Tuesday, October 18, 2011

War Horse in London

Wouldn't it be great to see this - need to be in London though. The life size puppets of horses are awesome.






Check the website. London National theatre


Postcript -  The movie is due to be released in Brisbane just after Christmas 2011 - and I note that an Australian horse trainer was used to train the key horses in this film.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Where's Colleen?

It was good to see the interview on Channel 7 tonight, with Colleen McCullough.  Despite her health challenges she's still on fire - and I love her laugh. 

She's still hard at her writing - and clearly she is still loving life over there on wonderful Norfolk Island.   You should be able to watch the interview here.

Remember Thornbirds?  There's a few videos on Youtube to bring back memories. 



Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Hugh Jackman singing in Chinese???

I set out to see the movie "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" - in part because it was a Chinese story, and I love reading or watching stories about China.  I'd not seen any publicity about it other than a rather off the cuff remark by Hugh Jackman in a recent interview, and I couldn't see the connection with him a such a movie.  As it turns out he does not appear until near the end of the movie.

The director of the film was Wayne Wang also the director of films such as Joy Luck Club, and starring actors Bingbing Li, Gianna Jun and Vivian Wu, who were unknown to me, and surprise surprise, with his listing (in order of appearance) well down the list as there were many others who appeared before him.

I thought the acting was excellent, and the drama's of 19th century China with the apalling tradition of binding the feet of little girls, so that they would make better prospects for marriage made one wince more than once as you almost endured the pain of the binding with the little girls. 

I loved the colour, and the scenes of life in China, with spectacular colour of traditional clothing.  Modern Shanghai was on show - and brought back quite a few memories for me. 

I'd recommend the film - I guess it will have less appeal for guys, it's not a 'girly' film, but women would appreciate the elements of the friendships of the women. 

An interesting aside is that Wayne Wang was born in Hong Kong and was named after John Wayne.


Go see the movie!!