Film Review: The Return of the King, Part 2

Time for the next part of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, it's the second part of The Return of the King today. Aww, the beginning of the end.

48. Last week we kind of recapped on what each separate group was doing; Frodo, Sam and Gollum are in enemy territory and things aren't going well for them; Merry and Pippin were reunited with Legolas, Gimli, Aragorn and Gandalf; we also saw the end of Saruman. It was a bit messy.

49. This week Pippin is causing trouble, prompting Gandalf to cart him off to Gondor.

50. Sleepover in Rohan.

51. Well, almost everyone's sleeping. Aragorn's wandered into the room where Éowyn is sleeping alone to make sure she's properly tucked in. Watch it Aragorn, people will talk.

52. Éowyn's had Faramir's dream. Perhaps that's a subtle way of saying they're meant to be together. Quick fact: That's also a dream that Tolkien and one of his sons also had.

53. I like Éowyn's dressing gowny-robe thing.

54. Aragorn's not the only one up. Legolas is outside looking at the sky. He's talking in riddles which basically mean Sauron is looking for something.

55. Actually, lots of people are up. Pippin's got up now as well. And Merry's awake too.

56. It looks like Gandalf is awake, but it turns out he just sleeps with his eyes open, a little like my crazy labrador. It's so creepy when she does that.

57. Pippin's got his hands on Gandalf's giant marble. Unfortunately when he starts playing with it he discovers that Sauron's eye is looking out at him. Then the ball erupts in fire and everything goes into slow motion.

58. That is until Aragorn grabs it off of him and Gandalf yells at Pippin.

59. Aww, poor Pippin.

60. Pippin got a vision of a dead white tree in a burning city and Sauron spoke to him.

61. Time for a counsel about what has to happen next. And Gandalf finally mentions the name of the big marble; it's a Palantír.

62. And that means it's time for another roadtrip. Everyone's got to go to Minas Tirith.

63. Except Aragorn has to go a different way to everyone else.

64. And Pippin's going with Gandalf.

65. But he doesn't get everything so Merry's having to spell it all out to him. Oh, I just want to give Pippin a big cuddle. He's just a very young Hobbit. He didn't even understand that Gandalf was just taking him and he was being separated from Merry.

66. Poor Merry too. He's feeling a bit lonely now. At least he's got Aragorn to help him feel better.

67. Meanwhile, the Elves are slowly leaving Middle-earth. Really slowly. They're just sort of walking ethereally through the woods.

68. That is until Arwen is interrupted by the vision of a little boy and Aragorn.

69. They could not have picked a better child to play Aragorn and Arwen's son. He looks just like he could have been Liv and Viggo's child, it's something about his eyes, nose and lips. He's actually the son of one of the guys who plays a Dwarf in The Hobbit.

70. That's enough for Arwen though, she's off, she's got a bone to pick with her father. Strangely none of the other Elves do anything to stop her or even accompany her back.

71. Turns out Daddy didn't want Arwen to have that future, he wanted to take her away to the Undying Lands with him. Elrond is a bit of a dick sometimes.

72. I love Arwen recitation of the poem. She says it's time to reforge the sword.

73. Elrond had better get it done too because he's just realised that she's given up her immortality. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

74. So he might be a big of a dick, but he does love his daughter really, since he gets the sword reforged so her husband-to-be has something to go into battle with.

75. Back to Gandalf and Pippin, who are now in Gondor.

76. Apparently some people were trying to raise money to build a real life Minas Tirith. I would live there. You'd get plenty of exercise walking from top to bottom.

77. I think it looks an awful lot like a whiter version of Dale from the Hobbit films.

78. And look, there's the white tree.

79. I know they're serious guards but the Gondorian soldier's helmets are kind of funny looking.

80. I love how Gandalf starts giving Pippin advice about what he should and shouldn't say and then is jut like, 'you know what? Don't say anything.'

81. Denethor's not really interesting in what Gandalf has to say though, because he's got Boromir's broken horn, so he just wants to know what happened to Boromir.

82. Pippin promptly forgets everything Gandalf said to him, tells Denethor just how Boromir died and pledges his service to Denethor. Gandalf is not impressed. He actually whacks Pippin with his staff!

83. Gandalf wants Denethor to light the beacons to call to Rohan for him. Denethor's not keen to do this though, he seems to know an awful lot about what's going on in the wider world, like the fact Aragorn is on his way.

84. He's really not happy about Aragorn coming back.

85. Oh look. Gandalf just said the title of the film. Subtle.

86. By the way, Aragorn is the King of Gondor. Just make sure you've got that.

87. Gandalf's really not happy but he's answering Pippin's questions about the city so that's okay. He's telling him all about the fall of Gondor and how the line of kings came to an end and why the White Tree is still guarded. It's clear from the way he says about the rule of the city being handed over to 'lesser men' that he means Denethor.

88. Looks like a big storm is brewing. It's being conjured up to allow the Orcs to travel in the dark.

89. It's sweet the way that Pippin thinks they can go now. That's a bit of a shock for him.

90. Back to Frodo, Sam and Gollum. Frodo has a feeling. He's just realised that Sam probably doesn't need to worry about the rations since they won't be coming back.

91. Sam says they'll be going 'there and back again, just like Mr Bilbo'. I love that line and it makes me smile all the more for the Hobbit films.

92. And I like that they included the statue crowned with flowers. It's one of the bits that I always look forward to in the book.

93. Back to Pippin and Gandalf again. Pippin's realising that maybe putting himself into the service of the Steward wasn't the smartest of ideas, not least because it'll mean doing as he's told, something he's not so good at.

94. Oh, I love this little bit about waiting on the edge of battle. Billy Boyd is awesome.

95. And there's a brief cameo from Peter Jackson as Gandalf talks about some of Gondor's enemies who are heading towards them as they speak. It's not looking so good for Gondor now.

Let's leave it there for now.


Next week we'll see more of Pippin and Gandalf in Gondor, where they engage in some light pyromania.

Chapter-by-Chapter: Twilight, Summary

I thought I'd do a quick wrap up post on my general thoughts on Twilight before we move on to the next book in the series, New Moon. Oh yes, I'm definitely going on to the next one. This should be fun.

Characters:

Bella

Obviously, Bella is the main character in the story, the whole thing being told exclusively from her point of views. What did I think of her? Well, to be honest, I didn't like her very much. My two overwhelming character traits for her are the fact that she's pretty damn miserable and she falls over a lot. Later in the story she develops a pretty obsessive love for Edward. And that's it.

I'm sure she's described in the story. I know that several times her outfits warrant a good mention and that she has pale skin. Other than that, I don't know what she looks like. I'm not sure if I just missed those descriptions or if I'm building my entire mental image of her on pictures of the actress who plays her in the film.

Edward

He is one seriously weird guy. I mean, I'm fairly certain that being turned into a vampire when you're not even out of your teens is going to mess you up a bit, but he needs serious psychiatric help. Number one creepy thing is the fact that he crept into Bella's room to watch her sleep, unbeknownst to her. Watching someone sleep is creepy at the best of times, unless the person sleeping is an adorable newborn baby or a cute animal which is dreaming; otherwise, even for the nicest person, it crosses into serious weird territory.

His mood swings also did nothing to endear him to me. I was not at all impressed by the way that he swung from happy and loving one minute to snapping and irrationally angry the next. Often this seemed to be without warning. People like that scare me and so that was definitely not a point in his favour.

On the other hand, we definitely knew what he looked like; shiny, marble, cold skin; magical colour changing eyes (dependent on mood, of course); nice smelling breath. I'm slightly disturbed by how much about Edward's appearance I have retained. Clearly it was mentioned fairly frequently!

Other characters:

Oh, I wish we had seen more of Alice. She was the most interesting, likable character in the whole book. I want to know more about her background and I want to just see more of her in general. I'm also fairly certain that she has a thing for Bella, and personally I think I'd rather read about Bella/Alice and than Bella/Edward.

The other Cullens. Uh, I'm kind of 'meh' about them. Emmett and Jasper seemed to be fairly interchangeable. Rosalie's main feature is the fact that she doesn't like Bella. Esme seemed pretty okay and Carlisle had an interesting history but other than that I wasn't really interested in him. Well, aside from the fact that it's kind of weird how he wanted to 'collect' all these vampiric teenagers.

Bella's parents. I liked Charlie. I felt kind of sorry for him for being stuck with Bella, especially towards the end when she was being horrible to him. Renee is basically a teenager herself. I don't think she's all that worried about her daughter. I can't imagine a woman whose daughter is in hospital itching to get away to speak to her husband, especially after being separated from her daughter for months.

The Story:

Writing Style

I was not a fan of the writing style. Perhaps it's just because I've gotten used to reading more classics this year, or books by people who are so totally different to Stephenie Meyer's style. It reminded me of some of my early attempts at fanfiction; a good marker for people who are new to writing fanfiction, they refer to eyes as 'orbs'.

There were several times where I had to reread a sentence a good couple of times to figure out just what was being said in it. And a lot of the time there were things that Bella and Edward said to each other that I just didn't understand. I'm not sure if that was just not something I didn't get in the actual conversation, or if it was the way things were worded that meant I missed the point.

That's not to say that there weren't some nice turns of phrase, but they were surprises rather than the norm. I talked about The Book Thief in my book review this week; I first read that during a 'book tree' where we wrote in a copy of a book and shared it with other people. With The Book Thief I easily could've underlined half the lines in the book just because I loved them all so much. In Twilight I could've maybe underlined about half a page. It just didn't grab me.

Plot

Eh. It was okay.

I can't really say that much about it because I think I said most of it during the course of the reviews. It was interesting but not much of it took me by surprise. It seemed easy to figure out which way the story was going and then it went there; there wasn't really anything in the way of twists or turns. In fact, the chapter titles meant that it was pretty easy to figure out what was going to happen.

To start off with I was hoping that there would be a double meaning in the chapter titles. There wasn't. It's a shame because I was hoping that there would be another level of meaning to the story. There wasn't.

Final thoughts on Twilight:

It was a mindless fluff kind of book. The sort of thing I'd expect to maybe read if I was away on holiday and didn't want anything that would ask me to think too much. Of course, I did end up thinking because I just couldn't fathom what was going on, or why, or what the attraction towards Edward was, or why he was that interested in Bella, and a hundred and one other questions.

I don't think that Edward and Bella's relationship is the finest example of a love story ever known. Edward is weird and Bella is boring. I don't think they should be held up as a fine example of young love.

Next week I'll take a look at New Moon, the cover, the blurb and what I'm expecting from it.

I'm guessing, more of the same.

Colouring In: Colour Me Calm

I've mentioned that I've been doing quite a bit of colouring in in the last few weeks. I figured that since I tend to share my crafty endeavours here, and one could argue that colouring in is a kind of arty endeavour, that I might as well share some of my colouring pages here as well.

On the overnight journey down to Wales I carefully packed a book to read, my Kindle (completely with audio play to listen to), my mp3 player, and obviously I had my phone for internet surfing (my downfall on the journey home as I almost went over my data limit and had to turn it off for almost a week to avoid getting a large bill, oops). But that stuff wasn't quite enough for me, so when we stopped at a service station (and I couldn't find the neck pillow I'd wanted to buy) I looked at the magazines and books.

I considered getting a crafting magazine or two but changed my mind when I saw that they had colouring books on 'buy one get one half price'. One of these was Portable Colour Me Calm, a small scale version of a much larger colouring book. It's just the right size to carry around in a shoulder bag for those moments when you need a quick hit of colouring in. I got a cheap pack of colouring pencils and now I regularly stick it in my bag when I might want to do some colouring in on the go.

It's designed with the focus on 'mindfulness' and suggests that one can use it as a sort of meditative activity, even going as far to recommend colours that you might want to use based on whether they encourage calmness or energy. So in theory, if you need a bit of help getting going at the beginning of the day you could colour using reds, oranges and yellows, whereas at the end of the day when you want to unwind you could use blues and greens. The introduction also gives the reasoning behind the different pictures that are featured, citing repetition and natural scenes as being conducive to relaxation.

It's all very interesting.

The book is divided into six sections, each one featuring a different style of picture to colour in (though I see some overlap between some of them): Mandalas, Water Scenes, Wooded Scenes, Geometric Patterns, Floral & Fauna, and Natural Patterns. At the beginning of each chapter there's a couple of sample ones which have been coloured in (presumably to show you how to do it) or partially coloured in (which you could complete, if you felt that way inclined).

My approach to all of the pictures was pretty much to just use whichever colours I felt like, as you can see.

I think the fish are my favourite with the geometric pattern a very close second. The fish is slightly rough because I worked on most of that one on the motorway coming home. The blue took me from Birmingham to Scotland to get done!

One thing I like about this book is that because of the way it's bound, it lies flat easily. The pictures don't run to the edge of the page, but it makes it better for colouring in close to the left hand side of the page. The facing page of each picture is just a pattern of swirls or or flowery shapes which you could also colour in if you wanted to (it's the same two patterns which alternate in each section). If not though, it means you could probably take completed pictures out of the book to display (should you want to).

Expect to see more pictures from this book again in the future.

Right now I'm working on Enchanted Forest and I've still got my Gardens and Art Therapy colouring books that I got for my birthday. I'm working in rotation so I don't get bored with any one style of book because they're all different in their own ways. Definitely something I'm going to have to add to my list of hobbies.

Wordless Wednesday: Warning

Book 4 of 2015: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Many of the books that I read this year were contributions towards the Reading Challenge I'm working through. I didn't really impose any strict restrictions on myself for this challenge, but I aimed to read books I'd never read before and especially books which could be classed as 'classics'; my particular favourites were ones which could be gotten for free via Project Gutenberg.

Of course, that wasn't always the practical option, and I always wanted to try to read books which were near the bottom of my To-Read list. I've got books which always end up on one shelf or another, that get shunted to the end of my pile and so even when I rearrange my bookcases they don't move further up the list. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak was one of those; as I sort my books by series, genre and author (usually), no matter where I put it, it always ended up at the end of the group. When I had to read a book that had been turn into a movie, this seemed like a good excuse to bump it up my list.

The Book Thief tells the story of Liesl, the titular book thief, during the Second World War. It's narrated by Death, who first meets her the night that her brother dies whilst they are travelling across the country to live with foster parents. Through the war Liesl learns some harsh realities about the world she lives in, makes and loses friends, and is forced to grow up. Death oversees all, telling the story in the way only Death could tell it.

I read this as part of a 'book tree' several years ago; my one and only time I'd read this book previously. I picked up my copy from a charity shop a few years ago when I was attempting to read a book by an author for each letter of the alphabet (I never got around to this one). I remembered the book really fondly and could remember loving it; I though I remembered the story really clearly but once I got started on it, I realised just how little I remembered. There were bits of it that I'd forgotten completely, even though I remembered the general story; at times it felt like I was almost reading it for the first time.

I love the way that it's written. When I read reviews of The Book Thief it seems like a Marmite thing; people either love the way Death sees the world of the living, or they hate it. I'm firmly in the love camp. It makes perfect sense to me. I mean, Death isn't human. He (It?) doesn't see the world that we do, so why should things be described in a human way? Death smells colours, tastes feelings, and all senses seem similarly interchangeable. It creates a really beautiful style and yet it makes sense as well; I know exactly what is meant when something like a 'yellow feeling' is mentioned and as the story progresses I notice them less and less.

Another thing lots of readers don't seem to like is the way that the story jumps around. You'll be introduced to a character and told that they die later all in the same sentence. Again, that makes sense to me because why would Death experience time in the way humans do. Death is omnipresent and I imagine would experience all times all the time, so why shouldn't Death look at a person and know their whole life story. Beginnings and endings only matter to people because that's the order we experience them in; Death's all about the endings, so obviously that's going to be important when people are introduced.

I really like that approach. It's different and unexpected from a story because that just. not. how. things. are done. I like stories that do things differently. Besides, although to might know that a character is going to die, you don't actually know how you're going to get to that point. It's a spoiler, but not a total spoiler because you don't really know the whole story.

This time around the end of the story had an unexpected effect on me too. I cried.

I can count on one hand the number of times I've cried during a book. The Time Traveler's Wife does it to me, without fail. The Fault in Our Stars is one of the more recent ones to make me cry. I don't remember The Book Thief making me cry on my last read of it. I'd like to say that part of the reason was because I was reading it in bed at night before I left my Mum's house after visiting staying there for a week, but I think a good chunk of the reason for the tears were because the book touched me in a way not many books do.

It's one of only two books to have been awarded five stars in my book journal so far this year. I'm pretty hard to please when it comes to five star reviews!

Review: Teisseire Grenadine-flavour Syrup

I mentioned last week that I got lucky with my BzzAgent products to review recently. Well, the Teisseire syrup was one that I wasn't expecting but which is probably one of my favourite things to review.

I don't really do squash drinks. I mean, I might add a dash of blackcurrant to some lemonade occasionally but I don't think I've ever really gotten over the trauma of those terribly weak cups of squash you used to get as treats at school or at birthday parties. You know the ones, where they'd got one bottle of juice and had to stretch it out to at least sixty children. Everyone got a tiny trickle of juice which was so watered down that you could barely taste it; it just made the water taste funny.

Even today I prefer plain tap water over diluting juice. At work everyone's got a bottle of diluting juice on their desk and I'm the one with a couple of packets of hot chocolate floating around.

All the same, I'm always willing to try something new, so when the Teisseire campaign came up I figured I'd give it a go. It was advertised as a drink flavouring syrup, to be added to cocktails, water or lemonade. I'm not really a cocktail drinker but if I can like something you add to water to make it taste differently, then it has to be a hit.

And it was!

I'm actually really sad that I ran out a couple of weeks ago and haven't had a chance to get any more since then.

When I signed up for the campaign I was told I would have the choice of two flavours, pineapple and grenadine. As it happened, there was no pineapple left so grenadine it was. I had to look it up to see just what flavour that would be, but I'm glad I got that one. I'm going to have to try the other flavours at some point, but the grenadine is just lovely.

The stuff comes in a massive bottle that says it does enough for about fifty or sixty litres of drink. I was half expecting to receive a little sample bottle so this was a pleasant surprise. It lasted for weeks and that includes taking a generous sample in to share at work.

As it's a syrup and not a juice, it's really thick, so you just don't need as much as you would with a regular diluting juice. My first few glasses were maybe a little stronger than it needed to be until I got the hang of just adding a small splash; a little goes a long way. It's got a wonderfully strong flavour, something which Mr Click and the girls at work all agreed with.

I never did try it as a cocktail, as I said, I'm just not really a cocktail sort of person. I did however add it to water and lemonade. I don't often add flavour to lemonade but it made it feel like a nice treat, especially in the warm summery weather we had (right at the end of the summer)!

I'm planning on picking up some more as soon as I can because, if nothing else, I did notice it made me drink more during the day at work. I stay hydrated by keeping a water bottle on my desk, I'll top it up during the day but once the water starts warming up, I drink less. Over the course of some days I'll maybe drink a bottle to a bottle and a half; on the days when I added a splash of Teisseire grenadine flavour syrup to my water bottle I'd drink twice that.


If you get a chance to pick up a bottle of this, I'd definitely recommend it. It's slightly more expensive than your average bottle of diluting squash, but it goes a long way, has a fantastic flavour, and is a little bit more grown up and decadent than a basic bottle of Ribena!

Weekly Rundown: Work & Welsh Cawl

This week has seemed to mainly revolve around work for me. I don't tend to say too much about work here because that's work and this isn't and it seems like a good idea not to cross the dividing line. But this week I have spent rather a lot of time there so I can't help but mention it.

I volunteered to do some overtime this week. Now if I'm doing overtime I like to do it at the beginning of the day because there's nothing worse than the feeling of watching (what feels like) all of your colleagues leaving at the end of the day and knowing that you can't go for another hour; even when you're staying on willingly, even when staying late was your idea. I much prefer going in an hour early and somehow it helps to make the day go quicker.

It seemed like a good idea.

Until Tuesday morning when the alarm was going off nearly an hour earlier than usual.

As you can see from this blog post, I survived.

I'm also not sure if I mentioned it here a few weeks ago, but I went for a new position at work and I got it, so a fair chunk of this week has been spent in training ready for that. I'm learning loads but I'm also coming home at the end of each day with my head spinning. Suffice to say, I've been unwinding with a lot of colouring in and not doing a whole lot else.

Except reading.

I've finished The Dwarves by Markus Heitz, started and finished The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, and now I'm onto The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. The Dwarves took a lot time to get through (about a week and a half) so I think that spurred me on to read everything since there quite quickly. I'm just not sure what to read next!

As it was such a busy week, we took it easy yesterday. Mr Click whipped up a lovely Welsh Cawl (while I was away in Wales I instructed him to find a new recipe to try, he chose something that he thought was appropriate) and we spent the day watching the theatrical releases of The Hobbit films.

We didn't start watching them until nearly 11am so I thought we'd be pushing it to fit them all in, but we managed it, finishing up a little before 9pm. Very good going considering we had breaks for Tara, cooking, the loo and dishing up food. I've already pencilled in an epic marathon viewing of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Extended Editions for next Easter. What can I say? I like to plan in advance!

This week coming I've got more training so I foresee more evenings spent colouring and reading. I keep saying I need to get on with my knitting as well. I was so wonderfully ahead with my Nativity figures, I don't want to fall behind now. I may have to get Mr Click to hide my colouring books for a while!