Isn’t that the day of …

Last.fm chart
No I cannot say that it came completely unexpected, this call. It was B.
What was going on, he asked.
And I said, B. !, long time no hear.
And he said, well, you know, Pirates, Vampires, I’ve been busy. But what’s going on ? I just checked your stats, and while I was under the impression that I was on a secure 5th place, I suddenly see I got overhauled by some-other-actor.
And I said, *cough*, uhm, well, *cough*, uhm, I got carried away a bit.
But you know you are number one, always, don’t doubt that.

He mumbled a bit. And asked me if I knew that, although living in London, mr. Spacey wasn’t even an englishman ?
And I said yes, I know that, don’t worry about it, it doesn’t mean anything!

And he said, well all right then.
So – I got you a jobinterview.
And I nearly choked in my tea. Jobinterview I stumbled, what do you mean ? I …
Yes, 14th of February, in North London. Be there.
And I said – oh – I don’t know what to say. Thank …
And he said – don’t mention it.

And I said the 14th of February. Isn’t. That. The. Day. Of. Love. Actually.

But he was already gone.

Memoirs of a Geisha (8/10)

Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)Memoirs of a Geisha tells the story of, Nitta Sayuri, who transcended her fishing-village roots and became one of Japan’s most celebrated geisha.

Well this film has been nominated for both Bafta’s Golden Globes and will probably also be nominated for Oscars. It’s a big production, but I have to say it is so beautifully shot. There are some really fantastic shots and the colours are amazing, it’s like watching a beautiful photograph exhibition. So for me, if someone should win an Oscar for this film, it should be the director of photography. You could actually watch this film for it’s pictures, it’s a joy for the eyes, and walk completely satisfied out of the cinema. But there is also a story, a story about this somewhat hidden and secret world of the Japanes Geisha culture, and that story is interesting enough to make this a film worth watching too.

Yes, go see it. It might be a girl film though.

Directed by: Rob Marshall (Chicago)
Cast : Ziyi Zhang (disappointing to see that her blue eyes in the film actually were contactlenses!), Ken Watanabe

Talking about cheating. I am a regular customer of Cinemaxx in ?rhus, it’s my second home and I would nearly say that I have been there so many times, that I have paid for one of their screens. They have this silly system that they only check your ticket when you come into the building. After that you are yourself responsible for finding the right film and screen (they have 8). That has made me think before. So yesterday I saw the Geisha film at 12.30. That’s early, but I needed to leave my appartment because people came looking at it. And after the Geisha, I thought – what if. What if I just stay, and watch another movie, for free. After a short discussion with my conscience – I stayed, and watched Narnia again. This time with excellent sound, and on the biggest screen they have in Cinemaxx, which is huge. It certainly was cool to see James McAvoy this size, but despite a much better film experience, Narnia did not score any more points than last time, 7/10.

How bad a person am I really ?

The Icestorm

The Icestorm
The trees wrapped in ice (Click for larger version)

I know that the trees don’t like it, but it is such a beautiful sight. And apart from that, it makes such a nice sound too, the clickering of the branches when the wind gently rocks them.

I have been walking to work since I kissed my friend goodbye, but this kind of weather makes that pure pleasure. This morning I passed a lot of people who were trying to remove the thick layer of ice that had wrapped their cars at night. They were annoyed and angry, and stressed. I passed them with a smile on my face. In this weather everybody is late for work, so why not relax and enjoy it in stead.

It’s cold in Denmark, below zero in the daytime, and there is still a lot of snow laying around. I love a real winter like this.

They now are officially looking for a replacement for me (at work that is), and it is somehow a weird feeling to see the job being posted on websites. As if I suddenly realize that there now really isn’t any way back. Not that I want a way back, I can’t wait to get to London, but still, it feels like losing ground a bit.

So if you want my job, I can send you a link :-).

And 43 days …

Funky Kevin – let’s dance

Now, I know that you want to know what music I am dancing on all the time right ?
And thanks to this genius of a WordPress plugin, which looks fantastic too, you can now dance along. Press play and get moving ! And if this song doesn’t make you happy, I don’t know which one will.

[audio:thatsall.mp3]

If you’re wonderin’ what I’m askin’ in return, dear
You’ll be glad to know that my demands are small
Say it’s me that you’ll adore
For now and evermore
That’s all – that’s all.

Bouncing balls !

Organizing a concert for 150 crazy tv-2 fans in Århus (next week) – that’s nearly a fulltime job at the moment I can tell you.

Got a phonecall from the man with the nice London accent again this morning (I am still in the run – but I don’t count on anything!)

And the best thing : the soundtrack arrived today and my god Kevin Spacey is sooooo goooood. Listening to him singing gives me a big smile on my face, and I can’t sit still either. (This really annoying my colleagues).

But all this in my head and my ears, the balls still bouncing like crazy, makes it impossible to write a “normal” piece of text that would make sense to you. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe not.

The Girl In The Cafe Movie – soundtrack

The Girl In The CafeThis post is mainly for all the people who come here looking for information about the soundtrack from The Girl In The Cafe.

The bad news is, there isn’t any official soundtrack available. But the good news is that you can find the 2 songs that make up 90% of the soundtrack of this film.

2 songs from the soundtrack of the Girl of the Cafe that made an everlasting impression:

Sigur Ros – Starálfur (islandic for Staring Elf) from the album ágætis byrjun (”an alright start”). (Download Starálfur free and legal from Sigur Ros’ website : click here).

Damien Rice – Cold Water from his album O. You can watch a videoclip of a live version of this song here.

The song that’s playing as they walk down the corridor to the hotel room on their first night in Reykjavik is ‘Somewhere there’s an Island’ by Seaman Dan. You can hear a sample of it here.

The beautiful movie soundtrack is composed by Nicholas Hooper, who also will compose music for the upcoming Harry Potter movie : Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Nicholas Hooper has also composed music for other Nighy delights like State of Play and The Young Visiters.

Nicholas Hooper won a BAFTA Award in 2006 for Best Original Music for The Girl In The Cafe.

Hope this helps.

If you want to get the DVD, you can find it here on Amazon.

Jobhunting II

And so my phone rang. And I picked it up and said hello. And he said hello Ingrid. And he had a London accent. And my heart started beating a bit faster. And he had gotten my application and CV. And he said that he had 2 potential jobs. And he asked if he could send my cv on to those companies. And I said yes please do – I never can refuse anything to people talking british anyway – and he said ok then. And that he would get back to me. And I asked him what my chances were for finding a job in London. And he said –

no
problem
at
all

And the girl is extremely relieved, very happy and is doing a very stupid dance in her livingroom as we speak.

Job hunting

I want youIn between chatting with some really nice people yesterday, I also managed to send off about 20 job applications. This sounds like a lot of work, and it is, but it is not as hard as I thought. It’s like job shopping. You add jobs to your shopping cart, and then you can apply for all of them at once, because the job world in the UK is ruled by recruitment agencies, and many applications are send to the same agencies. I learned that yesterday. I haven’t really heard anything yet, but look at it positively as there are really many jobs to apply for. There must be a job out there for me too somewhere. That thought keeps me going right now.

And it’s first now that I am ready to throw myself into jobhunting, I needed to gather some positivity and faith and good spirit, to be able to handle the high amount of rejections I, without a doubt, am going to get. I am ready.

So 20 applications. 18 of them are jobs which are ok, maybe a bit more exiting than my current job, but not where I want to be in the end really. But it will be quite allright to start with. The other 2 jobs I applied for are in the category “You got to be kidding – you are applying for this job – are you mad” ? This being said by the people getting my application. As in – I have no chance whatsoever in getting these jobs. They are not IT jobs.

But one of those two – if I (completely hypothetically speaking, ’cause it is not going to happen) should ever get a job like that (it has a very lousy payment but I don’t care) – I would be the second happiest girl in the Galaxy. The best job ever imagineable would be becoming some particular Brit’s assistent. The other job however, is, compared to that ridiculous idea, more likely, with an ImprobaBILLity factor of only about 99.999%.

Fact is though – that London has job openings like this. I didn’t just pick London out of the blue you know, I have actually thought about it. And you never know, one day I just might be lucky.

47 days. Goodness …

So long and …

And so we split up. We talked about it a lot, and we agreed that it would be best for both of us to go seperate ways. Because he didn’t really feel like going to London with me.
And he didn’t want to stay in Denmark either, where he always felt like an outsider between all those Centurions. He wanted to go back to his roots for a while, and think about what he wanted with his life. So I told him that if that was what he really wanted, that I could live with it. That I would miss him a lot, but that eventually we both would be happier.

I followed him to the car, gave him a kiss on the cheek, wished him a safe trip back to Holland. So long and … he was gone.
Tomorrow I have to walk to work.

Zenphoto 1.0 Beta

There has been released a new version of the very funky Zenphoto gallery. I upgraded my test Photo gallery, if you want to have a look.

Big improvements since last time:
Image and directory sorting (also with drag and drop with funky Ajax)
Comment notification

And they already had the incredibly smart on the fly editing of picture titles and descriptions.

Things on its way (soon hopefully, ’cause then I finally will kick Coppermine out – for good):
Tagging
Searching
Sub albums
A sexy integration with WordPress (2.0)

They are doing a great job to keep it a clean and simple gallery program.

Billboard


(Click for larger version)

Ok then, on special demand – this is my billboard (what are those things really called in English ??) at work. It’s a bit empty, because I threw out the calender for 2005 (a Vincent van Gogh one) but haven’t bought a new one, for obvious reasons.

It’s going quite well with the TGITC – on tour, 6 people are in the queue to receive the Girl in The Cafe at home. So you all need to be a bit patient, but she will knock on your door eventually, and hopefully knock you out too.

And since The Girl likes travelling a lot, she is even more exited now that she is going to fly by plane too. She is booked for a visit to the USA.

TGITC – on tour

Say what ?

The Girl In The CafeThe Short Version:
I think this is a wonderful and important film that needs to be seen by as many people as possible. That’s why I decided to send my The Girl In The Cafe DVD on a tour. The Girl has been on tour for more than a year now, she has visited more than 60 people already, and is planning to visit people in 20 (and counting) different countries. If you want to participate all you have to do is send an email to be put on the list. And when the film gets to you, you watch it, write a review on your blog (or send it to me if you don’t have a blog) and send it to the next person on the list.

The mighty Bill Nighy has called this project “very cool” and “very admirable”. And writer Richard Curtis is “thrilled” about this project.

Have a look at where the girl has been and will go on the world map here.

I was amazed by the number of people who either don’t know this film at all or have heard of it but have not seen it. And since this film made a big impression on me, I thought it was a nice idea to share it, and have other people to see it too. It is not only a great romantic comedy, it’s also a film with an important message.

And apart from people not knowing the film (which is forgivable to a certain extent), there seem to be people around on this planet, believe it or not, who do not know who Bill Nighy is! Now that is what I would call an emergency situation, a situation I had to do something about.

The script for the film is written by award-winning screenwriter Richard Curtis. You probably know him from Notting Hill, Love Actually (!), Bridget Jones, Four Weddings and a funeral. He doesn’t need any further introduction does he. So you get Bill Nighy, Kelly McDonald in a film with a very important message, by Richard Curtis, it can’t get any better than that! You can watch it as a very amusing and well-played rom-com, and you can learn a bit about G8 and what’s going wrong in the world too.

So – The Girl In The Cafe promotion campaign was born, my The Girl In The Cafe DVD went travelling.

Is this a sleazy way to promote your blog?
No. You don’t even have to link to my blog if you don’t want to, you can still participate. I just want to promote an in my opinion important and also fantastic film, and also support and promote the makepovertyhistory.org campaign. Maybe you already know everything about G8, the millennium goals, and aid, debt and trade, good, you can still enjoy the film. Maybe you didn’t, great, I didn’t really know that much before I saw this film either, so maybe it will clear up some things about all this for you too. It did for me.

So now you want to see don’t you? (Of course you do!)
Easy, just send me a nice mail telling me that you want to be put on the list, and write your postal address. All it will cost you is a stamp to send it to the next person.

The film is in English, and does only have English subtitles.

The Rules
If you want to participate in this project, you accept the following simple rules:

  • You watch the film (wowee – this really is the best part of it all)
  • You write a review about this film on your weblog and send me a link to it. (In English would be very nice, but if that’s a problem, use your own language) If you don’t have a weblog, you can send your review to me by email, then I’ll post it here.
  • After you have seen the DVD you promise to pack the Girl nicely, give her a kiss on the cheek and send the DVD to the next person about a week after receiving it; I will supply you with the name and address. And please send me a mail after you have done so. (This just to keep track on where The Girl is hanging around)
  • You may not make a copy of the DVD. You may lend, but not keep.

Any questions, remarks, comments, complaints? Send me an e-mail.
That’s it! Anyone can join in ! And go spread the word !

More info

Where is The Girl now ? (check the map)

The Girl In The Cafe – the official site (You can see the trailer there)
Bill Nighy Filmography (For those wanting to know what else he has been in)
Make Poverty History

(Credits to RobtheBlob.nl for pushing me (gently) to do this.)

Love can’t change
what’s wrong in the world.
But it’s a start.

5 x The Police

Best of – sort of.

1. Driven to Tears
1. Bring on the night
3. Hole in my life
4. Does everyone stare (lyrics : Stewart Copeland)
5. Masoko Tanga

Yours ?


I change my clothes ten times
Before I take you on a date
I’m in a cold sweat, my panic it makes me late
I know you never entered for this
I know
My shots will always miss
My shots will always miss

Does everyone stare this way at you?
I only look this way at you

I change my clothes ten times
Before I take you on a date
I get the heebie-jeebies, and my panic makes me late
I break into a cold sweat reaching for the phone
I let it ring twice before
I chicken out and decide you’re not at home

Does everyone stare the way I do?
I only stare this way at you

I’m gonna write you a sonnet but I don’t know where to start
I’m so used to laughing at the things in my heart
Last of all I’m sorry ‘cos you never asked for this
I can see I’m not your type and my shots will always miss, always miss

Does everyone stare the way I do?
I only stare this way at you

No time this time

One of the first things I am going to do when arriving in London is applying for a membership of BFI, the British Film Institute. Because they are showing a lot of interesting films, because you get discount on a lot of film related stuff, because you get invites for all possible film events, because you are able to buy tickets for the London Film festival before all others, and because they often have very interesting Q & A (Questions & Answers) sessions with directors and actors after showing a preview of their film. And I like films. And I like the extra background information you can get about films when listening to what a director, or actor for that matter, has to say.

And because there works a very nice lady who has just used 10 minutes on the phone to help me out. I called her because I saw that they had a screening of Gideon’s Daughter, a BBC film directed by Stephen Poliakoff, this saturday. After the screening there is an on-stage discussion with writer-director Stephen Poliakoff and members of the cast and production team. One of the two main cast members is Bill Nighy. So I called them to check if he was going to attend on saturday, to participate in this on-stage discussion. And she told me that she didn’t really know, because she was not responsible for the guest list of this event. So I told her that I would jump on the plane and come all the way from Denmark to attend this event, if Bill Nighy was going to be there. She was impressed. Either that or she thought I was a complete lunatic. Which I am, obviously.

She told me to hold the line, and she was going to find out. So I waited. After 5 minutes, she came back to me and told me just to hold on a bit more, she was trying to find the guestlist man. After 5 more minutes (my expectations were skyhigh now) she told me that she was very sorry but unfortunately – Bill wasn’t going to attend this time. Pfew, close encounter. I thanked her a lot for her help.

Better luck next time.

If I could, I’d slow the whole world down
I’d bring it to it’s knees
I’d stop it spinning round
But as it is, I’m climbing up an endless wall

No time at all
No time this time

(Guess a song – I need to find that record tonight)

Right on !

Goodness ! I just got a mail from London – (yes from the job application). Now I still don’t count on getting that particular job at all (and to be honest it is not a dreamjob – but hey it’s a job right) – but the fact that they came back to me, asking me to send a bit more information – I take that as a good sign. At least my CV is not as hopeless as I maybe thought it was.

So her sits one happy girl – with a very big smile on her face – singing along with Billy Mack (and that is a pure coincidence), and trying to keep down the urge of doing a stupid dance right here in my office.

Right

London

Let’s stop loving the stars for a while and write a boring piece about how things are going, with the London project. Well my flat is online now on the real estate homepage. And I actually was considering a little quiz about how many Bill Nighy references you could find on the pictures taken from my flat. But I decided not to. For one because I want to retain that last little amount of respect you still might have for me. But more importantly – this real estate system is tracking the number of visitors looking at my flat, and those statistics would be a bit worthless if people would go click around looking for Bill.

Tuesday will be a very important day. People who seem to be very interested in my flat will come and have a look at it. They are the first people actually coming over and see it. On the internet a lot of people have been looking at my flat, but not much more has happened apart from that. So I am exited, and cross my fingers. I don’t expect the first people looking at it buying it, but if they do I’ll have a big party, and you all are invited.

I also sent a first job application to London a few days ago, I haven’t heard anything yet, so I guess they weren’t interested. At least I have my CV in place now, so now it’s just a matter of writing a lot of applications, and hoping that I one day will be lucky.

At my work the news of my resignation and London move finally has been send out (it still was a secret for anyone except my bosses, and the people I had told anyway …) to everybody. And I have to say that it was nice to be considered cool and funky for a change by my colleagues, in stead of the usual “crazy nerdish dutch girl who loves tv-2 too much”. Life is good.

Kevin Spacey – Cool Cat

Kevin Spacey - Beyond The Sea

Sometimes you run into a movie, and it just blows you away. The Girl In The Cafe was one (oh really ? Yeah you didn’t know that did you) and today I saw Beyond the Sea. And if I didn’t already have a slight crush on Kevin Spacey, I certainly would have one now. Beyond the Sea is telling the story about the life of Bobby Darin, an american entertainer, singer and actor.

Kevin Spacey directed and produced this film. And apart from that he plays the main character Bobby Darin. And Kevin is just as spacey as Bill is, if there is going to be any singing in a film he is in, he is going to do it himself. Resulting in Kevin singing all the songs himself accompanied by a big band, and what a fantastic singer he is ! And if that wasn’t enough to get me glued to the screen, he is one hell of a dancer too. The girl definetely likes actors that can dance and sing well, and are sharpdressed doing it. And actors that are passionate, and Kevin Spacey is one.

It’s not a typical biography film, it’s more like a tribute from Spacey (being a fan of Darin) to Bobby Darin. But absolutely worthwhile seeing.

Robbie Williams go home. Swing with Spacey, then you’re winning.

I know, you want to hear Kevin sing, well go on then:
Beyond The Sea official site

I am ordering the soundtrack as we speak.

Somewhere beyond the sea
Somewhere waitin? for me
My lover stands on golden sands
And watches the ships that go sailin?.