My trip to Northern Ireland

It’s been 17 days since I last wrote on this blog… I’m so sorry… my time just ran out from under me! The reason is fairly simple: I was (still am) away from home… although technically I’m at home right now! I finally got some vacations and went to Ireland :D! OMG, I had been in Ireland before in May, but I love it, I loved it then, I loved it more now. So we got to Dublin on October 13^th and on the very next morning we boarded a train to Belfast, for a couple of days in Northern Ireland, a day of going around Belfast, and a second day of a Game of Thrones tour (and the Giant’s Causeway). Yeah, you read it right: GAME OF THRONES (freaking) LOCATIONS TOUR!!!! =D

Belfast is still a little overwhelming. They are trying really hard to let people know that it’s a safe city, with no more “troubles”, but as you’re walking along the murals and the walls that separated the two religions, you can’t stop thinking that the segregation is still not a thing from the past, and that the “troubles” weren’t that long ago…

Still, it’s a beautiful city. We only did a one day tour and went to the Titanic exhibition – that left me wondering: why are they so proud of a ship that went down?! Also, do you know that the Titanic studios, a.k.a. where the Titanic was built, is now the home where they film Game of Thrones? I have to admit that I was kind of scared of doing this tour, I stopped watching GoT at the end of season 2, and I didn’t know if I would recognize all the places, but yeah, I did.

The Caves at Cushendun

This is the place where Melisandre gives birth to the shadow baby, in the presence of a very frightened Davos Seaworth.

Ballintoy Harbour

This is Pyke Harbour!!! And Pyke’s beaches all around it. Pyke Pyke Pyke! They even have a poster of Theon Greyjoy.

Quarry at Larrybane

Renly’s camp was set there, this is where we first saw Brienne!

The Dark Hedges

A.K.A. The King’s Road… where Aria flees dressed as a boy at the end of season 1.

Giant’s Causeway

Ok, this is not GoT related, but still really impressive, right?

Tomorrow I’ll post about the rest of the tryp =) !

“The Mortal Instruments” will be back

Yesterday the internet exploded, for all of us, The Mortal instruments fans, finally got some news we had been waiting for so long: IT WILL COME BACK… but not as we thought. The Hollywood Reporter announced this yesterday:

“Constantin Film, the production company that controls the rights to Cassandra Clare‘s best-selling YA fantasy franchise and which produced The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones film, is relaunching Mortal Instruments as a high-end drama series.

Constantin has hired Ed Decter, whose writer-producer credits include Helix, Unforgettable, In Plain Sight and The Client List, as the showrunner for the Mortal Instruments series. The project is currently in development, with Constantin planning to begin production next year. No broadcast partners are yet attached to the series.

 

Constantin had originally planned to turn Clare’s fantasy series into a feature film franchise but shelved that idea after the first Mortal Instruments film, starring Lily Collins and Jamie Campbell Bower, tanked at the box office, earning just $31 million domestically. Constantin, however, insisted it had not abandoned the franchise and planned to return to Mortal Instruments.

 

“It actually makes sense to do (the novels) as a TV series,” Constantin film and TV head Martin Moszkowicz told THR. “There was so much from the book that we had to leave out of the Mortal Instruments film. In the series we’ll be able to go deeper and explore this world in greater detail and depth.”

 

The Mortal Instruments series is part of a broader strategic shift at Constantin that will see the German-based company move into English-language television series. Moszkowicz said Constantin is looking at possible television adaptations of several of its English-language movie properties, including period serial killer drama Perfume: The Story of a Murderer and the Resident Evil sci-fi horror franchise.

 

Constantin’s German television business has been consistently profitable over the years even as its recent English-language films, with the exception of the Resident Evil titles, have misfired. In addition to Mortal Instruments, Constantin’s big-budget disaster movie Pompeii and the 3D animated Tarzan, both fizzled at the box office.”

  

Well, I agree that it makes a lot more sense as a tv show. The series takes place in a limited time window, although, the amount of events is huge, and that was clearly not well done on the big screen. And I’m really excited about the possibility of it becoming a TV show. I’ve been “living” in the world of Shadowhunters for several months now (if you don’t count the 2 weeks I was somewhere between “The Maze” and “the Glade”), and it’s a “never-ending” story, in the sense that between the original series and The Infernal Devices we have already 9 books, and that Cassandra Clare is not only planning a sequel to The Infernal Devices, but to The Mortal Instruments as well! So, TV is not only a great chance for them to do it right, but to also expand on all the magnificent things the has put on paper!

The big concern right now is, of course, how they will come about doing it. Will they start from the beginning (ignoring the movie altogether), or are they starting in City of Ashes?! I have to be honest, I would love a total remake, because they screwed it up so badly, changing things that should not have been changed…

The other main concern for most fans is the casting. We now had a couple of years to grow to love all those involved in this movie, a second movie would mean that they would all be back, but a TV show means that most of them most likely wont! Lily Collins and Jamie Campbell Bower are highly unlikely to be linked to the TV show, no matter how much they love the characters, I just think it isn’t feasible given the success they enjoy right now. As much as I love Jamie in the movie, he’s not “my Jace”, so I guess I would be OK with it. Same goes for Clary, Lily Collins clearly made the character her own, but she not how I envisioned her. Now comes the tricky part: having any other person other than Robert Sheehan playing Simon would be plainly wrong. Isabelle is a role I fell needed a recast if we had had a second movie… Jemima West may be great, she’s just not a great Izzy.

Now Magnus and Alec… I guess in a sense we were lucky that nothing went on between them in the first book/movie… Godfrey Gao is “my Magnus”, I can’t read a passage with him in it without seeing his face, so I’m hoping, really hoping, that given that Magnus is a continuous character throughout the whole Shadowhunter business, that they’ll be able to keep him… I kinda grew to love Kevin Zegers‘s Alec, maybe because now I absolutely love Alec in the books, but I guess I would mind if he was recasted. Though all the fanart with Godfrey and Kevin’s faces would be out of date…

Whatever they decide, I’m just happy we’ll be able to see some kind of adaptation to screen of this amazing universe (and I’m desperately hoping that somehow The Infernal Devices will make it to the big screen…).

I wish I was watching Cats right now…

I love musicals! But if I had to pick a favourite, it would probably have to be CATS, written by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot and produced by Cameron Mackintosh.

Cats is in touring and right now it’s in Portugal, and, right now, my mom and my two nieces are watching and I just wished I was there as well. I’ve watched it twice live and saw the movie several time… besides, I have the soundtrack, which means I know all the songs by heart. I still tear up at Memory and openly cry at Gus: The Theatre Cat. Old Deuteronomy is one of my favorites songs, and Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat and Macavity: The Mystery Cat always make me want to dance and smile. I know most of their names… yeah, that’s how much I like it. And how sad I was when I realized that I wouldn’t be able to be in Portugal at this time… Guess I’ll have to go to London sometime soon… I just hope my girls love it as much as I do! =D

New sitcoms – week 2

How was week 2 of the new sitcoms?!

Selfie did a lot better than the pilot. Eliza was less much less flashy and much more likable. Henry became adicted to Facebook, which was really funny! If they keep it up, they might actually have a shot at hanging around.

Manhattan Love Story was ok… but really people, tone down on the voice-overs, they’re really not that necessary at times. My favorite character is Chloe… and she probably has the less screen time.

A to Z… again, OK! Andrew and Zelda are funny and cute together and I see a lot of potential in the show… if it wasn’t for the fact that they keep reminding us they won’t last (right? they’re not getting married after 8 months…). Their BFFs are hilarious!

Bad Judge was way better than the pilot. Losing the kid was a good choice, not sure if they’ll stick to it, but well done. Getting rid of the van: marvelous choice. Why anyone with a house like that would ride that train wreck is beyond me. Focusing on the bonding of Rebecca and Tedward, again, nice choice. I’ll give it another week, then we’ll see…

The Flash: “the fastest man alive” has arrived

It’s here! The Flash has arrived! =D

The first episode was great. It introduced the characters quite nicely, gave a bit of Barry’s backstory and set the premise of the show. It has a lighter tone than Arrow, but it still has plenty of darkness and angst – along with a lot of humor and cool effects.

Grant Gustin is the perfect Barry Allen, and OMG, the mask makes him look like a totally different person – unlike every superhero ever in the history of superhero’s tv shows and movies.

Just some thoughts:

• I’m super curious about who murdered Barry’s mom and how he got out of the house. The moment he sees a figure in the middle of the vortex speed it almost looks like him, I mean, the suit is pretty similar. But the yellow, apparently, is the colour of the Reverse-Flash, his nemesis… so we had yellow and red in that “vortex”, could it be that inside was not only the Reverse, but also the Flash… we know there’s some time-travelling capability there…

• Not a fan of Iris West (Candice Patton) yet, though I have to admit that I like her slightly better than Laurel from Arrow… but hey… that’s not that hard!

• Harrison Wells (Tom Cavanagh)?! Come on… that it genius! Giving us that tremendous WTF moment that will probably take a whole lot of time to be resolved?! Genius I say!

• Casting John Wesley Shipp as Henry Allen has to be one of the coolest things on superheroes’ shows since Smallville casted almost every single person related to the Superman movies and Lois and Clark: the new adventures of Superman series…

• Oliver Queen inspired Barry to be more than he is, and even though the rooftop scene can feel forced or whatever, the “cool!” moment that each of the has is not, and goddammit… it’s COOL!

• The writers and producers are hell bent in building an entire DC universe and that is great. Almost every single character has a story of their own and are destined either to become heroes or not so much. But from the name of coffe shops, to slight adaptations of names (Eddie Thawne anyone?!), to that future newspaper who besides having The Flash well represented, also mentions Oliver Queen and Bruce Wayne, they are thinking big. This is great! I’m not the biggest DC comics fan, but damn it if I didn’t love it when Smallville builded a team of their own!

 

Can’t wait for next week!

The concept of democracy is lost on student’s strikes

What a sh***y morning! So, I assume you are more or less aware that Catalunya want to be independent from the rest of Spain, right? So they want to vote on it and have it somehow count as it did in Scotland… (I hate to tell you this, but Scotland IS a country… Catalunya is not…). But well, so the students at my University decided to do a 2 days strike in order to raise awareness (I guess) and in the name of democracy!

That’s fair game, right? It’s a democratic right, the right to strike, but isn’t also your right not to do it?! Here at the university, we always have some trouble when the students decide to go on strike, because they barricade the entry that connects the FGC (trains) to the campus, which means, that either you got off on the previous stop and walk a long while to get there, or you have to know your way around the university pretty well and still deal with this a**holes (pardon my french). So, I decided “I’ll go super early, I won’t have a problem then”… and damn it, I was WRONG! Apparently the guys slept in the university so to be there super early!

As soon as I went towards the entrance to the university, I saw them putting up the last of the elements of the barricade, when I approached them, they were sending a poor kid away and…

I told them to “open up”…

to what they responded that “there’s now way, there are other entrances to the university”…

well “honey” – “I’m here and I want to enter!”…

“go around”

“no” – by this time, 3 other university employees were there as well, trying to get in – “I’m not spanish, I have absolutely nothing to do with this stuff, I need to get to work, you’re going to open up”

to this the guy responded in catalan – which is always nice when you just expressed how you’re not even from his country – “I’m not going to let you pass! There is a strike!”

at this point one of the ladies trying to get in appealed to the fact that the students may go on strike, but the personnel still has to go to work… this did nothing for them.

so, in a desperate attempt I said “well, you know, not everyone that sets foot in the university does so to study… some people have to work!” – to this the looked at me and laughed… I don’t know if it was the fact that I was wearing jeans, a hoodie and a backpack, but somehow this children (yes, to me that’s what they are!) thought that I was being ironic or something like that!

some other lady said (in catalan) “yeah, she’s right, there are a lot of companies based in the campus!”…

so some of the other kids convinced the first one to let us go through… quite a feat… if it wasn’t for the fact that has we were going in, they looked at a guy that was there as well and said “you can’t come in, you’re a student!”…

 

This made curse loudly… (with 3 policemen in front of me)! Do this people understand their rights? Because their freedom ends when somebody else’s begins! I would give them the benefit of the doubt if this was a strike about educational related subjects… but that was not the case. You have the right to have a divergent opinion, and you shouldn’t have your life disrupted because a group of people thinks that you opinion is not as valid as theirs.

God! I don’t miss being twenty!

Sailor Moon Crystal – Act 7: Mamoru Chiba

What a romantic episode! I can’t believe we waited 46 episodes on the first anime for Mamoru and Usagi to get together, and now, on episode 7, here they are, professing their love for each other. I loved it!

Things I really loved about this episode:

• Everything about Usagi and Mamoru! Everything!

• Sailor V!!! Minako is here people! And guess what?! She orders Luna around and it’s funny as hell!

• Any similarities between Umino and Doctor Tomoe are a pure coincidences… right?!

• I guess Queen Beryl has her own agenda… she won’t give the Silver Crystal to Queen Metalia willingly… so, that will be interesting!

• Mamoru socket punches Zoisite – I love Zoisite, come on, he’s my favorite baddie, but that felt good!

• Mamoru says that Usagi is more important that the Silver Crystal… considering that it’s the only memory he’s got, that’s pretty huge.

• Did I mention Minako? Venus? Artemis?! They both save the day… they’re coming… (tough Mina is not my favorite senshi, Artemis IS my favorite Cat!) =D !!!

 

(Venus?! Did you lost your tiara?! =| )

I’m loving this reboot, loving it, I love the pace of it, I only miss the bonding time between the girls, and now, with Venus being introduced in the next act, I hope we get some more girl time.

Gracepoint (a.k.a. Broadchurch with a different accent)

Gracepoint has finally arrived to our screens… and it’s obviously great… obviously because the first episode is exactly the same as the first episode of Broadchurch… the only difference being the cast (most of them, anyway) and the accent!

This was only the first episode and they said that the story won’t be exactly the same and I so want to believe them… because it’s a great story, but they could have changed a few things in the first episode. It didn’t need to be a shot by shot remake of the original, though.

One thing is pretty clear to me, I found the british cast way way better… (though I’m glad Kevin Zegers is on there 🙂 ). Anna Gunn, amazing as she is, is not Olivia Colman… David Tennant, however, is very much David Tennant, without his scottish accent… though when Emmett Carver started to shout, David’s scottish accent started showing! Let’s see what the next weeks will bring.

Movie of the week: The Maze Runner

I was very excited to watch this movie, and with good reason, a dystopian future with all its grandeur, it’s always nice to see on the big screen.

To be clear, it’s a great movie, action packed some good acting and a good story too.

I only had one problem with it (and it was my own fault) – it differs a lot from the book. So far with these YA books, I tend to watch the movie first and then proceed to read the book if the story is interesting enough. But with The Maze Runner I was super curious, so I decided to read the book first, in fact, I stopped reading one other book to read this, and waited until I was finished to go watch it at the movies… this was roughly 30 minutes before the movie started.

So, with all of the events of the book still all too fresh in my memory, I stepped into the cinema and I found myself thinking about how things should have been…

• Why the hell is Alby so nice?! Alby is never that nice!
• Why is Gally so nice?! No changing for him?! What?!
• Ben? Running? Shouldn’t he be lying in bed?! Stung in the middle of the day?
• Wait, so no one has seen a griever?!
• Bonfire? Really?
• .. they run with their boots? Don’t they get running shoes? Shorts? T-shirts? Why is Minho running around with a buttoned shirt?

You catch my drift, right? They changed a lot of things, some I don’t think were strictly necessary, such as Alby, but giving that they gave them all much less time than in the book, they had to make us care for the boy. The Glade wasn’t anything as I had imagined it, they went for a more rustic feel to it, giving the boys shacks instead of a house and concrete buildings… that’s ok… the elevator scared the hell out of me, I’m guessing that’s why they made it see through and not solid. All together, they did an amazing story for the movie, with the same clear objectives, but with a different path to it. It’s visually appealing and its fast pace will have you gripped to the screen… no one can deny that that maze moving is freaking scary.

One thing that I actually loved more than in the book was the final scene. The subtle changes made much more sense (and the door with the “EXIT” sign was just genius!).  Can’t wait for The Scorch Trials! Won’t make the same mistake again, though… I’ll read the book a lot sooner, so I don’t keep comparing the two… =)

A to Z and Bad Judge

Yesterday NBC premiered two new sitcoms, A to Z and Bad Judge, what did you think about them? Here’s what I thought…

A to Z

In a very (500) days of Summer way, the narrator tells us that Andrew and Zelda “will date for eight months, three weeks, five days and one hour, this program is a comprehensive account of their relationship – from A to Z.”

It sound interesting and fun, and then I thought “crap, what if I like them? aren’t they telling us that it won’t work? then what?!”… but as I was watching I couldn’t help smiling and enjoying it and somehow thinking that it’ll all be ok… This one I’ll keep watching 🙂 !

   

Bad Judge

Wow… Kate Walsh, how far you’ve fallen… I don’t know what to say except that this was (probably) the worst pilot I’ve seen in a while. Incredible, the title and catch phrases correspond nothing to what we see in the pilot. Is she breaking the rules at night? Why, because she sleeps in her clothes? Has sex in her desk? Is helping a kid whose parents she put away? It’s all over the place, with no thread whatsoever and no real story…

I think this show may just be the first one to get cancelled… or if not, it will be in the first bunch.