The flu, the flu
What can I do
Drink lots of tea
But not for two
This sunny day
I slept right through
It knocked me out
The flu, the flu
(A true and real time story)
Month: May 2006
The Girl In The …
well Cafe would be the only right word for it. Put that together with the dating thing, and you have all the ingredients for another close to embarrasing experience.
(note : it was not in THE cafe. You have to be really something before I invite you over there).
So I was standing in front of the Starbucks, waiting for him. And I was way too early.
Little Venice and Camden Lock
I never knew London had canals. Not before I moved here at least. They even have a place called Little Venice, which is the place where Grand Union Canal meets the Regents Canal. It is great for walking, because you can walk along the old towpath (from the time they used horses to pull the boats) all the way to Camden Lock. Somehow I always seem to end up in Camden.
Natural History Museum, London
If you like museums, South Kensington is the place. Here you’ll find the Science Museum, the V&A (design) museum and the Natural History Museum very close to each other. And Kensington Gardens, and Royal Albert Hall are just around the corner too.
If you are a National Geographic reader or Discovery Channel fan you would probably love the Natural History Museum. If you are interested in dinosaurs even more, ’cause they have quite a lot of them. Expect a complete zoo of stuffed animals. And on a rainy Sunday (last weekend), expect a whole zoo of people too and get a better understanding of what claustophobic means.
Even though located in a fantastic and beautifully decorated building, it wasn’t really me. I prefer living animals (to watch, mind you) and less people. But this is a world famous museum, and one of London’s topattractions, so go and check it out for yourself, it’s for free.
Free entrance. South Kensington tube station.
(The Big Dinosaur picture is on the photoblog, shaken, not stirred, but in this case I quite like that)
Take me somewhere I can call a home
I met up with 2 girls in the Starbucks on Leicester Square, and after some text communication about what we looked like, we found each other. We were going to see Prime. Prime was actually quite fun to watch, a real girls night out film, and if you love films like Love Actually you probably like this one too. Meryl Streep is hilarious, and they luckily chose the not too obvious endning. (a 7.5 for this one)
But this wasn’t the highlight of the evening for me.
X-Men: The Last Stand (8/10)
I haven’t seen all X-Men films. I saw the first one when it came out, and wanted to see the last one, because of Ian McKellen. He is cool as the powerful carcrushing Magneto. And I happen to like slightly nerdish high tech films like these. It is not really the depth of the story it is about in X-Men, even though this 3rd one does have some moments of thought. No it’s the special effects, and they are very well done. Pure entertainment, and I haven’t looked at my watch at all during this film.
Tagline: When a cure is found to treat mutations, lines are drawn amongst the X-Men, led by Professor Charles Xavier (Stewart), and the Brotherhood, a band of powerful mutants organized under Xavier’s former ally, Magneto (McKellen).
Directed by Brett Ratner
Cast Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart
Douglas Street
I have been in London for nearly 3 months now. And I am doing my best to become a real Londoner. This means crossing streets even though the light is red. Say “please” after nearly everything you say. Reading a book in the tube. Be on time for appointments, even when travelling by tube. And being able to recognize all the different coins. And I haven’t been in any mens rooms lately either.
All the things I was doing wrong the first weeks, I have overcome.
The Da Vinci Code (6/10)
I read the book before the film, and I was glad I did. Without a little bit of background info, the film would have been even more confusing. I liked the first 75% of the book a lot, after that I felt the book faded out. I liked the last 25% of the film, the first 75% part was just plain boring, and completely lacked the intensity of the book.
There was no chemistry whatsoever between Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou, which is impressive as I both like them as actors. And I even liked Tom Hanks’ long hair, he looked quite cool with it. But it just wasn’t enough to make it work for me. I found Jean Reno irritating, and Paul Bettany as albino monk, naah come on.
The only real highlight in this film was Ian McKellen. Really fantastic actor, and Brit, but he couldn’t save this film either. The only reason this film gets a 6 is because it has some shots from London. Bonuspoints for that. The Louvre scenes are filmed in the UK too by the way, they rebuilt a part of the museum on the set.
So – should you see it ?
Well if you want to take part in the hype discussion about this film, you might want to. If not, pick another film to spent your money on. Which one ? Well The Squid and the Whale was quite allright actually.
Tagline A murder inside the Louvre and clues in Da Vinci paintings lead to the discovery of a religious mystery protected by a secret society for two thousand years — which could shake the foundations of Christianity.
Directed by Ron Howard
Cast Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Ian McKellen, Jean Reno, Paul Bettany
The Girl gets a life
In the train back home from work I was thinking about what I could do on this course. I didn’t need to think long about that. I think I know a girl who can’t wait to get a life of her own. I have no idea how much we are going to accomplish in just 3 evenings, but it would be cool to have her starring in her own (very) short movieclip. Consider this to be a very rough first sketch attempt (and I am very bad with Flash), but I do have a micro story in my head, which could be fun to make. And I think she’s happy to finally have a beating heart.
(And several messages from Denmark are confirming that the postcards now really are available in cafe’s in Denmark. And the DVD of the project is still lost. I’ll give it until the start of June, if it hasn’t arrived with the next person then, I’ll send a new DVD around. I still hope on a happy ending though …)
Baby – life’s what you make it
With everything else in place, it’s time to go do some of the fun things I came to London for.
The first thing is the following course:
Video special effects and animation
Notting Hill Coronet
The first time I popped up from Notting Hill Gate station, I was disappointed. I had expected to see the market, and the house with the blue door. And maybe even run into Hugh Grant, spilling his orange juice on my Love Actually t-shirt. But then, you might say I am a dreamer.
I’ll be back on Monday
In the mean time enjoy Lawrence and go send Putin a mail.
G8 – act now
Lawrence (Bill Nighy), at the G8 in the Girl In The Cafe
The Girl In The Cafe was made in 2005 as a part of the makepovertyhistory.org campaign. The film got broadcasted just before the G8 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and the Russian Federation. Together, those countries represent 66.5% of the world economy) meeting in Scotland, and a fictional G8 meeting is big part of the film.
This year the G8 meeting is going to be helt in St. Petersburg in July. A lot of promises were made at the previous G8 meeting. And to make sure those powerful people keep their promises, Sir Bob asks you to send President Putin an email. To remind him to keep Africa on the agenda. If they do, 4 million lives a year could be saved by 2010. If they don’t, many millions will die of preventable disease and hunger.
As Sir Bob writes:
It’s not rock n roll. It’s poverty.
It’s not glamour or celebrity. It’s death and disease.
It’s not Bob and Bono. It’s you and it’s them.
It’s us.
Thank you.
Bob Geldof
I’m sure Bill does approve too.
It would be a total joke, having this website – loving the film this much and not asking you to signup.
So : All it takes is filling out your name and email address, and press send. That’s not too much trouble is it ?
Related links:
One – the campaign to make poverty history
(yes Bono is there, but so is Brat, and Liam, and Tom, and Jamie and Antonio, and Orlando, and George, and Mos Def, and well they are all there.)
Live8.com – maybe you should see this clip too
The Tunnel – a poem
he looks left
and she looks right
both angry still
after that fight
they both
look out
the landscape
night
into the tunnel
is that a light?
Some people can get away
with everything.
Especially when they have taken the effort to turn Trainpain into a song. I simply love the trains in the beginning and the end.
Hear yak performing Trainpain.. (If you don’t understand Dutch, just click on the first green triangle on the page).
The mango blaster
One of my favourite spots to sit and watch life go by is on the southbank of the Thames. Just on the left side of the Hungerford bridge, there are some cafe’s, a bookshop, it’s close to the National Film Theatre, and they have some excellent banks to sit on. The perfect spot for people watching. The perfect spot to see the sun go down, silhoueting the London skyline. The perfect spot to get rid of some stress after a hard day of work. The perfect spot to read. The perfect spot to eat an icecream, if I had one.
Read More
My name is Rachel Corrie, Playhouse theatre – London
I did give the half price booth of TKTS a go again yesterday. I was there on Saturday afternoon around 3pm, and the queue was impressively long. So long that I was in doubt if I wanted to queue at all. But I had my book with me, and the sun was doing it’s best to shine, so I did go for it. I timed it : it took me 20 minutes from the end of the queue to the little window of the ticket service desk. Unfortunately there wasn’t a man with a nice voice this time.
A Moon for the Misbegotten
Fall in London is going to be fantastic with Kevin Spacey back on stage in the Old Vic Theatre. Kevin Spacey has just announced The Old Vic’s program, and he is going to play in A Moon for the Misbegotten.
r u crzy???
Yes, well with living and working in place here in London, it was about time to do something about my social life. Even though I have no problems doing things on my own, it will be good with some people to talk about Life, the Univ… sorry. But seriously, I placed an ad on the internet somewhere. And no – it was not a romantic ad. (Even though that would probably get me a lot of readers on this weblog, mmm, might be something to consider …) But in this ad I was just looking for fellow movie addicts and other culturenauts like me, to see film, theatre, spaceships, Cafe’s and elephants together here in London.
Just to give you an impression about the quality of responses, here is one of highlights:
Hiii how ru?
wher bouts r u in London?
wanna meet u p for a film and coffee???
email me back i’m from sw london ..
we cud go to ritzy cinema if u want..mwah
Gosh, I thought I was ready to meet English people, but I can see that my language skills are far from sufficient to communicate with them.
London Live as I know it
Or The Girl Takes Pictures.
The move to London has awakened so many things in my life/head/heart/well you got the idea, and one of them is the pleasure of taking pictures. It’s back, I take loads of pictures at the moment. And just to keep things a little bit seperated, and not to mess up this weblog too much, I have decided to create a seperate photoblog for them. And doing it like this I can upload somewhat larger versions of the pictures too.
An evening or two fiddling with WordPress and a modified version of a very clean and nearly naked template usable for a photoblog was more or less what I needed to get started. There are still some things I need to finetune, and want to implement, but I think it is good enough to open the doors for the public.
Expect loads of underground/tube pictures (I am a hopeless tube addict), expect Elephants (oh you knew that already), expect spaceships, and expect all the other things I come across while exploring this beautiful city. Not more than one picture a day though, and no text just pictures.
Well, visit the Photoblog if you like. And feel free to take one of the pan galactic gargle blasters on your way in. Just be careful with them.(*)
(*) The Guide has this to say about the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster : The effect of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.
Don’t say we didn’t warn you …