movies: into the woods

How do you get Cinderella, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, Prince Charming, The Big Bad Wolf, Jack (of the Beanstalk variety) and the quintessential fairy tale witch all into one story?

With a magical curse that must be broken before midnight by the cow as white as milk, the cape as red as blood, the hair as yellow as corn and the slipper as pure as gold. And then you send them all Into The Woods.

I will say right off the bat that there's just something weird about the Sondheim style... there's a discordance to a lot of the music that isn't always necessarily bad, but it does stand out and can be a little off-putting and distracting at times. I also feel like this movie and Sweeney Todd essentially have the same musical beats a lot of the time, especially in regards to a lot of the incidental/minor stuff.

However, while this did have a degree of that "singing when you should be speaking" thing that tends to irk me about "modern (non-Disney) musicals", it was much less annoying here, in part I think because of the repetition of lyric beats (and can we just pause here to underline how much I absolutely DO NOT know about music, so I'm going to be making up words left, right and centre) it really worked.

One of the things that does tend to be a problem in this kind of musical, for me anyway, is the lack of actual "songs". More so that because there's so much singing and sing-speaking and falling in and out of songs, I come away from the movie without being about to really distil or remember a beginning to end song properly. There are a couple, but I more remember that there's just a beanstalk load full of singing mostly. And they're not things that you walk away singing to yourself (the only thing I can, once again, think to compare it to are Disney animated musicals... Frozen most recently... there's no equivalent to "Let it go" or "Do you wanna build a snowman")... sure I've got the "Into the Woods" snippet rolling around in my head, but that's literally just the one line.

And it's not necessarily a criticism, more of an observation.

I also knew it was a "dark" story going in... again, the comparison comes back to Sweeney Todd... even though it's fairy tales and you expect it to be all light and fluffy and Disney (and I know, it's released by Disney... so that's just confusing right there)... but it's definitely not that.

As they say at the end of the opening song... "Into the woods, then out of the woods, and home before it's dark!"... and you know then that it's going to get pretty damn dark before they find their way out of the wood.

That was actually one of the things I really liked about the story... they use a lot of the really nasty, horrible things (even though this Disney version did... tidy up the story a little by having some of the characters die off-screen) that happen in the original versions of the fairy tales. Characters get blinded, toes are cut off, the wolf is really damn creepy... and that's while they're mostly still sticking to the pure fairy tales in the first two thirds of the movie. The last third is where the stories "fall apart" from the tales you're used to and things get much weirder.

It's also something of a strange cast. Good, and to a one they handle their singing duties brilliantly, but it's a strange collection of actors.

Just from the movie poster along there's Meryl Streep, Anna Kendrick, James Corden, Emily Blunt, Tracey Ullman, Johnny Depp and Chris Pine.

And I'd just like to publicly apologise to Pine because I just assumed, given the deep, booming and over the top nature of his voice that he'd been dubbed... but if the internet is to believed, it's all him. And it's impressive.

Actually the Agony number Pine has with the very beautiful and blonde Billy Magnussen, as the unfortunately named The Other Prince, was one of my favourite sequences... it's so incredibly over the top and broad and comic. Plus, Magnussen in tight black leather and Pine in somewhat revealing velvet trying to out-Prince each other.

Corden and Blunt are really the emotional thread that runs through the whole story as the childless (and nameless) Baker and his Wife, and they're incredibly sweet together. And Streep is glorious as the witch.

I will say that Lilla Crawford who plays Riding Hood skates just on the line of being overly precocious and annoying... combing that with the fact that Depp is playing the Big Bad Wolf, and I was kind of rooting for the wolf. But there is a degree of humour she brings to her first scene that keeps it on that line and doesn't crossing it to much.

Having read some of the trivia online about the movie it said that Mackenzie Mauzy's Rapunzel subplot was re-written... and they seem to have re-written it mostly out of existence, or at least it felt that way... it's one of the few storylines that really just fizzles out and doesn't properly connect back to the rest of the story.

It is a good looking movie though... from the costumes to the sets to the overall cinematography from Dion Beebe who also shot, amongst other things, the two previous musicals directed by Rob Marshall.

While it does have it's flaws and foibles, its a good musical overall with a decent sense of humour and an emotional undercurrent.

yani's rating: 3 wishes out of 5

following the rabbit saturday shopping

Today mostly revolved around the Follow the White Rabbit art show put on by Espionage Gallery on the island in the Rymill Park.

And it really couldn't have been in a better spot... I didn't even realise that there's a statue of Alice that sits on the hill at the top of the park, and she kept a watchful eye over the exhibition.

Plus the weather was much more conducive to looking at art, especially given that the island is well shaded with big trees.

We started off the day with the usual supermarket wanderings... although I somehow managed to forget to pick up my wallet before we left the house both times. I still had some cash on me, but once that was gone, I was skint.

We also finally got around to taking some of our Christmas goodies to our regular check-out girlie. And essentially the look on her face when Ma gave them to her was more than enough.

Somehow we also got talking about the Fringe while we were at her register, and I really should have little cards printed up that say "you can ask me about the Fringe, but you do so at your own risk, because once I get started you may not be able to shut me the hell up". But she wrote down a couple of my suggestions (Gravity and Other Myths and Sound and Fury), so if nothing else, maybe I've sold another couple of tickets to acts I really love.

Once we'd come back and done the usual unpacking (and I still forgot to pick up my wallet), we headed out to Rymill Park for the exhibition.

Because Espionage worked in conjunction with Splash Adelaide to set up the exhibition, a little like the Ghibli exhibition, there were all manner of other stalls around the lake, and most of them fitting in with the Alice theme, including what I can only describe as a Mad Hatter stall (I wish I'd gotten a good photo of the "hatter", he was definitely a sight to see).


The island looked great... it's not a huge space, but the tree trunks were full of artwork and there was a table all set for the Mad Hatter's Tea Party.

Now, I will admit that Alice isn't really in, as they say, my wheelhouse. When I finally got around to reading the book a few years back (around the time I got my first iPhone actually), and she is the MOST annoying character I've read in a good long while.

And a little like the last Alice inspired show, the fact that Alice is a story about a girl, and most of the additional characters are either women or else animals doesn't always lead to artwork that appeals to me.

But then I saw the artwork by Tsunami Hee Ja...

Sure, they're anthropomorphic boys, but they're boys...

Plus it's an artist that was on my list since I saw her Catwoman work at the Batman show last year... and I will admit that I was especially taken with the March Hare in the middle for some reason.

So now it's mine and I'll be picking it up tomorrow.

There were also all manner of chess pieces with little numbers spread around the island... I couldn't work out what in the world they were for, but it turned out to be something to do with Chesslife, who also had a range of chess sets laid out with all the other stalls.

I'm not sure they'd thought out their plan all that well. You found a queen (they were all queen pieces), took it to them, they recorded the number and then you could either take the queen or rehide it for someone else to find.

So, it was hide and seek, but your prize was essentially the plastic chess piece. Weird, but I found one anyway, and now it's sitting on my "black and white" shelf with all my other black and white things.

Once we'd finished in Wonderland, we had a mostly fruitless wander up Rundle Street, and then up the Mall.

It's very odd, it seems that no where has their post-Christmas stock of Lego sets on the shelves. I don't know if the sets just aren't out yet or what, but it's very, very meagre pickings everywhere I've looked.

Anyway, once we'd had a wander, we headed back to Rundle Street to have some lunch at Burger Theory and check out the Burger of the Month... the Jambalaya Burger chock full of Cajun spices.

As always, the BotM was delicious, but it made me think about (and miss) the pulled pork bun that they used to do at Pearl's Diner before it closed. I fucking LOVED that bun.

Once we were done we wandered back past the exhibition again... I don't know if they're going to get the extraordinary numbers they got to the Ghibli exhibition (partly because I feel like there wasn't as much social media chatter about the exhibition beforehand, but also because it's the middle of January and there are a ton of other things to go and do, whereas last time it was July, which is something of a quiet time of year). But I look forward to being surprised when I go and pick up my artwork tomorrow.

But I can't wait until the next one!

Current Mood:

photo friday: bayside colours

First off, can we just talk about the Oscars for a second. Now normally I don't give two hoots about the Academy Awards, for a while now it's been predominantly made up of a) movies that I have absolutely no interest in (those are usually the ones that end up winning) or b) movies I've already seen.

But the nominations came out today, and there was a glaring omission in the Best Animated Feature Film. There was no Lego Movie. I don't necessarily disagree with any of the other nominations, even The Song of the Sea, which I hadn't heard of until today, has a good pedigree, since I enjoyed The Secret of Kells quite a lot. Maybe The Tale of Princess Kaguya is a little overhyped (I will put the caveat out there that I wasn't 100% when we saw the movie, but like a lot of Ghibli movies, I did find myself falling asleep). And The Boxtrolls was on my top movie list this year, plus HTTYD2 got an honourable mention.

It's the total omission of The Lego Movie that I don't understand. Although as the movie's director, Phil Lord, said on Twitter earlier today:

This is not a tragedy. Congrats to incredible crew and cast of The Lego Movie, who made a classic.
— philip lord (@philiplord) January 15, 2015

He's right, but it does reinforce my view that the Oscars are essentially inconsequential... at least as far as I'm concerned.

Work is all manner of Crazy Town at present...we're nearing the launch date of the major project we've been working on since before I came back, and there's slightly more work than there is time left and it's making everyone a tiny bit nuts. Unfortunately a lot of the stuff that's left are things that we're relying on other, external people to do, so that's always a little bit more stressful.

Fortunately my main task isn't part of that project, so while my direct stresses are a lot lower than the rest of The Nut House, there was something in the air, especially earlier this week, that just put everyone, myself included on edge.

Especially because I had a couple of people requesting a large number of jobs, a number of which were annoying, and one of which made NO sense as written.

So, yeah, I might have had a tiny meltdown a couple of times. Fortunately things calmed down for me around Wednesday.

Next week is going to be... interesting to say the least. Next week's Friday post could very well just be a random assortment of vowel sounds and animal noises.

I also had my first chiro appointment of the year this morning... and while I'd been fine over the Christmas break for the most part, it was still good to have the tune up, even if it did leave me a little bit winded. And I've been getting her to check my elbow each time I've gone in, since she helped me get it in the right place, and continued to ensure it wasn't out of whack since. But today when she checked it, she pronounced it pretty much all better and not in need of a cracking. Which is definitely a relief because having her crack my elbow was always a slightly nerve-wracking thing.

But yay for something that has actually stopped being busted on my body.

Speaking of "on my body" (and a somewhat TMI conversation at that)... I'm not completely convinced about the Andrew Christian underwear I wore today.

As I said last week I think, I bought a bunch of underwear, most of which ended up being jockstraps... but there was one pair of trunks. Turned out when I looked at them more closely, while they were in fact trunks, they just happened to be trunks without a front pouch. They were interesting to wear, except I couldn't every quite forget that... and excuse the TMI... my junk was just hanging out the front of my underwear. I think they may get moved to the "weekend" underwear category.

On a completely unrelated topic... tomorrow is Espionage Gallery's Follow The White Rabbit show in Rymill Park from 10am til 6pm... come along and check out the Alice in Wonderland inspired goodness.

Current Mood:

lego: chima legend beast lion

Up until a couple of weeks before Christmas I'd actually forgotten that the Lego Chima Legend Beast Lion set was waiting for me under Ma's tree, but then I was moving some things around on my bookcase and suddenly remembered (thanks brain for spoiling that semi-surprise).

The set has been sitting on my shelf since Christmas waiting to be put together, and I felt inspired this morning.

I also decided to try sticking a large sheet of coloured card to the wall behind the little table I use to put these sets together. I'm not completely sure how well it worked overall, I think it might have thrown the colour off a little. But it was an interesting experiment.

I kind of took the knolling to a whole different level this time around...although as always, it's not until I'm finished that I remember that I should have done it the other way around so that the picture looks right...

This set comes with the Laval minifigure, and like all the rest of the figures he comes with a gigantically oversized weapon (and a transparent blue shield).

In a lot of ways the build for the lion wasn't all that different from the build on the wolf... although interestingly the ball and socket joints are reversed from the wolf.

And the sets also show off the differences between the wolf and lion body shapes when it comes to the legs... the wolf has much less beefy legs, whereas the lion's front legs especially are quite chunky towards the shoulder.

I also like the "armour" details on the shoulders, both with the grey bricks and the discs.

Other than the fact that the wolf has stickers on his feet, the two sets have exactly the same design for the feet, which makes sense.

I will say that I found it much harder to get this model to balance properly on all four paws. But I did like like this pose, even though the model was still headless, because it felt very cat/lion-y.

I'm not sure exactly what my issue is with the head build on this model, but something just doesn't feel right... maybe it's the square nose, maybe it's the way the mane sits, I'm not sure. I will admit that it looks slightly better once it's on the rest of the model, especially with the whole crouching cat pose.

Click above to see the posts for the other four sets

But five sets later, this is the end of the Lego Chima Legend Beast sets, they've been fun to build and I hope they come up with some other designs... I'd especially love to see a rhino, a bat, a tiger (yeah, I know, it would be pretty much the same as the lion and the wolf, but I have a tiger thing) and a mammoth.

Current Mood:

rainy saturday shopping ramblings

Given that it's almost the middle of January, it was somewhat ridiculous that I left the house this morning in jeans and a hoodie.

But then it was raining all morning long, and on and off the rest of the day.

So today was decidedly a day of indoor things.

We started with the usual trip to the supermarket, but there wasn't much to report that was different to usual... other than the fact that our usual check out girly was back again after having had the last couple of weeks off.

Then it was back here for the unpacking before we headed out to run a couple of errands at the North Adelaide Village... essentially things I should have done earlier in the week but never got around to.

Ma also wanted to pick up some frames at IKEA so we did a very tactical strike visit... firstly we managed to get a car park not that far away from the exit doors, then instead of doing the whole maze, we went in the exit and wandered backwards until we got to the frame section.

Then, using the frames as makeshift umbrellas (they were the big ones), we jumped back in the car and took a drive down to Marion. And once again, the car parking gods were with us and we got a park with very little effort.

There wasn't any specific reason for the trip, although I wanted to poke around a few different stores for different things... most notably the Assassin's Creed special edition from EB Games.... however, while I'd looked at it a number of times online I failed to realise that it was the XBOne edition, not the PS4... and while they had it, it wouldn't have done me much good anyway.

Other than that we found a big mixing bowl to replace Ma's pudding bowl with the giant crack in it and a few other little bits and pieces.

As we were leaving it came time to repay the carparking gods for their earlier generosity, because we had to stand and wait and watch while a couple of stupid cars made life difficult for a seeming endless stream of other cars and generally took up space in the same row we were parked in. Eventually they sorted themselves out, and just to ensure the carparking gods were still on our side, I made sure I pointed out the fact that we were leaving to a car that was stalking parked cars further down the row.

Then we headed down Goodwood Road to Galaxy Toys.

Ma had gotten it in her head that it might be nice to make a couple of the Lego minifig frames for people she knows who have small boys, so we'd actually been checking out Lego all over the place in Marion, but unlike when I was a kid, they don't seem to actually make packs that just contain a bunch of minifigs any more, which is a shame.

I also pointed out to Ma that if she was looking to have six minifigs in a frame, then she'd be looking at at least $30 in minifigs, plus the frame and the plates, so pretty much pushing $50.

Anyway, it was a good excuse to finally set foot in Galaxy Toys, since I keep wanting to have a look, but I just never get there (usually because it's when we're on the way home from Marion and neither of us can really be bothered). It turned out to be a much bigger shop than I expected, but they also seemingly have more Lego sets than anywhere else we looked all day.

We poked around for a while... particularly the Harry Potter wands in the back room... and oddly enough my favourite ones were Hermione, Luna and Fleur, although both Snape and Sirius's wands were also kinda cool.

But we poked around the old minifig sets for a bit, Ma didn't really seem to get anything in the way of inspiration.

I did, however, see that they had the new series in. Galaxy Toys is one of those places that goes through and identifies all of the minifigs so you can go in and buy just the ones that you want... which I pretty much think of as cheating... half of the fun of the minifigs is the thrill of the chase and standing around feeling up little polybags until you know you have them all.

They also seemed to have them slightly cheaper for the whole set than it would otherwise have cost me, so that's a definite bonus.

And while we were there the guy and girl behind the counter were going through a box of the figs and feeling up all the bags to identify what was what and labelling them. So I told my story about standing up on crutches to go through the seventh series, and also helping various and sundry people in Myer at various times.

I think the guy behind the counter was trying to test me, because he handed me a bag and asked me what I thought it was... granted this is literally the first time I'd laid hands on this series, and initially I thought it was the sheriff based on that I thought was his hat, but I kept feeling around looking for either his gun or the 2x2 tile I knew was in the pack, but couldn't find either. I did find something that was definitely a gun though, just not the Wild West gun and after checking out the box again realised it was the Alien Trooper.

So if he was trying to test me, then I think I pretty much passed.

We definitely have to go back at some stage though... it's a fun little store.

When we got to the Greenhill Road intersection and Ma mentioned the H word... that's right, Haighs... if she hadn't said anything out loud then we may have just headed straight back to my place, but she did, so we ended up doing a detour to the factory shop.

And for what may be the first time EVER, when we got there the little car park out the front was entirely devoid of cars. Again, quite possibly the carparking gods were smiling down on us.

It also meant that we were in and out pretty quickly.

That was pretty much it... although when I got home there was a note under my doormat from one of my neighbours apologising for making noise and promising to keep it under control from now on. Sadly it wasn't any of the neighbours that I have a problem with, and while I was kind of aware there was noise coming from that direction, it's at the opposite end of the block and didn't bother me. But it was nice to see at least one of my neighbours being a person and recognising that noise is bad.

If only some of the others took a leaf out of his book.

Current Mood:

photo friday: art rhinos

This just feels weird... with Christmas and New Years being so close to the end of their respective weeks, I haven't actually written a Photo Friday post for three weeks.

Even so I think I managed to cover most of everything that went on during that time in other posts, so we can start fresh with this week. In a lot of ways this week has felt a little bit like a comedy piss-take on a regular week. First we had the weather, which went from hot to very hot and humid to so humid I wanted to slap somebody to cloud and 22.

It got so hot and humid and horrible in fact that I spent two nights sleeping on my living room floor directly under the air-conditioner. Technically it's no drama at all to drag the giant mattress out, but I may still take a look at inflatable mattresses (although I'm guessing the pain in the ass that is inflating them outweighs the benefit of them being easy to move around the place).

Then work started at the rather low-keyness that had characterised the Christmas holidays at the beginning of the week, and then Wednesday everybody remembered that they were actually back at work and hence all decided to send us things at the same time. And yes, after the last couple of weeks, while I would MUCH rather be busy than twiddling my thumbs, it would have been nice to slightly ease into it a little more.

Tuesday was my first Housiversary (well technically Apartmentiversary, but that looks stupid)! It quite literally feels like I've been there for about five minutes, but at the same time I've settled nicely into my groove. Thankfully I don't need to worry about the whole lease thing for another month, since my initial lease was for thirteen months. Hopefully I can talk them into a 25 month lease, or maybe like a 37 month lease. We'll see what happens.

I also dived back into the world of Assassin's Creed over the last couple of weeks, thanks to the copy of Black Flag I got for Christmas. I intend to do a full review later once I've finished it, but I can see why people had good things to say about it when it came out. They definitely threw out a bunch of the stuff that didn't work at all in the previous game and it feels like they've gone back to some of the earlier games to find some inspiration. Granted, the fact that I'm something of a completionist means that at around the half way mark some of the non-story things are feeling slightly monotonous, but I'm still excited to dig back in again.

And I've very much been tempted this week by the slightly cheaper price of the PS4, as well as the Unity game... so far I've resisted since it is a bit of a chunk of change to lay down, but it does keep popping up in my brain.

But on a slightly related note (only because if I don't have a job then I don't have any money and I can't buy all the nice things), all of the contractors in The Nut House (who outnumber the permanent staff about 2 to 1 I think) have been extended until the end of February from the end of January so that La Ninj can do the paperwork to extend us until the end of the year. And yes, I know I've been down this particular path before and it ended in some degree of frustration, but you know, living in hope and all that.

In completely unrelated news I finally got around to start watching Arrow this week... And there is some small element of forcing myself through these early episodes because I know eventually I'll be rewarded by Colton Haynes in tight red leather... but holy crap some of this first season is crap. The whole best friend/ex-girlfriend storyline I could happily live without, and the show seems to have more than its fair share of dialogue that no human person should really be uttering.

Also unrelated, I succumbed to the retail itch that's been rolling around in the back of my head for a few weeks to buy a Nerf gun... not because I have any great need for one, but I have been looking at websites where they repaint the guns and I was slightly inspired. Whether it'll get that far or not, I don't know, but either way, I do like the design of the gun (which is weird because I'm generally not a gun person).

I also got not only my Instagram calendar (which looks great as usual, although I was a little disappointed to see that they've gone from being delivered in a really nice sturdy box to something that seems a little more "temporary", especially as I use the box to collect the pages as I take them off the calendar) this week and the poster print I got for Ma for Christmas (only two weeks late), but also my most recent purchase of underwear from Andrew Christian.

I didn't realise until they arrived, but the underwear is essentially all jockstraps, or at least ass-less in one way or another. It does mean that I really need to sort through my drawer full of jockstraps and throw some of the less comfortable ones (and perhaps the ones that aren't holding up as well) away. But given that I've worn nothing but Andrew Christian underwear for the last three weeks, I have to say I'm impressed with their products overall... especially the way the pouches fit, but also that the fabric and elastic are generally comfortable and don't tend to dig in or pinch like other brands can. Whether they'll be long lasting I can't say yet, since I only bought my first pair a couple of months back, but overall they seem to be doing okay.

Oh, and anybody viewing this on my blog may have noticed that the mood icon images, as well as my link icons up at the top of the banner have all disappeared... I think possibly when the ISP servers melted out in Perth, maybe somehow it took some of my data with it? I don't know to be honest, and I need to contact my ISP to get them to talk me through FTP'ing into my web space, since it no longer works on my new computer... but I'm lazy and it's not a huge priority, but I will get there.

Current Mood: