M&M: Bastille Day

Bastille Day is a movie from the year 2016. Bastille Day is referring to July, 14^th, the national holiday in France. On July, 14^th 1789 the Bastille was stormed. The movie is set in contemporary Paris a few days before this national holiday. Michael Mason (played by Richard Madden) picks pockets and is unwillingly involved in a bomb attack, when he steals a woman's bag, in which she hid a bomb. Mason checks the bag quickly and decides that there's nothing interesting in it for him and leaves it. As he walks away, the bomb explodes. The CIA hears of the incident and starts looking for Mason, who they believe to be a terrorist after identifying him through cameras around the buildings where the explosion took place. Sean Briar (played by Idris Elba) is ordered to look for Mason. Briar is from the CIA, but not necessarily a guy playing by the rules himself. Initially both men naturally don't trust each other, but then Briar is willing to work with Mason to find the woman, who had the bag first so they can find out more about the reason for the bomb attack.

Richard Madden is initially shown picking pockets. According to the trivia section on imdb.com for this movie, he actually trained to do this for real.

The movie was released in cinemas on July, 13^th 2016 and on July, 14^th the terrorist attacks in Paris and Nizza followed. StudioCanal removed all digital advertisements of this movie in Paris and let theatres decide for themselves, if they wanted to keep the movie in their program or not.

The story of the movie, as described above, may at first read like a simple movie at most described as “action movie“. Yes, it is a movie with lots of action, starting with the pursuit when Briar finds Mason, who runs up to the rooftop and on to other rooftops of Paris. To me however the movie is more than just an action movie. When I saw it the first time, it was on tv at around 10 at night and I was fairly tired already. I wanted to just have a quick look into it, to see what this movie was like, that had the French national holiday as a title. That night I didn't just have a quick look into it, I watched the whole movie to the end, because the story was captivating enough for me to make me curious what the reasons for the attack were and how the story would end for both Briar and Mason. I liked the characters. It's not just about the attack. With Mason we have someone innocent, picking pockets, who suddenly has to prove his innocence when everyone else is looking for him, thinking he wanted to execute the attack. The fact that I'm somewhat interested in magic may have helped making Mason more sympathetic for me.

As I watched the movie, I did however ask myself one question repeatedly: The CIA is not a French organisation, Briar is not a Frenchmen, neither is Mason, but the movie is set in Paris, the capital of France, around the French national holiday. Couldn't they have made the movie “fully” French, instead of just using the date of the French national holiday and making the story take place in Paris? That's not at all critisising the acting abilities of Richard Madden, Idris Elba or anyone else in this movie. I'm just thinking that as much as the frame work of the movie is French, why not use French actors for the main characters and some French organisation instead of the CIA? That's a bit sad all in all, nevertheless I liked the characters of Mason and Briar enough to be interested in a “Bastille Day 2” kind of sequel with the two. The movie does have a good and reasonable ending, but especially the future for Mason after all the events of the movie are questionable and I'd have liked to see how things went on for him specifically. I'm not aware that any sequel is even planned though and I doubt that a sequel with those characters will ever come.

Sunset today

Pandemic and lockdown may suck, but not everything is bad. This sunset wasn't bad at all. Enjoy the little pleasures in life, everyone!

Tell me in the comments what nice things you experienced lately.

Out at a restaurant with a very special guest at the table next to us

 

vu

I had a proverbial screw loose (and lost it)

 

3 ingredient cookies variations

In 2017 I wrote a blog post with a cookie recipe I called 3 ingredients cookies, although the internet knows it more under the name of "Nutella cookies". I myself made them with Nutella only once, but did them many times with all sorts of spreads.

The following pictures were not taking this January, they are older. I wanted to share some variations I made with you anyway.

In May 2019 I found pistaccio spread:

That same day I also made my favourite cookies with friends with caramell sea salt spread (the brown ones). I did announce that there is "Bounty cream" to those friends to get a variation of coconut cookies. I blieve those versions of spreads like Bounty/coconut, Mars, Mily Way and the like are just temporarily available, I haven't seen them a lot lately, only the occassional Mars one maybe. I didn't find "Bounty Cream" that day, but a similar suitable coconut spread (the white cookies):

Another posibility for cookies are with M&Ms, but they are big and large (make sure to stick the M&Ms well into the cookies, otherwise they may drop out and away from the cookies during the cooking time in the oven:

I found that smarties are more practical, because they are smaller:

There's a brand available here called "Chocolate Symphony". A dark chocolate version can be seen here:

They have all sorts of variations, mostly in 200 g jars, which is just what you need for the cookies. The spread is easy to get out of the jar, the labels can be taken off the jars very easily with no traces of the glue left, which I think makes them great to reuse. Check those out and get them, if you can. I always do.

Here's the webite of the company: https://brinkers.com/brands/chocolate-symphony/

Leave me a comment what kind of variation you'd like to try or have tried already.

M&M: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

I like and respect Roald Dahl as a writer and enjoy watching the movie “Mathilda” several times and I did enjoy reading “The BFG” even as an adult. Maybe I should some day read his book “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, on which this movie from the year 2005 is based on.

To be honest, I don't like the movie much. It's predictable from the start and the whole conception of it is just purely annoying. A typical Tim Burton movie with the “usual suspects”: with Danny Elfman scoring the music, like he did with almost every Tim Burton movie, we also have Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka in the lead role and Helena Bonham Carter (then still fiancé of Tim Burton) as mother of Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore). Charlie's family is so poor, they barely have enough just to eat. Still it's Charlie of all people, who gets one of the rare golden tickets. The golden ticket enables Charlie and other children to visit Willy Wonka in his famous chocolate factory and get a tour there, one which none of them will ever forget. In the end even Willy Wonka, living estrangd from his father, learned something. Yawn. In fact at the end I had the feeling that the movie should have been called “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”, because it was somehow most of the time about Willy Wonka, his life style and his factory and not about Charlie Bucket.

While nobody would wish for anybody to grow up in such poor circumstances that Charlie has to be in. However the other kids that get the remaining golden tickets are rotten and spoiled. Each of the spoiled kids will get into a nasty situation according to their character. Charlie is the only one getting away from that tour in a positive way, since he's already punished enough by living in the poor family situation he grew up in.

The movie respectively the factory has jarring colourings in a typical Tim Burton way. As a fan of Danny Elfman's music I listened to it several times before I saw it was on tv one day. I don't know if my parents knew what the movie was about or that it was a Tim Burton movie respectively some parts would be musical songs. I don't know what bothered my parents the most. In any case they turned it off soon. I watched it alone some time later. As I watched it, I had the feeling Danny Elfman's music held everything together and especially in the factory it seemed that they were moving from one song to the next. I liked the music. Especially the first tracks of the album (1-5) are funny and diverse like the characters they're about (“Wonka's Welcome Song”, “Augustus Gloop”, “Violet Beauregarde”, “Veruca Salt”, “Mike “Teavee”). Danny Elfman sang the lyrics to the songs himself and as he reported himself, as he composed the songs, he had laughing fits so hard that his wife checked in on him a couple of times,to see if everything was ok. I can very much imagine that. The tracks are “quirky”, upbeat and dynamic. With “Augustus Gloop” there is however already a revelation that nothing really bad will happen to the kids. Of course not! It's a children's movie and as rotten as the kids may be, nobody wishes them anything terrible („But don't, dear children be alarmed, Augustus Gloop will not be harmed, Augustus Gloop will not be harmed“). The tracks 13-15 (“ Loompa Land”, “The Boat Arrives”, “The River Cruise”) and 18 (“The River Cruise – Part 2”) are pretty dark tracks, by the way. So it's by all means not all just cheery music. I'm listening to the soundtrack again after a long time as I'm writing this blog post.

I would almost suggest to not watch the movie and just listen to the soundtrack. Of course you won't see the kids that way or in what kind of situations they get into and the lessons they'll learn. By only listening to the soundtrack you will also not know the ending and what happened to Willy Wonka and Charlie Bucket after the tour. I like Helena Bonham Carter, who can only be seen shortly as the mother and I also like Freddie Highmore. Still, I personally would prefer listening to the soundtrack happily and repeatedly, which I find much more entertaining by itself with the sounds and the lyrics, than watching this quirky, predictable movie. Probably most people will want to watch the movie after listening to the soundtrack anyway. To that I can only say this: Watch it at your own risk!

On the way to the Christmas party...

The jaw of a co-worker dropped and she was literally speechless when I showed her this picture I took on my way to the Christmas party: