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Gimli at Helmsdeep, Gollum karaoke, Indy brilliance and French Art House – more LEGO® anarchy

Can’t beat a bit of LEGO® stop motion. There’s some truly brilliant stuff around, some of the best knocked up by the Brotherhood Workshop. Here are four of my recent favourites, two from the aforementioned creative team.

This has a great Lord Of The Rings riff on a box (Legolas trying to help Gimli see over the parapets):

Gollum singing the Justin Bieber classic “Baby”:

A lovingly created Indiana Jones pastiche from kd2apoof called “Indiana Jones and the Mystical Gemstone”:

A full-length French thriller, by Maxime Marion and Studio Sepsilon, complete with subtitles (!):

 

 

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Music’s endless capacity to inspire

Wherever you are in the world, whatever you do, music seems to have an incredible capacity to lift the spirits and create a sense of purpose and community. Here are two very different examples of that inspirational power in action.

The first is a musical flashmob that was sponsored by Spain’s fifth largest bank, Som Sabadell, to celebrate its 130th year of operations. Flashmobs have a wonderful way of startling people with their incongruity whilst at the same time generating a sense of fun and bystander participation in something quite special.

The second is the amazing story of Paraguay’s Landfill Harmonic, where children and young adults have made their instruments exclusively from rubbish reclaimed from the tip in Catuera. Built on top of a landfill that is still active, receiving 1,500 tonnes of waste a day, and where the water is regularly polluted, the story of this little band is nothing short of miraculous. Director of the orchestra, Favo Chavez has created something very special, using music to help the local youngsters aspire to rise above the danger and misery of their lives.

A film is in production about their stunning achievements.

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Effervescent Theatre’s dark magic… And my future brother-in-law’s film-acting debut!

“Heed now the tale of Rapunzel and Thyme,

Tick tock tick tock,

Whose lives were bound by a pocketwatch,

Tick tock tick tock…”

Effervescent Theatre have a new production opening in Plymouth on 13th February. It’s called The Fish Hearted Bride and is a dark and twisted story that mixes in elements of well-known fairy tales to create a show for all the family.

As part of the promo, my ultra-cool future brother-in-law was asked to star in their promotional film trailer. Check it out below and tell me he shouldn’t be in the next Tolkien movie, swinging a bloody great sword!

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A bracing New Year’s Day walk… Welcome 2013

There is something quite bleakly beautiful about the countryside that lies against the Essex coast. The vast skies over flat scrub and grassland, the silhouettes of trees against the horizon as the sun sets, and the cold reaches of the Thames, snaking its way past Southend, Mucking and Tilbury, can conjure feelings of a romantic loneliness. It was the perfect surrounding for a New Year Day’s walk, a chance to walk and think and take in the beauty of the countryside I am lucky to live so close to.

At Mucking, the Mucking Marshes Landfill provided one of the largest landfill sites in Western Europe. Until very recently, the barges floating down the Thames, carrying London’s municipal waste in bright yellow containers, were a familiar sight. At the end of 2010, with the expiration of its extension on its waste license, Mucking Tip stopped taking waste. Now, the site has been capped and the amazing Essex Wildlife Trust has established its largest and most ambitious project yet, Thurrock Thameside Nature Park, creating a safe haven for dozens of birds and other wildlife, both common and rare. With a visitor centre providing stunning views over the Thames estuary and a café with welcome refreshments, EWT have  created something really quite special on this stretch of the Essex coastline.

Some photos from today’s excursion below.

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Jack Reacher: The Hollywood ruin of my guilty pleasure

In sixteen novels I have come to regard Lee Child‘s Jack Reacher as my heroic alter ego.

Reacher is described as 6′ 5″ tall with a 50″ chest, weighing in at 220-250lbs and with dirty blonde hair. His size is a significant part of his character and affects how he feels about himself and how he is seen by others. I’ve often thought a movie would be great and always wondered who the heck they’d get to play him. I was a bit miffed when they announced that the first film would be One Shot, which is actually the ninth book and by no means the best. Still, I reasoned, they had to start somewhere and there’s enough of a debate as to whether or not you should read the books in order that it didn’t really matter.

So the question was who would play Reacher? I realise 6′ 5″ is a big ask, but you could at least go tall.

I always thought Christopher Meloni, Elliot Stabler in Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, would be quite good. He’s got height, at 6′ 0″ and a good jaw for it.  Similarly, Canadian Ryan Reynolds, at 6′ 2″, would make a passable Reacher.

So who did they choose?

Tom Cruise. All 5’ 7″ of him.

One Shot is out on 26th December in the UK. I will never think of Jack Reacher the same way.

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A Spring morning’s walk

Life has its way of providing food for thought – sometimes more than it is reasonable to expect a person to digest. And much as a good walk can provide suitable repair after a heavy dinner, so a walk is often the best way to get one’s head around the various challenges that life throws up. Between national and local politics, happenings to friends, and other personal events, a long walk was long overdue.

I have a favoured route.

I walk along Nethermayne and past the hospital, turning into Dry Street. I head past the farm where I spent so much of my childhood, past my church and on to One Tree Hill Country Park. From there I walk through Northlands Woods, around Sutton Woods and in to Coombe Woods. Finally, I arrive back on to Dry Street, before ending up at Hillcroft for coffee.

On the way you can’t help but be moved by the beauty and serenity of the countryside. I think I have reflected previously that you could never imagine that you are just twenty-five miles from London. The sounds of traffic on the A13 is blocked out by trees and hills and fields. The sun was glorious this morning, and the sky blue. The rape fields were bright with their yellow crop. The bluebells are at their height, though they seem fewer in number than in previous years. A lack of sun, perhaps, or sustenance for the elusive muntjac deer that live in the woods?

Between Northlands and Sutton lie ancient administrative boundaries with interesting purposes and delineations. Thankfully, there are still a few people about the hills who know the stories of the past. Local social histories are fragile things and there seems less and less time for them in this increasingly busy and technologically-demanding world. With so much emphasis on the future, we often forget that there is a rich seam of learning to be had in investigating the history of the places about us.

Anyway, I thought I would share this morning’s walk in pictures.

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70 years since five famous adventurers made their debut

It’s 70 years since Enid Blyton’s Famous  Five made their debut in Five on a Treasure Island. I remember reading those novels voraciously as a youngster, determined that when I was exploring castles, such as Raglan and Bodiam, I would also find gold and be an adventurer.

It wasn’t all harmony, though, probably as they were all family, and Anne and George certainly didn’t hit it off. For my part, as a kid I always thought George was a pretty cool kinda girl. There was no messing about with her. Or rather there was a lot of messing about – in trees, clambering rocks and generally getting into scrapes. Anne always seemed a little bit precious and not like any of the girls I hung around with. We were all in it together, grazing knees, throwing apples at each other and having stick wars.

Anyway, I maintain that Enid Blyton is the reason for my love of reading, my love of a good story and a continuing childish sense of adventure. So in celebration of the Famous Five, here’s Anne meeting George for the first time.

When Anne awoke she couldn’t at first think where she was. She lay in her little bed and looked up at the slanting ceiling, and at the red roses that nodded at the open window – and suddenly remembered all in a rush where she was! “I’m at Kirrin Bay- and it’s the holidays.” she said to herself, and screwed up her legs with joy.

Then she looked across at the other bed. In it lay the figure of another child, curled up under the bed-clothes. Anne could just see the top of a curly head, and that was all. When the figure stirred a little, Anne spoke.

“I say! Are you Georgina?”

The child in the opposite bed sat up and looked across at Anne. She had very short curly hair, almost as short as a boy’s. Her face was burnt a dark-brown with the sun, and her very blue eyes looked as bright as forget-me-nots in her face. But her mouth was rather sulky, and she had a frown like her father’s.

“No,” she said. “I’m not Georgina.”

“Oh!” said Anne, in surprise. “Then who are you?”

“I’m George,” said the girl. “I shall only answer if you call me George. I hate being a girl. I won’t be. I don’t like doing the things that girls do. I like doing the things that boys do. I can climb better than any boy, and swim faster too. I can sail a boat as well as any fisher-boy on this coast. You’re to call me George. Then I’ll speak to you. But I shan’t if you don’t.”

“Oh!” said Anne, thinking that her new cousin was most extraordinary. “All right! I don’t care what I call you. George is a nice name, I think. I don’t much like Georgina. Anyway, you look like a boy.”

“Do I really?” said George, the frown leaving her face for a moment. “Mother was awfully cross with me when I cut my hair short. I had hair all round my neck; it was awful.”

The two girls stared at one another for a moment. “Don’t you simply hate being a girl?” asked George.

“No, of course not,” said Anne. “You see – I do like pretty frocks- and I love my dolls- and you can’t do that if you’re a boy.”

“Pooh! Fancy bothering about pretty frocks,” said George, in a scornful voice. “And dolls! Well, you are a baby, that’s all I can say.”

Anne felt offended. “You’re not very polite,” she said. “You won’t find that my brothers take much notice of you if you act as if you knew everything. They’re real boys, not pretend boys, like you.”

“Well, if they’re going to be nasty to me I shan’t take any notice of them,” said George, jumping out of bed. “I didn’t want any of you to come, anyway. Interfering with my life here! I’m quite happy on my own. Now I’ve got to put up with a silly girl who likes frocks and dolls, and two stupid boy-cousins!”

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Favourite BGT 2012 #2: Ashleigh and Pudsey

This is simply astounding. What is going on in that dog’s little brain?

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Favourite BGT 2012 #1: Charlotte and Jonathan

Occasionally Britain’s Got Talent throws up some great moments. This is an occasional series of some of my favourites.

First up is Charlotte and Jonathan:

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More tea genius

I wrote before about Twinings “Gets you back to you” advert. I like my tea and I love simple, affecting advertising. And am clearly feeling sentimental again.

Here’s Twining’s second advert. Not quite as good as the first, but still good:

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