intouchables

 Last night Mystery Guest suggested going to the movies, I'd like to see Tintin but refuse to see anything in 3D and the times didn't work out anyway. He had heard about Intouchables, French movie that had just come out and looked good.

I haven't written about movies much in the last couple of years, there have been some good ones and some absolutely horrible ones but this one blew my mind.

It was funny, touching and from the first scene you were in the movie. Here's the trailer, I won't say anymore :) 

vroom vroom

Last night Mystery Guest and I celebrated the fact that I finally passed the dreaded code... step 1 of getting my French license! Today I went over to the auto-ecole to drop off my paper saying I passed and to see about getting a date to take the driving exam.

It works a little differently - heck - totally differently if you're talking about the license process! But the driver's ed teacher wants me to do an hour or two more before the exam to make sure I'm ready. The cool thing is that they will pick you up from the train station to do your driving practice. So the week before I'll be doing 2 night drives, hope the sun will still be up! Hate driving at night... boo just realized that...

Then I asked when the first testing date would be, October 27th. My. Birthday. LOL! How 16 do I feel right now? Good thing is that if on the driving practice he thinks I'm not quite ready it will just push back the date by 1 week, but what a great birthday present that would be! When she said that I was reminded of this scene...



Let's hope I won't be that blond!

I've been looking for cars online now, leboncoin here I come! Any suggestions? I'm looking for something not more than 5,000e obviously with not too many km and diesel would be nice but not necessary. I see all the French brands but have no clue where to start...

Polarize

Playing with my new iPhone app: Polarize... puts your pictures into polariod form - too fun!

workin' workin'

Things are busy busy, we're working on the house as much as possible. Got the floor all nailed down yesterday. All of the plywood sheets that will be used as the floor upstairs all had to be put into place, cut to size and then screwed down - every 30cm. That was up to me and Mystery Guest. I went ahead and drilled little holes to make it easier to put the screws in and then he followed me with the battery powered screwdriver. That is a lot of screws people! It was nice and hot too so I'm beyond golden brown these days lol.After all that work on the house we ran home, got showered and decent and drove up to Cherbourg to go to the movies. There are 2 movie theaters in Cherbourg, one big multiplex which shows mainstream movies (and always dubbed) and a smaller one in the center of town that shows more artsy movies and sometimes subtitled. We were lucky enough for them to be showing Inglorious Bastards the same week it came out - in English! I'm sooooo glad we got to see it in English, we were cracking up at Brad Pitt's accent when no one else was and got some good comic relief from that :-)
All in all it was an excellent movie! Normally I'm not a huge fan of Quentin Tarantino's movies just because usually they are uber violent and that comedic violence of Kill Bill just doesn't do it for me... But this movie was just amazing, I think Christoph Waltz stole the show from Brad Pitt, he was unbelievable! Anyway go see it for yourselves :-)

It's Sunday and the weather is beautiful but we're happy to stay inside and veg a bit after cooking in the sun yesterday.

And I'm realizing that in just over a week I'll be going to my first office job ever.. hello! Talk about a big change coming up!! But I'm switching over to a new cell plan with BoogeyTel (that's how I like to say Bouygues) with 3G for my little iPhone so I'll be all connected while training it to Caen 5 times a week... :-)

Public Enemies

Tonight we went out for some sushi and to go see Public Enemies. The sushi was excellent and the movie was well.. ok. The sound in the theatre was too low and it's never good to strain to hear a movie that and the filming was really weird. Half the time it felt like a documentary... with a slapstick editing job. Both of us felt the time drag on which is never a good sign. I did leave for a minute to ask the guy to turn up the volume but it didn't seem to change much.
That said maybe if you had a better sound system (by the way the soundtrack was excellent! I love Billie Holiday!) you might enjoy the movie a little more...
We also decided to go out to celebrate the official purchase of the land that will soon have a house on it! Mystery Guest signed all the papers and is now fully in debt but is now the proud owner of a huge chunk of land. My offer still stands for anyone wanting to show a little muscle and come help us out the beginning of August... any takers?? :-)

baby blanket

A good friend is expecting #2 the end of April and so last month I decided to make a little something for the new one. They don't want to know if its a boy or a girl so I thought I was getting some gender neutral color but now I think its a bit too blue so I'm hoping for a boy! I guess I could always stitch a little pink flower or something if I need to :-)

Anyway this blanket is probably the biggest (size wise) project that I've finished, its about 1 meter square. I wasn't a big fan of synthetic yarn but I thought for a baby blanket it could be really good to have something you can throw in the wash and not have to think about it. Anyway I thought it came out pretty good. I have some left over yarn that I think I'll try making some baby booties out of for another friend who is indeed expecting a little boy (also the end of April! - what happened 9 months ago?) and then I might finally start on some socks for me.. maybe :-)

Oh and I've been meaning to post a little review:

Twilight - fun, got to see "home" and not just a teeny bopper movie, worth watching & good story (I've never read the book).

The Watchmen - big thumbs down, got bored, cheezed out and didn't follow the story well. I think you would have to be a die-hard fan to enjoy it (never heard of it until seeing the movie...)

Gran Torino

Wow.

That's all I can say. Mystery Guest and I just got back from Gran Torino, what an amazing movie!

The story was powerful, the acting amazing (despite the dubbing...) and Clint was just... unbelieveable. I don't want to say more because I wouldn't want to give anything away but if you have seen it let me know what you think!

England Day 3

Our last day in England was a long one! We woke up to a few snowflakes falling which motivated us to get out and see the slights and get onto the main road just in case it started falling heavier - we didn't want to get snowed in somewhere and miss our ferry! So we drove to the next down over, Tintagel the legend- wait for it -dary birthplace of King Arthur and walked around. It was raining just a little bit as we walked down to the castle ruins but we got some good views of the rugged coast and marveled at how the would have built a castle perched on those rocks... We continued our little hike up to the old stone church and then back down into the village. It was quite touristy but being a Sunday in February most of the little kitchy shops were closed up. We decided to visit the King Arthur's Great Halls but we had to wait 40 minutes for them to open so we went down to a pub to get a tea and warm up. The visit was very well done, really impressive and apparently the modern building is used in different films and tv shows to represent King Arthur's court.

We didn't get to spend long in Cornwall, but it would be a lovely place to visit in the summer, you can really feel the Celtic roots in the town names and landscape, it really is sauvage out there. But we wanted to escape any risk of snow so we made our way back to Exeter to search out the mysterious Apple store. We finally found it and Mystery Guest went in to drool while I made a beeline for the Gap store and its big sale sign ;-)

I've been looking for new jeans since the beginning of the sales and have yet to find a pair in France that fits me! So frustrating! I did find a pair at the Gap that I liked and the price really wasn't bad with the weak pound so I grabbed a pair! Yea! Mission accomplished. I picked up Mystery Guest (Appless, sadly) and we stopped in a grocery store to pick up some cheddar before heading out. Big hunks of delicious mature (sharp) Cheddar, 2 for about 8 pounds. Considering we pay about 15e a kilo in the supermarket I'm fairly sure we got a good deal. Anyway yummy!

We drove out of Exeter along to the coast via Exmouth but the weather was terrible, very windy and rainy so we saw the beautiful seaside towns from the car. Neither of us had the courage to venture outside!

It was only 4:00pm by the time we got to Poole and the ferry wouldn't board before 10pm... I would have liked to see what Poole's port looked like but it was just too nasty out. In the guidebook they talked about a shopping/bowling/cinema complex outside of town so we went there. We killed some time with a movie (He's just not that into you) which was actually very well written. It was the only showing that would work with our schedule but both of us really liked it. Then we looked around for dinner. When we stepped out of the theater I felt like I was back in America, hearing American English (without subtitles) for 2 hours and then seeing TGI Friday's, KFC and other American chains I had to remind myself that no, this was not Kansas toto! Mystery Guest and I decided for a Mexican restaurant where I got my fix of a delish quesadilla with guac, sour cream and spicy salsa. I also got a side of refried beans... I was in heaven! (side note, anyone know how to make refried beans? I'd love to try to recreate those at home... can't be that hard, Mystery Guest said it tasted like Cassoulet..)

We ducked in a little casino and bet away about 40p in small change.. I think we won back about 12 or 14p... haha.

Then we caught the ferry, paid extra for a cabin because of the exhaustion of the day and arrived early this morning at 6am in Cherbourg!

It was such a great weekend getaway, so glad we were "forced" to go because of our non refundable tickets :-)

the dark knight

Last night I went to go see the Batman: The Dark Knight with Mystery Guest and his two brothers who are in town for summer vacation.

I really really liked it, the story was excellent and Heath Ledger was amazing as the Joker (which blew me away, I would have thought that I might be disappointed with his performance after hearing all the hype) but for some reason the dubbing really bothered me. I don't know why, I've gotten so used to seeing films and tv shows in French that after the first five minutes I don't even notice. Something was just off though, I had a really hard time getting into the story and that really bugged me. But at least I saw it on the big screen, now I can watch it at home in English and enjoy it all over again ;-)

kung fu fighting!

Last night Mystery Guest and I went out for a little sushi and a little movie - Kung Fu Panda. It was so fun! I really loved the animation, the landscapes were stunning! The story was cute and it was just funny, a feel good movie :-)

I can't waaaaait for Batman to come out in France! Why did they not release it at the same time??? Usually blockbusters like that are all at the same time... I'll just have to wait I guess...

welcome to the sticks

CNN is doing a week-long report called "Eye on France" and there is a funny interview with Danny Boon on his film Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis.

His English is quite good and he is really funny - I love the part where he jokes around about being a porn star because its the only thing that he hasn't done yet!

Anyway the clip is interesting because he sold the rights to the film to Will Smith who is going to make an American remake - Welcome to the Sticks.

I'm curious to see where that will go...

dans le sud

I got back on Tuesday from a wonderful trip down to the South to visit a friend of mine. Since I didn't have vacation in April (I decided to work for some extra cash-ola) I took a few days before the exams while my students are doing their study week. While Miss A. was working/in class I had a little adventure in Arles/Avignon one day and Carcassonne the other. I've never been south of Lyon (except a day and a half in Nice) so I was excited to explore something new but always happy to come home to Normandy :-)

I'll just leave you lovely readers with this video :-)



PS. Indiana Jones so not worth it! Don't waste your money... :-)

for the bible tells me so

Yesterday I was reading a post a friend put on her blog. It was about the documentary For the Bible Tells me So. I had never heard of it but after doing some poking around on the internet I managed to watch it and I have to agree, it was an amazing movie.

Dealing with such a hot topic this movie managed to show a side that was not constantly a "put down." The strongest message I felt was to be open minded and to use your noggin. I think the biggest dangers are believing in something because someone else tells you to and following blindly in something. I think these messages spread beyond what is discussed in the film.

I wish a movie like this would have come out when I was in high school, I saw so many people just following what so-and-so says just because they said it. It was so horrible to watch such smart people be so close-minded. I like the way the film presents things in a heartfelt manner, it doens't seem to be "we're right and this is why" but rather lets look at both sides - at all people - and then look at some logic behind it. It is dangerous to put labels on anything or anyone, history has shown us that.

Why are we still doing it today?

One of my favorite clips used in the movie was this one, I like smart comedy :-)

Iron Man

Yesterday was a quiet day, the coast was socked in by the fog almost the whole day so Mystery Guest and I stayed inside and got some work done.

Today, however, we need a break and with the sun out and shining we drove over to Cherbourg and did some running around. Got ID pictures taken conform to the new regulations (for his carte d'identite and my carte de sejour), some stuff at the grocery store and an awesome new phone for Mystery Guest from Lidl. (did I ever mention how Lidl rocks my socks????)

Then we went out for some sushi and a movie. Went to go see Iron Man. I'm always a bit skeptical of action movies, but to be honest it was so fun! Robert Downey Jr is great in the role, adding a bit of comedy and his quirky nature :-)

Ca$h

Mystery Guest and I decided to go out on a Saturday night for a little date night, we went to go see Ca$h. It was really fun, reminded me a lot of Ocean's 11 - the same style, music and theme of big slick crooks. The story, however, was quite different and kept you wondering what would happen all the way through. I can tell you that I never would have guessed the end! Those are my favorite kinds of movies, the ones that keep you on edge and surprise you with the final scene :-)

chez les ch'tis

Ok, I still have a ton I want to write about Venice but I've been busy at work the last two days, so I'll hopefully get to it soon...

In the meantime Mystery Guest and I went to go see Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis tonight after some friends highly recommended it and it rocked!! I loved loved it! After I got more used to the accent it was hilarious and not just a movie that used some loose story line to put in a million bad jokes, but really cute.

Makes me want to go to Lille... maybe... :-)

walking tongue?

On all the bus/tram stops in Caen there is this ad plastered everywhere, I couldn't find it on google images but the one we have actually has this little tongue that has its own elephant-like feet. It is too weird and creepy... I'll have to see if i can take a picture of it, has anyone else seen it??

In other news Mystery Guest and I went to see National Treasure: the Book of Secrets. I loved loved it!! It had the same spirit of the Indiana Jones movies with the historical suspense of the DaVinci Code (book, not movie!). I thought it was excellent.

Junebug

Just got back from Juno, I loved, loved it! Thanks Sam for the recommendation. Plus the music rocks :-)

movies...

Ok 2 very very different movies, but 2 thumbs up from MilkJam! :-)

cinema

Last night I saw le Coeur des Hommes 2 which I really enjoyed. As my friend so perfectly put it at the end of the movie "Its like Sex and the City with guys."

tee hee maybe that's why I liked it so much ;-)