London Exhaustion & Jurassic Weird
Okay so I'm a bit behind of this week's blog but I'm still mentally exhausted from a jaunt up to London. Being Singaporean, I'm used to everything being within an hour by public transport from one end of the island to the other.
Obviously, being in the UK is a completely different story because getting to London was 1.5 hrs just by train from Salisbury, and not to mention all the fiddling about on the Underground and walking through swathes of tourists.
The British Museum is my place of choice when going to London since I'm not really a fan of anything except what old people like, apparently.
If there's one thing about my UK that still wows me, especially in a town like Salisbury, it's the history you seen down every road or every building. The place where I live now dates back to the 14th century from what i've found with a little bit of googling.
I personally don't like London - I've lived in busy cities all my life and it tires me out to be some place where there's so much hustle and bustle - but I do love the British Museum. It's a strange feeling to be a bunch of molecules looking at another bunch of molecules that were formed and re-formed a long time ago. Puts things into perspective I guess.
After spending two hours in the veritable collection of things classified under OAB (Old As Balls), I wanted to track down some specialist craft places in the Soho area but it turned out to be a really tiring endeavour. For one thing, I'm used to craft places being a hodge podge of various supplies in one convenient place, like DAISO. One thing I'm still getting used to here is words like haberdasheries, and fabric suppliers, meaning that I have to plan exactly what it is I want to buy before heading somewhere to buy it! Yikes! Guess my agak-agak way of making my crafts are going to have to take a back seat.
Oh man, I DIDN'T EVEN MENTION IT COST £180 JUST TO GET TO LONDON!! Yeah, London's cool but not £180 cool to get to all the time. Think I'll stick to my new fave shopping place, Bath. Again, I'm blogging for the benefit of Singaporean readers so bear with me people who live in places larger than a borough in most continents.
So Russell and I went to watch Jurassic World yesterday with a few of his friends and I have to say, I'm still flummoxed? Meaning I'm not sure if I went to watch a good film or a bad film. Either way I wasn't bored because I distinctly remember laughing at moments of violence, but that's just me.
Remakes must be incredibly hard to make good, because the people involved have to make the movie good for both the generation that grew up with the original awesome film and also make sure that the film is still awesome for the current generation. I think the approach they took with making Jurassic World was turning it into a dino-fest with a huge dollop of self-deprecation. And you know, thinking about it, how could you not? You're making a dinosaur movie. You have to make fun of yourself.
I'm not going to talk too much about the content of the film itself, but I'm fairly sure anyone who's watching the trailer can put two and two together. A thrilling suspense this film is not - but hey, I did eat a lot of popcorn watching Chris Pratt mindmeld with raptors.
The mixture of nostalgic music which seemed more dated to my ears, soaring shots over a theme park as opposed to inspiring shots of cute herbivore dinosaurs, mixed with clunky dialogue should have rendered this movie terrible but with its tongue-in-cheek tone, it still managed to stay really entertaining! The action scenes hit all the right points and Chris Pratt's impression of a leading man was kind of hilarious within itself.
I'm not going to say anymore except #teamBlue! It's a film you have to see and not have described to you and most importantly, don't expect too much waxing philosophical about the folly of man. Just come for the dinosaurs.
Otherwise, being the old lady I am in soul, I haven't been doing too much except cooking up some really delicious food with Russell which I regret not taking pictures of due to extreme hunger and lots of painting and crafting. We've yet to start binge-watching Orange Is The New Black since it dropped yesterday and I should probably hydrate and get snacks ready for the marathon watching that's going to commence as soon as I finish blogging.
In recent things I've been painting, Eva Green as the totally perf Vanessa Ives from Penny Dreadful. Victorian occult, gothic horror with a generous helping of camp, brilliant actors and actually witty dialogue, this series totally hits the spot. I'm obsessed with the world and so had to do a pitch-perfect painting dedicated to my favourite character on the show.
As always, check my Art > 2015 for new things I'm adding all the time! I'm still free for commissions so hey, if I can shamelessly plug my services here - drop me a line at najmahsalam@gmail.com if you need an illustration or design project done