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Contrary to every single romcom set in Ye Olde Englande, it really doesn't snow here very much at all.
Yep, we're on the same latitude as Moscow, but thanks to the lovely gulf stream, it mainly rains. A lot. All winter (and all of last summer, too.)
In fact, large chunks of the northern hemisphere would find it extremely funny quite how unprepared for the slightest hint of snow most of the UK is (back in January 2003, people got stuck in their cars on the M25 for about 8 hours. It was insane.).
So this afternoon, when it started snowing, everyone went a little bit snow-crazy. Howling freezing gale? check. lots and lots of cold wet stuff? also check. And it actually settled, for once. We don't really get 'snow days' around here, as a rule. For one, hardly anybody lives so far out in the sticks that they literally can't get out of the house. For another thing, all the bus routes get gritted, and you'd be hard pressed to be that far from a bus route in this part of the world (whether the trains will be working tomorrow will be something else entirely. Apparently we have very temperamental train lines...)
It's still snowing now, and has been mostly all night. The street outside is glowing vivid orange under the streetlights and it's curiously bright outside for gone midnight. The Doodle Dog has seen snow lots of times (it settled heavily quite late spring last year after we got him, and it was snowing when we first saw him at Easter in the rescue centre) and so has Kitten, so i guess the novelty is about to wear off right about the point when i have to start battling into work tomorrow.
Snow doesn't.. settle in the City so much; its mostly just cold and slushy and wet. Yuck.
Elsewhere, I'm mostly totally geeking over Lost. Fabulous, fabulous stuff, and there is so little decent TV left to watch these days (I'm down to sky-plussing ER, Psych, Brothers & Sisters, and BSG now. Which is just sad - it's January; prime TV season.) I'm trying to gee myself up to watch BSG and not succeeding, so far. I know what happens, and it's just too damn depressing right now...
Mostly, it's all just winding down to the end - the last season of ER (Abby leaving was so damn nostalgic), 8 eps of BSG left, the last few Daisies to watch at some point, the last part of Prison Break later in the year and... Well, 34 eps of Lost to go. I'm gonna miss that the most.
'What You Left Behind' was wonderful, geeky stuff; 'The Lie' was heartbreaking, and after accidentally reading a couple of tidbits for 'Jughead', I couldn't even wait 4 days for Sky to show it. And then I watched it on TV again tonight, and then hit the net for spoilers because I absolutely couldn't bear the thought of Charlotte dying and breaking Dan's heart. Gah. I'm such a sucker for hopeless ships.
But it was all such good stuff - Desmond and Penny (cue dreadful Brit accents from most of the supporting cast, ick) plus baby Charlie :o) And then Dan had messed up some girl's brain (oh she of the dreadful Mockney peroxide sister) and apparently knew the annoying 1954 Ellie from somewhere, and then declared undying love for Charlotte (oh she of the timetravel nosebleeds) right before going to defuse the nuclear bomb... I love that Lost is completely mental, all the time. And now I have to go sleep.
What I shouldn't have done tonight was watch Hitman. Horrible stuff - a nasty rip off of the Dark Angel opening plus a stupid version of the Transporter 3 plot, but with 94 per cent less fun stuff. Every single female in it was mostly naked and/or a hooker, and after seeing T-Bag and Desmond playing ker-razy Russians with bad accents, my brain wanted to explode.
Good stuff, recently - Frost/Nixon was a gorgeous, funny, dark and slightly eccentric battle of wits ("I used to love cheeseburgers!") that was far, far more entertaining than I expected.
(nb: my brain cannot cope with trailers for Frost/Nixon and Underworld 3 in the same ad break. Yes, Michael Sheen is versatile, but I can't but think the universe will implode or something)
Slumdog Millionaire - well, Danny Boyle is not my favourite director, but this was gold. Dickensian nastiness, some gems of child actors, genius camerawork and cinematography and the darkness balanced with the ultimate hope that destiny is writing the ending for you. and Indian Millionaire! And the little Eastenders breakdown! And a rather fabulous dance sequence over the closing credits, in what turned out to be one of the scenes of the Mumbai terrorist attacks last year.. Loved it.
Australia, much as I wanted to give it a go, turned out not to be good stuff. It was muddled and so, so ridiculously long, and did Baz even watch African Queen before he kept comparing this to it?! I love Baz Luhrman, I really do, but this was a misfire - I genuinely did want to know more about the Darwin bombings, but the constant clunky harping on about racism undermined everything else. The narration, for one thing... Whale Rider works, beautifully, with Keisha Castle-Hughes narrating, because it's Pai's story, and Pai's story is ultimately her whole family's story. Australia doesn't know who's story it wants to be, and it's really not Nullah's enough for him to narrate. Sarah, maybe, would have been a smarter choice, as she's the one who changes.
But instead we get the loony tunes version to start with, lots of (quite frankly patronising) 'ethnic' lecturing. Honestly, it gave me the creeps. Australia still has major problems with attitudes towards aboriginal people (literally from what I've witnessed myself recently) whatever the situation is, and I didn't feel comfortable watching something 30s set that wanted to use 30s racist slang and still lecture about the Stolen Generation, while also wanting to claim that Aboriginals can.. stop bullets? There are films that put a lot more thought into how Australia really was, and is - Rabbit Proof Fence addresses the Stolen Generation; Jindabyne has the modern culture clash, and even 10 Canoes had a wide release last year.
Maybe it's just me, but the historical situation, and the reality of what exists today, deserves more than the endless cartoonish mess Australia ended up being. People kept trying to stand up and leave, only to realise it wasn't even nearly over, and I honestly walked out feeling like I'd been beaten around the head with a didgeridoo for 3 hours straight. But I will still say that the scene where Nicole Kidman tries to describe The Wizard of Oz is the most acting she's done in years, bless her...
Yep, we're on the same latitude as Moscow, but thanks to the lovely gulf stream, it mainly rains. A lot. All winter (and all of last summer, too.)
In fact, large chunks of the northern hemisphere would find it extremely funny quite how unprepared for the slightest hint of snow most of the UK is (back in January 2003, people got stuck in their cars on the M25 for about 8 hours. It was insane.).
So this afternoon, when it started snowing, everyone went a little bit snow-crazy. Howling freezing gale? check. lots and lots of cold wet stuff? also check. And it actually settled, for once. We don't really get 'snow days' around here, as a rule. For one, hardly anybody lives so far out in the sticks that they literally can't get out of the house. For another thing, all the bus routes get gritted, and you'd be hard pressed to be that far from a bus route in this part of the world (whether the trains will be working tomorrow will be something else entirely. Apparently we have very temperamental train lines...)
It's still snowing now, and has been mostly all night. The street outside is glowing vivid orange under the streetlights and it's curiously bright outside for gone midnight. The Doodle Dog has seen snow lots of times (it settled heavily quite late spring last year after we got him, and it was snowing when we first saw him at Easter in the rescue centre) and so has Kitten, so i guess the novelty is about to wear off right about the point when i have to start battling into work tomorrow.
Snow doesn't.. settle in the City so much; its mostly just cold and slushy and wet. Yuck.
Elsewhere, I'm mostly totally geeking over Lost. Fabulous, fabulous stuff, and there is so little decent TV left to watch these days (I'm down to sky-plussing ER, Psych, Brothers & Sisters, and BSG now. Which is just sad - it's January; prime TV season.) I'm trying to gee myself up to watch BSG and not succeeding, so far. I know what happens, and it's just too damn depressing right now...
Mostly, it's all just winding down to the end - the last season of ER (Abby leaving was so damn nostalgic), 8 eps of BSG left, the last few Daisies to watch at some point, the last part of Prison Break later in the year and... Well, 34 eps of Lost to go. I'm gonna miss that the most.
'What You Left Behind' was wonderful, geeky stuff; 'The Lie' was heartbreaking, and after accidentally reading a couple of tidbits for 'Jughead', I couldn't even wait 4 days for Sky to show it. And then I watched it on TV again tonight, and then hit the net for spoilers because I absolutely couldn't bear the thought of Charlotte dying and breaking Dan's heart. Gah. I'm such a sucker for hopeless ships.
But it was all such good stuff - Desmond and Penny (cue dreadful Brit accents from most of the supporting cast, ick) plus baby Charlie :o) And then Dan had messed up some girl's brain (oh she of the dreadful Mockney peroxide sister) and apparently knew the annoying 1954 Ellie from somewhere, and then declared undying love for Charlotte (oh she of the timetravel nosebleeds) right before going to defuse the nuclear bomb... I love that Lost is completely mental, all the time. And now I have to go sleep.
What I shouldn't have done tonight was watch Hitman. Horrible stuff - a nasty rip off of the Dark Angel opening plus a stupid version of the Transporter 3 plot, but with 94 per cent less fun stuff. Every single female in it was mostly naked and/or a hooker, and after seeing T-Bag and Desmond playing ker-razy Russians with bad accents, my brain wanted to explode.
Good stuff, recently - Frost/Nixon was a gorgeous, funny, dark and slightly eccentric battle of wits ("I used to love cheeseburgers!") that was far, far more entertaining than I expected.
(nb: my brain cannot cope with trailers for Frost/Nixon and Underworld 3 in the same ad break. Yes, Michael Sheen is versatile, but I can't but think the universe will implode or something)
Slumdog Millionaire - well, Danny Boyle is not my favourite director, but this was gold. Dickensian nastiness, some gems of child actors, genius camerawork and cinematography and the darkness balanced with the ultimate hope that destiny is writing the ending for you. and Indian Millionaire! And the little Eastenders breakdown! And a rather fabulous dance sequence over the closing credits, in what turned out to be one of the scenes of the Mumbai terrorist attacks last year.. Loved it.
Australia, much as I wanted to give it a go, turned out not to be good stuff. It was muddled and so, so ridiculously long, and did Baz even watch African Queen before he kept comparing this to it?! I love Baz Luhrman, I really do, but this was a misfire - I genuinely did want to know more about the Darwin bombings, but the constant clunky harping on about racism undermined everything else. The narration, for one thing... Whale Rider works, beautifully, with Keisha Castle-Hughes narrating, because it's Pai's story, and Pai's story is ultimately her whole family's story. Australia doesn't know who's story it wants to be, and it's really not Nullah's enough for him to narrate. Sarah, maybe, would have been a smarter choice, as she's the one who changes.
But instead we get the loony tunes version to start with, lots of (quite frankly patronising) 'ethnic' lecturing. Honestly, it gave me the creeps. Australia still has major problems with attitudes towards aboriginal people (literally from what I've witnessed myself recently) whatever the situation is, and I didn't feel comfortable watching something 30s set that wanted to use 30s racist slang and still lecture about the Stolen Generation, while also wanting to claim that Aboriginals can.. stop bullets? There are films that put a lot more thought into how Australia really was, and is - Rabbit Proof Fence addresses the Stolen Generation; Jindabyne has the modern culture clash, and even 10 Canoes had a wide release last year.
Maybe it's just me, but the historical situation, and the reality of what exists today, deserves more than the endless cartoonish mess Australia ended up being. People kept trying to stand up and leave, only to realise it wasn't even nearly over, and I honestly walked out feeling like I'd been beaten around the head with a didgeridoo for 3 hours straight. But I will still say that the scene where Nicole Kidman tries to describe The Wizard of Oz is the most acting she's done in years, bless her...
