Chatiryworld

Nagglemas

Jon has declared his birthday, 25th February, to be Nagglemas.  Here he is blowing his candles out on the traditional Nagglemas cake, more commonly known as the chocolate cake in Cupcakes From the Primrose Bakery.  It's another rich, sweet and enormous special, too much for us two really, I'll maybe be less ambitious next year!  The Kitchen Aid and Magimix joined forces to make creating it a dream though.

We went for lunch at The Kitchin again, which was amazing, although this time a little too rich for me.  Still delicious, from my pre-starter pumpkin soup through a couple of different vegetable concoctions to the blood orange and rhubarb tiramisu.  I'm not really a fan of tiramisu but I kind of trust The Kitchin to challenge my preconceptions of what a dish should taste like, and this was gorgeous.

In the evening we walked through the rain to go and see Ponyo again, this time subtitled (so much better) at the Cameo, there was a real sense of everyone in the cinema coming out just feeling really happy.  Whilst the children there may have been young enough to be singing the theme tune out loud, I bet most of the adults were singing it in their heads.

Yesterday we went through to Glasgow to eat cake (lemon and chocolate from the Green and Black's cookbook , yum!) and hang out at Jon's sister's flat.  We went through earlier to catch Micmacs, but the weather conspired against us and flooding meant we arrived too late.  We'll see it tomorrow instead.

Goldfish and frogs

The past two Sundays have seen us skip over to the local cinema to see some animation.  I haven't seen 2D animation at the cinema for quite a while, and it felt a bit odd for all of, oh, 2 minutes, then I got swept up into the films and transported away with the story.

First up, Ponyo, the latest offering from the wonderful Studio Ghibli.  (I wonder if I would have ever got into Studio Ghibli films if I hadn't met Jon?)  It's a lovely simple story about a goldfish who becomes a girl, and I think it would make the perfect first film for a small child to go and see.  Like My Neighbour Totoro, it's nice and gentle and might disappoint fans of Ghibli's 'older' work, but I loved it.  We saw it dubbed and I even got over the fact that Noah Cyrus (who seems to stand for everything Ghiblin stands against about childhood) was the voice of Ponyo.  We're going to see a subtitled version at the Cameo this week which should be great.  Jon's written a better review over at Falling Sky.

This morning we went to see The Princess and the Frog, the latest offering from Disney.  Very different from Ponyo, but equally wonderful.  Based on the tale of the Frog Prince it's set in 1920s New Orleans at Mardi Gras time, complete with all the colours and visuals you'd expect from that.  It's got the usual Disney princess dresses in it but the heroine is a feisty hard worker determined to fulfil her dreams.  Unlike Ponyo, it's not really gentle enough to take very young children to (we watched it on the biggest screen and the small children around us found the scarier bits - involving voodoo - a bit much to deal with) but at home on DVD I'm sure it would be fine.  We'll definitely be buying it.

Alma

Alma from Rodrigo Blaas on Vimeo.

I don't often have the patience to watch more than about a minute's worth of video on the computer, but this animation is worth it - and should be viewed at full screen.  Creepy doll shop and snow.  Fantastic.  Via Boing Boing.

Light and blood

On Friday we went to the Botanics to see Spirit, a Chinese lantern show by the wonderful NVA (we will get to one of their landscape installations some day).  Cameras were not allowed (didn't seem to stop some people) but in a way this was good as it made us experience what we were seeing properly, through our eyes as opposed to a lens.  Press passes were available and I think the results can be seen here on Flickr.

Despite most of the other people attending being walking Edinburgh cliches (straight from Jenners tea rooms) we had a great time and were really impressed with what we saw.  The lights in the Palm House were low, and certain blooms, plants and details were highlighted with spotlights, encouraging you (we seemed to be the only ones not rushing through though) to examine the details in them.

Having taken a few days off to celebrate Jon's birthday, we went to the cinema this afternoon to see There Will Be Blood.  It was my first viewing, and Jon's second.  I'm sure he'll write a better review than me, but goodness it was amazing.  Has anyone read the book that it's based on, Oil!?  I know it's more a loose basing but I came away intrigued by the back story of the character of Eli.  Apart from having some kind of delusional mental illness, how did such a young person manage to become his community's spiritual leader?  I wondered why people were so ready to submit to him but in the same way that people were so ready to lease their land to the oil company for money, they were prepared to give their rationality to the church for salvation.  The acting is superb, especially by Daniel Day Lewis and Paul Dano, and their last scene is particularly powerful. 

Umm...

...why is one of the adverts in my gmail for masonic clothing?

Feeling a bit better today, nearly reconsidered going through to Glasgow but glad I didn't as I went into town for a couple of hours and was knackered afterwards.  Lots of Christmas shoppers.  Really happy to see a small range of Liz Earle products now in John Lewis (strangely enough I once had a dream about this a few years ago), I am one of her many cleanse and polish devotees.

We've been watching lots of films over the past few days: Heima, The Gay Divorcee, 101 Reykjavik, Anchorman and My Fair Lady.  There has also been knitting, baking and killing zombies.  Guess which one of those activities was conducted by Jon.

And now I must go and serve up tasty and nutritious roast root vegetable risotto.

Seachd: The inaccessible storyline

We've just come back from going to see Seachd: The Inaccessible Pinnacle at the cinema.  We really, really wanted to like it, set on Skye, in Gaelic, potentially lots of good storytelling, but I'm afraid it just didn't do it for us.  I don't want to pick it apart, as I support the idea of making films in Gaelic, in the Gaeltachd, but it came across as confusing and cliched with lots of elements that just didn't seem right (what kind of parent goes to climb a dangerous mountain on Christmas Eve, especially parents in an obviously close and loving family who look have lived in an area all their lives and must know the dangers). 

There were several folk tales woven into the film which I found more interesting than the main storyline, although they could have been made more of, in fact a great film could have been made based around one of the stories.  Each time a story ended, I wanted to know more, what happened next, especially with the kelpie tale.

We were also disappointed not to see more of Skye, if you want to see it in film, go and see Stardust, you get a lot more landscapes.  There are some stunning shots in Seachd, but it just feels like there could have been more.  Maybe the makers were worried about having too many dramatic landscape shots, I don't know.

I'm adding Seachd to the my list of island-films-I-really-want-to-like-but-they're-just-not-very-good.  Also appearing in this list are the Orkney-set films Blue Black Permanent and Venus Peter (actually I think Venus Peter is supposed to be set in Fife, but they filmed it in Orkney).  It's a shame, I really want to someone to make a fantastic Gaelic film, and unfortunately Seachd isn't it.  Keeping the story simpler and having professional actors (although it was great to see Dolina MacLennan) would probably go a long way.

Giggle

We've just got back from seeing Knocked Up at the Edinburgh Film Festival, what a great film, lots of laughter all the way through.  Like 40 Year Old Virgin, you're laughing with them not at them.  It was actually the UK premiere but as it wasn't in London it was very much a jeans and t-shirt affair.  The director, Judd Apatow, and two of the stars, Seth Rogen and Leslie Mann (Judd Apatow's wife, their kids were also in it) were there to do a quick Q&A, which was really good.  I'm sure Jon will write better reviews of the films we've seen over the weekend so keep an eye on Falling Sky.  I'm really getting into the whole idea of seeing films at the festival, most seem to have a member of cast or crew present and it's nice to be able to applaud them (if you enjoyed it of course).  Hopefully we'll not move house next year and go to more films.

We needed a giggle after the night we had.  Yup, the neighbours again.  We woke up at 2am because we could hear their music, just as we were about to call the noise patrol people it stopped.  So we went back to sleep.  Until about 4am when it started up again.  We could hear all the lyrics clearly.  I called noise patrol immediately, and as they had knocked off the police came round.  We had to wait until about 5.30am but they got them to turn it down.  We're quite glad it came to that, even though we were kept awake, as they definitely deserved it.  Unfortunately due to the crap soundproofing in this building turning the music down wasn't really good enough so we went back to sleep in our own room (we've been sleeping in the spare bedroom as it tends to be quieter), also it didn't stink of smoke.  We got back to sleep but when we woke up at 9am they were talking loudly in the kitchen below.  I know people should be able to talk in their kitchens at 9am but it just felt like they were following us around!  Anyway, we got up then and they must have gone to bed soon after.  So glad we are moving a week on Thursday, we can't live like this (no one can).  We're absolutely sick of it, and the expense of this move will be worth every penny.