Home-made takeaway and movie night

For dinner this evening, we had Thai chicken burgers and kumara chips.

The big boys are now watching The Incredibles while eating apple and rhubarb crumble that I just made.

Once they go to bed we are going to put Weekend at Bernie's on for a comedy night. This is because I heard a comment by Christopher Pyne during Parliament Question Time this week referring to Julia Gillard as being like Bernie Lomax ie. a puppet of the faceless men.

The Ukulele Orchestra were great last night. More on this later...

Thursday Muppets

Today I took my boys to see the new Muppets movie while Rosie was at child care. Very enjoyable, not least because it was a break from the frequent toilet trips we have been enduring at home over the past few weeks while toilet training has been in progress.

Rowan fed before we left home and then was kind enough to sleep through the whole movie with only a couple of fidgety moments.

This song is in the movie but I won't give away any more than that. Go and see it if you can, it has nice moments for both the kids and adults. Even a couple of tear-jerking moments for me (how embarrassing...).

Edited to add...the line in this song that goes "Have you been half asleep...and have you heard voices?" takes on a whole new meaning when you have small children...

I just saw an ad for the movie Happy Feet 2

Rated G....but with "very mild sense of threat."

What does that mean, I wonder?

Holiday movies and other random life stuff

The boys are very excited about this one (opens here on Boxing Day). They borrow TinTin DVDs from our local library on a regular basis. Nerdy, I know.

Not sure what the movie will be rated though...

Not much else happening here. Last week of school with the round of busy-ness that involves. My (teenaged) nieces are staying with us for a few days to help take care of Rosie now that Chris has gone back to work. We sold our car (the CRV) so the funds from that will be nice to have before Christmas.

Saw a house for sale over the weekend that we didn't mind the look of, and that suits our new larger family size slightly better than our current place. It's being auctioned next Saturday. That's not great timing so we're trying to work out whether to do anything about it or not. Do we like it enough to put in the hard yards of organising finance etc in the middle of our sleep deprived state and the last week of school festivities? I'm not sure...

Movie night: Gnomeo and Juliet

On Saturday night we had a picnic dinner in front of the TV and watched a family movie on DVD together, Gnomeo and Juliet. Harmless enjoyable entertainment. Lots of Elton John music (he's the executive producer) so that's a warning if you're not a fan of his stuff.

We were explaining to the kids that it's loosely based on Shakespeare's play called Romeo and Juliet and how there were some similarities (for example, that the two families were at war with eachother, that there was a love story etc etc).

Liam, our little history buff, was full of questions the next day, as he tends to be once he's had a chance to think about things. First, he asked what country Shakespeare was from. That was pretty straightforward. Then he asked how they acted out the scenes in the play where the gardens were getting destroyed by oversized lawnmowers and crazed garden gnomes.

So then we had to explain that the original play wasn't actually about garden gnomes at all.

Six year olds are pretty funny sometimes. We had a little chuckle to ourselves after he asked that one.

Panic at Rock Island

Between us, Chris and I watched this movie on Sunday night. "Between us" means that I watched the first bit while Chris was tidying up the kitchen, then I dropped off to sleep and he filled in the gaps of what had happened when I woke up again ten minutes before it finished.

For those who might have missed it (and really, it wasn't the greatest movie), it's an Australian telemovie about a highly contagious killer virus that spreads like wildfire through a music festival on Rock Island (I think it might be called Goat Island in real life?) in Sydney. You could probably have slept through the forty five minutes I missed and not really missed all that much.

We were having a half-hearted debate about what kind of movie it was. Sci-fi? Thriller? Horror? Combination of the above? My position was that it was more science-fiction based, but Chris was of the belief that it would be entirely possible for a killer virus to strike (think SARS, swine flu, Spanish flu, Hendra virus etc etc).

I don't know. I have no doubt that killer viruses exist, but I think I'd prefer to believe they would spread far more slowly and be far less infectious than the Rock Island variety. Obviously the fast incubation period and easy spread from person to person that we saw on the TV was necessary to provide the most shock value for the prime time viewing audience. But I'm not up on the latest viral mutations either. Chris works in higher levels of health management than I do. It seems that in higher echelons of health services, they do sometimes talk about this kind of adverse event as a distinct possibility. That's a bit scary to think about.

The cast read like a roll-call of television actors from every single Australian drama series of the past twenty years. And I wasn't sure about Grant Bowler in the lead role. In my mind, he's become a bit too ingrained as a television show host/commentator to seem very believable as an actor anymore.

Babies Documentary

This movie was reviewed by Margaret and David on At the Movies last night. It looked interesting, but then I am someone who finds babies and infant development fascinating from a professional viewpoint (and once my own babies were through those first few months where it all just seemed like a hard slog, I found it was also personally quite rewarding to see them growing and changing).

I'm not sure it's particularly representative of cross-cultural family-infant relationships. But who really cares? The babies are cute to watch. The opening scene of this trailer with the two babies playing together was pretty funny.

Jason and the Argonauts

Last night after I finished watching an episode of the DVD series I have on loan from our local library, we were flicking around the television stations and discovered the 1963 movie of Jason and the Argonauts on ABC2.

When we tuned in, this scene was in progress. Apparently this was one of the earliest special effects movies. Fairly impressive for the times.

We didn't manage to make it to the end where he finds the Golden Fleece, but we did see Jason and his crew saving the blind guy from those creatures that attacked whenever he tried to eat food. And the bit where he talked to the Hera figurehead from the boat was pretty funny too.

Probably a bit too frightening for our kids right now (both with vivid imaginations when it comes to scary creatures) but might be a good one for the future.

The King's Speech

Chris had a day off today (my last official day of maternity leave...I start back next Thursday) so because we were child-free during school hours we went to see The King's Speech. I've been wanting to see it for a while.

Because we went to a morning movie session, there were lots of older people in the cinema with us. It's been a while since we were the youngest people in a movie so it was interesting listening to the conversations around us. I heard one old guy behind us asking at the point where Colin Firth was getting ready to give the big speech and Helena Bonham Carter was giving him a last kiss and a few words of encouragement, "That's his wife, is it?" Given that that was at least three quarters of the way through the film, I'm not sure who he thought she was before that. Amusing though.

It was kind of interesting watching the therapeutic relationship between George VI and Lionel Logue develop through the film. Unsure how true to real life this was, but it seemed to evolve beyond a professional-client partnership into a friendship. That hasn't ever happened for me as a professional (in fact, I've probably always viewed that as being a bit questionable ethically) but I guess their relationship could never have really been a conventional one given the status of the client involved.

I think Chris would have preferred to be out having a surf at the beach because it's been a very warm day here, but since I am an early-bird beach-goer who doesn't like being out there once the heat of the day kicks in, I was more than happy to sit in the cool air-conditioning and eat a choc-top ice cream. Yum.

Movie Review

Today while Rosie was at child care, I took the boys to the movies. We saw Tangled. I enjoyed it but it probably wasn't that memorable. At the beginning I was having doubts but it improved as it went along. Plenty of chasing action and bopping people over the head, which is always what the boys say they like the best after animated movies. I don't think they were so keen on the romantic storyline, but I enjoyed that bit. Rapunzel's hair was impressive.

I'm glad I have a few more years of going to see children's movies, it's always interesting seeing what the kids find funny. I wish they were cheaper though. $34 for the three of us seems an exorbitant amount to pay, particularly when we are reaching the point at which one income is probably not quite enough to afford luxuries like trips to the movies. I keep telling myself it is only another few weeks until I go back to work and then it will all be okay.

Embarrassing confession

One of my favourite ever movies is Apollo 13. It was repeated again on television last night.

I always cry at the end when they make it safely home. I don't usually get too emotional about films so it's a bit strange that I cry at this one. Even having seen it at least ten times, and knowing that they get back to earth safely, I still cry. The music is very stirring and it's something about all those people celebrating their safe return that brings on the tears, I think.

Weird, isn't it?