The Magic of the Movies

With the afternoon free today Mr G and I took Master F to the movies to see Hugo - a splendid example of film-making that's set in late 1930's Paris.

Armed with 3D glasses, we settled into our seats for a two hour session of visual delights encompassing glorious views of Paris, stunning scenery, old fashioned machinery and a beautiful set of characters that charmed the socks off the three of us. Moreover, it exemplified the passion that can come through a film when the people behind it are truly dedicated to creating something unique and special.


Everything - from the heart shaped key that Isabelle carries as a pendant and the automaton that Hugo is trying to fix; to the splash of character sketches that glide through the air when the children unearth a hidden box - is created with one big dose of love that's often missing from modern day movies.


This is first and foremost a movie about making movies and doing them with such creative charm that they lie embedded in the memory for decades to come. It's also brimming with tons of great British talent - Emily Mortimer, Sacha Baron Cohen, Christopher Lee and a great American actress - Chloe Grace Moretz whose British accent well and truly kicked ass...

I wasn't quite sure how the master of film-makers planned to work the 3D format into his plan, but un-surprisingly it was nothing short of perfect - adding drama, intensity and surprise in equal measures.  As with any 3D movie, I often wonder how they transcribe when they end up on the shelves in Blockbuster and are taken home to be viewed on normal TV's, but can now see that with a great story line, thoughtful and surprising character development and a great big dose of charm (which Hugo has in equal measures) the small screen version will be equally as delightful.

So to summarise, us Greens give Hugo a great big fat 10/10. This movie is a prime example of true cinematic brilliance. But with Scorcese at the helm, it couldn't be anything other than perfect really could it?

Satur-cake-day

My daughter, cake obsessed fraggle that she be has officially declared post-ballet Saturday morning's as goodies time. Now I wouldn't mind this so much were it not for the astronomical, quite frankly ridiculous prices of cakes and coffee in Perth.

Yes we live in the inner city burbs where you can expect the going prices for your beverage of choice and a slice of something fancy to be a little above average, but $25 for 1 x green tea, 1 x coffee, 1 x babycinno and three teeny tiny macaroons? Seriously? That's one hell of a mark up.

Sadly, the lazy baker in me would prefer to pay this than muster up some homemade delights of my own (which would most probably be inedible anyway) so I should probably zip it and suck it up. Alternatively I should head more often to Dolcetto - a reasonably priced cafe, sporting THE most amazing cakes known to man. Angela - we'll be in for a visit soon!

http://www.dolcetto.net.au/

Fabulous Feist

Dan and I donned our finest festie gear again last week and headed to the Perth Museum for the Laneway Festival - a veritable treat of talented artists belting out some great songs on a sunny saturday arvo. Despite feeling old and not quite trendy enough (grrrrrr), we had THE best time - including a performance by Feist that will go down in history as my best live music experience yet.
Laura Marling is such a sweet, delicate little flower but man alive that girl can sing! Her voice is so pure and natural and I loved the way she looked up to the sky when working those vocals. Can't wait to get the album now...yet another great British artist doing something brilliant.

The finest point of the day was of course listening to Leslie belt out her tunes. They started out with The Bad in Each Other which made me a little bit giddy, followed by some new tracks from the new album Metals and some classic old tunes. She is officially the coolest rock chick on the planet. Am seriously considering learning guitar (hello Glenny!) so I can get that riff going...
Check the live version out on Jools: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnj8_aDBJT8

I'm back....

Well that was one long big break....after returning to the wonderful (albeit slightly stressful) world of work, blogging sadly took a backseat. So the new plan is to write once a week with a mixture of musings from Green family life, Perth experiences (the good and the bad) and hopefully the odd self-made photograph too. And by that I mean pics that have been technically considered with the Nikon beast and aren't simply a quick spin of the instgram wheel.

Those damned iphones make things so easy...

Things I'm looking forward to this week: getting back to work tomorrow after a week-long chest infection, dinner with the Green team on Friday night, a few sneaky macaroons after ballet on Saturday morning, more of mum's homemade lemon cake, oh and the Laneway Festie! I finally get to see my heroine Leslie Feist. 1,2,3,4....here we come :)