Another DVD from Mum’s collection. I love films that revolve around music, and this one is about two brothers, Jack and Frank (real-life brothers Jeff and Beau Bridges), who make ends meet playing piano together, a double lounge act they’ve kept up for over ten years. Frank is a responsible family man and something of a worrywart, who arranges the gigs and looks after the financial side of things; Jack is a sexy taciturn loser who lives in a crappy apartment with his dog, has numerous one-night stands, and goes through life with the general air of not giving a shit about anything. Which is of course an affectation, because deep down Jack really cares about jazz and only looks truly happy when he sneaks off by himself to play at some small club. But he’s just too inert and stuck into the Fabulous Baker Boys routine to change things.
Month: August 2015
Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult – Book Review
Jodi Picoult’s novels are my comfort reading, probably in the same way Agatha Christie’s crime novels are. By all rights I should find them overly sentimental and cloying, but there’s just something fundamentally likable, cosy and wholesome about her style – even when she writes about murder, incest or prison rape – and her strong sense of family and friendship is always very appealing.
Phillip Island
Had a nice getaway at Phillip Island. Yesterday, it rained the entire two hours it took me to get there (managing to drown out Guns N’ Roses at one point), so I didn’t rate my chances for nice walks the next day, and consoled myself with the thought that at least I upgraded to a suite with an enormous spa bath (it was awesome). But miraculously, Melbourne weather for once didn’t behave like a bitch! Still cold and windy, but plenty of sunshine.
The Nobbies is one of my favourite walkways in Victoria. The coast in this area is ragged and dramatic and covered with weird succulent-type vegetation which creates an interesting texture of greens and reds.
I’ve never seen them on the island before, but it must be the time of year for geese. My Mum has horror stories about being terrorised by the village geese as a child, so they make me nervous too despite being like 1/10 my size
So much foam it looks like white paint spillage…
Smith Beach looks nothing like it does in the summer, except for a couple of crazy surfers who’d probably go for a swim at the North Pole too. The nice thing about visiting it in winter is that, when you’re not distracted by the beachy things, you can actually look around the place and notice things you don’t when you’re busy getting a tan.
I like to call the big red rock a Hippo Head
Not to sound pretentious or anything, but I really think that rocks are nature’s abstract art
This was a totally random surprise – I was driving back to Melbourne and made an impulsive turn for something else and found this cute little dock instead
Favourite Rocks
I’ve been lucky enough to see some amazing rock formations on my trips in Australia and overseas:
Delicate Arch in the Arches National Park, Utah, USA
Goosenecks State Park, Utah, USA
Monument Valley, Utah-Arizona border, USA
Wave Rock, Western Australia. Totally worth the 8-hour return trip from Perth.
Cappadocia, Turkey
If you do one hot air balloon ride in your life, this is the place to do it. It just looks like it’s been sculpted by Gaudi.
Purnululu National Park, Kimberley, Western Australia
Moeraki Boulders, New Zealand
Antelope Canyon, Arizona, USA
I can’t believe this place wasn’t even on our official tour itinerary! It turned out to be one of the highlights.
Bryce Canyon, Utah, USA
Or possibly an alien planet.
Remarkable Rocks, Kangaroo Island, South Australia
Remarkable Rocks, Kangaroo Island, South Australia
Twelve Apostles, Victoria, Australia
Well technically not twelve anymore…
The Three Sisters, Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia. It was one of those perfect moments when you arrive at the famous lookout and it looks 100% like it should.
Raft Point, Kimberley, Western Australia
Quote of the Day
Vanity Fair by William Thackeray is one of my favourite novels, and its last paragraph is one of my favourite conclusions to a book.
Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied? – Come children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.
The very last sentence is memorable enough on its own, as it reminds the reader of the theatricality of the whole thing, but what sticks in my mind is how sad the ending actually is. That despite the fact that merely a few pages before we got our supposedly happy ending, complete with the dramatic last-minute dash and declaration of love from our heroine to the man who had hopelessly loved her for years. I love the BBC adaptation with Natasha Little as Becky Sharp (unlike the Reese Witherspoon version, it didn’t sugarcoat the fact that Becky is a horrible person), but I think it loses a lot by skipping over the sadness of the hero no longer caring for his most-cherished prize.
The Last Time I Saw You by Elizabeth Berg – Book Review
I don’t know if it can be called a subgenre, but there’s certainly a kind of scenario that often appears in fiction: a bunch of people with disparate personalities and lives, who share some kind of common past, reunite for an occasion that ends up changing their lives, with revelations and much soul-searching along the way. This book was about a group of former classmates who attend their fortieth high school reunion.
Artwork in progress
It’s been almost five months, but I’ve finally finished the templates for the figures.
It took me a couple of false starts to figure out how to approach this. At first I simply tried tracing the figures in Illustrator, but the original image was too pixellated, so everything blurred together when I zoomed in and I ended up with a bunch of ugly blobs. Then I decided to print out the enlarged figures on A3 sheets, trace over them with a pen, scan the drawings and trace over the pen lines in Illustrator. That resulted in more detailed figures, but they still looked too blobby. So the final solution was to redraw the figures from scratch, so that the planes of colour would look crisp, clean and angular. Sometimes there’s just no taking shortcuts unfortunately.
I am happy with the outcome though, let’s see how long it takes me to actually execute this in fabric! I might have to simplify this if the detailing is too small and fiddly.
Girl, Interrupted – Film Review
I decided to dig into the DVD collection back at my Mum’s house, and watch the ones I haven’t seen yet. First one up was this 1999 film, for which Angelina Jolie won her Best Supporting Actress Oscar, deservedly so. She was easily the best thing in this good but not great movie.
The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin – Book Review
This was the only Ira Levin novel I haven’t read yet, so while I was excited to finally get my hands on it, it’s always a bit sad to come to a point where you’ve read all the books by one of your favourite authors, and there are no more to follow, ever. He’s not Harper Lee exactly in terms of output, but I wish Levin wrote more than seven novels in his lifetime. Or make that six, because while Son of Rosemary wasn’t all bad the ending made me wish I’ve never read it; truly a book to fling against the wall while screaming in rage.
Trainwreck – Film Review
Saw Trainwreck yesterday. It’s been forever since I watched a comedy at the cinema – I think my last one was the first Hangover movie – or a chick flick for that matter which wasn’t a costume drama. This one got good reviews and I’ve been hearing all sorts of raves about Amy Schumer in the last few months on the US-based entertainment sites, so I looked forward to it quite a bit. I walked out with some mixed feelings: while now I’m also happy to jump on the Amy Schumer bandwagon, the movie itself wasn’t as good as its leading lady. I’d go as far as to say it was pretty damn ordinary.
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