Many things on a Monday

I've been failing to keep my own blogging schedule recently. This, of course, just goes to show why this blog is useless and pointless; Technorati give it an "Authority" of 1. But anyway;

Film: The Golden Compass. Well to make it work (with the choice of not gutting it and putting in whatever Hollywood cliches came to hand taken as read) you need to get Lyra right, Pan right and finally IOREK BYRNISON! 15 FEET OF ARMOURED BEAR! right. Lyra is good (although they could probably have found 20 child actors who could do the job if they'd wanted), Pan works, although the constant changing is more distracting on screen than on the page, and Iorek is very good. Ian Mckellen has the right voice, although he has the wrong accent to me; Iorek sounds like he went to an Oxbridge college (which would have made an interesting plot twist if they'd gone for the gutting and clicheing option). Leaving off the end of the book leaves them with some tricky choices for the rest of the trilogy - if it goes ahead.

Book: More Phillip Pullman love as I've just finished The Ruby in the Smoke. It's a kid's book. Although it's a kid's book with opium smoking and child slavery and... well never mind. I'd seen the BBC Adaption[1] with Billie Piper and that, with the change in cover, made me take it more seriously. Good stuff!

Food: Cooking Belly Pork again (as we've been getting techie advice from Stan and I need to make sure I'm up to the task of repayment) - this time based loosely on a Ken Hom recipe. Brown the belly pork, skin side down, then put into a pot of simmering stock, rice wine or sherry, soy sauce, five spice powder and ginger. Leave it to cook for ages (an hour and a half a least). You can reuse the stock for other Chinese dishes; Ken Hom recommends freezing it.

Song: Sweet Talking Woman, ELO. I would have made it the version of "Don't Bring Me Down" on Dr Who (you know, in the episode "Love and Monsters"? With Peter Kay? The one where the Doctor is mostly off-stage and a group of people try to track him down but get distracted into forming an ELO tribute band? No? It has an oral sex joke at the end? Try this from 2:10 onwards) but it's only in the middle of that video I linked to in the parentheses, so I've gone with the more interesting Sweet Talking Woman.

Wild Card: The Young Man has a travel blog. Look on in near real-time as he wanders the Middle East! (And the Far East probably, or I've wasted my time posting his Chinese language books to Ankara).

Bonus: Short again! Well there's this tutorial which explains how to make an 8 page pamphlet or zine out of one sheet of paper. Well I found it interesting.

[1] "Now a major BBC Drama" as it says on the back. They never bother telling you if it's a minor feature film or adaption, do they?

Comments

Anonymous said…
Please post a picture of your beard. Go on.
Neil Willcox said…
My camera is in Putney (probably). Maybe I'll get Jim to take a picture tonight.

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