T'eyla Minh

So, on Friday night I went to see Dark Shadows at Giant Screen with Paul and my mum. It was very enjoyable indeed, thank you. :)

( Incredibly spoilerific thoughts under here )

Hm, that ended up a bit more philosophical than I expected...

In other news: on Saturday we had our "Classical meets Romantic" concert. Frankly, I was quite glad when it was over with. I don't especially like singing in Town Hall anyway (the changing facilities are a pain, and the choir stalls are cramped), and everything felt a bit under-prepared because we were focusing so much energy on Equinox back in March. I'm pretty sure there were sections of the Beethoven I hadn't seen before during rehearsal. I personally didn't feel it went that well, but I was also really tired on Saturday anyway (post-squee comedown from Friday night).

There's too much going on at Symphony Hall this month that I want to see: Karl Jenkins on the 27th and Dracula (the Legosi one) with a live orchestra score on the 29th. It also transpires Katie Melua is touring and appearing there on 12th October; I did a search for tickets last night and there are only the back few rows of the Grand Tier left - or you can get them through touts for upwards of £85 (they retail at £32.50!) I wish I knew about this stuff sooner. :( I think Vicky's bought me the new album for Christmas anyway, so I won't have heard it by October in any event, but it's still irritating.

I also need to find money from somewhere to book Phantom for the UK tour - it hits Birmingham in March 2013 and tickets go on sale next Monday (ten months in advance). I am utterly skint and they cost as much as going to London. It's been 15 years since the last tour (I saw it in Birmingham in August 1998) so I want to see it on that basis, as it was something of a rite of passage and the start of an up-and-down love affair with the fandom when I was 16, but it's so expensive and I'm worried that by the time I have enough money to afford it, there'll only be rubbish seats left. :(

Ho hum.

( Some good stuff )

Okay, that's long enough I think. ;)

We went to see the new Sherlock Holmes last night, on Orange Wednesdays at Cineworld. Orange Wednesdays are the only exception to my rule of only seeing films at IMAX or the Electric (thanks to AMC fail when we saw Deathly Hallows: Part 1 and my being generally opposed to Cineworld's ethos) and there seems to be a direct correlation between how busy the cinema is and how bloody quiet it is, as both times now we've seen a film there on a Wednesday evening in a packed auditorium where everyone shut up - as opposed to half-empty auditoriums where noisy bastards feel a need to fill the silence.

I wouldn't go there normally considering it's now £6.85 for a single ticket at peak time (with an extra few quid on top if it's in 3D)! I don't mind paying a tenner for IMAX because, you know, it's a 60-foot screen; we saw Sherlock... on Screen 12, one of Cineworld's smallest screens. I mean, it's still bigger than Screen 1 at Odeon but, you know, for nearly seven pounds I expect better when the film hasn't even been open that long.

To prove the point about why I dislike their treatment of films: they're showing a Luc Besson film entitled The Lady, which is only on Wednesdays at lunchtime. We're several editions behind on Empire presently so I've not heard of this, but Cineworld's treatment of it alone makes me think it would actually be quite good, if I had time to see it. According to Cineworld logic, only unemployed people want to see arthouse films. Which is about as ignorant as Jeremy Clarkson's presumption that only poor people use public transport.

Plus they were obviously sore about Vue obtaining the rights to the POTO 25th anniversary gala - and thus lots of money - considering their sarcastic 'summary' of it on their Twitter feed. :P

Anyway, gripes about the company aside, here are some thoughts on Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. I think actually I should have bought the first one on DVD already to re-watch it, as I'd kind of forgotten HOW AWESOME it was. ( Thoughts under here - contains spoilers, obviously. )

Right then, here's the separate cut with my POTO-related ramblings, which I want to keep apart from the film thoughts because they're only semi-related... ( In which Erik is vocal again. )

Fandom makes me crazy, apparently. But I think we already knew that.

In other news, I was supposed to re-start gym attendance this week but being insanely busy has put a damper on. Paul's Monday nights have now been reclaimed, as Broken Amp is going monthly rather than weekly, but he was at Alex's this week, then I had choir on Tuesday and we went to the cinema last night, obviously, so I need a quiet end-of-week before going out to the cinema again on Saturday for The Artist at the Electric.

We booked to see it at the Electric thinking it wouldn't be on elsewhere, and naturally, because it stormed Cannes it's on everywhere. Still, it will be interesting seeing it at the Electric and for once I don't mind them showing a mainstream film. :P (Even they've relegated it to Screen 2, though.)

I also want to try and catch Hugo in 3D at the IMAX whilst it's still showing. It's nearly Oscar season so there will hopefully be some good stuff in the pipeline (although War Horse is being trailered to death), but even if there isn't, the new Tim Burton endeavour, Dark Shadows, opens in April or May. It looks gothalicious so I am very much hoping for an IMAX release. 60-FOOT GOTHIC JOHNNY DEPP, HELLO. :)

Right then, I think this entry is MORE than long enough, so I will sign it off. Apparently with my LJ these days you get nothing or you get epic spam. Sorry.

RIGHT THEN. Now that I've finally managed to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 all the way through without interruption from ignorant pissheads, I shall provide a review / thoughts... I intended to post this last night, but obviously our internet was down again. I swear Virgin Media just know when I have stuff I want to do…

( HP7pt1 - probably contains spoilers )

So yes, that was quite enjoyable. As for trailers, Mars Needs Moms looks quite cool. In terms of upcoming films, I really want to see Black Swan, and The King's Speech to a lesser degree. It's Oscar season so a lot of good films are coming out. :)

Before HP7, incidentally, we went to Darren & Andrea's on Saturday afternoon / evening, as Andrea was building Paul a website for his and Richie's weekly acoustic night, Broken Amp. We had a go on their XBox Kinect, which is the weirdest thing ever... I think I still prefer the Wii, as you need even more bloody room for the Kinect and it's exhausting. AND TERRIFYING, as it watches you. Darren made us chilli and then we played four rounds of Scrabble and watched a bit of the run-up to the Comedy Awards before heading home. It was a pleasant, sedate evening.

On Sunday evening we invited Lisa up to share our roast dinner, as we had a gigantic pork shoulder joint from Asda. It was £7.00 for just under 6lb of meat!! It was quite possibly the best pork joint I've ever done: the scratching was lovely (apparently!) and actually crisped up, and the meat was just falling off the bone and coming off in those lovely tender stringy bits like you get on hog roasts. OM NOM. Obviously there's still loads of it left. I'm going to make some soup tonight to take to work, and will probably have some more nomalicious pork for tea. :)

( Embroidery Stuff )

So, as I say, I meant to post this last night, but had no internet. Which was especially annoying because I didn’t actually sit down at the PC until I’d done the washing up, put washing in, made soup for work and eaten my dinner, which was about 7.30pm. So instead I uploaded the embroidery photographs to post later, and finally got around to installing Sims 3.

( Oh, dearie me... )

I have some work annoyances to post, but I'll do them in a separate entry, as this is quite long enough...

Okay, it's taken two days to do this thanks to lack of internet at work and Virgin Media being poo (as usual) last night. Two entries to post, one friends-only because it's about work. I would backdate but then nobody'll read them. :P

I'm still alive, and also still reading my f-list, in case you were wondering. I'm just being a little bit hermit-like in general lately. Also I'm absolutely skint so haven't really been doing anything particularly interesting. However, I have seen a couple of films recently, and my LJ is long overdue a good old rant, so here I am: updating with two film reviews and a moan. :P

Firstly, last Tuesday (2nd March) we went to see ( The Lovely Bones - spoilers under cut )

Then on Sunday, we went to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D... ( Rant and review - spoilers again. )

I do worry, sometimes, that Tim Burton is losing his magic touch. His latest films still retain his special mark of genius, but it's not quite so obvious as in his early work. Where The Corpse Bride was clearly a triumph of stop-motion technology, for example, it falls down on the enchantment and timelessness of Nightmare Before Christmas. I think the answer is that he needs to produce more original work (like Nightmare and Beetlejuice) rather than re-inventing old stories. That's where his talents lie; he's an artist, not an adaptioneer. But that being said, I do think he has the best approach to musicals that I've seen thus far, and I'd like to see more of that.

Anyway, that's more than enough. We shall now return to our regularly scheduled not!posting.

I've barely had time to think this weekend...

On Saturday it was the concert. It did feel like we'd spent so much time rehearsing Sea Drift that Sea Symphony barely got a look in, which was also exacerbated by most people in the choir having already sung it once or twice before. Not so good for us young 'uns who've never seen it before. I think there was one bit during rehearsal on Saturday I'd never actually seen before in my life; thankfully, Vaughan Williams is fairly easy to sight-read, and there are several repeated themes within the piece...

The concert itself seemed to go okay. Only bad thing was that Paul couldn't attend because our bedroom ceiling was leaking. Presumably the leak from last year (which is now fixed) found a new way through. He didn't want to leave it because it was right next to the smoke detector (or possibly even coming through the smoke detector), which is hard-wired. He phoned the landlord but obviously, nothing has yet been done about it...

That wouldn't have been so annoying if I hadn't traipsed all the way to Symphony Hall on Friday to get him a ticket, and it was £21 we could have saved. Bah.

On Sunday I met up with Vicky (from Uni) because she was in Birmingham and wanted to give me my Christmas present. Paul came with me so we could go to the cinema afterwards, thus I spent almost the entire time we were out paranoid that the flat would catch fire (from a potential spark from the smoke detector - how's that for irony?) or the roof cave in.

Vicky and I had a bit of a natter in the Squeg (I needed breakfast) before she and her mum and nan went off to the German Market, and Paul and I made our way slowly to the cinema. We played on the ItBox in the Squeg first, then went into Cyber Candy to check it out (bought some terrifyingly sugary Jolly Ranchers, a rather disappointing fake Kinder Egg, and some strawberry Pocky! They sell American cereals, too, like Count Chockula and Froot Loops, but they're like £6.70 a box...) Then we had some food in the Windsor, and made our way up to the cinema.

Very little actually showing at any reasonable time, obviously. 9 appears to have finished (great...), and everything else was on at stupid times. The Fourth Kind was only on at 11.30pm (er, okay) and I don't think Saw VI was on the list, so the only remaining option was Up in 3D, whcih wasn't on until 4.00pm (we got there at 3.00). So we went down to the Figure of Eight to kill some time.

( Film Review )

In other news, Paul has agreed to go on the big wheel with me this year (preferably at night so he will hopefully freak out less, though it's unlikely, and so I can take some photographs of Birmingham by night), though he tried to make a deal that he would only do so if I would see Paranormal Activity at the cinema. Thing is, I DO want to see the film, just NOT AT THE CINEMA. The sensory overload will absolutely kill me, and I won't sleep for about two days. I was bad enough after The Blair Witch Project and The Descent. The only horror films I make an exception for are the Saw series and anything foreign with limited release, out of principle. Otherwise, it's a no-no on horror films in surround sound. :P

After the cinema we had another drink in the Briar Rose before heading home, finally getting back just before 8.00. I watched the EastEnders omnibus and the end of I'm a Celebrity..., we had some dinner, and went to bed.

So, rather a busy weekend. And yet more busy weekends up until Christmas, so don't ask me to go anywhere. :P

Bit of a quiet one last night. I escaped from work at 3.30 because I was insanely tired (but had no caffeine, as I've not been able to get to sleep the past two nights), we had dinner fairly early and then Paul went out to watch the football at Alex's. Whilst he was out I ended up watching (finally) Howl's Moving Castle, which I'd taped over Christmas.

( Some thoughts. )

Paul returned shortly after it ended (it's quite long, much more so than I was expecting) and we settled down to watch the kick-off of Derren Brown's The Events on C4, where he predicted the lottery numbers - all six correctly. On Friday he reveals all; apparently it took him a year of intensive work. It should be noted that his predicted numbers were totally not the numbers stuck to the lamp-post in the advert... the entire thing's very mysterious right now, what with the backwards website (retsehcnaMdetinU.com) and "It will be you" messages. I suspect that all of this has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual programme, and as ever Derren is just messing with our minds.

Went to bed after that, and I think I must have nodded off before Paul came in only to wake up shortly afterwards, as I can definitely remember him asking if I was okay because I was trying to get comfy...

Whilst I'm here, I'll share my dream from the other day. Can't be bothered to filter it, but I just want to share the trauma. ( Dream: Teeth Trauma. )

Grah. *shudders* I HATE HATE HATE teeth trauma dreams. I had one when we last stayed over in London (February) which I now can't remember, but I was paranoidly checking my teeth were intact for about two hours after I woke up. Awful. This one wasn't as bad, I think because it provoked that reaction within the dream itself, but on thinking about it afterwards it was fairly horrible...

Okay, I think that's everything. I have tomorrow off (initially in case there was a hen do - still not sure if there is, but a day off is a day off) so will get around to watching OotP and probably SLEEP a lot.

I think this office has something against me. Not content with breaking my chair, on Friday my monitor had lost some pixels - just a line or two at the bottom, across the task bar. This morning they've spread to incorporate my top left hand corner and most of the title bar.

Thankfully IT are going to order me a new one, and it doesn't affect my actual working area too badly... yet.

( Weekend )

At some point this weekend we also attempted to watch the final episode of Psychoville on replay, only to discover that despite putting every other bloody episode on there, the BBC have decided not to put the last one on there. I suspect this is because the DVDs have just been released. Hopefully it'll be on the online iPlayer somewhere, though. Stupid BBC.

We decided to watch a film and, after several minutes of perusing the On Demand films without success, decided on the awful-sounding Deadgirl, whose summary actually made it sound worse than it really was. ( Comments / spoilers )

On Sunday morning Phil turned up to fix / replace our kitchen light (so at least we can now cook properly in the evening), without any warning. We knew he was coming at some point this weekend, and he happened to turn up just as I was getting out of the shower. He then borrowed Lisa's chair to turn off the fuse in the porch, resulting in her shouting irritatedly up the stairs at us... A bit later on when Paul popped out to get cigarettes, he thought Lisa was blanking him, but it turned out later she just had her headphones on and couldn't hear him, and also that she was annoyed with Phil for not warning us when he would turn up, as she was in her nightdress when he arrived, rather than annoyed with us... though we probably should have warned her nonetheless.

We decided to go to Wetherspoon's for Sunday dinner because I couldn't be bothered to cook. So, five minutes before we left, my body decided to punish me for no apparent reason with crippling stomach pain. So I barely even managed half of my roast pork before we had to go home. I ended up having a fitful nap for about an hour or so (thankfully some of the pain had subsided by then) and we watched telly for a few hours. I caught the last hour or so of the shot-for-shot remake of Psycho (not as bad as anticipated; Vince Vaughn should do more serious films) and we started watching a docu-drama on Peter Sellers that we taped about two years ago and forgot about, starring Geoffrey Rush. Always an underrated actor, IMHO. Didn't finish watching that, as I was tired, except then thanks to my nap I didn't actually nod off until around 1.30...

Paul also has a bad stomach this morning so it's obviously something we both ate. I suspect it was the remaining sausages from the fridge. I felt somewhat ill halfway through eating mine, and Paul finished them off... There was nothing in our Experimental Tea which might have poisoned us (it was basically just chicken, tomato and onions) so that only leaves the sausages...

Still a bit grumbly this morning. I wouldn't mind, but I've been good all week - no takeaways, sandwiches with brown bread, and mostly real food with vegetables included. Stupid body.

Bit of a hectic week coming up. It's my mum's birthday tomorrow (need to finish stuff tonight and wrap presents) and we may or may not be seeing her then, depending on what they're doing... I have half of Thursday off as flex, so will be going to get my hair cut at lunchtime, then Paul and I are going to the Bodyworks exhibition at the O2 on Friday (£28 for the coach tickets - yay National Express), then I'm going to We Will Rock You on Saturday afternoon (mum's birthday present) with her and David, then we're going to La Fibule for dinner in the evening.

I do believe that's everything.

( No, wait, fic stuff... )

Right, THAT is everything. ;)

We went to see Public Enemies last night. It was... okay. Considering we had to hang around Broadway Plaza until 8.05 to see it only to be vaguely disappointed that it wasn't mind-blowing didn't help, and nor did the fact that I kept getting distracted by little irritations, like the fact that they hadn't quite managed to cover up Johnny Depp's finger tattoos, or that the make-up in general was really heavy-handed in places.

( More )

I've been tired and irritible all week. I think the downpours all week haven't helped in the slightest, nor has the fact that we still don't have a functional kitchen light. The washing up has piled up, I'm falling behind on laundry (because I can't put it outside to dry and obviously the heating isn't on to dry towels, etc. on the radiators, though I have been sorely tempted the past couple of days...), and as much as I'd love to blitz my negativity into cleaning or whatnot, I just don't. have. the energy.

TGIF indeed. A quiet weekend hopefully.

*crawls under rock*

Fairly eventful. Before that, though, I just want to share that last night, I dreamt we got five numbers on the lottery (admittedly the draw was done by buses pulling up to a bus stop, with their numbers corresponding to the lottery numbers) - what a shame to wake up and discover it wasn't true. :(

Went to see my mum on Saturday. We were going to have paella for dinner, but on arrival they'd changed their mind and were going to take us out to the Kings Head (formerly Quantum, formerly Kings Head) in Bearwood. Quite possibly the most expensive meal I've ever had, but also hands-down the absolute best I've had, too.

For starters, David and I both opted for the seared scallops with pea puree and crispy pancetta. Very nice indeed. Paul and my mum both had the chicken liver parfait with cumberland sauce, which was also delicious. I think I heard the waiter say the scallops were Michelin starred...

We had different mains: David had the steak (which looked delicious, though he wasn't inclined to share it. :P), my mum had the tuna, Paul had half a lobster, and I had the lamb shank. There was seriously enough meat on it to feed three people. And it was gorgeous.

Despite having half a sheep for my main course, I still found room for dessert in the form of a lemon tart with orange syrup, which was just as good as the savoury dishes. Quite often I find restaurants are let down by their sweets, but not so in this case.

Despite being expensive, however, it was very good value for money (especially given the size of my lamb!), and I would definitely recommend it. Their bar menu looks impressive, too... We put in the customer satisfaction cards to enter their monthly draw and try to win a meal for two...

They also do a good value set menu Mondays to Thursdays which also sounded very nice...

Got back and managed to catch the Killers live at T in the Park on BBC3, which was fortuitous. :)

On Sunday we had breakfast at the cafe in Tesco at Five Ways, en route to the cinema. I was still full of lamb and lemon tart, but managed a couple of vegetarian sausages and hash browns. I am now on a mission to find said sausages, because they were very nice - mostly potato, leek and carrot, I think, actual vegetables rather than quorn... I tried the little Tesco in the city centre, in the hope that said sausages were perhaps their own brand, but they didn't appear to have any vegetarian sausages at all... I've kind of gone off most breakfast food (at least at breakfast), you see. As such I've stocked up on croissants and muffins and want to find some veggie sausages because I think my constitution will cope better with those than full-on meat-filled ones.

After breakfast we went to see Bruno, which was even more gratuitous than Borat and about as entertaining... it had its moments ( Spoilers ), but seriously, one of these days Sasha Baron Cohen is going to get his head kicked in by angry racists / homophobes / religious nutters. There's one point where a chair comes very close to landing on his head, which is mildly terrifying. I quite agree that half of the time these people fully deserve to be baited in such a way, but I imagine there's only so far you can push before they turn violent...

The rest of the evening was spent watching the 'Stenders omnibus and fighting off tiredness, then watching the latest installment of Big Brother and finding Clue on ITV3.

So I've not really had time to think this weekend. Hopefully next week will be a quiet one.

I need to book some tickets to We Will Rock You tonight, before there are none left...

The frame arrived this afternoon, so I've done a bit more of my embroidery. ( Scan 2/? )

Yesterday I ended up watching The Water Horse and The Colour Purple, both thanks to Sky Movies, as the usual terrestrial fare for Bank Holiday Monday was useless. Today I got out the DVD of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory because I missed it on Sunday due to cooking dinner. As much as I enjoy the film, the constant Americanisation really starts to grate after a while. Not just the mentions of 'candy' where they mean 'chocolate', but the monetary unit being dollars. It seems to be set in this bizarre Anglo-American hybrid of a place which can't decide where it wants to be. Other than that, though, I still love the little references to previous films (Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood; even the TV Room glasses are somewhat reminiscent of Nightmare Before Christmas...) and the general visual prettiness...

Trailer for Corpse Bride on the DVD so I might watch that tomorrow. I'm actually quite overdue a Tim Burton marathon, though it will involve digging out the videos from upstairs as I don't have a full collection on DVD as yet... Hm, perhaps at some point. I'll add it to the never-ending to-do list.

It's mine and Paul's anniversary on Thursday (four years) and we're going to a local tapas restaurant called Byzantium, so that should be nice. Paul also has a four-day weekend from Thursday so hopefully we might get a bit of spring cleaning done...

Nothing else to report. Over and out.