Today is my last full day in the Netherlands as I'm heading back to England tomorrow afternoon. We were going to go for a hike, but in the end Eva wasn't feeling too well and I keep sneezing and blowing my nose (the first cold of the season), so we opted for staying in and keeping warm.

One of the films we watched this afternoon was "United", which is about the 1958 Munich plane crash which killed several members of the Manchester United squad known as "Busby's Babes". The players were all relatively young, hence their name. I actually knew very little about it, but had a read of the Wikipedia page after we finished the movie. I think the whole thing was done very well, and pays a decent tribue to both the deceased and the survivors.

We've also been entertaining the cats, who have been chasing after a pen on and off for the afternoon and at one point one of them skidded across the floor in a desperate attempt to get to the pen first.

This is either Liam or Locke, can't remember which one. They're both a mixture of crazy and sleepy. One of them ended up having a nap on my legs last night which surprised Eva as he's not really much of a lap cat.

This evening we've indulged in Star Trek: Into Darkness, and a takeaway. I went for chicken nuggets, chips and to fit in with the Dutch I had a beef croquette. The chips aren't like proper British chips, but they were delicious, and I managed to avoid the Dutch tradition of putting mayonaise on them.

Tomorrow's blog post will no doubt be very, very short unless I can think of something to write about when I'm on the Eurostar.

Have a nice evening everyone!

Rise of the Guardians

Over the weekend I finally got round to watching the CGI film Rise of the Guardians. It was created by DreamWorks Animation (creators of the Shrek films) and came out in the cinemas last year.

It tells the story of Jack Frost, who is chosen by the Man on the Moon to become a Guardian of children. The current Guardians are Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and the Sandman. Santa has a Russian accent, and the Easter Bunny is Australian (and voiced by Hugh Jackman). The "bad guy" is Pitch (as in "pitch black"), a Boogeyman that no one believes in.

Rise of the Guardians buttons by beanclam

The story is good, but I was really impressed by the animation and the scenery design, as well as some of the twists on childhood tales. Everyone knows that Santa has Elves, but did you expect to see Yetis? And the Easter Bunny lives in a lush green wonderland with tiny little eggs that bathe in paint to make them multicoloured.

If you have children, or are like me and just like kids films, you should really check out Rise of the Guardians. You might want to leave it until winter though, it has a very Christmassy feel to it, even though it's actually set at Easter.

Have a nice evening everyone!

Pixar Day

A friend of mine at work recently told me that he finally got round to watching the Pixar film "Cars". We both agreed that while it's a decent enough film, it's not what we'd consider to be Pixar's best work. In the end we couldn't decide what was the "best" that Pixar had to offer simply because there's several to choose from (including Wall-E and the Toy Story trilogy), but it did inspire me to have a small Pixar Day!

Up Adventure Book by AlbumOptions

The first one I watched was Up. I think it's a film that will go down in history simply through being the film that makes everyone cry in the first ten minutes and manages to show a couple's life with no words and some beautiful music. No matter how often I watch the film I end up getting very teary-eyed. Adventure is out there!

Chibi: Merida from Brave by CuteChibisandMore

The second film I watched was Brave. I never got round to watching it when it was in the cinema, so I added it to my Lovefilm DVD rental list and it arrived this week, so I made it part of my Pixar day! I liked it, although I don't think it's ever going to be my favourite. However I did think the animation for Merida's hair was incredible, and really shows the talent that Pixar has in it's studios.

I think everyone deserves a Pixar now and then, if some of you aren't now scouring your shelves for DVDs to watch then I haven't done this post right!

Have a nice day!