Conversation about Star Wars:

E – “Xavier, what we’ve seen is the *first* Star Wars movie: The Phantom Menace. Next, we will see the *second* Star Wars movie: Attack of the Clones.”
X – “But I want to see the one with R2D2.”
E – “R2D2 is in every Star Wars movie.”
X, smiling – “Will we see the one with the big head, too?”
E – “Jar Jar Bing? Hehe. Yes, he’s in the next movie too.”
X – “Yes, the guy with the pants. The guy with the black pants, he… (unintelligible retelling about Jar Jar Bing’s performance).”
O – “And he falls, he falls on the ground!”
E – “Jar Jar Bing?”
O – “Yes, he falls on the ground!”

It seems Jar Jar Bing has an audience, after all, in preschoolers. As a matter of fact, the leader of the toad people’s jowl shaking was the only moment when Orly laughed throughout the movie.

After my mom (nicely) kidnapped our kids and we found ourselves with an empty evening ahead, the suggestion of our beloved classic dinner-and-a-movie popped up like fireworks. Once our belly filled with fine italian, we headed for the theater.

We stepped in just in time to see “Yes Man” with Jim Carey.
We both loved it. Some reasons:
- It had been a while since we had laughed out loud so much during a flick.
- A good series of unpredictable gags.
- The predictable stuff was heartwarmingly charming, wrapped in funny.

Now go see it.
(Say “yes”, and go.)

PS. Watch the trailer I’ve linked, not the other one, it reveals too many jokes.

We went to the movies twice this week. How decadent, right?

Saturday at 4:30pm, Frank goes something like “I feel like catching a movie tonight. And how about dinner in a restaurant?”. And so, totally taking advantage of the fact that my parents moved into their house next door, we were out the door half an hour later, with mom already with her nose over our stove, cooking spaghetti for Xavier and them.

We went to see “August Rush”, the story of which is completely over the top, and I really enjoyed it. It’s such a cute story, and I’ve liked Kerri Russell ever since “Felicity”.

Then, yesterday, we were offered tickets to the premiere of “The Golden Compass” – Frank’s grandmother had won a set of four from the paper. So we went to the theater again. On a weeknight. Outrageous!

I just read again my expectations for the movie from a previous post, and it’s unsurprisingly close to the mark. Much yummy eyecandy, although the darker themes were somewhat there, if one did some interpretation. I can’t give a balanced opinion, however, as I found myself distracted with my knowledge of the book. There are no surprises in store for people familiar with the literature, you can expect every event one by one. They switched some parts around and added a couple of little scenes to squeeze in required information – they can’t not, really, when adapting to screen – but, as I said, it was hugely distracting to me and I kept asking myself “wasn’t there the part with … before that happened?”. One other thing that bothered me a lot: the book follows Lyra’s evolution step by step, but the movie version takes a couple of shortcuts by leaving her side and injecting scenes with the other characters.

The daemons were wonderfully well done. Lyra’s world was craftily shaped – I can’t tell if the machine designs came from descriptions by Philip Pullman or from the movie people, but it worked well enough. Nicole Kidman was beautiful as Mrs Coulter, and Lyra and Lord Asriel were well cast. The polar bear character (Iorek Bernison, I believe) was more of a softie than what I remembered imagining, and the 3D of him, while beautifully done, was missing just a little touch of realism in some spots – but maybe I’m being difficult there.

Oh, and my last warning for those who have read the books and are planning to see the movie: the movie ends a couple of scenes short of where the book finishes. That jumbled me when we got to the end, since I expected another little stretch of action. I understand why they did it: the novel ends in chaos, with some strong cliffhangers. It is logical that they decided to wrap things up in a smoother way (although the end was a little over-americanized to my taste). Still, that’s one other way my knowledge of the book became a hindrance, since I felt catapulted out.

I still recommend seeing it, if only because it’s a nice piece of fantasy to paint on a screen.

PS. And I know: I changed the background. About time, right?

Transl. Xavier in hot water

There’s now a small video of Xavier enjoying a dip in his grand-parents’ jacuzzi in our Video Archives in our Picasaweb albums. I’ve also started his July album and created a new album (52 pics!) of our visit to St.Edouard Zoo. It’s not a big exotic zoo – mostly wolves, wildcats and llamas – but it’s close-by and an adequately short trip for two toddlers who won’t notice the difference anyway (we went with Mathieu and Christine with their son Félix, now 14.5 months).

I’ve been quite tired, which has dragged down the number of activities we embarked on during our vacations, but other vacation activities included for me a trip to Ikea and another to see the new Harry Potter movie in Mtrl with Karine – I liked the movie, it was quite better accomplished than the 4th in my opinion, and the adaptation from novel to movie length was no small feat. We also spent a couple days sans Xavier, which were sort of vacation in their own fashion, and finally, yesterday, we all went to the local fair to see yet more farm animals and where Xavier and Félix enjoyed their first rides.

The end of vacation… a year’s worth

Well I wouldn’t call vacation the whole of last year, which was my maternity leave, but it will indeed end tonight, as tomorrow is my first day back at work. I’m not really nervous about it – I went back for half a day already, and it was pretty much like riding a bike. Some staffing changes and office configuration aside, work doesn’t change much. What I’m most concerned with is how tired I’ve been feeling lately, and how that will translate into the busy schedule of workdays and caring for Xavier. I’ll have Wenesdays off with him; I’m not sure those days will be as relaxing as they sound, but at least I’ll get to see my son a little more than 2/7 of a week.

I’m hoping to keep the blog alive even after I’m back at work, but post occurence might slow down.

Our summer feels like it’s ending with vacation time – especially with the grey skies above – but there’s still plenty of stuff to expect, in fact, notably Xavier’s first birthday in two weeks, and the awaited-for-with-trepidation first ultrasound on August 15. I hope everyone is having a good summer so far!

The Zoo St-Édouard’s website

Found this little series of videos on YouTube yesterday, called “Hi, I’m a Marvel… and I’m a DC.” (a parody of Apple’s Mac/PC commercials). I thought they were hilarious – well it was late evening, what can I say, but I still think they’re pretty funny this morning, in any case.

Check the link above for the whole series, but the funniest one, to me, was #3 :