Category Archives: films

benjamin button

08 Sunday Feb 2009

Posted by in films, food & drink, friends

≈ 20 Comments

the-curious-case-of-benjamin-button

Banal, boring and waayyy too long …

As I have mentioned here on many occasions, there is only one cinema here in Sevilla that shows films in their original version (not dubbed into Spanish) so there is usually a very limited selection of English films. So imagine my surprise when I saw that there were four films in English showing this weekend that I’d heard good things about: Benjamin Button, Revolutionary Road, Frost/ Nixon and Doubt.  And then early yesterday afternoon I got a message from Flor, inviting me out to a movie and asked me to choose between Benjamin Button and Frost/Nixon (she’d already seen the other two) … and, just like always happens with supermarket queues, I chose the wrong one!

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girls’ night out

11 Sunday Jan 2009

Posted by in films, food & drink, friends, photos, restaurants, sevilla, tapas

≈ 13 Comments

toast

The other day I saw that there was a chick flick on at the cinema – in English! – and asked Pipocas if she wanted to see it. So we made plans to go on Saturday (last night).  Then it occurred to me that not only was I going out to the cinema (something I don’t think I’ve done since before my first operation last May) but I was also going out on a Saturday night and that it was going to be a girls’ night out…

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surf the channel

02 Tuesday Dec 2008

Posted by in films, internet, media, television

≈ 6 Comments

television

surfthechannel1-2

The other day my friend Kristin suggested I try out surfthechannel to find a new tv series she had recommended. So I checked it out yesterday and it looked like a fabulous idea, but upon using it I have found a few annoying glitches.

STC doesn’t stream videos or host content and so the videos available are hosted and shown from sites such as Y! Video, Tudou & Megavideo. I’ve tried all three. Tudou has massive subtitles in Japanese that take up almost a quarter of the screen, Y! Video has serious buffering problems and Megavideo limits your viewing time to 70 minutes – if you want to continue watching you either have to wait an hour or else pay a monthly fee (10€ a month). Also, if you click to full screen on any of them the image goes all pixillated. It’s a shame because STC has a massive library that includes films, cartoons, sports, etc.

Has anyone else tried STC?

Looks like it’s back to adding to my Amazon wish list …

it was 20 years ago …

25 Monday Feb 2008

Posted by in culture, films, health & happiness, life stuff, rants

≈ 13 Comments

mystic_pizza.jpg

. . . that I first saw this film.

A very charming ‘coming of age’ film about three teenaged girls (played by Julia Roberts, Annabeth Gish & Lili Taylor) in the small town of Mystic, Connecticut. And I had vague memories of really loving this film a lot.

Got to watch it again yesterday as it was being shown on tv on Sunday afternoon . . . and I loved it all over again.

But something really niggled. which I know is one of my pet niggles . . . and that is about how women portrayed in films twenty years ago actually got away with having real women’s bodies. I mean, okay, Mystic Pizza was a small indie low-budget film and not a big-time Hollywood film, otherwise this may not have been the case. But man, there was ole Julia (I think it was her first film role) showing a lot of big sexy butt and voluptuous curves, and Annabeth and Lily also looked like … well, like normal women do when wearing trousers. Like, no three inch gap between their thighs. And all scenes showing any of them in a sleeveless top or dress also showed quite attractive and normal looking upper arms, not pencil-thin sticks protruding out of bony shoulders… it was really refreshing to see this for a change.

Well, refreshing and also sad to think of how things are now. Ah well…

An excellent film – does anyone else remember it?