Devil's Horns

Back in Burton-upon-Trent, we walked along a path and those trees (?) were reminding me of the devil's horns (spiky!!).

Edit: Ok, they do not look at all like devil's horns, more like pitchfork maybe... anyway, there is something menacing about them... :)

Zimm.

The 6th picture of the most recent folder

Hi,

just to accept Emsoe's Challenge about finding the 6th picture of the latest folder on my computer.
I opened one of the latest folder and I found one picture in it... so that was it :)


Zimm.

Ze birdy

A bit of artwork, now and again, will not kill anyone. I don't usually draw because, let us face it, I can not, but this time there was a little girl who was asking for drawings so I joined the group and created this little Ze birdy.

Manor Outdoor

Some pictures from the Manor and its outdoor features. First is the front entrance by this bright sunny day.
Second is a yellow flower growing a few yards away from the main path (don't ask me the name though...)

Match Point

Match Point is directed by Woody Allen, and stars Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Emily Mortimer and Scarlett Johansson, amongst other. A young tennis trainer (Jonathan) starts training some rich banking guy. He subsequently meets the sister (Emily), parents, and then fiancée (Scarlett) of this rich guy. He starts dating the sister, and slowly progresses into the father's business. Very quickly, it shows that he is very interested in the fiancée.

The acting is quite interesting, Jonathan plays this character, constantly on edge, twitchy, crazy guy, but also very smart. He is a great manipulative character and gets his way, or sort of. The all movie is about relationship, betrayal, love, murder. I think one can recognise the style of Woody Allen in this picture. It is a good movie, which I would recommend to probably anyone as it is not too disturbing, though quite weird stuff :)

Zimm.

Million Dollar Baby

I watched this movie recently, starring Clint Eastwood and Hilary Swank. Clint plays a boxing trainer who is over careful with his current trainee which makes the trainee leaves him. Then comes along this girl (Hilary), thirthy-ish old, who wants to be trained by Clint. He refuses at first, but finally accepts. From there, a father-daughter/lover relation starts, so does the success of Hilary's boxing. Getting better and better, she starts fighting the Champions around the world... until something goes wrong.

First, I thought the movie was fantastic, 9/10. The acting is good, it's Clint, playing as Clint... I guess one either does or does not like his style. The picture is excellent as well, there are good visuals about this movie. However, all along the movie, one does wonder when something will go wrong, because it is simply going to well. I was a bit shocked how bad it went...

Would I recommend this movie, Yes, to anyone, No. The last third part of the movie is rather depressing.

Zimm.

Cut grass

Ahhhh, that was nice this morning on the way to work, the nicest scent I can think of around this period of the year: the smell of freshly cut grass. It might sound weird, and I would not want to bottle this scent for future use. The reason I find it nice is that it is strongly associated with Spring and later Summer time.
Yes, we are approaching Spring!! Yepiiiiii. Motivation boost.

The Pink Panther 2

Yeahhhh, that was good.
There seems to be a lot of criticism about this movie because it is not as good as the earlier ones (with Peter Sellers). I have not seen the earlier ones, so I can not compare, but with an absolute judgement, can I say it was good fun? Yes I can. It was good fun. Steve Martin might not be as good as Peter Sellers in the role of Inspecteur Cluzeau, but I don't think it matters. S.Martin is good enough to make one laugh, so job done! The gags are not of great sophistication but I felt that they worked.
I would recommend it to people who do not necessarily expect anything huge, rather a nice easy movie with a few nice gags, and a bit of absurdity.

Tcho,
Zimm.

Shrek

We recently watched the three Shrek movies in a row. It was rather fast, roughly 4h30.
I am not going over the synopsis because I suppose everybody knows what it is about and if not, check www.imdb.com and look up for Shrek.
Rather, I will comment on the movies and their quality and whether I enjoyed it or not.
Shrek is an "ugly" ogre, but considering he is an ogre, he is not bad looking :). I thought that the first movie is really more for the kids, there are not so many references to other movies, or "adult" jokes. I found the two other movies a lot funnier, probably due to these jokes and other clin d'oeil. The other thing that is markedly different is the animation details. Shrek 1 is a lot less detailed that the other. That's not suprising considering it was made way before the other 2, and even more its time, it was really great. The two subsequent movies show more colours, more details, more little things that one might not see the first one watches the movies, but there are there.
All together, they are great movies, funny, clever and well animated. And having Rupert Everett voicing over the Prince Charming is delightful!

Tcho,
Zimm.

Some new pictures

Hello there, just to let you know there are some new pictures on FlickR
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zirf/

G.