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Ivana A. | Diary of Difference (1171 KP) rated Rachel's Pudding Pantry in Books
Oct 2, 2020
A fast read that talks about family, love, grief and finding reasons to be happy!
Rachel’s Pudding Pantry is a story about Rachel, who is a farmer in the modern world, living with her mum Jill and her little daughter Maisy. Rachel and her family has been dealing with a lot of grief in the last couple of years, and are struggling financially to keep the farm running.
The one thing that glues this family together, and keeps them happy is the baking and the making of lovely sweet puddings. They bake all day, especially grandma Jill, and they are the perfect example of what a family should look like – full with joy, love and laughter.
I loved the personality Rachel has;
She always puts her family in the first place, cares about her daughter and mum so much. Everything she is doing, she is doing for them, and she is always positive minded. It was such a refreshing moment for me to find such character.
Rachel and her mum are dealing with grief, losing a person in their family that meant a lot to them. This moment of sadness can be felt throughout the book, and I loved it. It shows that grief is a constant battle – it is not easy to lose someone you love, and you don’t get over it very easily. Years could pass, and you will still have the emptiness in your heart. I felt this on my skin, when I lost my grandfather in January. Even after three months, I still think of him every single day, and hope that he is looking over me and is proud of who I have become.
I was also very positively pleased with the other supportive characters surrounding Rachel’s story. Tom was the perfect neighbor – the one you always call for help and will always help you when you need him. He is always caring and trustworthy, and sometimes, I felt awkward when Rachel always came to him for help. Knowing myself, I would be so embarrassed to keep asking for help.
Then we have her best-friend Eve. She was my superhero, and a friend anyone would wish for. She was always supportive, always there for Rachel with her never-ending love. It is a priceless relationship these two ladies have, and I couldn’t help but be a massive fan of them.
The only thing that kept bothering me throughout the book, and is not that big of a deal anyways, was the fact that despite their financial struggles, Jill kept baking for like thirty people every single day (this is before they started the new business). If that was me, I wouldn’t bake that often. I guess it was a fact that just stuck with me for a while.
Even though it is not my usual read, I honestly really enjoyed this book. I am seriously considering giving this genre more time, and reading more books similar to this.
It was a quick, pleasurable read. It always made me feel happy and content, and eager to go in the kitchen and bake some sweets. Because I am a lazy one, I just bought sweets and ate them instead. Tell you what – that also works quite fine!
Rachel’s Pudding Pantry is a story about Rachel, who is a farmer in the modern world, living with her mum Jill and her little daughter Maisy. Rachel and her family has been dealing with a lot of grief in the last couple of years, and are struggling financially to keep the farm running.
The one thing that glues this family together, and keeps them happy is the baking and the making of lovely sweet puddings. They bake all day, especially grandma Jill, and they are the perfect example of what a family should look like – full with joy, love and laughter.
I loved the personality Rachel has;
She always puts her family in the first place, cares about her daughter and mum so much. Everything she is doing, she is doing for them, and she is always positive minded. It was such a refreshing moment for me to find such character.
Rachel and her mum are dealing with grief, losing a person in their family that meant a lot to them. This moment of sadness can be felt throughout the book, and I loved it. It shows that grief is a constant battle – it is not easy to lose someone you love, and you don’t get over it very easily. Years could pass, and you will still have the emptiness in your heart. I felt this on my skin, when I lost my grandfather in January. Even after three months, I still think of him every single day, and hope that he is looking over me and is proud of who I have become.
I was also very positively pleased with the other supportive characters surrounding Rachel’s story. Tom was the perfect neighbor – the one you always call for help and will always help you when you need him. He is always caring and trustworthy, and sometimes, I felt awkward when Rachel always came to him for help. Knowing myself, I would be so embarrassed to keep asking for help.
Then we have her best-friend Eve. She was my superhero, and a friend anyone would wish for. She was always supportive, always there for Rachel with her never-ending love. It is a priceless relationship these two ladies have, and I couldn’t help but be a massive fan of them.
The only thing that kept bothering me throughout the book, and is not that big of a deal anyways, was the fact that despite their financial struggles, Jill kept baking for like thirty people every single day (this is before they started the new business). If that was me, I wouldn’t bake that often. I guess it was a fact that just stuck with me for a while.
Even though it is not my usual read, I honestly really enjoyed this book. I am seriously considering giving this genre more time, and reading more books similar to this.
It was a quick, pleasurable read. It always made me feel happy and content, and eager to go in the kitchen and bake some sweets. Because I am a lazy one, I just bought sweets and ate them instead. Tell you what – that also works quite fine!
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Bob Mann (459 KP) rated Stuber (2019) in Movies
Sep 28, 2021
An action comedy that takes you for a ride.
Kumail Nanjiani hits my funny bone… again.
Like no other genre, comedy is highly personal and one person’s comedy gold is another person’s comedy nightmare (“Mrs Brown’s Boys” anyone?). Similarly there are some comedians that I really engage with and others that really irritate. For me, stand-up comedian Kumail Nanjiani falls into the former category. Although having had bit-part roles in many films over the last ten years, it was his starring role playing… well… basically, himself in “The Big Sick” that first caught my attention. Here he repeats that starring role and delivers a deft performance as the shy and ‘scaredy-cat’ driver making a pick-up he won’t forget in a hurry.
He’s paired here, in an unusual ‘buddy cop’/’not buddy cop’ manner, with “Spectre” bad-guy Dave Bautista, a giant of a man who displays a knack for comic delivery (albeit as the straight man) that I was not expecting.
The seeing-eye Uber man.
Bautista plays cop Vic Manning who is in an obsessive pursuit of bad-guy Oka Tedjo (Iko Uwais). Suffering from increasingly bad eyesight, Manning undergoes laser eye surgery on the very day that the “big tip-off” comes through. Being almost blind, Manning hires (read kidnaps) Stu to be his unwilling partner in a battle that puts Stu as well as Manning’s attractive artist daughter (Natalie Morales) in harm’s way.
There’s comedy to be mined in the blind cop set-up…. it’s similar in some ways to the Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor comedy “See No Evil, Hear No Evil”.
Surprisingly visceral action.
We all know that Bautista can do a good fight scene. That fight onboard a train in “Spectre“, with Daniel Craig‘s Bond, was almost on a par with the famous Connery/Shaw fight in “From Russia With Love”. Here, Bautista gets to brawl with gusto in a few scenes.
In general, the “action” in this “action-comedy” is pretty full-on and entertaining. The opening scenes in particular, with Manning and officer Sara Morris (the ever-watchable Karen Gillan) taking on Tedjo in an upper floor of a high-rise building are exciting and dramatic. This is due in no small part to the acrobatic capabilities of Iko Uwais. (Uwais is an Indonesian champion at the martial art Silat… and it shows).
Slick writing that delivers some great lines.
The script is by Tripper Clancy, with this being his first US film after penning two previous German films. And it really made me laugh a lot, both in terms of some of the set up scenes (one in an animal hospital is particularly funny) and in some of the dialogue. As an example, when pushed to the limit of his stress, Stu wails “So I’m gonna have to get cheap student therapists who quote white guys with Indian names and tell me that I should meditate. I…DO…MEDITATE!!!!”.
Also top-notch is the use of music in the film. A use of the Hollies classic “Air that I breathe” during the above mentioned Animal Hospital scene was brilliant.
Summary
Comedies need to make me laugh. This one did. Repeatedly. It even made the illustrious Mrs Movie Man laugh too. Repeatedly. As such “Stuber” comes with a “recommended” from me.
Like no other genre, comedy is highly personal and one person’s comedy gold is another person’s comedy nightmare (“Mrs Brown’s Boys” anyone?). Similarly there are some comedians that I really engage with and others that really irritate. For me, stand-up comedian Kumail Nanjiani falls into the former category. Although having had bit-part roles in many films over the last ten years, it was his starring role playing… well… basically, himself in “The Big Sick” that first caught my attention. Here he repeats that starring role and delivers a deft performance as the shy and ‘scaredy-cat’ driver making a pick-up he won’t forget in a hurry.
He’s paired here, in an unusual ‘buddy cop’/’not buddy cop’ manner, with “Spectre” bad-guy Dave Bautista, a giant of a man who displays a knack for comic delivery (albeit as the straight man) that I was not expecting.
The seeing-eye Uber man.
Bautista plays cop Vic Manning who is in an obsessive pursuit of bad-guy Oka Tedjo (Iko Uwais). Suffering from increasingly bad eyesight, Manning undergoes laser eye surgery on the very day that the “big tip-off” comes through. Being almost blind, Manning hires (read kidnaps) Stu to be his unwilling partner in a battle that puts Stu as well as Manning’s attractive artist daughter (Natalie Morales) in harm’s way.
There’s comedy to be mined in the blind cop set-up…. it’s similar in some ways to the Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor comedy “See No Evil, Hear No Evil”.
Surprisingly visceral action.
We all know that Bautista can do a good fight scene. That fight onboard a train in “Spectre“, with Daniel Craig‘s Bond, was almost on a par with the famous Connery/Shaw fight in “From Russia With Love”. Here, Bautista gets to brawl with gusto in a few scenes.
In general, the “action” in this “action-comedy” is pretty full-on and entertaining. The opening scenes in particular, with Manning and officer Sara Morris (the ever-watchable Karen Gillan) taking on Tedjo in an upper floor of a high-rise building are exciting and dramatic. This is due in no small part to the acrobatic capabilities of Iko Uwais. (Uwais is an Indonesian champion at the martial art Silat… and it shows).
Slick writing that delivers some great lines.
The script is by Tripper Clancy, with this being his first US film after penning two previous German films. And it really made me laugh a lot, both in terms of some of the set up scenes (one in an animal hospital is particularly funny) and in some of the dialogue. As an example, when pushed to the limit of his stress, Stu wails “So I’m gonna have to get cheap student therapists who quote white guys with Indian names and tell me that I should meditate. I…DO…MEDITATE!!!!”.
Also top-notch is the use of music in the film. A use of the Hollies classic “Air that I breathe” during the above mentioned Animal Hospital scene was brilliant.
Summary
Comedies need to make me laugh. This one did. Repeatedly. It even made the illustrious Mrs Movie Man laugh too. Repeatedly. As such “Stuber” comes with a “recommended” from me.
BankofMarquis (1832 KP) rated The Pale Blue Eye (2022) in Movies
Jan 15, 2023
Haunting and Intriguing
An eerie, gothic murder mystery pairing an ingenious Detective with a young Edgar Allan Poe is now streaming on Netflix and is the perfect way to shut out the January winds and hibernate on your couch and get involved in the mystery while sitting in front of a warm, roaring fire (or heat lamp) and your favorite warm (possibly adult) beverage).
Written for the screen (from book by Louis Bayard) and Directed by Scott Cooper (OUT OF THE FURNACE), THE PALE BLUE EYE stars the always good Christian Bale (probably my favorite actor working today) as Civilian Detective Augustus Landor who is summoned to 1830’s West Point Military Academy to solve a murder. He is aided by a young cadet played by Harry Melling (Dudley Dursley in the HARRY POTTER FILMS) who turns out to be none other than Edgar Allan Poe.
Cooper films this movie in shadow and dark brown and yellow tones, giving the 1830’s setting a certain dream-like, dreary quality that underscores the gruesome goings-on happening behind the scenes at the fledgling United States Military Academy. These types of films - and the mood that is permeated throughout - can often be slow slogs and often times bogs down under the weight of it’s own pretentiousness - but Cooper keeps the action moving forward (though at a deliberate pace) often-times mimicking the piecing together of the circumstances that Bale’s character is doing.
Thank goodness Cooper had the good sense to reunite with his OUT OF THE FURNACE star and cast Bale in the lead role. The character of Detective Augustus Landor is dark and brooding - himself still working through the emotions of a tragedy from his past. But he is also thoughtful and deliberate in his detective work and Bale handles these moods…and the pacing of the film…like the pro that he is. If for no other reason, check out THE PALE BLUE EYE (a reference to Poe’s TELL TALE HEART) for Bale’s performance at the center of things.
Fortunately, Bale is aided in this film by a strong ensemble of (mostly) British actors from Toby Jones to Gillian Anderson to Simon McBurney and Timothy Spall - they all bring their considerable talents to lesser roles as suspects and/or witnesses in this “whodunnit”. Cooper also trots out good ol’ (and I do mean old) Robert Duvall for a “blink or you’ll miss it” cameo. The casting works well for this gothic murder mystery.
And then there is Melling as Edgar Allan Poe. He plays Poe as you might expect one to play a young Edgar Allan Poe - as an “odd duck” who is fascinated by macabre scenarios (which would be later found in his storytelling), but Melling gives him an intelligence and gentleness of soul that really works in this case.
The Cinematography of this movie is bleak and dark - as befits a gothic murder mystery - and the pacing is not fast in any sense of the word, but if you click into this world, you’ll be rewarding by an interesting murder mystery that resolves itself in a surprising - and satisfactory - way.
Letter Grade: B+
8 stars (out of 10) and you can take that to the Bank(ofMarquis)
Written for the screen (from book by Louis Bayard) and Directed by Scott Cooper (OUT OF THE FURNACE), THE PALE BLUE EYE stars the always good Christian Bale (probably my favorite actor working today) as Civilian Detective Augustus Landor who is summoned to 1830’s West Point Military Academy to solve a murder. He is aided by a young cadet played by Harry Melling (Dudley Dursley in the HARRY POTTER FILMS) who turns out to be none other than Edgar Allan Poe.
Cooper films this movie in shadow and dark brown and yellow tones, giving the 1830’s setting a certain dream-like, dreary quality that underscores the gruesome goings-on happening behind the scenes at the fledgling United States Military Academy. These types of films - and the mood that is permeated throughout - can often be slow slogs and often times bogs down under the weight of it’s own pretentiousness - but Cooper keeps the action moving forward (though at a deliberate pace) often-times mimicking the piecing together of the circumstances that Bale’s character is doing.
Thank goodness Cooper had the good sense to reunite with his OUT OF THE FURNACE star and cast Bale in the lead role. The character of Detective Augustus Landor is dark and brooding - himself still working through the emotions of a tragedy from his past. But he is also thoughtful and deliberate in his detective work and Bale handles these moods…and the pacing of the film…like the pro that he is. If for no other reason, check out THE PALE BLUE EYE (a reference to Poe’s TELL TALE HEART) for Bale’s performance at the center of things.
Fortunately, Bale is aided in this film by a strong ensemble of (mostly) British actors from Toby Jones to Gillian Anderson to Simon McBurney and Timothy Spall - they all bring their considerable talents to lesser roles as suspects and/or witnesses in this “whodunnit”. Cooper also trots out good ol’ (and I do mean old) Robert Duvall for a “blink or you’ll miss it” cameo. The casting works well for this gothic murder mystery.
And then there is Melling as Edgar Allan Poe. He plays Poe as you might expect one to play a young Edgar Allan Poe - as an “odd duck” who is fascinated by macabre scenarios (which would be later found in his storytelling), but Melling gives him an intelligence and gentleness of soul that really works in this case.
The Cinematography of this movie is bleak and dark - as befits a gothic murder mystery - and the pacing is not fast in any sense of the word, but if you click into this world, you’ll be rewarding by an interesting murder mystery that resolves itself in a surprising - and satisfactory - way.
Letter Grade: B+
8 stars (out of 10) and you can take that to the Bank(ofMarquis)