Friday, July 29, 2005

Melinda and Melinda



I actually saw this film a couple of weeks ago in the Taliesen Arts Centre, I had read a few fairly negative reviews which claimed the film was mediocre proof that Woody Allen was no longer capable to produce a witty screenplay with snappy dialogue in a similar vein to Crimes and Misdemeanors or Bananas.
This criticism is perhaps justified to an extent but Melinda and Melinda was always doomed to seem second rate because Woody isn't actually in the film, Will Ferrell is however fairly convincing as a surrogate Woody/Chevvy Chase type. I read on IMDb that Winona was originally cast for the title role and Robert Downey Jnr. was offered a part too (as Sveigny's husband, the profligate school teacher?) but they were both too expensive anyway.
The protagonist's life story is played in two different scenarios. Melinda is
either a 'tragic' paranoid, neurotic wino or 'comic' ie. a bubbly, romantic and vapid ditz.
Neither version of Melinda is particularly sympathetic but 'comic' Melinda is marginally less irritating than the former and has much better hair. Radha probably does well with the script but the characters overlap a bit too much for the film's central tenet of a divided personality to be fully convincing. This may be intentional as the film's underlying message seems to be that lfe is either comic or tragic depending
upon individual interpretation of life events.
The glass is either half full or half empty.
Sveigny basically carried the movie in her role as a wronged housewife and Park Avenue princess. I do have a soft spot for her anyway because she's so interesting to watch
and is also the only woman to make me want to bleach my hair and dress solely in varying shades of pastel and beige.



Thursday, July 21, 2005

Petnapping and its terrible consequences.

During my lunch break I overheard this story on radio four and it really made me laugh, this makes me a very bad person.

The radio broadcast was about the recent surge in petnapping (by this I mean people stealing other people's pets, to sell, vivisect, etc.) the program was pretty boring but I was midway through a cheese and onion toastie so I decided to listen to it anyway. This incredibly annoying upper class, Kensington lady was droning on about her Staffordshire Bull Terrier being stolen from her back garden. The wrought iron fence being 5 ft high, this was the only explanation as to why the horrible creature was missing - there's no way its stumpy legs could have propelled it that high into the air. The devastated woman spoke about her vain efforts to find her beloved pet, putting up posters, phoning the local vets, she even set up a website for Pippy.
The website and posters were partially successful as the dog owner received lots and lots of phone calls from people claiming to have found her dog, however all leads (pun not intended) turned out to be false. Then one day, a new post arrived on Pippy's website which the lady eagerly opened only to discover, to her horror that the new lead to Pippy's whereabouts was actually a picture of the dog. Someone had doctored the poster of Pippy,he now had a pair of bloodied devil horns sticking out from either side of his head and Nicole Kidman's face!!

Genius.






Monday, July 11, 2005

News and Views

Such a lot has happened since my last post it's difficult to know where to start. Here's a brief outline of the weekend's events...

Whilst working in the shop selling flip flops, sun tan lotion and beach balls to hordes of American, Spanish and Italian tourists I heard on the news about the London bombings which resulted in frantic phone calls to London based friends over my lunch hour; they were all ok.
Of course, the bombings meant that Mega-Bus wasn't running properly and in addition to this we were warned on the news not to travel in or out of London until the situation had calmed down. This scuppered our plans to meet up with Aussie Scott and to attempt to drink in all the places on the London Monopoly board (presumably Scott's plan didn't include the 'Jail' destination) on Saturday as a lot of the pubs were located in the affected areas.

As an alternative we bought train tickets to Bristol but a by some bizarre twist of fate ended up at an International food festival at Cardiff Milennium Centre where we ran into our old Uni housemate, Jon, who was selling cheese (his parents are cheese farmers). I had a great time eating overpriced veggie burgers and drinking German lager whilst laughing heartily at drunken office workers attempting to dance with a group of kids to a soul band specialising in Otis reading covers. It was so much fun that we went back again the next day and somehow I managed to spend £150 in two days - with only a pair of Mexican earrings to show for it - and they only cost a fiver?!?
We did also manage to make it to Chapter Arts Centre for a yummy curried chicken and mange-tout stir fry. I'm on that fusion cooking vibe.




Above: Alex enjoying the German lager at Cardiff's International Food Festival.

Saturday, July 02, 2005

See-Food

This seafood in the market always looks pretty tasty...

The Tour

Not that I'm particularly interested or excited by watching sweaty men cycling but it seems it is that time of year again and my boyfriend is glued to Sky Sport in the hope that Lance Armstrong will win again - this is after all the last race he is competing in.

Last year we went to Paris with his family for the last leg of the Tour which was a gruelling experience for all involved for various reasons. It wasn't entirely horrific however because we found a bar serving over 500 different varieties of beer from all over the globe - you could literally drink your way around the world if you had the stomach for it! We didn't get there until after two in the morning and the bar closed at four but we gave it a good shot anyway.

I finally went to a little Vegetarian sweet shop in the Upalnds today which specialises in traditional Indian sweets. Surprisingly filling but quite tasty even though the different flavours are quite similar and always involve carrots and almonds in some way. Not necessarily a bad thing.

Friday, July 01, 2005

Drunken Ramblings

Fairly wasted due to a little too much cider and wine but satisfied with vegetarian shepherds or 'gardeners' pie(not cottage pie as had been previously assumed).
Unsure why my photos are not showing but it's pretty annoying.
Dab is up for grabs. Dab sucks ass.