Smashing shout-out

Just a quick rec of a site I stumbled upon via http://www.mister-wong.de/charts/

Smashing Magazine http://www.smashingmagazine.com

It's an online mag for webdesigners. I'm not one, but it's still fun to look at the site if you're interested in photography and such. The latest post features free desktop wallpapers with calendars for the new month. Yay. I love changing the wallpaper on my comp. The wallpapers are all beautiful and stylish and come with or without the calendar and in various sizes.

Okay, gotta get back to work. See ya.

P.S. Why must Blogger mess up the hyperlinks EVERY frigging time?! Argh. If only I could remember the little HTML I once knew ... Shit shit shit. So I guess you have to copy and paste the URLs instead of clicking them. How last century. Grrr.

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.

The Script

Haven't recommended any new songs for a while. Might have mentioned We Cry by The Script sometime. Now I've heard their 2nd single The Man Who Can't Be Moved and that's excellent as well. They're an Irish trio but don't sound Irish to me. Not that that's a bad thing, it's just that their R'n'B-ish style doesn't sound like any other Irish artist I know. Went straight to an online record store but guess what, their album isn't out yet. Grrr. So I have to wait to Sept 5 or something.

Anyway, they're good and you can check out their Myspace page here

Now why doesn't the link show up in the preview?? Argh. If it really doesn't show, just google them or something.

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.

More vampire stuff

I've started reading the first book of the Twilight series that I mentioned recently and I love it. It's got 500 pages and I'm already on page 420 or something like that (even though I wasn't home most nights this week). I'm reading it in German, but I think I'll have to get it in the English original for myself soon.