Here’s the first look at Spielberg’s adaptation of Michael Murpurgo’s War Horse. The book has already been adapted into a West End play using stunning, traditional puppets for the horses (After the jump below)
Sci-Fi Re-imagined
College Humor re-imagined a handful of famous Sci-Fis as kids books. If you’re a sci-fi nerd, you’ll find these hilarious. If not, you’ll at least like the pretty colours.
I Am Harry Potter
Daniel Radcliffe tells the world that he really is Harry Potter.
Bridesmaids Review
I’m going to avoid rants on this blog as much as possible but decided to write a review of Bridesmaids for one simple reason; to balance out the reviews it’s been getting so far.
Let me start by saying that I have a lot of time for Kristen Wiig. I think she’s a great comedy performer and an amazing writer. For me, she’s the highlight of Knocked Up (another Judd Apatow-involved comedy I dislike) and her brief cameos on HBO’s Bored to Death are hilarious. Going by the rave reviews Bridesmaids has been getting – (even better than The Hangover) – I was looking forward to seeing this. I just left the cinema an hour ago and I couldn’t be more disappointed.
Virtual Haircut
This is a fun and sometimes frightening way to spend four minutes.
Plug in some headphones, close your eyes and listen to this. You have to use headphones and close your eyes otherwise it wont work.
The Hobbit – First Glimpse
Here are the first glimpses of The Office star Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins in Lord of the Rings prequel, ‘The Hobbit’. According to director Peter Jackson, he got quite a shock when he saw the schedule for the adaption. ‘I felt a terrible drop in my stomach when I saw that we’d be shooting for 254 days’, he told Entertainment Weekly, ‘We’re only 12 days short of The Lord of the Rings even though we’re only doing two movies!” Jackson went on to say that he warned returning star Ian McKellen (Gandalf) that ”this isn’t Waiting for Godot or King Lear. This is The Hobbit. This is the real thing.”
Coffee
I got a new camera recently (the Nikon D3100), which I’m loving playing around with. So I made a very short film about making coffee to test the camera out. Here’s two versions.
Pottermore Update
So apparently, JK Rowling’s mysterious Pottermore project is an online treasure hunt that leads fans to prizes in the real world. If this is true – (and I hope it is as it’s better than some of the theories I’ve heard so far) – I like it. It’s all very Willy Wonka. Let’s hope that if this is, indeed, the case, that Pottermore is inclusive of Ireland!
According to the Guardian;
News of the project emerged after the Times appeared to have been sent a memo by mistake, although it is not known if it was sent as a marketing device. PR company Adam & Eve appears to be behind the project, and has, in the past, conducted online treasure hunts using Google maps. Last year it created LittleBigMap, a game designed to promote the video game LittleBigPlanet 2, which encouraged users to find new markers on the map by following clues.
Read the Guardian article here
#69 Facts About Me
I saw this trending on Twitter so I thought I’d give it a go here.
1. I have one sibling; a brother called Paul.
2. I am from Leitrim originally, a town called Mohill.
3. I am the eldest of all the cousins on both sides of the family.
4. I cannot drive.
5. I can touch-type (learned in Transition Year).
6. My first published story was called ‘White Fox’.
7. I crack my knuckles.
8. I was once on RTE’s answer to Blue Peter, Echo Island. I was on the Hot Seat Quiz where I answered questions on the Meryl Streep film, The River Wild.
9. My father is an undertaker, as his father was before him.
10. I almost appeared in Katherine Lynch’s second series as an extra with my mum. But she laughed so we were cut.
Books I Like #2: ‘Mort’ by Terry Pratchett
During the week, author Terry Pratchett – who has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s – broadcast a documentary on the BBC. It was called ‘Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die’ and detailed his own, and others attempts to be receive assisted suicide in Switzerland. Certainly a sobering and painfully sad documentary; but an important one, nonetheless.
It got me thinking about Pratchett and the huge number of books he’s written. He wrote a book with Neil Gaiman – (‘Good Omens’, which, I’m sure, I will write about in the future) – is one of my favourites. But of the Discworld novels, of which there are now about 40 titles, the one that stands out for me most is Mort.
At just over 300 pages, Mort is one of his shorter novels but, to me, this translates as most succinct. While I often find the other Discworld books can stray off the point at times, Mort sticks rigidly to the classic, three-act story-telling structure. We meet a teenager called Mort, whose farmer father believes that his thoughtful temperament prevents him from finding gainful employment. The plot begins when Mort’s dad brings his son to a local employment fair. Thoughout the day, Mort fails to find a new employer. Then, as all hope was lost and at midnight, a stranger arrives in a black coat riding a white horse. He offers Mort a job, which the boy accepts gratefully. The only hitch is that the man is Death and that Mort’s new job is as an apprenticeship ushering souls into the next life. So begins a rollicking adventure that’s part comedy/parody, part fantasy, part romance and part reflection-on-death-itself.