Yesterday was my 8th wedding anniversary. We decided to go watch the movie Avatar(more about the movie in another post) as we had heard so many good reviews and due to now having offspring, it has been ages since we have been to the movies (3 years for Craig!). We were going to grab a cheap Thai meal at Simply Asia in Canal Walk, but discovered that particular one doesn’t have its own seating. Dressed up and in anniversary mode, we did not feel like joining the masses in the food court and rushing our meal. Purely by accident we discovered that a little further on, tucked away behind the food court, is a lovely new Thai restaurant called Chai Yo (I have since learnt that there are others elsewhere around cape town). It overlooks the canal, and has a relaxed and airy atmosphere that makes you forget you are actually in a shopping center. We sat on the deck and watched as the ducks swam by.

The food was excellent. We shared a sushi starter platter, that was beautifully presented and tasted divine. I then had my favourite Pad Thai with prawns and Craig had a Beef dish(sorry, can’t remember the name) that came with rice.

We both had Mojitos to drink, as the restaurant also has a trendy bar and cocktail menu. The waiter, Jeremy, from the Congo, was soft-spoken, attentive and very good. All in all, it was a wonderful evening!
I really recommend this restaurant and they have a few specials at the moment which is always good in a recession! (half price cocktails on Thursdays for ladies, Sunday Buffet, happy hour on sushi and cocktails form 4-6pm daily etc) If you enjoy eastern food, do yourself a favour and go and take a look.

Just finished watching My sister’s keeper. I loved the book so much and of course movies never quite match up to the written word, but never the less we enjoyed it. There were quite a few sniffles going on in the room. Hectic stuff, especially when you have kids.

Nina went to bed early and so was due a bottle around 9.30pm. I took it to her and spent a little extra time cuddling her. I dismissed the normal “don’t play with them at night” rule and when she gave me a naughty grin, I grinned back, making her giggle. Priceless.

Children are such precious jewels.

I am so very grateful for them.

We have been watching some rather enjoyable movies lately(more on this lately) and recently took out The Duchess from the DVD shop. I love period movies, had seen the trailer for this particular movie a few times and had fancied the look of it. The movie stars Kiera Knightley and Ralph Fiennes and tells the story of the life of 18th century aristocrat Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. She is in an unhappy marriage, with pressure to produce a male heir. It made me think of how rough woman had it in those times. You had no rights, formal education, could not vote and were pretty much solely viewed and judged for your child-rearing abilities.  I don’t really want to say too much incase you watch it but what I wanted to write about was a scene that really moved me and made me think. At one point she is forced into giving up a child. That scene just broke my heart into a thousand little pieces. I have always been an emotional person, but ever since having had children I am even more so. When there is anything to do with motherhood, babies etc, I just feel even more empathetic and emotional. I guess it is because I can relate now. One thing I know for sure is that I would never have been able to give up a child. I just don’t have it in me. I get too attached and would feel as if a part of me was being torn off. I would fight with every inch of my being to keep my baby. I think what also gets to me is knowing just how vulnerable little babies are and how much they need their mothers. To be taken away, is just plain cruel and unnatural. It made me remember a story someone told me about their own mother and how she had fallen pregnant at age 15 and had been sent away to live in a nunnery (and this was only about 35 years ago!) until she had given birth. It was a baby girl and this young mother got to hold, feed and stay with her baby for 3 days until they came to take the baby away! Imagine that? Three days of feeding and bonding with your child and then they take it away from you. Yes, she was young but how even more damaging for a young teenager to go through something like that. A year later she was pregnant again and this time she told everyone she was keeping the baby – my friend, who told me the story.

I think I watched Dirty Dancing about 20 times as a child. Patrick Swayze was my hero and in my mind, I danced with him just as Baby does in the movie. I am sure I am not the only woman who remembers the movie so fondly!

Memories, unlike people, live forever.

Rest in peace Patrick.

I have vowed to stay away from movies for a while as everything we have watched lately has turned out to be the biggest load of you know what. The last reasonably good movie I watched was ‘Passengers’ with Anne Hathaway, but everything since then has been bad…really bad. Maybe it is just my video shop’s selection that stinks, or perhaps it is just a sign that the recession has clearly hit Hollywood as well, either way, please be advised to stay away from the following pieces of trashy celluloid moonlighting as movies:

• Rachel’s getting married – to be fair this is not that bad. It also has Anne Hathaway in it, in a roll that demonstrates she can definitely act. However, the movie tries too hard to be an art movie, the cinematography is strange and the intra-family dynamics are heavy. At the end you are left feeling slightly depressed and still confused as to what the hell that was actually all about. Perhaps that was the point?
• The Punisher 2 – Ok, so perhaps one should have seen this one coming, but please believe me when I say that The Punisher 1 was actually a really good ass-kicking, revenge style movie with a hot lead actor. Based on a comic strip (never a good idea) The Punisher 2 has lots of cheesy acting, a crappy plot and despite having one of my favourite actors from the Rome series in it, is overall very disappointing. I never even finished watching it.
• Lies and Illusions – This piece of utter trash boasts a cast of Christian Slater and academy award winner Cuba Gooding Jr. Personally I think Christian Slater hasn’t made a worthwhile movie since True Romance and as for Cuba Gooding Jr., I am pretty sure aliens stole his body for this movie. This movie consists of very hammy acting, the most ridiculous fight scenes I have ever seen, background music that sounds as if it belongs in a porno and a story that was dismally weak and pathetic. Never finished watching it AGAIN.
• Blindness – a story where everyone in the world catches a contagious disease and goes suddenly blind starring Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo. This is watchable, although barely. Apart from having annoying cinematography and a rather pointless plot, there is only one word that adequately describes how I found this movie – DISTURBING. It upset me terribly, so I warn you stay away at all costs or be doomed to nightmares.

My video contract has just run out and I won’t be renewing it for a while!

As I have mentioned before, I love movies. I will watch just about anything, but my favourite movies are dramas or psychological thrillers. I even find action movies entertaining. My worst type of movie though, has to be the romantic comedy (affectionately referred to by some as a ‘rom-com’). I will still watch them, movie addict that I am, but what I hate most about this genre of movie is not the soppy acting so much as the weak and predictable plot. You know how it goes: Man & woman meet…man falls in love with woman….woman falls in love with man…but then something has to go wrong, say man walks down stairs and accidently sees woman being kissed by her ex (meantime it is her brother or just a total mistake) and man gets all upset and thinks woman doesn’t love him so he leaves….woman than thinks man has disserted her and doesn’t love her….blah…blah…blah. This is the part I hate, the part where you as the viewer know that this is all just a misunderstanding and that they both love each other and should be together and it is all just wrong that they aren’t. You want to scream “COMMUNICATE!!!”, “Forget your silly pride!” “Phone her dammit!” to the TV screen, but of course you can’t – they just wouldn’t hear you and you would annoy your spouse sitting next to you and who is actually enjoying the rom-com. I find it very frustrating, but then in true predictable rom-com form, they will somehow meet up again and profess their undying love for each other and all will be ok (usually involving running to catch a cab or catch the person at the airport before the plane leaves or something dramatic like that).
I hate rom-coms and their predictability. Life just isn’t like that is it?
But you know what? Sometimes I wish it was.

I have mentioned this before, but I really LOVE movies and I enjoy a good TV series (my favourite being 24 and Battlestar Gallactica). A few months ago we made the decision to cancel our DSTV as we felt it was not worth the money and we didn’t want to have the type of home life that centered around TV (as it is we have a giant size plasma in our lounge that looks like it is a type of altar to TV!) After we disconnected our decoder we never bothered to connect to the standard SABC channels and I must say we have never looked back. I have found eliminating TV has resulted in us having more time as a family, communicating better, enjoy mealtimes without interruption and I believe it is healthier for Amy, who is already too much of a TV addict for my liking. This way we have greater control over what and when she watches. So now we just rent DVDs from the videoshop and watch movies or a TV series that way, as opposed to starring at the screen and watching any old rubbish(a pet hate of mine). One of my best things about not having DSTV is that now I no longer have a husband that channel surfs!!! Yay!! If you have ever seen the play, ‘Defending the Caveman” you will know that it proposes that men are inherently hunters and that channel surfing is just another form of hunting. That may be, but 1) it is bloody irritating for us gatherers aka women and 2) I don’t see any form of sustenance as a result of said hunting, rendering it totally useless in my opinion.

Anyway, what I am taking a long time to get to is that we have taken to watching a couple of series that I missed when I used to work teaching yoga in the evenings. Recently we watched a few episodes of True Blood , the redneck vampire series that made me playing “I like it –I like it not” in my head after each episode. I am still undecided. My absolute favourite of the moment though, has to be LOST. Yes it gets far-fetched and complicated but hey it is filled with suspense, great characters and an intriguing stortyline for someone who has a weird mind like mine. I am addicted and now deeply saddened as I have just finished watching the 4th series and now have to wait until the 5th series comes out. I still have so many questions about that damn island!

I totally adore the character Sawyer (above) from LOST– apart from some clever oneliners and amusing nicknames that he comes up with, he is hot!

-> Just found a site called Lostpedia

We watched ‘Definitely Maybe’ (Craig’s choice) and ‘The Stone Angel‘ (my choice) this weekend and enjoyed both movies. ‘Definitely Maybe’ is a romantic comedy(not normally my favourite type of movie) but is a really lovely story. Ryan Reynolds plays such a likeable guy, Will Hayes, who is a 30-something Manhattan dad in the midst of a divorce. His 10 year old daughter, Maya(lovely name – except for the fact that it means Illusion in Sanskrit), starts to question him about his life before marriage. Maya wants to know absolutely everything about how her parents met and fell in love. The other movie The Stone Angel was a bit on the heavy side and not everyone’s cup of tea, but very good. It starred Ellen Page and the very sexy Cole Hauser.  Ellen plays the feisty aging Hagar Shipley . As one review says, “Her rebellious heart has always ruled and her choices have put her at odds with family and friends. Faced with her own mortality, and desperate to find solace, she goes on the run. But haunting memories of the life she has led, the men she has passionately loved yet destroyed with her unrelenting pride, and the sons she has estranged catch up to Hagar on this momentous journey. In both the past and the present, she is forced to come to terms with the pain and pleasure, the disappointments and the exhilarations of her life. Based on the best selling novel by Margaret Laurence.”