New Title! And it's Easter!

Vera                                            Alice

As you may have noticed, we've changed the title of the blog so, hopefully, there's less confusion about Vera and Alice.

If you want to check out the story of their relationship with me, and with each-other, it's in this post here.

The address is still the same, that's "http://veras-monkey.blogspot.co.uk" - but if you've got us on a bookmark (or favourite) you won't need to type all of that in.

Some of Google's "tubes"

Did you know that the "http" stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol? It tells your browser (Firefox, or Internet Explorer, or whatever) that it's to translate the file it finds, at the rest of the address, into a web page, 'cause it's written in "html", which is Hypertext Markup Language.

And if you want to know what that looks like, take any web page, and right click on anything that's not a link or image, and select "View Page Source." Looks like a load of old goobledygook? Well, it will, if you've not learnt how to write it. But the magic thing is that it's all in unformatted text, which takes up hardly any room at all in the "tubes" (actually wires and cables) of the internet, so it travels nice and fast between one server and another. Images, however, are a whole other kettle of fish. . . Alice wrote a "technical digression" about such stuff in this post here.

And now it's Easter! Alice says it's vulgar to use so many exclamation marks - in the heading too - but I think it fits the feeling. My feeling, anyway. I love the fun, the eggs, the chocolate bunnies, the flowers.

Of course if you're a Christian, then Easter is about Jesus rising from the dead - as several other gods are reported to have done, by the way.

But for an atheist, like Alice (though she believes some quite way-out stuff too) or a bit of a pagan like me, it's a very ancient feastival [that was a typo, but I think it should stand!] about the goddess Oestre, fertility, the Spring, and new life of all sorts. Hence the various celebrations.

Equinox, was it?

Well, it was supposed to be the first day of Spring here on the 21st of March.

I was fooled in the morning, as you can see, because the sun was shining and the tulips in our window boxes were actually starting to open - well, most of them, a few are clearly past all revival.

But it's been bitterly cold since, with yet more snow in lots of places. Not to mention the "wind chill" factor!

Alice says that astronomically speaking it is the start of a new season, because this is the Equinox. That means "equal night", when the hours of day and night are equal. It's all to do with the tilt of the earth's axis relative to its orbit round the sun. She found a diagram to make it clearer. I think it does, if you imagine you're looking down on the earth from somewhere over the north pole, with the two extra globes seen from the side, as it were.

Open the image in a new tab to see it properly. Or try this article if you're still puzzled.

Astrologically, Alice points out, we're into the first sign of the Zodiac. That's because the sun appears to be in the 30 degrees of the sky assigned to Aries. [Yes, yes, we know that the actual constellation is no longer in that relative position, but that's not the point!]  

Drawing up a horoscope is a Science, which is why it can now be done by computers, rather than by working out on paper lots of complicated sums based on the Ephemeris (a kind of railway timetable of the planets). It's the interpretation that's an Art. The question of whether it works is based on thousands of years of observed correlations! See also this response to the scoffers and sceptics.
 
How it works is the question for Philosophy.

See a fascinating article on this $64,000 question by the great modern astrologer Robert Hand, and follow the links to his others, if you're curious. We do like to be provocative!

Winter is coming ... back

No, we don't mean the current weather in Scotland, even though the forecasts have been for yet more snow, and it's not at all Spring-like. Alice had some brave bulbs sprouting in her window boxes, but they all got buried and almost frozen to death. Happily, when it thawed, most of them seem to have recovered and are still doing their best to come into flower. Brrrrr... It's been right old two-hot-water-bottle nights for us lately! As you can see, I've got my furs ready too...

No, we're talking about the return of HBO's marvellous Game of Thrones, a superbly produced serialisation of G R R Martin's fantasy epic, A Song of Ice and Fire. In all senses of epic, too, at five books in seven volumes, with another one or two still to be written! We've mentioned it before, as we're both great fans.

Series Three is about to hit the TV screens accross the globe.  That's if you've got yourself a satellite dish and subscription to Sky, of course. We don't, but rely on babysitting the grandchildren in a fully equipped household. (The haunting background music to the trailer above is Bones by MS MR.)

Winter is Coming is the motto (or "Words") of House Stark, and the winter they're talking about might last for more than a generation. Jon Snow (right), a bastard Stark, is properly kitted out as a member of the Night's Watch in the far North - filmed in Iceland. HBO spares no expense!

King Monkey on the Iron Throne

The series is all about seven rival Houses warring for the Iron Throne. A bit like Wars of the Roses, but with magic involved as well. It's a terrific story, full of twists and turns, with fascinating characters who are all complex in their own way. (Just like me!)

If you Google it, you'll find umpteen more sites and videos to give you the idea.

Alice lent her box set of Season One to a friend, who was so taken with it she watched it twice over, and then sent off for her own copy, plus Season Two. We're catching up on that one now, in preparation. So watch out, you might get hooked too.

Don't forget to click on the images to see larger, or open in a new tab for full size.

Yet MORE marvellous movies! 
 [UPDATED 10 MARCH & 19 APRIL 2013]

Well, the Oscars have now come and gone, with no great surprises. But there have beeen several cinematic treats since then: To the Wonder, Cloud Atlas and Stoker have all wowed us!

Claudia Winkleman and Danny Leigh do a great job on Film 2013: their views are often in sharp contrast, and they joke about with each-other, so it's always enjoyable and interesting. A shame BBC iPlayer only gives it a week of catch-up time. However, they both somewhat disparaged To the Wonder in their review.

We really liked the film. The "Wonder" in question was first glimpsed as a red rose in the frost, atop Mont Saint-Michel. Alice says it also symbolised the initial ecstasies of "being in love", which fade when love is perceived as not fully returned. I've never gone in for all that sloppy stuff myself, so I can't comment.

Parallel with the story of the lovers, we also have Javier Bardem as a priest struggling with his faith, "What is this love that loves us?" yet still managing to preach and visit the needy. (A role reversal from that figure of doom he played, together with a gruesome haircut, in No Country for Old Men.) The beauty is also contrasted with scenes of pollution and poverty - again brilliantly captured by Emmanuel Lubezki.

Claudia and Danny debated whether they could bear much more "twirling" by the female leads, but Claudia imagined it might be fun to do all that joyful running through the fields, to which Danny added, "looking winsomely back over your shoulder"!
I think he said winsomely. . .

I told Alice I fancied some winsome twirling, so she inserted  me into a Malick sunset scene. [Click for the full glory.]

The film as a whole is a typical Terrence Malick offering, with absolutely gorgeous images (see here), philosophical musings and lots of voice-over with little live dialogue. Just the sort of thing we really like! Some detractors say he's degenerated into self-parody, yet other reviewers appreciate his unique skills. See also bfi's Film of the Week.

Cloud Atlas was much preferred to The Wonder by Ryan Gilbey in the New Statesman. Claudia and Danny variously called it "bonkers" and "stoned" but she admitted she loved it all the same. Hannah McGill's review is titled "Breathtaking action, profound emotion, dark sense of fun and sheer deranged brilliance." Sums it up!

There are six stories told, all in different time-frames. Having thought David Mitchell's novel rather pretentious and very confusing, Alice much preferred this interpretation, which she found more understandable, with the links between characters made by having some of the cast take on several different roles. Some-one has even constructed this "infographic" [What!] chart to explain the film's complexities. You can right click here for a larger version, but go to Cinema Blend for an explanation and to see it full size.

There was considerable inter-cutting of the different time periods, also pointing up the overall themes. But most importantly, it all looked totally wonderful. I especially liked the futuristic city, which reminded me of one of our very favourite films, Blade Runner. I thought it was altogether a great load of fun, and somehow at the same time very serious too. Alice got quite swept away by the whole experience. Certainly worth the price of a cinema seat!

From a photo by Dan Winters

The film actually had three writer-directors. Two of these were the unusual Wachowski siblings, responsible for the ground-breaking Matrix films (a yes to those - we do like our sci-fi) and the third was Tom Tykwer, who made the bizarre Perfume.

There's a fascinating article about the Wachowskis in The New Yorker which tells how the three directors wrote the screenplay of this "unfilmable" novel together. At one point they had hundreds of differently colour coded index cards, representing separate scenes, spread over the floor in different arrangements, until they found a sequence which satisfied them. A real labour of love.

In a video at Time Entertainment, David Mitchell himself says it's as though the Wachowskis "dis-assembled my Lego novel and re-assembled it in the shape of a film."

There is another in depth, informative and extremely interesting interview with the siblings at A.V.Club. We've picked a few quotes to whet your appetite: "Cinema is a social art form. You cannot make a piece of cinema by yourself"; "The main character in [Cloud Atlas] is humanity" and "the most interesting art is open to a spectrum of interpretation". Plus some intriguing insights about the Matrix. Go check it out!

Park Chan-woo's Stoker has been described by the screen-writer, Wentworth Miller, as a "horror film, a family drama and a psychological thriller." It is indeed all of that, and if we were to describe the plot, you would think it nothing much out of the ordinary in such a genre. However, what makes it extra-ordinary, is the comsummate style of the cinematography, cutting, and sound. Reviewers use phrases like "gorgeously mounted"; "ominously beautiful"; or "startling and sensual images".

Dear Alice was well nigh swooning in her seat, it was the best visual feast she had laid her eyes upon for quite a while. And full of suggestive symbolism: see Mark Kermode. If you've been following our film-based posts, you will by now have realised that Alice's highest appreciation is usually for the pictorial aspects of a film, and those directors who really make full use of the potentials of this truely spell-binding art form.

Yes, yes, but let's not get overly pretentious. Sometimes I just want a rollicking good story, without too much of the fancy stuff. Don't we all?

Alice also expects the highest standards of acting, and was not in the least disappointed by any of  the stirling cast: Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode, and Nicole Kidman. I thought they were all horribly convincing, too.
Ummm, is that right?  Oh - you know what I mean.

So, folks, To the Wonder, Cloud Atlas and Stoker all get top marks from both of us!