want to give it away, you’ll have to go see the film yourselves to find it out. Apart from this twist concerning Alfred (CB), there’s another one which has to do with Hugh Jackman’s character, but that’s not really a twist because you see when it’s first discovered. Um yeah, sorry if this doesn’t make much sense.

Another thing: the whole cast was very good, especially Michael Caine who is the narrator, sort of. Something that can be confusing is the way the story is told, i.e. the events are not shown in chronological order so you sometimes wonder what came when etc. But things do make sense in the end. So, on the whole, good film with slight imperfections but two very handsome and talented leading men.

Oh, and there were lots of trailers shown beforehand. Most of the films looked quite interesting, such as Breaking and Entering with Jude Law, Juliette Binoche and Robin Wright Penn. Don’t think I’ll go see it because Jude Law has an awful hair cut and looks really old and Juliette Binoche has a very strange accent (at least in German. Didn’t sound like the French accent you’d expect of her.).

Happy (belated) new year!

Oh how very creative I am with my post titles ….

Anyway, I’ve moved into my own place at last and I love it. The heating wasn’t working properly in the bedroom, though, and I caught a cold, but someone came this morning and fixed it (the heating, not my cold unfortunately). There’s still a lot to unpack, but the TV and VCR are working, which is very important. Haven’t unpacked the computer yet cos I might have to get a new desk cos the old one is probably too big if I put it in the living room. You see, the sofa’s bigger than I thought. There’s room in the bedroom, but I don’t really want to put the desk there. Hm. We’ll see. The only problem at the moment is that the fabric I’ve picked out for the curtains in the living room isn’t available anymore so I have to go and pick out another one, which won’t be easy cos I loved the one I had chosen.

Christmas and New Year’s Eve was good. Nothing spectacular, but okay.

And I went to the movies! I saw The Holiday (German title is Liebe braucht keine Ferien, which means Love doesn't need holidays. Doesn't make much sense, does it?) with Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet and the so very handsome Jude Law. Loved the film. I thought there wouldn’t be much of a story except for 2 women who’d just dumped their boyfriends swapping homes, but there actually was, which was a very nice surprise. The whole cast was very good. And the cottage in England looked like straight out of a Thomas Kinkade painting.

And Christian Bale's new film The Prestige opens here tomorrow. Am very excited about it. Will try to go see it on Friday or something.

Oh great and now one paragraph looks different than the others. Never try to understand computers, I tell ya ...

Comp update

I'm back online, obviously, and from my own comp this time. I managed to trick my comp, whose DVD drive decided to stop working at the crucial point when I wanted to actually install Windows (the before mentioned "26 minutes remaining"). So now I have a running system, but one which says I need to activate it within 30 days. Yippie. I still need to find my own Win XP CD - if I ever had one, which I'm not so sure anymore - or try using that recovery CD again, but not before next weekend.

Um, yes, what else? Christian Bale got a parking ticket. Go to www.justjared.com for pics. Not as spectacular as I thought. He looks as he always does in paparazzi shots. Very casual clothes. When I read the headline (Bale gets busted), I thought he was arrested.

OpenOffice.org is cool. That's all I can think of for now.

DVDs

Borrowed the 3rd Harry Potter film on DVD from my sister. Really really loved it. Must admit I don’t remember the 2nd one very well. The 1st one was on TV recently, so I do remember that. Anyway, I found The Prisoner of Azkaban to be full of great ideas right from the start when Harry blows up Aunt Marge like a balloon. Then there was the purple Knight Bus, very cool as well. I liked the shrunken head, which was not in the book, I think. Also liked the way the Book of Monsters turned out on the screen. It was like an animal or some weird creature, biting and spitting out bits of paper and hiding under the bed. The dementors looked good, i.e. very scary. Very much like the Nazgul or Ringwraiths in The Lord of the Rings, though, but I won’t go into the similarities between the 2 series or I’ll never stop. Buckbeak turned out very well, too, I think. The only thing I didn’t really like was the way the werewolf looked that Lupin turned into. Very un-wolf-like, IMO. That’s all I can think of now.

There’s also a disc 2 in the set my sister has, and it contains lots of good extra features. Couldn’t figure out the interactive games, though, but the interviews and behind-the-scenes clips – such as a look at the animal trainers, at creating Buckbeak etc. – were very good. I didn’t watch all the interviews, but I really liked “the kids” as they seem to be referred to, i.e. Dan (surprised me they call him that instead of Daniel, which really isn't such a long name), Emma and Rupert. All 3 seemed to get along really well and appeared to be down-to-earth and still not used to their success and fame. Gary Oldman’s and David Thewlis’s interview together was great, too.

Um, yes, as always, I’m rambling on and on. Wanted to write a paragraph about the Batman Begins DVD, but I’ll save that for later cos I’ve only just started watching it anyway. Let me just say that there’s at least one little snippet of an interview with Christian Bale on disc 2. I think I’ll never get used to him speaking with an American accent. It always seems unnatural to me, no matter how good he is at it. In this interview bit he talks about the time before filming started and he quotes an English crew member who said something like “Are we shooting Fatman or Batman?” because CB had gone too far in putting weight back on after losing way too much (IMO) for The Machinist. Anyway, CB quotes this crew member and the English accent he uses when doing that is so funny!

Oh, and: Yay, normal HTML tags work, too! Writing < b > is so much shorter than < strong > (without the spaces, of course). (And yes, I'm still using Opera to browse the web and it doesn't show the formatting buttons.)

just quickly...

As you can see, I've changed the template cos the old one (TicTac it was called, I think) looked too much like summer or spring with its fresh green and orange colours. So this now fits better for autumn and winter, I thought. Didn't dare to use a template not offered by Blogger itself cos I still don't know how to do certain things.

I wish I had more time to post more often. I really find myself thinking about new entries all the time. I'd like to post how much I hate driving in the dark, for example. Sounds exciting, right?! Kidding ...

Anyways, gotta get back to work.

ETA: just realized that Jeopardygirl uses the same template, but in pink and purple, for her NaNoWriMo novel .

Looked at the website for Christian Bale's new film The New World (which opens on Christmas in the US, I think). First impression after watching the teaser: looks like a cross between Last of the Mohicans and The Thin Red Line. Bale's nowhere to be seen, unfortunately. Just Colin Farrell and Pocahontas.