Woodland walk

Safe community?

Hubby's childhood was spent here:

My sewing machine

Peter & Joan very generously bought me a sewing machine. It was a complete surprise: totally unexpected! I'm dying to play with it now...

Kitten wife

Chinese New Year: Year of the Dragon

We had great fun @ Wagamama last night. A really nice meal and an opportunity to chat with people outside of class.

Sadly, many of the photos were quite blurry due to the lighting and people moving so there weren't many featuring Hubby.

Connery is the best Bond?

People often say this but are they including Diamonds Are Forever and Never Say Never Again?

Never Say Never Again had the worst-ever title song. Worse even than Madonna's... It was one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

Lined winter trousers

These are so warm!

Down jacket

Coupled with hat and gloves, a good down jacket with a water-resistant/proof outer fabric is a fabulous way to stay warm in winter. With a wide variety of cuts available, you can avoid the bulk if you shop around.

Tip: the longer the coat, the heavier it is.

Lightweight fleece

A lightweight fleece worn over a thermal undershirt is great for warmth. These garments can be worn beneath a feather & down coat.

Thermal undershirt

Thermal undergarments are a great investment.

Rab double-pile fleece

This is a must for warmth! The soft Berber pile is really nice and the back has double-thick pile.

Hubby once tried 300 weight polartec and it felt like wearing a cardboard box. This Rab jacket is much better.

George Clooney films we like

1. Solaris (remake)
2. Good Night and Good Luck
3. Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
4. Leatherheads
5. Burn After Reading
6. Intolerable Cruelty
7. The Good German
8. Out of Sight
9. The American
10. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

(Not so keen on: Up In The Air, Ocean's 11, 12 & 13, Michael Clayton, Men Who Stare At Goats, Perfect Storm, Peacemaker, One Fine Day, From Dusk Til Dawn)

Clooney got pretty good once he stopped wobbling his head so much.

Cousin Bette - brilliant!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eahnCKKma08

Films to do with Japan

1. My Neighbour Totoro
2. Spirited Away
3. The Pillow Book
4. The Ramen Girl
5. Lost in Translation
6. Memoirs of a Geisha
7. Rising Sun
8. Black Rain
9. The Last Samurai
10. You Only Live Twice

We have many Japanese-inspired books that offer intriguing glimpses. These films offer some

Enter the Dragon or The Illusionist?

Tai chi has more in common with The Illusionist than Enter the Dragon.

Hubby is not doing spinning kicks or making crazy noises. His teachings are stunningly subtle and require the student to undergo repeated perceptual 'jolts'. It is necessary to drop all manner of bad habits and misconceptions on the road to understanding.

What I like about the teaching is how Hubby does something amazing and then immediately proceeds to show you how to do it too. Yes, there's theory... followed at once by the practical application of the theory. Everything is scientific, clear and provable.

Man of Constant Sorrow

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEy30r74kKU

Moneypenny

I think Barbara Bouchet was the best Moneypenny and Samantha Bond is absolutely the worst.

Etsy

http://uk.etsy.com/

Dawanda

http://en.dawanda.com/

Casino Royale (1967)

This was one trippy movie; with all manner of spoofy touches and lots of Scottish jokes at Sean Connery's expense. Is it worth watching? I guess that's down to you...

Ursula Andress is good, so is Peter Sellers.

Battleship

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/universal/battleship/

After Battle: Los Angeles I don't know whether to risk seeing this...

A Mighty Wind

The Artist

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/weinstein/theartist/

Jack the giant killer

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/wb/jackthegiantkiller/

Hubby is not keen on James Bond films

I quite like Bond films but Hubby finds them to be largely tedious. He liked The Living Daylights and Tomorrow Never Dies to some degree but largely indifferent to the rest...

Recycled Bond extras

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0336509/

Charles Grey played Henderson in You Only Live Twice in 1967, then Blofeld in Diamonds are Forever 4 years later. Confusing.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000833/

Joe Don Baker plays the baddie in The Living Daylights, then a CIA man in the Pierce Brosnan movies.

A Mighty Wind

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JhLuVu-Cho&feature=related

Men in Black 2 was awful, can 3 be better?

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/meninblack3/

Given how bad the second film was, I don't know if I'm interested in even trying the third...

A Mighty Wind

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoCu5w59eiE&feature=related

Pacsafe bags

http://shop.packyourbags.com/acatalog/Pacsafe.html

Pac Safe

http://www.pacsafe.com

Dark Knight Rises

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/wb/thedarkknightrises/

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/focus_features/tinkertailorsoldierspy/

Diamonds Are Forever?

A great song for a truly lousy film.

Connery looked fat, lazy and bored throughout the movie. The sets and decor were so vulgar and the acting terrible. This is 1971 and the world of Bond hits rock bottom. We switched it off less than half way through.

Prometheus

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/fox/prometheus/

Golden Gun

http://www.factoryent.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=408011

On Her Majesty's Secret Service...

What an odd Bond film. It was more like a romantic adventure.

The look of the movie was clearly showing some pre-1970's influences; sleazy, rough, tacky, coarse. Bond reading playboy, the appalling decor, the weird fashions.

Hobbit

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/wb/thehobbit/

Bond - walk and shoot

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IdDl-pHeDw&feature=related

I like Pierce Brosnan's walk-in: very snappy and accurate: BANG! Lazenby was good. Moore looks decisive. Dalton is edgy. Craig is nasty.

Connery is wobbly.

My multi-tool

http://www.leatherman.com/product/Style_CS

Action bits

The action sequences in James Bond films aren't really our scene. We've been known to sleep through them entirely or fast forward...

Wife

Spy shop...

http://www.spyshop.co.uk/

Lost nicknames

http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Nicknames

Green & Blacks

I tried Green & Blacks cooking chocolate in my chocolate brownie. Wow! What a difference it makes. More pricey than normal chocolate but much tastier and you can't eat as much.

Not so secret agent?

If James Bond is a 'secret' agent, why doesn't he disguise his identity or use aliases like the Saint? Instead, he tells everyone his name and acts like an intelligence community celebrity.

Aren't spies meant to keep a low profile?

Star Trek dressing gown?

http://www.find-me-a-gift.co.uk/mens-dressing-gowns-star-trek-captain-kirk.html

Happy New year!

Wonderful Christmas break

I've had a wonderful Christmas break with my hubby. It has been so hard to get out of bed.

Returns

A few of Hubby's Christmas gifts had to be returned by post. It proved rather expensive.

This is the downside of on-line shopping I guess.

James Bond

We've been watching the Sean Connery old Bond films. A lot of people say that Connery is the best Bond, but I think that the popularity of the early Bond films is also due to their overall mood and style. Compared to the 1970's Roger Moore movies, they are so different. A lot more laid back, not quite as corny, slower too.

The Asian Vegan Kitchen

The Food Hospital

The Enlightened Kitchen

Christmas food preparation

Kansha

Darth Vader

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXcoIN6tqXY

A modest Christmas

911

The date of 9/11 is also odd : September 11th 2001.
In the UK that would be 11/9 - nothing significant. In the US it is 9/11. 911 is the Amercian emergency services number.
Is this just a coincidence?
Would Arab terrorists plan an attack on that date just by chance?

I sound like one of The Lone Gunmen now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-1-1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_conspiracy_theories

9/11

The Lone Gunmen pilot episode aired 6 months before 9/11.

Watching it really freaked us out.
The show details how an airliner is piloted into the World Trade Centre. The plane itself is the weapon, rather than a bomb.

It genuinely makes you think "what the h...? "

The darkest hour

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/summit/thedarkesthour/

The Lone Gunmen detailed 911

From Wikipedia:

The debut of the show in March 2001, began with Byers' father faking his death to uncover a conspiracy to hijack an airliner. The Lone Gunmen try to get to the truth of his supposed death and uncover the conspiracy.

One retrospectively interesting aspect of this pilot episode is that the airliner has been hijacked (via remote control of the plane's autopilot) and, by the end, both Byers and his father have boarded the plane to try to stop the hijacking. Through the aid of the other Gunmen, they are able to regain control of the plane and just miss crashing into the World Trade Center with the airliner.

This, of course, was before the actual 9/11 attack against the World Trade Center later that year.

The Lone Gunmen: X-Files spin-off

From Wikipedia:

The Lone Gunmen, a spin-off of the popular series The X-Files, was a television show that aired on FOX, featuring the characters of the same name.


The show first aired in March 2001 and, despite good reviews, was canceled due to a drop in ratings.[1] The last episode aired in June 2001.