Cade and I saw Return of the King tonight.
Was very good.
Was very long.
I didn't find the spider scary. I found her utterly horrifying.
I had to concentrate hard not to grip Cade too tightly and cut off his circulation.
I told Cade that nobody is allowed to mention spiders in my presence for at least the next week.
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
Blogger Adverts Are Far Too Clever
My goodness gracious!
Only a few days ago I wrote something about Cornettos, and now I look at my blog page again, and there are advertisements at the top for stuff for making ice cream!
Blooger.com is SO quick at jumping on the hot topic and finding an ad to fit it.
How do they do it?
Why do they feel the need to make life scarier than it already is?
Here are the ads...
* Ice-cream Machine
Thousands of items - low prices Buy & Sell on eBay here!
* Softserve Ice Cream Mix
4¢ oz, Delicious, creamy, we export Shelf stable. Make 100 flavors.
Only a few days ago I wrote something about Cornettos, and now I look at my blog page again, and there are advertisements at the top for stuff for making ice cream!
Blooger.com is SO quick at jumping on the hot topic and finding an ad to fit it.
How do they do it?
Why do they feel the need to make life scarier than it already is?
Here are the ads...
* Ice-cream Machine
Thousands of items - low prices Buy & Sell on eBay here!
* Softserve Ice Cream Mix
4¢ oz, Delicious, creamy, we export Shelf stable. Make 100 flavors.
Monday, January 19, 2004
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
Ice Cream Advertising
At my Newtown bus stop this morning, at the stop near the Martin Luther King/Aboriginal flag mural, I saw a bunch of posters stuck on the walls advertising Streets Cornetto Ice Creams.
Someone, perhaps a student who's a fan of Adbusters, had stuck a smaller printed poster over one of them, which said "I've seen too much poverty in Sydney to care about what you are advertising". Which is fair enough.
But underneath that, some thoughtful soul had used a big black marker to point out that "Poor folks love ice cream".
How thoroughly true!
I know that someone on a budget would probably head for a humble Paddle Pop rather than one of those toffy-nosed Cornettos, but ice cream is ice cream.
I was truly touched that someone cared enough to step in and defend poor dear sweet lovely ice cream.
Yes, lovely, lovely ice cream.
Someone, perhaps a student who's a fan of Adbusters, had stuck a smaller printed poster over one of them, which said "I've seen too much poverty in Sydney to care about what you are advertising". Which is fair enough.
But underneath that, some thoughtful soul had used a big black marker to point out that "Poor folks love ice cream".
How thoroughly true!
I know that someone on a budget would probably head for a humble Paddle Pop rather than one of those toffy-nosed Cornettos, but ice cream is ice cream.
I was truly touched that someone cared enough to step in and defend poor dear sweet lovely ice cream.
Yes, lovely, lovely ice cream.
Friday, January 09, 2004
Hitchcock
I watched an old Hitchcock film this week called Sabotage.
It was one of his very early British ones.
It had some good scenes, and one absolutely excellent one.
There's a scene that goes for about 10 mintues, and it was done so well.
Was wonderfully suspensful.
Here it is, for your reading pleasure...
The bad guy has to get a bomb into the middle of London on behalf of foreign terrorists. He's being watched, so he can't take it himself. He tries to get other people to take it, but it doesn't work out. Finally, the only person he can get to take it is his wife's young brother. So he tells the young boy that it's a roll of film (they all work in a cinema) and that he has to take it into town and drop it off at 1:30pm then come home.
The bomb is set to go off at 1:45pm.
So the boy runs off, with the package under his arm.
The scenes of the boy running the package through town go for about 10 minutes, so it gets quite tense, waiting to see what happens with the bomb.
He is trying to get there fast, but he gets held up by a toothpaste salesman who forces him to help demonstrate the effectiveness of his toothpaste for a crowd of people.
The boy gets away after a few minutes and starts running through more people trying to hold him up, till he runs into another crowd. Turns out a parade is coming by. He can't get through so he watches the marching bands pass by, until it ends with a royal carriage, hurrah!
He runs off again, with some difficultly getting past the bustling crowds.
He realises he's going to be late, so he jumps on a bus.
He sits down, and starts watching a puppy the woman next to him is holding.
There are more close ups on the package.
And close-ups on clocks showing it's almost 1:45!
Oh no!
The bus keeps getting stopped at red lights.
The boy gets a bit worried, because he knows he's late.
More close-ups on the package.
Close-ups on the boy. He looks around a bit, wondering how long the bus is going to be stopped at this red light, then smiles at the cute puppy again.
Then a clock shows 1:45 o'clock!
Another close-up on the boy.
Nothing has happened.
While I'm watching this I'm waiting for the police or somebody to rush on the bus or something.
Another close-up on the boy, looking around, seeing the red lights.
Then there is a HUGE close-up on the hand of a clock.
It ticks from 1:45 to 1:46.
And BOOM!
The bus blows up!
OH My GAWD! Oh NO!
I was quite taken aback.
Hitchcock very rarely killed off sympathetic characters in his thrillers, though he did sometimes do it in his later horror-type films, like Psycho and The Birds and Frenzy.
But in most of his films the good characters usually survive.
At the end of the movie the bad guy's wife finds out what he did to her little brother, and they end up having a bit of a knife fight in the kitchen.
Bad guy gets it in the stomach.
The end.
It was one of his very early British ones.
It had some good scenes, and one absolutely excellent one.
There's a scene that goes for about 10 mintues, and it was done so well.
Was wonderfully suspensful.
Here it is, for your reading pleasure...
The bad guy has to get a bomb into the middle of London on behalf of foreign terrorists. He's being watched, so he can't take it himself. He tries to get other people to take it, but it doesn't work out. Finally, the only person he can get to take it is his wife's young brother. So he tells the young boy that it's a roll of film (they all work in a cinema) and that he has to take it into town and drop it off at 1:30pm then come home.
The bomb is set to go off at 1:45pm.
So the boy runs off, with the package under his arm.
The scenes of the boy running the package through town go for about 10 minutes, so it gets quite tense, waiting to see what happens with the bomb.
He is trying to get there fast, but he gets held up by a toothpaste salesman who forces him to help demonstrate the effectiveness of his toothpaste for a crowd of people.
The boy gets away after a few minutes and starts running through more people trying to hold him up, till he runs into another crowd. Turns out a parade is coming by. He can't get through so he watches the marching bands pass by, until it ends with a royal carriage, hurrah!
He runs off again, with some difficultly getting past the bustling crowds.
He realises he's going to be late, so he jumps on a bus.
He sits down, and starts watching a puppy the woman next to him is holding.
There are more close ups on the package.
And close-ups on clocks showing it's almost 1:45!
Oh no!
The bus keeps getting stopped at red lights.
The boy gets a bit worried, because he knows he's late.
More close-ups on the package.
Close-ups on the boy. He looks around a bit, wondering how long the bus is going to be stopped at this red light, then smiles at the cute puppy again.
Then a clock shows 1:45 o'clock!
Another close-up on the boy.
Nothing has happened.
While I'm watching this I'm waiting for the police or somebody to rush on the bus or something.
Another close-up on the boy, looking around, seeing the red lights.
Then there is a HUGE close-up on the hand of a clock.
It ticks from 1:45 to 1:46.
And BOOM!
The bus blows up!
OH My GAWD! Oh NO!
I was quite taken aback.
Hitchcock very rarely killed off sympathetic characters in his thrillers, though he did sometimes do it in his later horror-type films, like Psycho and The Birds and Frenzy.
But in most of his films the good characters usually survive.
At the end of the movie the bad guy's wife finds out what he did to her little brother, and they end up having a bit of a knife fight in the kitchen.
Bad guy gets it in the stomach.
The end.
Thursday, January 01, 2004
2003 Australian Music Charts
Cade found me the Australian music charts for 2003.
The singles chart is a bit sad methinks. Some okay songs surrounded by a fair bit of crap. Topped off by Guy Sebastian singing what must be the sappiest number one single in history. Barf!
The album chart is interesting. It's definitely a big mix.
* Lots of compilations of course, from Cher to Barbara Streisand, The Bee Gees, Elton John and ABBA (Australians are so daggy).
* REM's new compilation is at number 38, yay!
* New albums by Tony Bennett (with kd lang) and Rod Stewart (all the way up at number 18!) are there, shock!, gasp!.
* There are 21 Aussie albums, which seems decent I guess. Though almost half of them are from John Farnham, Delta Goodram, Australian Idol and Kylie.
* I was very pleased that Jamiroquai is there again, even though his last album was initially released in 2001. Good for him.
* And Dido got to number 11. I didn't want her to be a one album hit wonder.
If you take out the compilations and the crappy pop (I don't mind the likes of Avril Lavingne at number 3, but Hilary Duff is just sad and bad, even though she's down at 74 it's not low enough), you're probably left with two dozen good new albums.
Here are the links....
Top 100 Singles 2003 - Australia
Top 100 Albums 2003 - Australia
The singles chart is a bit sad methinks. Some okay songs surrounded by a fair bit of crap. Topped off by Guy Sebastian singing what must be the sappiest number one single in history. Barf!
The album chart is interesting. It's definitely a big mix.
* Lots of compilations of course, from Cher to Barbara Streisand, The Bee Gees, Elton John and ABBA (Australians are so daggy).
* REM's new compilation is at number 38, yay!
* New albums by Tony Bennett (with kd lang) and Rod Stewart (all the way up at number 18!) are there, shock!, gasp!.
* There are 21 Aussie albums, which seems decent I guess. Though almost half of them are from John Farnham, Delta Goodram, Australian Idol and Kylie.
* I was very pleased that Jamiroquai is there again, even though his last album was initially released in 2001. Good for him.
* And Dido got to number 11. I didn't want her to be a one album hit wonder.
If you take out the compilations and the crappy pop (I don't mind the likes of Avril Lavingne at number 3, but Hilary Duff is just sad and bad, even though she's down at 74 it's not low enough), you're probably left with two dozen good new albums.
Here are the links....
Top 100 Singles 2003 - Australia
Top 100 Albums 2003 - Australia
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