Ugly Christmas Sweater

Saw these cards in a Flying Tiger Copenhagen store and could not resist them - flash back to the movie where Bridget Jones and Mr. Darcy appear in their ugly Christmas Sweaters, thought alone makes me smile

 

Then turning to my company's CEO who was wearing his Christmas sweater his last workday before his Christmas holiday, but when he walked around and said "Merry Christmas" to every employee he was not wearing his sweater. People asked why he wan not wearing it as it was a nicely knit Christmas sweater?

 

 

There you have it in print, there are actually some Christmas sweaters that I think look nice, or maybe they have more a winter's theme than a christmassy one. Saw these adds online from the British clothing brand  FATFACE, a brand that I really like and actually saw some cool looking Christmas Sweaters.



 

 

Makes me want to re-read The Great Christmas Knit Off by Alexandra Brown and Sybil's wacky Christmas jumpers.

 

 

Beam Me Up Scotty

I bought this magnet in New York - when placing it on my Fridge the words "Beam me up Scotty" flew into my head. Guess I have been watching too many Star Trek movies :o)

June 2015 in Books

Posting this a bit late, but one day takes another at the moment.

Just learned, that an old book shop Atheneum in Copenhagen is about to close business. They opened the doors in 1874 (141 years ago) and have always been ready with advise and suggestion, if you were a bit stuck with the choices available or needed inspiration - but the internet business and the end of bookstores having lost the monopoly on selling books here in Denmark, so the supermarket chains can sell books at incredible low prices have proven to be too much competition. Makes me think of the movie "You've Got Mail" where Meg Ryan's children's book store has to close - just proves that some of the points in that movie are still valid. *sigh*

Here is the list of books, that I read in June:

Rejsen til frihed by Linh Nguyen
(Translated title: Journey to Fredom)*
Denmark

Den sønderjyske farm by Erling Jepsen
(Translated title: The South Jutland Farm))*
Denmark
E-book

Stik by Stine Dige and Marie Ladefoged

(Translated title: Sting)*
Denmark

Miss Perigrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
USA
Library Book

Aase Seidler Gernes
Denmark

Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D.James
UK
Library Book

The Peacock Emporium by Jojo Moyes
UK
Library Book



*Translated title: the book has not been published in English version, so title is not an official title of the book.

The Imitation Game

 

Went into the cinema darkness and laughed a bit about the words that just popped into my mind when watching the movie: data structures, algorithms, pointer, array, balanced trees, hashing, Pascal, Turing, programming and the list goes on. Some will go "Huh?!" as not all on them were even mentioned in the movie - other will laugh as it reveals some of my past.

Well once upon a time a young lady thought, that computer science was going to be her future, so she went to university to study it. That young lady was me only to find out, that I need interaction with people and not just sit behind a computer screen developing software etc. so I changed major after 4 years of studying.

The movie "The Imitation Game" is about Alan Turing and the Enigma machine invented during WW2 to decode the Germans' coded messages. We heard about the Turing Machines (now know to us as early computers)  in some of the classes at the university as his work was important in the evolution of computers. I was surprised to learn, when the British revealed a well kept secret from WW2, that Turing and some others had actually managed to crack the Enigma code and used some of the intelligence reports thereof to defeat the enemy in strategic places/battles.

Another story within the story is, that Alan Turing was homosexual - at that time a crime in the UK - could it be used against him and would people stop working with him when they found out? Alan Turing committed suicide in 1954 - later to be questioned as it could also have been a fatal accident when handling cyanide.

Yes Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing is eye candy, and so is Matthew Goode as Hugh Alexander - you can never go wrong with adding Keira Knighly as the only female in Turing's code-breaking team. But the story was also luring me into the cinema to learn more about this event in the history books.

Knitting Cinema

Who thinks up an idea like Knitting Cinema?

Rock'n'Roll Hausfrau had an idea a while back - why not have a viewing at the local cinema, where the moviegoers brings their knitting or crochet-in-progress and do their craft while watching the movie - light not dimmed as much as usual as you need to be able to see the yarn in your hands and a little more talk amongst the audience as people are admiring each others' work or maybe commenting the movie a little bit.

Today was the second event and they have already scheduled another one next month showing a Danish movie. A friend and I participated for the first time and we both agree, it is not the last time. Yes people were chatting a little bit, but not that much and it did not bother us - maybe because we knew in advance that it was part of the package and people were just relaxed and enjoyed themselves while working with yarn. Me I am working on a scarf that I hope to show in a month or so..... work in progress :o)

Let us not forget the movie - Gone Girl........ I do not think I would have seen it if it was not the one that was showed today - but I am glad I did. 

Nick Dunne gets a phone call from the next door neighbor on his and his wife's fifth anniversary - their front door seems to be open and their cat is outside. He returns to his home only to find evidence of some kind of struggle and his wife has gone missing. Soon the little evidence that surface points towards Nick as being guilty of the crime behind his wife's disappearance, but is he innocent as he claims.

It is one of those movies that shows flashbacks to give you clues about the crime, where you simply do not trust what you are seeing as it continuously takes a turn/twist that you did not expect - even the ending leaves you with a "What?!" and the audience looking at each other in disbelief and then smiling as you try to figure out in your head what will happen after the end titles starts. "What... How....Why..." keeps tumbling in your head.

Really good entertainment and a good start on a weekend.

Saving Mr. Banks

 

In the 1960's Walt Disney finally got P.L. Travers to travel to Hollywood as it had been a dream for him to make a movie based on her book Mary Poppins since it was his girl's favorite book and it intrigued him. It was clear that P.L. Travers had to be included in the creative progress of creating the movie's manuscript.

Mary Poppins is personal for her and the Americans are set for some huge challenges as she is very set in her ways and is not fond of the American way of life at all: too many sweets and a dismay towards the beloved Disney characters. Disney however is persistent and try to give in to her quirks as she is not fond of musical, dancing and cartoons at all.

Mary Poppins did become a blockbuster movie - a classic - and you get a insight in how that movie became an reality despite the differences between P.L. Travers and Walt Disney.

It is a movie that makes you laugh and also a little sad when learning the real story that led to the book about Mary Poppins. Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks - great cast for P.L Travers and Walt Disney as they are their roles.

August: Osage County

A while ago I went into see "August: Osage County" - love Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts, so wanted to see how a movie with both of them turned out.... adding a little spice with the appearance of Benedict Cumberbatch as Little Charlie... 

But the line-up of famous actors in that movie.... mind blowing ... and guess it will be hard to go wrong if you have so many good actors to make a movie... then again all the characters call for good actors as the personalities they have to portray are so complex. 

The family is far from being an ordinary family, when secrets are revealed - abuse of alcohol and pills seems to be what has kept Violet and Beverly Western together as a married couple and at the same time estranged them, as the abuse is revealed to hide unspoken/hidden truths about their marriage. Their 3 daughters and family/boyfriend + Violet's sister+family arrives for the funeral and start "talking" and unravel the hidden relations in the family so the tense behavior between the family members surfaces and forces them to open their eyes.

When leaving the cinema one can not help wondering, if a normal/perfect family exists? One without secrets or skeletons in the closet? In some of the elderly generations, they were brought up to endure a lot thus making them to stay together as a married couple despite quarrels - nowadays more are getting a divorce when opinions between them becomes too different.

Kvinden i buret aka. The Keeper of Lost Causes

The movie of the first Department Q book by Jussi Adler Olsen (Danish title: Kvinden i Buret, English title: The Keeper of Lost Causes) - those of us that have read the books published so far have eagerly awaited this film. Some with raised eyebrows, since they thought that actor Nikolaj Lie Kaas (you might recognize him as a villain from the movie "Angels and Demons" based on Dan Brown's book) is too young to play the part of Carl Mørch - and most are convinced that is is a good choice after seeing the trailer.

Just saw the movie, and the casting of Nikolaj as Carl is just perfect and annoying (Carl's character can be annoying) - and even though I knew the plot, I was at times sitting on the edge of my seat. Usually I can not help comparing the book and the movie while watching the filmed adaptation - but this time I completely forgot to do it. I know that they are filming the second book in the series right now and can not wait for that movie to come out.

The movie is about Carl, that gets reassigned to the new Q-department, after a serious incident when he was shot and a colleague got paralyzed. He is now to go throgh all the cold cases from the past 20 years along with a new partner Assad and close 2-3 of them per week. He stumbles over a 5 year old case, with a Danish politician that apparently died on the ferry from Germany to Denmark: suicide by jumping off the ferry. Carl's initial gut feeling tells him that something is wrong: Why would she bring her mentally sick younger brother on the ferry if she was suicidal? Is his intuition right or is he just loosing it?

 

 

Prisoners

This is not the usual choice for me when going to the cinema to see a movie - I had not even watched the trailer when I Went to the cinema for a pre-view of the movie. With a cast counting Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal and Maria Bello I was looking tforward to a surprise-me experience as I had absolutely no expectations to the movie. I only knew the above names of some of the cast and had read a 3-lined synopsis about the movie.

 

So was it worth the the 2½ hours?

 

Yes. Suspense, drama, surprise elements (twists), thriller.... the list of keywords could continue, but the majority of comments I overheard after the screening were all positive... and the Hugh Jackman's beard help him giving his character a stonger part in this movie, where you forget about him being eye-candy but gives him the extra punch to play his character to the fullest. Seriously without the beard, I do not think I could have taken his role as serious  as I did.

 

I found myself trying to play detective while watching the movie: What really happened? Who done it? But just when I thought I had guessed it - WHAM!! the story made a twist, and then another one... and I forgot about the detective urge and just let the movie surprise me... love when movies have that surprising element over it - not all directors can handle it, but this movie works.

 

The trailer pretty much gives you an idea what the movie is about, but I wont reveal more than that other that it is worth watching ;o)

Yarn to Go

First book in A Yarn Retreat Mystery series by Betty Hechtman - made me think of a scene in the movie Snow Wonder, where Aunt Lulu (Played by Mary Taylor Moore) says the following:

"You know, sometimes in a family there can be a square peg - the one that doesn'r really fit in. And sometimes family can embrace that and sometimes they feel threathened by it. They try to sit on you. They love to tell you what isn't possible."

I bet that Casey Feldstein feels a bit like that, when it comes to her own family - she now stays at her aunt's place in a small city where she has build up a business as a dessert chef. When her aunt dies, she tries to host a yarn reatreat, that her aunt had planned before dying. But "She got totally frustrated when I kept mixing up with crocheting and knitting. I knew that you needed two things for one of them and one for the other, but not which for which. Needles, hooks, not my thing."

A regular at the yarn retreat is suddenly found murdered and Casey decides, that the killer must be caught - but will she succeed? And will she ever learn the difference between needles and hooks and get the yarn in her blood?

Pacific Rim

"Godzilla meets Transformers" used quite a lot locally when newspapers have revieved the movie "Pacific Rim" - and very good reviews. Well Godzilla (Japanese: Gojira) is Kaijus that has risen from the Pacific Ocean and are striking against the contries at the Pacific Rim - and Transformers are actually Jaeger (the German word for hunter) robots, that are operated by at least two humans, who are synchronized/connected in neural bridges.

 

What makes the movie extra special (in my opinion) is that it is directed by the Guillermo del Toro ("The Orphanage" and "Pan's Labyrinth") thus adding some of the humour we saw in "Hellboy", while good inspiration from the movies mentioned by the newspaper reviewers also flows in this movie.

 

Honestely, I did not quite know what to expects when going into the cinema darkness but came out with the good feeling of excellent entertainment

Wolverine

Regular heatwave today - temperatures above 30° Celcius (86+ Fahrenheit) and no wind to cool you down resulting in an extreme humidity according to our standards - hence me once again escaping to a cool cinema:

 

Like the X-Men movies, so not hard to persuade me to go in and see this movie.

 

The scene is quickly moved to Japan, where a dying Yashida-san has requested his presense to say goodbye - Wolverine saved his life when the Americans dropped the Nagasaki A-bomb. Wolverine meets Japanese culture and traditions at a very high paste: the neom lights of Tokyo, fast train, yakuza, ninjas - inspirations from a few Japanese movies has fingerprints on this movie making it a little more "real". A bite of good humor and some twists keep this story going and you entertained, plus Hugh Jackman as Wolverine is pure eye-candy ;o)

And a hint: Keep watching the movie despite the subtiltles starting at the end - you are in for an extra treat.

World War Z

I actually went into see a zoombie movie the other day - and one starring Brad Pitt. Now some eyebrows are raised as that is usually not a film that I would go in and see on a Sunday, but some friends asked me if I wanted to join them at the cinema - why not? And just expanding the movie world a little more.

 

Must admit, that there are elements/messages in the movie, that I do like - and despite being a zoombie movie it even made you think a little further about what we are doing to us/the Earth (Mother Nature). Mother Nature is the biggest serial killer of the all. At first I laughed when I heard one of the characters state that - but then the laughter stopped.

 

Mother Nature - one you can not beat, perhaps with modern technology slow down - who will always be the wiser. It is like people are discussing the face that more and more people get a certain kind of dissease than previous - but given the fact that a lot more people are living on Earth han "previous" are ratios actio the same or actually less? Or are we looking at an area where homo sapiens have invented a drug/medicine to alter/stop the course of a virus/dissease so Mother Nature merely adjust and alters her course/direction?

 

Might be a bit thorn over the subject, as I have an illness that needs medication - I believe that Mother Nature sometime tries to evolve, but then end up in a blind street and needs to learn. She is good at adapting and finding other solutions - might sound harsh that she lets something die for other things to develop into more amazing things. Then there are the homo sapiens - us - who have developed methods to survive her quirks, but would it actually be better for us in the long run, if we let her have her ways?! That will always be a hot topic, since we think, act etc. and nobodys' opinion will never be the same even in situations of life and death......

All these thoughts "just" because I saw a movie.

Kon-Tiki

A Norwegian man, Thor Heyerdahl, decided in 1947 that he would prove, that South Americans were the first settlers and not Asians, as it was commonly believed.

 

What seemed to be absurd was the way he was going to prove it. He gathered 5 other Scandinavians to go with him on a raft, built as they would have done it 1500 years ago - thus depending on Mother Nature to bring the raft from Peru to Polynesia... 101 days it would take him to reach the goal.

 

Only with radio communication and a kamera as the only modern things onboard, not comprimising the mission to sail without modern technology, he passed the Pacific... when he published a book, many thought it might be science fiction, but his Oscar awarded documentary about the journey on the Kon-Tike blew people away.

 

Still to this day, the accomplisment is amazing and beautifully captured in this movie. No wonder it was nominated to an Oscar for best foreign movie.

Les Misérables - Revisited

If you think that you are going to see an action movie, since the movie is starring actors like Russel Crowe (Gladitor) and Hugh Jackman (The X-men movies and Wolverine), Les Misérables should not be your choice. If you can not stand a man singing, when his friends have just been killed, Les Misérables is not the right choice. If you think that the commercials reminding you to switch off mobile phones are necessary, but you and your spouse keeps talking loud during Les Misérables, you should not have chosen to see it at the cinema.

 

Les Misérables, once again adapted into a movie - this time based on the musical version, so yes this is almost three hours of famous actors singing throughout the movie. I have seen the musical both in London and in Copenhagen so could not wait to see the new version that recently won three OSCARs but it is annoying when people are complaining loudly while watching the movie - some of them walked out during the movie, as they clearly had not realised that it was a musical.

 

Don't you read what the movie is about or watch the trailer before paying money to watch a movie at the cinema. Ok, I used cinema points to see the movie (free ticket), but for me that is almost like spending money so I still want to know in advance what type of movie to expect. I liked the movie and was also thrilled about some of the eye candy in the movie - if you like the Les Misérables musical, this is definately one to see. What to expect - well the trailer is here.

Quartet

Opera diva in a nursery home - Ok that alone could not sell movie tickets - but I am talking about the movie "Quartet" directed by Dustin Hoffman and with a star struck cast like Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Pauline Collins, Bill Connelly andd Michael Gambon.

 

The cast does not let us down, but dazzle us with their presence and humour. The settings is a nursery home for musicians, so the home is filled with music and the tennants' everlasting huge passion  for their metier. There is sparkling of drama between some of the tennants, and then there are those who are just enjoying themselves immensely being among peers.

 

The nursery home needs funding to survive, so they are organizing a concert to raise money - will their latest arrival return from her retirement and dazzle the audience with her voice?

 

See it - it will make you in a good mood and it's a tribute to those elderly English actors that are still going strong and making us laugh.

 

Hitchcock

Psycho - Vertigo - Rear Window....just mentioning a few of Alfred Hitchcock's movies which I guess we have all encountered or seen on TV/DVD .... and it seems to be a like/dislike relationship to his movies as almost none are neutral to what they have seen.... and is it not interesting that a 1950s movies can still makes those small hair on your body rise in horror??!! Guess that tells us that modern days' special effects still compeed with the old "simple" effects :o)

I have just seen hitchcock with Anthony Hopkins and Hellen Mirren as the Hitchcocks portraying the time wen they struggled to make the movie Psycho - revealing why Janet Leigh's scream in the famous scene with the shower curtain are so realistic. I was surprised to learn that secret and still you can not help laughing when you find out - and let me just say, he was not being nice to his leading ladies.

For the 5th Time: Yippie-Kay-Yay!!!!

The well-known words from John McClane (Bruce Willis) who has a talent spotting terrorists from a long distance and do his best to not letting the bad guys win - I have now seen all 5 movies in the cinemas, as simply had to go in and see his latest adventure (Yay! for enough cinema points to claim a free ticket) A Good Day to Die Hard.

This time we meet his son John McClane Jr - and even though they will not admit it at first, they are "like father - like son" which naturally spurs the humor we find in every Die Hard movie. This time the scene is Moscow, Russia - John Sr. tries to speak a little Russian with the help of a travel guide, but gives up and later on his not-understanding-Russian makes us laugh. Some critics do not like this movie, claiming it is an 80s relic - but hey! it is an action movie, which most of the time someone being macho - and terrorists are often on the outlook for something to use as weapons, so why not use some historic place that we do know something about? Die Hard movies are not supposed to be deep movies nor romantic ones but fun action - and that is what you can expect from this movie.

Classic Movie: Death on the Nile (1978)

The title of an Agatha Christied story that sprung into my head when I was standing in front of a pyramid in Egypt less than two months ago. Got to see the 1978 movie (marked by age and many screenings) at a local cinema last Sunday and it truly felt like being 3 places at the same time: being entertained in the cinema darkness, being in Agatha Christie's bookworld and back in Egypt amazed by the seights. 10 minutes into the movie I realized why the thought of the book had occured: the newly wed Doyles are at the pyramids and sfinx at the Giza Plateau - the same place I was visiting.

Fascinating that one sees new details, when seing the film where it is supposed to be seen: at the cinema - despite knowing the plot and having seen it a lot of times on tv. Agatha Christie's stories about Hercule Poirot seem to be timeless and still manages to intrigue people of all ages :o)

Lincoln

16th president of the USA - who fought for the 13th Ammendment to the Constitution - emancipation. Went in to see the movie - a lot of people have complained about the amount of conversation in the movie. Honestly, I think they are forgetting something: politics involves a LOT of talking, speaches etc. It was the "hottest potato" of the time: emancipation - at the same time the Civil War was tearing the country apart leaving long trails of casualties. It's also very dark - but that is helping one to feel/understand the grim reality of the Civil war and it's human casualties.

Guessing most this part of history - so can only recommen you to see this movie.

No wonder, that Martin Luther King delivered "I Have a Dream" speach on the steps of Lincoln Memorial in DC - as Lincoln helped pave a trail for a lot of people seeking freedom and equal right. I know this speach, but never knew that King delivered the speach at the memorial - that I ound out on the day I visited the place which coincidently was Martin Luther King Day. The view from the monument is spetacular - no wonder that he's sitting watching over the Mall to capitol Hill.

Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC (2007)