Snoskred – Life in the Country

Look. I love Sex and The City as much as most people out there who own a television set and have seen the show more than once. I have seen the whole series several times over. There were cringeworthy moments but these were more than made up for by the fashion, the glitter, the hair, the shoes, the ladies, the gorgeous men..

I saw the first movie and it was pretty good. Mildly annoying in places, but generally good. There was full frontal male nudity which is always an epic win as far as I am concerned.

I read the reviews of the second movie and decided to wait till it arrived on dvd from Quickflix. I am so glad I did wait but then again.. I almost regret sitting through it. Twice. The second time for the commentary track.

I pity the poor men who were dragged along to this movie. It took an hour of screen time for them to even leave to go to Abu Dhabi, then it took an hour and a half for the rest of it to play out! If not for the gorgeous outfits, shoes and general prettiness, I would not have made it through the movie at all. I almost switched it off when they karaoke sang I am woman but they all had sparkly outfits on and I was dazed by the glitter.

Listening to the commentary track I understood better the reasons why it was so over the top but there was never an explanation for the two and a half hour running time.

Some of the jokes fell so flat.. eg Abu Dhabi Doo.. that was plain disturbing especially coming from the normally sane Miranda.

I cannot possibly imagine a third movie but if one were made, such is my addiction that I would watch it. Only once the next time, though!

you? Is there anybody out there? Delurk and leave a comment if so.

Diamond Head at Sunset.

Since February I have been using a service called Quickflix. And no, they’re not paying me to say this. I’m saying this because I like it.

You can hire DVDs over the internet and they post them to you. My DVD purchasing was getting a bit on the high side and there was a two month free trial for $1 voucher on one of those group buying websites so I decided to give it a try.

Just quietly, I enjoy it enormously. There are so many good parts to it I needed to make a list for you..

- Making your personal queue of movies that you want to see. You can choose regular movies or box sets of TV shows. I have a good mix of both on my list.

- The email from Quickflix saying we have sent you XX.

- The anticipation of waiting for XX to arrive in your mailbox.

- XX actually arriving in your letterbox.

- Watching XX at your leisure.

- Putting XX back in the envelope & returning it.

- Marking that DVD as returned on the website.

- Getting an email from Quickflix that same day saying we have sent you XX.

- Repeating the above, over and over!

Another good thing about it is because you are not buying the DVDs you can put titles on your list that you would never pick up in a DVD store. I found a great little fun show called Drop Dead Diva which I never would have bought but it turned out to be a blast, it reminds me a bit of Ally Mcbeal only the main star is not a stick thin plank.

Currently I am in the midst of The House Of Elliott Season one & In Treatment Season two. Loving both of them. The House Of Elliott is one I always wanted to see but over here it is on the Ovation channel and it costs extra money on the Austar, and to buy the DVD set was hugely expensive!

I put a few titles on my list for the other half and I loved both of them. How to train your dragon.. wow was that dragon cute. Brilliant movie.

The second choice forced me to sit through one of the most dodgy movies of all time in order to be able to watch it – the original Tron movie. That explains a lot about my other half and his brain stem. That movie I pretty much hated, but the Tron Legacy movie was a different story. I was surprised to find I loved it.

On the non-rental movie front, I went to see Water for Elephants recently. I’d read the book and the movie did an excellent job of bringing the book to life. However bookending it with the old guy made it mildly depressing – I kind of wish they hadn’t done that. I loved the rest of the movie and the circus was especially great but the real star was 100% the elephant. And RPattz was excellent too.

So what have you been watching?

Ok, so it has to be said, I tend to be really behind the times on things like movies. I don’t actually recall specifically the last time I went to see a movie in a cinema. The last one I remember was Shakespeare In Love, back in 1998. I’m sure I have been since then, but I can’t remember what I saw. I suspect the most recent visit to the movies may have been The Butterfly Effect with Ashton Kutcher and I remember being surprised at how good his acting was in that movie. But everyone has their own opinions on actors and what is good acting. But he is awfully cute, too.

I recently was flicking around on a rainy afternoon and I found myself watching The Guardian – a movie I had previously dismissed for two reasons – Kevin Costner, and it was a long movie. I’ve had bad experiences with a Kevin Costner & Long Movie combination in the past (haven’t we all?) but on this occasion two events occurred to make me watch it – the fact that it was just beginning, and the fact that absolutely nothing else was on and it was raining so going anywhere wasn’t really an option.

Then I discovered that Dulé Hill was in it, and I was sold, though his role wasn’t as big as I would have liked. The movie was excellent. I really enjoyed it, and Kevin Costner was finally redeemed from all those terribly bad movies like Dances with Wolves and Waterworld.

Plus Kevin was looking pretty darned cute. Almost as cute as in The Bodyguard. The ending of those movie was absolutely stunning and very unexpected, reading the trivia on IMDB there was a different ending filmed but the one they went with hits like a tonne of bricks. Seriously. If you haven’t seen it but you’re looking for something to watch, this might be a good choice. I especially enjoyed a lot of the Coast Guard training aspects, it was very interesting.

Today, we’re going to be talking about William Shakespeare. Yeah, I know some of you look forward to this about as much as you look forward to root canal work.

- A quote from Dead Poets Society

At some point during the childhood or teenage years of many humans, they are taught to fear Shakespeare. They are taught that it is difficult to study and that they will hate it. When the time comes to study it in school unless they have an amazing teacher they probably will hate it.

If they are lucky as I was, their school has an excellent drama department with a drama teacher who inspires their students and loves Shakespeare. That teacher will teach them to love words and to savor Shakespeare like they would savor good Lindt chocolate.

But now, they might be lucky enough – at an appropriate age because this movie does contain some quite saucy love scenes – to have a teacher or a parent who shows them the movie Shakespeare In Love.

Many of the works of William Shakespeare had been recreated on both television and in movies but this movie is unique because it is a fictional version of the life of Shakespeare himself. Fortunately when they did decide to tackle it they made it a comedy. What a comedy it is, too! If you have not seen it, you must. So why do I love this movie so much? I could sit here and write reasons why all day long, but here are the top 5.

5. The costumes.

Incredible!

4. Dame Judi Dench.

If she is in a movie you know it is going to be incredible. The costumes she had to wear were huge and heavy as you can see above. Her portrayal of Elizabeth was exactly perfect.

3. Colin Firth.

Everyone loves Colin Firth, right? Well I do anyway. I think this is one of his best performances. You can tell he is enjoying it. Usually he plays the opposite kinds of roles to this.

2. Gwyneth Paltrow.

She pulls off quite an acting feat in this movie. I don’t want to spoil the story in case you haven’t seen it but let me put it this way. In the movie she plays more than one character. One of the characters has long hair extensions. The other character could not be played with the long hair extensions. She spent a lot of time in the hairdressing chair and on average it was 2.5 hours each time they had to put the extensions in. And gentlemen, you get to see her half naked. She said in the commentary track that she wanted the love scenes to be realistic rather than being worried about covering herself up. On top of all that, she’s speaking in an English accent.

1. Joseph Fiennes.

He is the brother of Raiph Fiennes – and note that is spelt Raiph and pronounced Rafe and not Ralph – who is a very well known actor. Joseph is amazing. I could not imagine anyone else playing this role. He has the most gorgeous big brown eyes. He was also in another of my favourite movies – Elizabeth with Cate Blanchett.

Other Good Things

Geoffrey Rush is in the movie and his character is hilarious. Normally I can’t stand Ben Affleck but he appears in this movie and I actually quite liked him in this role. The DVD version I have includes two commentary tracks, one with the director and one with the cast and crew. Both are very interesting.

In Conclusion -

This movie deserves to be seen and savored. It deserves a home on your DVD shelf. Excellent acting, gorgeous and stunning and sparkly costumes and plenty of Shakespeare. It is the only movie that I own both on video and DVD. It was also the first movie The Other Half and I ever saw together. Now The Other Half is not into most of the same kinds of movies that I am – he is more an action or science fiction fan. He loved this movie as much as I did. It’s not just a chick flick.