People that know me, will know that the latest gadgets leave me somewhat cold...I have my laptop and my battered solar powered radio and thats about it.............even our tv is a supermarket buy with a 12" screen!, so I was quite intrigued when Chris presented me with his old ipod yesterday!
He has a new , all singing, all dancing, even-makes-the-tea, ipad thingummy, of which he is extremely proud,so I have taken another step towards the 21st Century and have bought my first itune download......ok it doesn't take much guessing which single I bought? yep Mr Cardle.......but I put the whole experience down to experience!
My new ipod will be a constant new friend me thinks.....especially as my two main friends in North Wales have disappeared somewhat off the radar for very different reasons!
Anyhow, today, my first lesson ( after switching the bloody thing on) was to learn how to download! ( or is it upload?) anyway....after organising Mr. Cardle I ventured into the free podcast service from the BBC! FANTASTIC! ...so on a rather wet and uninteresting walk I listened to the sweet tones of Kirsty Young interviewing Jonney Vagas in Desert Island Discs followed by a compilation of Woman's Hour and The Archers......
It was lovely.......
and Nige, don't worry I will make an effort and keep the little scrap of miracles clean and dry!!!
I heard through the Internet grapevine that the movie Winter's Bone was well worth the price of a pint of lager...so tonight I braved the elements and popped down to the Scala to join eight other hardy souls in watching this slice of "Ozark dirt poor realism".
It's an depressing tale....but is an interesting one. Poverty stricken Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence ) is just seventeen but single handedly is looking after her two younger siblings and her mentally ill mother. Her father has disappeared before a court appearance and has put the family shack up as a bail bond, so in order to save the family home, Ree has to face the local criminal underclass in an effort to find out what has actually happened.
Yes it sounds all very Deliverance doesn't it?,the sense of dread, oppression and uneasy menace does in fact remind me of the 1972 Boorman film, and Winter's Bone on occasion crawls towards every stereotype we know about Hillbillies in the cinema........the rubbish strewn farms, the happy slappy menfolk and the women showing that Silence of the Lambs " shortness of bone".......but thankfully director Debra Granik focuses the films gaze upon the teenage Ree, and her hard-as-nails, unwavering sense of what is right for her family. Ree, unlike the drug riddled and oppressed mountain men she faces, is a mother tiger, frightened but fiercely passionate about saving her kin. With the reluctant help of her violent and frightening uncle "Teardrop" ( the chilling John Hawkes ) she eventually finds out the truth about her father in an awfully tense and almost unwatchable climax and it is Lawrence's amazing performance that is key to Winter's Bone's success. Without her, the film could have teetered down the uncomfortable road of a hic thriller , but with her powerfully centred Ree, we see a character that is both strong and moral, warm and intelligent. She is a mother personified and is never anything less than real. Lawrence never softens her characterization too much, she keeps the audience directly behind her at all times and I suspect she will be nominated for an Oscar ( still hot on the heels of the cracking performance of Melissa Leo in the similar Frozen River
8/10
I would be fascinated to hear what my American Bloggers think about this movie
