I feel so cheap doing the “weekend wrap-up” post when we had no less than three (or four at a pinch) bloggable events! But, time is so precious these days, and truth be told, I only took photos for one event of three; so a wrap up it is!

On Friday night, we trolleyed out to The Durham’s for dinner and a movie (Hoodwinked – gerrod.com rating: 8/10). To complement the delicious pork cutlets, David and Nelly had whipped out a selection of salads that would have put Sizzler to absolute shame. The honey roasted carrots with currants and almonds were particularly impressive!

On Saturday night, whilst Nonni and Poppi babysat for Oscar, Kristy and I had a night out on the town (well, in the valley more accurately)! And frankly, it felt weird being out past 7 PM, and without child! Weird, and yet good. Very good! We were out to celebrate Penny (from work) and Adrian’s engagement, and we partied up in style at The GPO, doing our very best to get through their generous bar tab.

Given that it was a “work” outing, we met up with the work crew – Ben and Michelle, Rob and Elise, and Pieter and Annalize – for dinner beforehand. Rob decided on Kings Diner, and instead of ordering the traditional way, we played Chinese roulette! Basically, everyone randomly chose a number from a range given by the gatekeeper (me), whose job it was to ensure that (a) everything picked was generally edible, and (b) there was a decent variety of meats and styles. It was absolutely awesome – and we ordered loads of dishes that I’m sure we would never have picked otherwise. The salt and pepper calamari in sweet chili sauce was a particular favourite!

We spent Sunday quietly recovering from our night out (it quickly became evident that we aren’t young anymore). Actually, we spent most of the day in the kitchen, cooking food for Oscar, and various delicacies for ourselves. And for the folks that turned down our invitation to join us for dinner – you know who you are – this is what you missed out on:

Slow cooked (for 8 hours) curried lamb shanks, served on a bunk-bed of nutmeg mashed sweet potato over chive and oregano mashed red potatoes. I don’t know any other words for “delicious” but if I did I’d be throwing them at you right now. Yeah! Take that!

(A huge thanks to Louisa for the recipe!)

If Julian were ever to see Boy, I would imagine he would comment that it was “strange”. And he’d be right, it is a strange film! I’m terrible at trying to summarise film plots, but since this isn’t a primary school book review, I don’t have to! Instead, here’s the summary from IMDB (which I note that they stole too; maybe they didn’t like book reviews in primary school either?)

It’s 1984, and Michael Jackson is king-even in Waihau Bay, New Zealand. Here we meet Boy, an 11-year-old who lives on a farm with his gran, a goat, and his younger brother, Rocky (who thinks he has magic powers). Shortly after Gran leaves for a week, Boy’s father, Alamein, appears out of the blue. Having imagined a heroic version of his father during his absence, Boy comes face to face with the real version-an incompetent hoodlum who has returned to find a bag of money he buried years before. This is where the goat enters.

By far, the best thing about this film is the kiwi accents, which are so thick in parts that they’re almost indecipherable. I also loved the father’s gang’s call sign – the “Crazy Horses”. Just classic!

Definitely worth checking out for an enjoyable night in. gerrod.com rating: 8/10.

Blockbuster have a deal – four movies, four nights, for £10 – so when we watch one move, we end up watching four. Here’s a short review of the other three from our latest batch:

9: Very interesting! This is a computer animated film, which follows the journey of a little hessian sack doll who wakes up in a world where humans have been wiped out by machines. It’s a bit dark and mysterious at times – its one of those films where discovering the past leads to an understanding of the future. It was also very short, so even if you do end up watching it and hating it, you’re not going to be there for long. Sensational on bluray. gerrod.com rating: 7/10.

Seven Pounds: I had never heard of this film before, but was trying to pick out something in the RomCom genre for Kristy’s viewing pleasure. The photo of Will Smith on the case looked like it was straight out of Hitch, so I figured it was a probably winner. I also didn’t bother to read the box too closely – something about changing the lives of seven people – so we watched it in ignorant bliss.

Turns out that the film is very gripping; it definitely has a bit of romance in it, but it’s by far more of a drama. The less you know about it, the better – but it’s good. Very good. There were tears by the end. gerrod.com rating: 8.5/10.

The Invention of Lying: Fail! This movie turned out to be the RomCom, yet I had thought it was purely a comedy. It’s a Ricky Gervais film, so I had expected it to be of the calibre of Ghost Town. Sadly though, it wasn’t – it was slow, and it didn’t hold my interest. I think it held Kristy’s interset even less! Sure, there’s a few laughs to be had, but overall, its definitely missable. gerrod.com rating: 5/10.

Where did the week go? Not a lot happened, and yet I feel like we haven’t really been home at all!

On Tuesday night, we met up with cousin Louise, and her sister (hence also cousin) Kylie. Kylie is fresh off the boat from Queensland, having only landed in London on Thursday the week before. It’s way cool having more family over here now!

On Wednesday night, both Kristy and I had “after work drinks” to go to, and in both cases, catching up with old colleagues. It’s been ages since I had a night on the turps, and boy did I feel it the next day! It was nice seeing my old workmates again however, so all worth it in the end.

Thursday was a total write off. I feel like I spent the whole day in the wrong place, at the wrong times. I was glad to be home on Thursday night; but more on this later.

Nick and Giovanni arranged a Friday night get together at one of my favourite bars in London – Bar Kick. Unfortunately, since the French were playing the Welsh in the rugby, and since it’s a French bar, the place was absolutely packed out. I left around 10:30 PM, feeling very hot and exhausted. It was too crowded to take any photos inside, but this is the tube that I caught home:

Julian and Shelley stayed over on Saturday night, and amongst a boatload of food, and a game of hearts, we also watched the movie Surrogates. It was ok; perhaps one for the Bruce Willis fans out there, and fairly harmless entertainment for said fans’ wives. gerrod.com rating: 6.5/10.

And that brings us to Sunday, in which our highlights have been gym, salmon fishcakes, and a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother. See? Not a lot happening at the moment, but I guess that’s how things roll in winter in London. Oh, blue skies and sunshine, where for art thou?

Kristy having bronchitis at the moment has given us the perfect excuse to stay in and catch up on some films. We took advantage of Blockbuster’s “4 films for £10″ deal and got out four different films… though you probably had guessed that by the title of their deal.

Year One: I saw a preview for this one somewhere along the lines, and had thought that the combination of Jack Black and Michael Cera would be a sure hit. Wrong! I’d be lying if I said that there’s no laughs at all, but they’re definitely few and far between. Background entertainment, at best – or perhaps a film to put on if you’re someone who appreciates that a movie with lots of low points provides you with frequent opportunities for a trip to the gents. gerrod.com rating: 5/10.

The Ugly Truth: Have you seen that “unforgettable” classic, How to lose a guy in 10 days? Then you’ve pretty much seen this movie. On the up side, I’d take Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler over Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson any day. gerrod.com rating: 6/10.

Revolutionary Road: Unbelievably good. Ben’s review of this movie is what piqued our interest in it, and it was very well recommended. I liked that the characters and the storyline were so relatable – like when they argued about one thing, it inevitably snowballed into something else. The only thing I didn’t like about this movie was Kate Winslet’s hair – something about the washed out blond didn’t match her uber-dark eyebrows. I found it all very distracting. gerrod.com rating: 9/10.

Inglorious Bastards: This film is an absolute masterpiece. I haven’t liked a Quentin Tarantino film this much since Pulp Fiction! Definitely not one for the feint hearted – there’s a few rather gory scenes – but it’s a film about World War II, so I guess it’s not entirely unexpected. Definitely worth your while seeing, even if you have to avert your eyes during some bits. gerrod.com rating: 9.5/10.

The moment I saw the preview for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (= HP6), I knew that I’d be watching that bad boy at IMAX, which they so proudly boast as “the biggest screen in Europe”. (Or perhaps “biggest screen in the UK”, but that doesn’t sound as good.) So, yonkies ago I booked us in to see it, and last night our numbers came up… unfortuantely it was a 9 PM session which is a bit late for a school night, but that was all that I could get. Jules and Shelley, and Nick and Suzie crashed our party too.

No folks, they are not Kristy and Shelley’s ordinary, everyday glasses – the first 12 minutes or so of the movie was in 3D. Whether this added anything to the movie or not is up for debate; it certainly added to the fun factor, though throughout the rest of the movie I felt a compelling urge to spin the glasses around in my hand, to pass the time.

On reflection, the reason I felt this way is probably because the movie is far slower than what I had imagined it would be. I mean, when you watch the previews, it makes it out to be non-stop action from beginning to end; but in reality, there’s a lot of emphasis placed on the awkward love interests between Harry and Ginny, and Ron and Hermionie. (Seperately, that is; there’s not some weird four-way love square thing going on there.)

Suffice to say, the movie did not do the justice to the book that my imagination did. I know they have a limited time window to work with, but I feel like they chose to portray all the boring slower paced elements of the book, rather than the big action scenes. Maybe my memory of the book is wrong, but I’ve never been wrong on anything before, so it’s doubtful.

I still enjoyed myself – it’s easy to get carried away into their world of magic – but overall it doesn’t hold a candle to HP5. gerrod.com rating: 7/10.

We managed to squeeze in two DVDs this week!

The Bank Job – Based (loosely, I think) on a true story, this is a film about a bunch of crooks that broke into the Baker Street branch of Lloyds Bank by tunneling under the floor, and coming up in the safety deposit box room. It was quite an enjoyable flick, sort-of in the style of Snatch, or Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, though with a few less subplots. It even had that guy in it who always plays the organised crook in an otherwise unorganised bunch – he was playing the organised crook, in an otherwise unorganised bunch. gerrod.com rating: 7.5/10.

Wall-E – There’s only one way to describe this movie: adorable! I really, really enjoyed it. Best of all, it has a message for the whole family – that memory really can be restored by the love that exists between two robots. gerrod.com rating: 9.5/10. Waaaaalllll-eeeeee!

If there’s only one thing that Kristy and I learnt from the latest Star Trek film (which we saw at IMAX on Monday), it’s that the iPhone is clearly the phone of choice for trekkies. I’d guess that at least one in two people in the sold-out cinema had one! We were way up in the second back row, and it was funny to look down and watch all the trekkies writing tweets throughout the film.

Anyway – the film itself was great! JJ Abrams – of Lost fame – did an awesome job with the directing. The special effects are just amazing, especially when seen on such a massive screen! I must admit that I didn’t know much about the film going in, so I was shocked when Kristy pointed out that Eric Bana was playing the captain of the Romulan ship. I didn’t recognize him at all!

Overall – a very enjoyable experience, even though we could only get into the 9 PM session, which meant we didn’t get home until almost midnight. gerrod.com rating: 8/10.

Everyone always feels like weekends are too short, but for once, I feel justified in saying that the weekend just gone was definitely too short.

By now, pretty much everyone would have felt some effects of the credit crunch, and our workplace has been no exception. Friday brought with it the rather unwelcome event of our third round of redundancies, and the IT department was once again the biggest to suffer. For the moment I still have my job, but many of my friends don’t. The layoffs were so severe this time that I really don’t know how we’re going to cope – we lost a lot of people who I believed were “key players”, and I think a lot of knowledge will be lost with them. It’s honestly hard to tell who the lucky ones are now – those that still remain, or those that have walked.

Not surprisingly, most people spent at least a portion of their Friday night at the pub, commiserating with our colleagues. It had been a long day, and it turned into quite a long night, so by Saturday morning I was thoroughly exhausted.

We’ve chilled out for the rest of the weekend, enjoying some sleep-ins, and the general comforts of spending time at home. Ariella – Kristy’s friend from TfL – and her boyfriend Paul came around for dinner and boardgames on Saturday night. We introduced Paul to The Settlers of Catan, and he must be one of the fastest learners yet, as he managed to beat us all!

The only thing that Kristy and I had planned for Sunday was to try our hand at tennis, down at the courts at Wandsworth Park. Unfortunately, it turns out we weren’t the only ones with this genius idea – there was a queue for the court by the time we got there. We decided to postpone our match and played frisbee, instead.

After enjoying a BBQ for dinner and watching Man on Wire (gerrod.com rating: 8/10), we turned in for an early night, not at all looking forward to the week before us.

40 hours of flying gives you plenty of time to catch up on films! Here’s what I thought of the ones that I saw:

• Slumdog Millionaire: My only regret with this film was that I saw it on a tiny TV showing both English and Singaporean subtitles. Otherwise, it was absolutely spectacular, and worthy of every single good thing that was said about it. I’ll definitely be catching it again on our shiny big flatscreen. gerrod.com rating 10/10.
• Burn After Reading: Fantastic, light hearted entertainment, with lots of genuine laugh-out-loud moments. Brad Pitt is as good an actor as he is a looker! gerrod.com rating: 9/10.
• Changeling: Definitely the surprise movie of the trip; I only watched this one because I was pretty much out of other options, yet I was amazed at how much I enjoyed it. Has some fairly wrenching scenes but overall is a fantastic package. gerrod.com rating: 8.5/10.
• Quantum of Solace: Maybe I was tired when I watched this, but to me it didn’t make much sense. Seemingly it was just an endless action movie, with lots (and lots!) of different characters all trying to kill each other, and not much plot to sew it all together. Definitely a step down from Casino Royale. gerrod.com rating: 5/10.
• W: A fairly long drama about Big George’s rise to president, which does a great job of analysing his character, his alcoholism, and his sketchy relationship with his father. You’ll genuinely feel sorry for the man by the end of the film. gerrod.com rating: 7.5/10.
• Monsters vs. Aliens: I’ll admit we saw this one after our flights, and that I was drawn to it because the main character is a giant girl named Susan. Still, the preview looked a lot funnier than the movie turned out to be; not all together unenjoyable, but I wasn’t too sad when it ended. gerrod.com rating: 6/10.