danke1

Disaster and Action

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:06:48 GMT

My friend invited me to see the 2012 movie last Monday and who am I to say no to that. And even though it´s a disaster movie we laughed way more than during some comedy.
The story is built on the Mayan prognosis that the end will end 21st December 2012. The Earth´s core is heating up and it causes such a huge earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that the Earth is destroyed. The American government was warned ahead and started to built 3 huge ships aka Arks to save some of the population, the richest population of course. One ticket costs billion dollars. Nice.
Well, anyway, me and my friend were laughing our asses of the whole time. There were lots of ridiculous moments and our cynical minds couldn´t stop. I love that the main character always survives EVERYTHING. So typical for such movies.
I loved seeing Oliver Platt in this. It made me feel fuzzy and made me remember the good old times in New York in spring. I miss Guys and Dolls era. It was like seeing an old friend. Even though he played the bad guy I loved him.
All in all I liked the movie cos I had really good time in the cinema, though I don´t know if we were supposed to laugh that much.

And on Wednesday, on my Name day, I went to see Law Abiding Citizen. Again, not my first choice of movie but what a girl won ´t do because of a guy. I had a one condition, though. If I´m supposed to go see an action movie it has to have a cute guy in it.lol And who´s more yummy than Gerald Butler? (the second movie I was supposed to choose from was an action movie with Gérard Depardieu, no thank you.lol)
The movie itself wasn´t bad at all. It´s about a guy who sees his wife and daughter to be killed in their house. The main killer was given only a few years in a prison and so he wants to take justice in to his own hands. Sometimes it was pretty scary and brutal.
I like that it wasn´t predictable, at least for me. I enjoyed the movie and Gerald took his shirt off so what more I could wish for.

I was in cinema yesterday again but more about that next time.

P!NK´s Funhouse

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:09:51 GMT

P!nk is amazing. Did you know it? She really is. I attended her concert last week and I´m still full of it. I can´t say one bad thing about it. It was really an exceptional show.

I wasn´t any big fan of her, I had only knew and liked her biggest hits but I thought her concert could be fun. When I finally decided that I want to see it I found out that the concert was sold out, though. Sold out 2,5 months before the actual concert. That´s a good score. So I kind of gave up on the idea but then I saw tickets on czech „eBay type“ site for a reasonable price so I immediately snapped them. (funny coincidence - the seller works exactly 50m from my office).

The concert was in O2 Arena, I´ve been to several concerts there, but they have never been completely sold out, so it was interesting experience this time. The band before P!nk was Evermore from New Zealand. After they ended their set we still had to wait an hour for P!nk. She really took her time but the audience was in a great mood and they made like 10 mexican waves in a row. Everyone was prepared to have a fun. We stood somewhere in the middle of the arena, right next to an aisle with paramedics and saw couple of teenage girls who fainted.

At 21:37 the concert finally started with a short movie on a screen featuring P!nk and her voice singing AC/DC´s Highway to Hell. Then a guy, and artist, came on the stage and started to unfold a floor door which P!nk appeared from, hanging on a rope, with a long feather tail flying after her. Effective. When she was in the air the covered stage was revealed with a beat and the show could start. P!nk started to sing Bad Influence with so much energy that I was like „whoa, I wonder if she´s able to hold this till the end“, and she really was. She was jumping, running, dancing, flying in the ropes, did artictic numbers and even bungee jump, this all with perfect voice. She didn´t do the trapeze thing during the Sober number, some other people did this, but never mind, she was amazing even though she dropped this number. I really liked all the songs she sang. So What, Just like a Pill, Family Portrait, Funhouse, Stupid Girls, well, she played 22 songs, I won´t named them all.lol

The concerts had several different parts, the crazy „running around“ numbers, then she just sat with the band on the front stage, playing guitar, wearing t-shirt and jeans a singing kind of acoustic. I really liked this part. She played Dear Mr. President, Trouble, I don´t believe you…. Like that.

She played 4 covers, Babe, I´m gonna leave you by Led Zeppelin, Crazy by Gnarls Barkley, the AC/DC and Queen´s Bohemian Rhapsody. The Rhapsody was a-m-a-z-i-n-g. Great band, great singing, they really did Queen an honor. I know one guy who went to the Queen with Paul Rodgers concert last year and he said that the P!nk version was way better. I really had chills during this number.

The scene was spectacular. The tour (and the CD) is called Funhouse so that´s exactly how the stage looked like. With slides, clowns, ropes, stuff like that. There was still something to look at.
The concert ended with song Glitter in the air where Pink was hanging in the air in a sling, with three women „dancing“ above her in the air. Then she was slowly sunk in the water and then rised again, all glittery, singing.

Pink really is a great performer and knows how to take the house down. I think this was the best show/concert I´ve ever been to. I loved Pink´s energy. She really won me over. Luckily she released this tour on DVD already, taped in Australia. Same costumes, same songs, Santa promised me to bring it for me so I´ll have a nice memory.

I was thinking about what number I should post here and I couldn´t decided cos I really love them all, I´ll post at least the three of them. The clips are from the DVD so the quality is good.

First, the opening of the concert, Bad Influence. Great energy to start with.

The Funhouse song. I don´t know why but it was my favorite number.

And the Bohemia Rhapsody can´t be left out. I just love it so much.

Maureen can´t stop to wonder

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:56:59 GMT

I went to a theater on Friday 13th to see my roommate from college on stage. During my 5 years in the college I lived 4 years in a dorm and I lived with some student actress every year. I was pretty excited when I got her invite on Facebook. Finally I could see her as a real actress, not just actress to be. I had seen Diana on stage only once during her study. Her class played Hamlet and she played Gertruda, Hamlet´s mother. It was pretty cool play. I haven´t seen her act at all during her final year in school cos I was working in Prague already and was only commuting to Brno for two classes.

Diana has been acting in West-bohemian Theater in Cheb for two years now. They guested with one play in Prague in the Theater in Celetna street. The play premiered in October a it´s one-woman show which is pretty amazing for Diana. The play was called Maureen can´t stop to wonder and generally it was about differences between czech and irish people. Maureen, the irish woman, and her czech husband are about to give a lecture about irish dancing but Maureen´s husband, who is the lecturer, is late so Maureen is trying to distract the audience and it ends as an hour long speech about czech and irishmen. It was amusing but there where some things said that I didn´t agreed with. I thought it would be more funny if she talked more about the social differences but it soon turned into Maureen´s reflection of life and it kind of got into frustrations and it was bit weird.

I sent flowers on stage for Diana. She had lots of friends and family in the audience so she´s got a lot of those. I talked to her really briefly after the play, just said hi. I had to catch a train.

This is it

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:18:24 GMT

I, the one who said she doesn´t need to see this at all, ended up seeing this documentary twice. And not because it was that great but because I accidentally promised to 2 people to go with them. But honestly, it was quite good, I enjoyed it, cos they played only the hit songs and who doesn´t like them, right? I´m not big Michael Jackson fan but I admit that his songs are great. It made me want to sing along. It could be a really nice concert, every song was staged like one story. The problem I have is that I never believed these concerts would actually happen. When I heard that Michael would have 50 concerts in London I was like „so not gonna happen“. So I still think there was something calculated about it, I can´t get rid of the feeling.
Michael itself looked bad. Walking skeleton. His presence did nothing for me so I watched anyone who was on the stage with him. Loved the dancers behind him. They were great and had nice bodies to look at.lol And why was everyone talking to Micheal like he was a little kid? Well, anyway, it was good to see Kenny Ortega.

KUDYKAM musical

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:58:22 GMT

We have a new czech musical, except it´s called Lyrical cos it´s all in verse. I usually don´t like czech musicals but this one has an acclaimed song writers Hapka & Horáček behind it, plus it had hell of the promotion so I was curious. It´s called Kudykam and the best part is that I can see it for free because of my work. Which is good because the price is insane, twice as much than every other musical. No one would make me to pay the money for a czech musical. Thanks to work I had three free tickets into the box, which is almost right above the stage. Nice view.

The story is about a young guy who doesn´t know what to do with his life and ask himself kudy kam, which can be translated „which way to go“. After asking this question a figure of Kudykam appears. He looks kind of demonic and tells him that he´ll lead his way. Which I think is a good concept but it got too confusing when it tried to be too deep and philosophical. Then it got little boring. It was long, I would cut at least 30min of it, especially the scenes with the helpers of Kudykam dressed as a birds, too much stage time for nothing. I would make it more playful. I laughed only once, when there was some actor wearing a mask with head of our president and wearing a kimono, it was part of a dream sequence, which was fun. But the huge hot pink bunnies running on the stage later were too much.

Csongor Kassai played Kudykam. I liked him, nice voice and demonic look. Martin the young man was played by Ondřej Ruml. He ended second in X-Factor last year. The singing was good but he was saying the verse the same way the whole time. I would like to see a real actor in that role.

There was other thing I was disappointed about. They play one really nice song on radio saying it´s a single from this musical. The song is even on the cast album. And I really like the song so I was waiting the whole time to hear it and suddenly there was curtain call and nothing. I don´t get it, why not to include the nicest song on stage??

I was leaving the theater with mixed feelings. I listened to the album from the musical later that night and I liked the songs itself. Maybe I will like it way better next time, when I actually know the songs. I´m going to see it this Sunday with my parents, so I´ll see.

ETA: I´ve seen it for the second time and my opinion didn´t change. Musical where they quote Emmanuel Kant isn´t for me, apparently.

this is the song I like. Very gentle duet.

And poster with picture of Kudykam

Holiday and The Brothers Bloom

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:37:28 GMT

October 28th is public holiday here. We celebrate the beginning of independent Czechoslovak state. In 1918, after the WW I., the Austria-Hungary empire ended and after 300 years we were granted independence as a free state again. So it´s the most important public holiday we have. And this year I celebrated with shopping. My mom came to Prague and we went to Prague´s biggest mall Palladium to do some serious autumn shopping. We spent 5 hours in the mall and we visited only like 6 shops but it didn´t stop me to spent tons of money. My bank card was pretty exhausted. But I bought some cute autumn clothes and accessories to wear to the work so I was satisfied.

After the intensive shopping I had a movie date. We went to see The Brothers Bloom. It´s a story about two brothers who are really good at making plans how to rob rich people. The beginning of the movie was funny and charming but what was funny at first turned into boring after 30 min of the movie. And then it became incongruous and hectic. I liked the part that was filmed in Prague, they showed some pretty views but it weirded me out that they were in the Prague castle the whole time pretending it to be National Museum. And I cringed when they blew out the most important czech cathedral in the air. Not a good look on national day.lol I thought the movie had much more potential, but it got lost somewhere in the middle. And I soo could tell how the movie would end. It was so transparent. What can I say, I was looking at my watch a lot, it seemed never ending. Too bad. The best thing about the movie was Rachel Weisz.

Protector and friends

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:06:24 GMT

I´ve been too lazy to write anything lately. I feel like I was in the cinema too often, I can´t keep up anymore.

Last Tuesday I met with my 3 friends from high school. I don´t see them often since we all live in different city and so when they asked me if I want to go to the cinema with them I couldn´t say no. They wanted to see a czech movie cos my friend doesn´t like to read subtitles so there wasn´t much to choose from. One comedy that got bad reviews or a drama. I convinced them to see the drama, cos I wanted to see the movie anyway. I met my friend after work and we went to get some dinner and then we went to meet the other two. It was fun to see them again. I love to know that these are people who I can be friend with even though I don´t see them often. Every time we talk it feels like we saw each other last week the latest. Nothing changes, we are still the same, we are still friends like in high school. It comforts me to know that.

After a little bit of gossiping about our other schoolmates (we are girls after all.lol) we went to the cinema to see new czech movie Protector. The movie is set between years 1938 – 1942, the worst time in history of Czech republic, when the country belonged to Hitler´s Germany and was called The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

At the beginning we meet Hana who is a famous actress and her husband Emil, a broadcast journalist. Beginning of the war and the occupation changes their lives upside down. Hana is a jew and she falls from top of her career down to the bottom of a social ladder. Emil becomes a head of Prague radio station what broadcasts Nazi propaganda in order to protect his Jewish wife. However, as the Nazi rule over Czechoslovakia calls for more and more collaboration, his relationship with his wife spirals downward.
He starts to cheat on Hana and one day when he´s leaving his lover in the morning and is late to the work he borrows a bike which is standing on the sidewalk and rides it to the work. But it is the same day (June 4 1942) when SS Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich was assassinated and one of the offender left the crime scene on a bike. Fatal contact with seemingly unimportant object starts dreadful ride where Emil gets his self-respect back at the end. But it´s too late for his marriage. This movie doesn´t have a good ending at all.

The movie was filmed in very original style, I really like the camera work. It think this is the type of movie where I like it better few days after watching. I thought it was good while watching it but now, when I let it lie in my head for a while, I think the movie was great.

BTW. This movie is Czech Republic's official submission to 82nd Academy Award's Foreign Language in 2010. I guess I don´t see it getting in the final 5 though. We´ll see.

Oh, and the actress who played Hana was a senior on my Uni when I was freshmen, so I got to see her on Uni stage quite a lot. She was one of the best from her class. So it good to see these people around:)

A Double Cinema

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:33:39 GMT

I´ve been in a cinema a lot lately. My mom gave me some 1+1 cinema vouchers that she got at work so why don´t use them. That caused that I was in a cinema twice the last week. My friend is having a knee operation today and will have to use crutches for next six weeks so we wanted to enjoy the cinema till she could. And it was fun.

We went to see Julie and Julia on Tuesday. I can´t miss any Meryl Streep movie and she didn´t disappoint. She was great and I liked her accent. Amy Adams was cute as always plus I love most of Nora Ephrons movies (You´ve Got Mail, anyone?)
The beginning was pretty good and the movie had a good potential. I loved how competitive Julia (aka Meryl) was while learning how to cook, especially when she cut the onions. Giggles. The movie lost its rhythm somewhere in the middle though and it seemed like it was too long. Or maybe it felt like that to me because I don´t cook and I don´t like french food. But it was good thing that we had time to get dinner in restaurant before the movie so we weren´t hungry while watching it.

And we went to see The Ugly Truth on Thursday, mainly because my friend loves Gerard Butler. We saw the preview like a month ago and we both said at the same time „We are going to see this“.lol He´s such a manly man, it was good to stare at him for 90 mins. The movie was quite funny, such a chick flick. Katherine Heigl wasn´t bad either, although I was imagining Lauren Graham in her role the whole time and thought how she would be in a role like that. I think she would fit.
There were lots of dirty scenes in the movie but the scene with vibrating panties was over the top, too much for a cheap laugh. Other than that I think it was good funny movie for girl friends night out. We had a good time even tough we were debating and kind of not believing that we are the right dating-flirting material. Sad.lol

Chinese Festival

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:20:01 GMT

I got free tickets to Chinese Festival in Prague to see "Colorful Homeland" performed by China National Ethnic Song and Dance Ensemble. It took place in The Prague State Opera and we had pretty great seats so we dressed up a bit. There was a lot of politicians, ambassadors and diplomats in the audience. Ambassador of China and our Minister of culture had an opening speech, translated into chinese, english and czech. So long. They talked about cultural exchange between both countries.

It was a show compact of song and dances. Each number was performed by different chinese ethnic group. It was very colorful and the dancing was good. But somehow it look artificial to me, felt more like propaganda in export. Especially when they performed number “Happy Tibetan”. It didn´t look like real national culture to me, more like a commercial version of it.
They tried to sing some czech songs in czech too. I had hard time to even recognize the songs but I appreciated the effort. They also played on some traditional chinese instruments like morin-chúr and ku-čchin.
They invited czech National Song and Dance ensemble to perform two numbers on the stage too. You could see it was totally different world.
The whole show left me at loss. It felt like they tried too much for us to like them.

I attended this festival last year too and I saw „My Dream“ which is a show performed by China Disabled People's Performing Art Troupe. It was very impressive to see what they were able to do without actually hearing the music. That show I enjoyed a lot.

I recommend you to watch this video of deaf girls dancing.

District 9

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:14:22 GMT

I was invited to a cinema to see District 9 last Sunday. It´s not my kind of movie but I guess that´s what you get if you want to go out with a guy. He agreed to see The Proposal with me the week before so I figured I could try a bit and show that I can be a girl who can compromise.lol I´m just not really into sci-fi and fantasy movies. I tried not to comment when the guy told me that he liked sci-fi movies the best when we saw each other for the first time.lol I just don´t get them, don´t find them interesting and don´t feel the urge to see them. I think the last sci-fi movie I saw was The Fifth Element in 1997. But here I am, going to see District 9 for a boy. Surprisingly it wasn´t that bad.

The plot was actually pretty easy. Some aliens in a big space ship crashed in our world, respectively in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1990. People saved the almost dead aliens and put them in to a refugee camp called District 9. 20 years later the aliens ghetto changed into very criminal place so the government decided to move the aliens into another camp, further from the city, called District 10. An ordinery office worker Wikus Van De Merwe is in charge of this whole movie operation but first of all he has to get permissions from the aliens and get them sigh the moving documents. The wild aliens doesn´t care for him of course. In the process of his work in the ghetto he spills some alien liquid on his arm which causes that his hand changes in to alien hand and gradually his whole body is about to change. The government wants to make some difficult research on his body so he manages to escape and hide in the District 9. He finds the one alien who produced the liquid and he tells him he can return his body back to human but he needs the liquid, which the government confiscated, to do that. So they both go back to the goverment building, steal the liquid but are caught by the police and so they run away and there´s big chase and lots of shooting. The liquid is also able to start and repair the space ship which is still hanging over the Johannesburg. The alien with help from his kid is able to get to the space ship and leave, promising to Wikus that he´ll come back and help him to make his body human again. Last we see Wikus sitting alone in deserted District 9, all in alien body, thinking about his wife back home and waiting.

After this shallow summary I guess you see that I really don´t take movies like these too seriously. I don´t look for any deep details and explanations. But I have to admit that I liked the way it was filmed, the movie-documentary style was good. The not famous actors helped to the documentary aspect of it. This movie didn´t bore me for sure and I enjoyed it. The guy I went with did not though. Funny.

Mozart! Musical

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 11:13:25 GMT

Last Saturday I went to the opening night of Mozart! musical in City Theater Brno. It´s famous austrian musical and it was czech premiere. But before I get to the musical itself I have to write about the most frightening thing that happened to me in a theater so far.
There was an accident on the stage. 20 minutes into the play there are 4 actors on the stage. The main actors, playing Mozart and Mozart´s father, leave the stage and two actors remain, and suddenly there´s screaming from the backstage. The two actors who just left were desperately screaming "UP UP UP, FOOT, SHIT, UP, UUUUUP" it lasted like 30 sec and for the whole time I was thinking it was part of the play. The two remaining actors on the stage were just staring at each other, waiting, apparently confused. I sat next to some of the actors from the theater and they started panicking, cos they knew it didn´t belong there. By that time the screaming changed into desperate cries and then a curtain went down and lights went on. Then general manager of the theater who was sitting in the audience ran to the stage, behind the curtain and then a wife of the actor who played Mozart, who was sitting right in front of me, stood up and all panicked ran on the stage too cos she though something happend to her husband. We didn´t know what happened so it was pretty bad feeling. Then the manager came on the stage and told us that there was an accident and the actor who played Mozart´s father was injured and is taken to the hospital and that they will continue in 20 minutes. Luckily the actor who alternates the father was present in the theater and could take over the role. I was literally shaking for the whole 20 min break. At the end of the play we were told that the actor had three toes crushed. Really interesting opening night.

Musical Mozart! was written by Michael Kunze and Sylvester Levay and franky I didn´t know much about it so I didn´t know what to expect. The storyline focused more on Mozart the rebel and not the more usual theme Mozart the genius. You better know something about Mozart cos you don´t get to know much about his work in this musical. It was all about his relationship with his father and his need to do something for himself, not just be the music genius the world know him as. He is confronted with a little Amade, small himself, that represents all his talent. So all in all, Amadeus is portrayed as a loser, rebel and childish guy. And it goes likes that without ups and downs, there´s no gradation in the story and it can be little boring.
I saw Dušan Vitázek as Mozart. He is kind of big star now, so I´ve seen him in so many musicals lately. I kind of wish I could see the other alternations for Mozart. I´ve heard they are even better. I would like to someone else for a change. But it was cool to see him walking upside down and singing a difficult song.
Leopold Mozart was played by Jan Ježek at the beginning and he has really great full voice so I liked him a lot but after his injury the father was played by Michal Šebek who is not that older than Vitázek so the old father characterization didn´t work for me.
I like Petr Gazdík as Hieronymus Colloredo. I love his voice. And the scene in the a moving carriage was funny. Markéta Sedláčková as Baroness von Waldstätten really surprised me. She sang the most famous song from this musical „Gold von den Sternen“. I haven´t find her voice so great lately but she sang it really nicely. So I´m glad to have Markéta back.
I liked the ensamble songs a lot but the occasional solos weren´t that strong.
So all in all, I didn´t like the storyline that much but some songs were great and the ensamble finale song gave me goosebumps so it made me to forgive to the bland parts in the show. But even with that it can´t beat the play Amadeus by Petter Shaffer which can be easily called the one of the best shows I´ve ever seen. I´ve seen it 4 times in this very same theater and it was perfect. Nice memories.

I was surpised to find a clip from this production on youtube. It´s from dress rehearsal.

and this is the most famous song "Gold von den Sternen".

Brace the Opera

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:10:29 GMT

I braced myself and ventured into opera world again. I went to see The Bartered Bride by Bedřich Smetana in our National Theater last week. It was 3rd opera I have attended so far. I guess I should visit opera more since I studied theater but it´s really not my genre. I know why I don´t like it but it´s a thing that I don´t know how to describe in english + opera singers are usually bad actors.

What made me go this time is that The Bartered Bride is like our national treasure so I though it was a shame that I didn´t know what it was about. I knew the most famous arias of course but not the whole thing. I took my friend who is a theater student herself.
Suprisingly it wasn´t bad at all. It´s called a comic opera so it didn´t take things too seriously. It was light, playful and quite colorful. The scene was creative and I liked it.

The opera is in three acts, all set in a small Bohemian village. Jenik and Marenka are in love but her parents don´t approve the marriage cos they promised her to Vasek, a younger son of wealthy landowner Micha. Someone she has never met before.
Kecal, the marriage broker, offers to Marenka´s parents that he´ll solve the problem. Kecal decides he must convince Jeník to give up Marenka. He makes Jenik promise to give up her for 300 florins. Jenik pretends to accept, but imposes a condition – no one but Mícha's son will be allowed to wed Marenka. Marenka finds about Jenik´s deal with Kecal and is heartbroken thinking that he gave up on their love. At the end we find out that Jenik is long lost older son of Micha. So Jenik and Marenka end up together.
There was a traveling circus in the last act, which was pretty great cos the National theater asked theater Continuo to participate. Theater Continue is known for its artistic performances and work with puppets and they were able to make a good show out of it.

There was a 20minute break after each act so it made the evening pretty long.

I liked the music, knew most of the arias and liked the polka sound. The one thing I really don´t like about operas is that the young characters are usually played by old or huge people. Jenik and Marenka are young people so I really appreciated that Jenik was played by young actor. Marenka was like one generation older but she could pass for that age with eyes half-closed. Actors way older than their characters, that´s what made me disappointed about Carmen.
The only thing I didn´t like was the actor who played Kecal. I always thought Kecal was a funny character, this one was not funny plus I almost couldn´t hear him, that shouldn´t happen in opera I guess.

All in all, The Bartered Bride was my first good opera experience.

Pope, the ZOO and the Proposal

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 09:34:39 GMT

I´m really behind with the writing about the shows I´ve seen. It´s a little crazy lately. I´m in theater or cinema almost every other day. Now I´m going back one week and write about Monday, which was public holiday. We celebrated Day of Czech statehood, the dead of czech patron St. Wenceslas. 3 day weekend, nice. Pope Benedict XVI. visited our country during those three days. Czech rep. is one of the most atheistic countries in the world, over 60% of people, so there wasn´t any madness about it. He served two masses here and I watched them on tv. I liked the theatrical aspect of the ceremony, cos theater originally came from religion ceremonies so it was interesting. He tried to talk czech a lot so bonus points to him.

I had free tickets to Prague´s ZOO for Monday, it was 78th anniversary of the opening of the ZOO. I love this ZOO. It was voted as the 8th best ZOO in the world last year. The terrain of the Zoo is very diverse, lots of green everywhere and everything looks very natural and it makes very nice walk, you go up and down and it takes you hours to get through it. I was there twice last year but it didn´t stop me to go again this year. Alas, it was public holiday and the place was crazily crowded. I´ve never experience such a crowd there before. It was challenge to avoid all the families with strollers everywhere.
I didn´t got to see gorillas this time cos I didn´t want to stand in a line to their pavilion. Have I mentioned that it was crowded?lol. I made sure to see lions and tigers, though. I love these animals the best. The tigers from this ZOO are like from textbooks. So perfect. Sadly I´ve never saw them out, they always lay lazily inside of their pavilion. And somehow I miss the elephants this time. You would think that you can´t overlook them. I always choose different route and then I´m lazy or too tired to go the whole way back to look at them. Next time.

The main reason I wanted to go there this time was because I wanted to see a new pavilion for sea lions which was re-opened recently. I think the sea lions are one of the most popular animals in the ZOO mainly because of the sad fate they had during the big flood that hit Prague in 2002. The Prague zoo is situated right on the bank of the Vltava River, almost half of its area was flooded. Millions of people watched the the situation in the ZOO on tv. It was so sad and scary. Under the extreme pressure of time and in the tense and dramatic conditions, the workers of the zoo had to deal with probably the biggest evacuation of animals all over the world. More than 20 buildings and expositions were demolished and other 13 were seriously damaged. The water was 10m high at some places.
The stories of some animals were very sad. I remember sitting, watching news and crying over Gaston, the sea lion. 1030 animals had to be evacuated. The rescue actions of most of the animals took place in extremely difficult conditions. In 3 hours it was necessary to evacuate 16 tigers, leopards and jaguars. 134 animals did not survive the flood.

Just reading some of the animal stories makes me cry again.

Millions of people even outside the Czech republic watched closely the life stories of some of the animals. The sea lion Gaston died in Germany after a 300-kilometers long journey in the flooding river. The elephant Kadíra and the female hippo Lentilka had to be killed as the flood set them free from their ranges. The male gorilla Pong did not manage the stay in the flood tower of the pavilion and got drowned in an unknown way. The hippo Slávek survived the flood elevated by the waters to the second floor of the elephants’ pavilion where he spent two days in the narrow corridor of the service gallery, waiting for help….

It´s almost magic how the ZOO was able to get up from the bottom and became one of the best ZOO in just 5 years. The ZOO has a great general manager, but he´s ending this year and will run Czech building in New York. Very sad for the ZOO.

And now, drumroll please, Brad Pitt and Angelina visited the ZOO last year. They had to close it down for half a day because of them.lol

This is one sad commercial from 2003 that asked people to help the ZOO. It´s a beautiful commercial but the end always gets me. I remember that they always played in the cinemas before movies.

And we went to the cinema straight from the ZOO. Went to see Proposal finaly. My friends tried to sell it to me like one of the best romantic comedy and well, I didn´t find it that great. It was good but nothing I would remember, not even know, just one week after. It was light and funny but the end was too much. I have very low tolerance for cheese. At least the actor who played Sandra Bullock´s fiance was nice to look at.

Nice to see you again, Theater

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:20:06 GMT

Theater holiday ended and so I jumped back into my theater life again. I didn´t choose anything easy for a start but accidentally jumped right into the heavy stuff. I went to see Long Day´s Journey into Night (1956) by Eugene O´Neill. I kind of didn´t expect such a drama but I should have since I had seen his Mourning Becomes Electra(1931) before and it was pretty much the same.

I invited my friend to go with me as a present for her Name day. It played in Theater Bez Zábradlí (which could be translated like The Theater Without Banisters.lol). So we sat in the theater, tired after long day at work, hoping they would entertain us. Boy, were we wrong. It sucked us in the story from the beginning, needing our full attention for a whole time.

It´s a story about one day of one very dysfunctional family. The Theme of the play is addiction and the resulting dysfunction of the family. All three males (father and two sons) are alcoholics and the mother is addicted to morphine. Isn´t it happy company? It was sad to see how the father and sons tried to stop their mother to fall back into her morphine addiction. They all constantly conceal, blame, resent, regret, accuse and deny in an escalating cycle of conflict with occasional desperate and half-sincere attempts at affection, encouragement and consolation. No happy ending in this one.

The acting was superb. The father was played by Jiří Bartoška, mother, played by Zuzana Bydžovská was crazy, scary and pitiful. The sons were played by brothers Michal and Filip Čapka. I especially liked the brothers, they very really convincing and really “into it”. Amazing acting concert. It was directed by mostly film director Alice Nellis. Well done.

It surprised me to read in the brochure that this play was very autobiographical. Almost everything happened in O´Neill´s life too. I can´t even imagine something like this, too me it just seemed so drastic and destructive. He got Pulitzer prize for this, btw.

The Only thing I didn´t like about this is that it was too long. I just wasn´t ready for 3 hours long emotional blow-out and it was very tiring at the end. We planned to go for a dinner to some restaurant after the theater but the kitchens were closed when it finally ended. So we left the theater very tired and hungry.lol

Inglorious Basterds

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:01:17 GMT

I´ve seen a great movie yesterday and the movie would be Inglorious Basterds. I´m not any big fan of Tarantino, I don´t like movies like Kill Bill but Basterds really got me. It´s one of the movies where you leave cinema with head full with a need to discuss it. And I woke up this morning and my head was still full of the movie. I need to discuss it with everyone today, I keep asking my co-workers if they have seen it (sadly they have not). It doesn´t happen that often that movie affects me like this. But I like when that happen, every movie should leave something in you. Ironically the last movie that did this to me was another Brad Pitt´s movie Burn after reading and I´m not even his fan.lol

The story takes place in Nazi-occupied France. The opening scene takes us to a french farm where „Jew hunter“ Col. Hans Landa (great Christoph Waltz) came to look for hiding Jews. He interrogates calmly and slowly and he plays it nice but from the beginning you sense not to trust this guy and you are prove right the next minute when the jewish family is killed. One girl, Shoshana, managed to escape and plays very important role in the second half of the movie. When we see her next time she runs a small cinema in Paris where the Nazi leaders decided to have a premiere of a new german propaganda movie. The Nazi leaders Goebbles, Göring, Bormann, even Hitler himself are scheduled to be there. What´s a better opportunity for a revenge when celluloid burns so well?

And then there´s a second linea of the movie, the Basterds, Jewish-American soldiers who were chosen specifically to spread fear throughout the Third Reich by scalping and brutally killing Nazis. They are led by Lt. Aldo Raine played by Brad Pitt. They too plan to kill the Nazis during the movie premiere with a help of german actress Bridget von Hammersmark (amazing Diane Kruger). Shoshana´s and Basterds paths cross for a fateful evening that will shake the annals of history. What a bloody spectacle.

The acting was great, I especially loved performances by german actors Christop Waltz and Diane Kruger and french actress Mélanie Laurent as Shoshana. It was fresh to see new faces in Hollywood movie. Another thing I loved about it was that they talked in native languages, not like in Valkyrie which I was disappointed about. That brought out the right atmosphere.
I don´t think I need to add that there were lots of brutal scenes, it was Tarantino after all. Especially the scalping of people was pretty disgusting. I had to cover my eyes a lot but there was something funny about it at the same time. We laughed a lot during the movie.
I didn´t know till the end how the movie will end. The plans were changing so dramatically and I found strange that I was sitting there rooting for them to blow the cinema to the air and at the same time I thought it won´t happen cos I thought they wouldn´t change the historic facts. They did change them, though and for some reason I liked it. It wouldn´t be a satisfying end without the blow out at the end. I love historically correct movies but I would rather watch this than boring, historical movie like Valkyrie.
This movie was also kind of cathartic, seeing all Nazis die and brutally killed Hitler made me feel kind of… satisfied I would say. (Should I feel bad for saying it like this?)

I think the appeal of this movie can be experienced best in the cinema. I don´t think you would feel the same about the movie when watching it on tv at home. I just liked how the movie was made, the atmosphere, the cinematography, the music, and the story, all things put together made a great movie. I could do with less of the blood, though.

And just a little thing on the side, I found funny that when Hans Landa proudly mentioned his nickname „Jew hunter“ he was wondering why Nazi protector of Czech country Reinhard Heydrich didn´t like his czech nickname „Executor“.lol

Macy Gray-O-Matic

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 11:02:35 GMT

So finally some big cultural event in my life again. Macy Gray concerted in Prague for the first time this Saturday and I paid great money to be there. It took me 2 months to make my mind that the money would be worth it and to stumble over my usual problem „who to go with“ so I bought tickets just the day before the concert. This weekend was also the most important feast in my hometown so I´m little sad I missed it but the concert was so worth it.

The concert took place in this new fancy funky club in Prague called SaSaZu. The concert was supposed to start at 8.p.m. se we were there from 7.p.m. just to stand in the cold night for a hour. The organization was bad and the concert was delayed for a few hours. That was a little annoying. We went to a bar to get something to drink and oh my god, it was so insanely expensive, at least I´m not used to having 2dcl of juice with vodka for 9 dollars, it costs 3 dollars normally. Unfortunately we learned the price after we ordered it, so I was sipping the drink for like 2 hours. I was invited for the drink so I felt little bad about it.

The forerunner was Tonya Graves from czech famous band Monkey Business and she was really great and funny and helped to get the mood up after all the waiting. Macy Gray herself got on the stage at 10:15 p.m. All the waiting was forgotten and people loved her from the beginning. Macy is planning a big comeback this year with her new album The Gray Life but surprisingly she didn´t play any new songs. It was more like the best of concert. She started with Ghetto Love and continued with good classic songs like When I see you, Do Something, Glad You´re Here, Sexual Revolution, Sex-O-Matic Venus Freak, Sweet Baby, Why Didn´t You Call Me, I´Ve Committed Murder... The song Oblivion at the end of the set was almost surreal, crazy game of lights, bubbles springing from the center of the stage, a guy with red horns on his head running on the stage with lyrics of the song written on a huge card. Everyone was jumping like crazy, it was hell of the ride.lol Macy communicated with audience quite often and 2000 people gladly did everything Macy asked them to. There was great energy during the whole concert.
Macy sang I Try as an encore, as the last song, so we had to wait the whole concert for it. It was so great to hear this song live, I love it. I was trembling when she sang that so I had to hold my camera with both hands, it was so moving.
Macy had two singers to sing and dance with her and they both had amazing voice, and their dancing was fun, they really looked like they were enjoying their time on stage. They were kind of corpulent but everyone loved them for not being shy about it.

Macy celebrated her birthday that day so we all sang Happy Birthday to her at the end. And she got a huge cake from the production company. Then we were asked to sing Happy Birthday in czech.haha. and macy gave pieces of the cake to the people in the first row and then told us all to just come on the stage to take the cake. The production people said no, though. Booo.

I can thank to Gilmore Girls for my love for Macy, cos it was in the pilot where I heard Macy for the first time, I Try, right after the fight between Lorelai and Rory, remember? I fell in love with the song and I got her Best of album right after that and for a long time I was listening to the album over and over during my time in college.

It was a great night. The concert ended at midnight with people literally running from the place cos the club is off center and the last metro runs at midnight. Was good to get a ride home by car this time.lol

Reviews for the concert were great and it got 90% in all of them. 10% down for a sound. And one newspaper called it the best concert of the year so I´m really glad I decided to go.

I tried to do some videos but my battery was almost empty so I didn´t do much. Here´s I Try and Sexual Revolution, my two most favorite songs. I think my camera makes really great videos from concerts, the sound is as good as it can get.

Last holiday weekend

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:25:56 GMT

I was reading a board on broadwayworld.com after a long time today and it made me miss theater so badly. I wish I could go to NY again to experience Broadway more. Theater holiday is almost over here so at least I will be able to enjoy Prague´s theater scene again soon. In the meantime I will post about my perfect last weekend of summer holiday.

I took Thursday and Friday off and went to my parent´s house in my hometown. My dad wanted me to go to a biking trip to our national park with him. Last time we did that my dad fell of the bike and totally ruined it and his knee hurt for a month, but it was 4 years ago so he wanted to try it again. But this time, after we drove 2 hours to the mountains, we found out that all the bikes had been rented for the day. That ruined our plans completely. We decided to take a chairlift to the top of the Black mountain and walk to a ski resort Pec pod Sněžkou from there. The weather was great and the view from the mountain was perfect so it was a nice walk. We walked downhill all the time and we couldn´t feel are calf´s for next two days.lol I like little mountain towns but I rarely see them in summer so it was a nice change. They built a new alpine coaster there so we took one ride and it was fun. Pretty fast, but could be longer:) Then we took over crowed bus to Janské spa where our car was parked. We walked through a promenade there and then went to a restaurant to have blueberry pancakes that we were craving the whole day.

The next day we just made a short trips around county with my parents. We couldn´t decide where to go, it seems we´ve visited everything interesting in 50 km radius from our town already. Turned out to be a nice day too, visited one old beautifully restored mill with eco farm, had lunch in famous medieval restaurant and walked around one lake.

Saturday was cloudy and my calf´s were still sore so I was reading and watching 30 Rock the whole day and in the evening I went to a bike trip with my dad, which turned out in 26 km long ride. We rode 13 km to one nice outdoor restaurant, some folk singer started to perform right when we were seated, so it was a nice atmosphere. We got a beer and drove 13 km back, pretty fast, may I add, cos it was getting dark very quickly and neither of us has any light on our bike and since we rode along a river I really didn´t want to fall in to it.lol
And on Sunday we went to our cottage where I just laid on the garden reading the whole day before going back to Prague.

So that was my perfect last weekend of summer holidays. I really couldn´t wish to spend it better. Balance between active and lazy is the best way to go!!:)

You can see the czech highest mountain on every picture, the pointy thing in the back, Sněžka.lol. The mountains are called Krkonoše, Giant Mountains is english official term. There´s nothing giant about them since Sněžka has only 1602m, so I don´t know who came up with it but it´s how it is. I thought the view was lovely.

Slovakia - the land of Tatras

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 11:34:36 GMT

So, Slovakia. I went there for a week with my friends during my vacation first week in August. I´ve been there once before cos I have a penfriend Klaudia there. We´ve been sending letters to each other since I was 13, long before e-mails and now our friendship lives on Facebook. We were both huge Beatles fans so we were writing about them. After few years of writing she came to visit me for a week and next year I went to east Slovakia to visit her. And when Paul McCartney had a concert in Prague she flew here and we went crazy together.lol Nice memories but it was all long time ago.
So I thought it was time to visit Slovakia again. It´s a shame that I haven´t seen more of Slovakia since we used to be one country. I was glad when my friends suggested Slovakia as a place to go this summer.
We rented a cottage near Ružomberok in High Fatra mountains. Slovakia has a really beautiful nature so we made sure to see most of it. It meant lots of hiking and climbing but it was worth it.

We visited mountains mostly. First we started with Lower Tatras mountains. We went to Chopok (2024m) and went to Ďumbier from there, with 2043m it makes it the highest mountain of Lower Tatras. We went along the ridge and the view was so beautiful and calm.
Btw. the highest mountain in Czech rep. Sněžka has only 1602m, so anything higher than that is exciting to me.lol

Since we stayed in High Fatra mountains we, of course, had to explore them too. We wanted to go along the ridge but the weather was against us. It was very cloudy so there was no view at all and it rained for a while too so we shortened the trip and went to one small mountain village Vlkolínec which is on the list of UNESCO. The houses are build in typical old slovakian style with wooden roofs. It was very picturesque.

I was looking forward to visit of High Tatras mountains the most. They look more like the Alps. Pretty high and rocky. It took us 2 hours by car to get there so we didn´t have that much time to spend there. There´s so much to see. We chose to visit Lomnický peak. You can get on the top of the peak with a famous red cable-way but the tickets are sold out pretty early in the morning. We were only able to get to Lomnické saddle but the view was great from there too.
There was a massive windstorm in 2004 which hit National Park of High Tatras and destroyed over 100 square kilometers of forests leaving flat land with fallen trees behind. We went through the most destroyed parts by car and it made me so sad to see the plain land everywhere. Poor Tatras.

Well, enough with the mountains. During the week we also visited Karst cave of Freedom and Ice cave in Demanov. I´ve never been in ice cave before so it was interesting, very prehistoric-y.lol And the guides there were oh so cute.lol
We also visited thermal park in Bešeňová. The weather was cloudy and cold and we were in outside pools with water from 28-39C. Niiice. There were some slides and toboggans so it was fun. We wanted to visit Tatralandia, which is new huge aqua park but we didn´t have enough time. Bummer.
And we also visited gothic Orava castle which was cool and Bojnice castle which was cool only from outside.

I think we managed to see a lot during the week + I was able to reread 7th Harry Potter book there and My sister´s keeper book too. Busy week, huh?

I´m really glad we went there, it was really nice to hear slovakian language again, even though I had problems to understand some words sometimes. I miss hearing the language more often, it sounds very melodious to me. I can´t speak slovak and I got so shy and flustered when I tried. Especially when I wanted to buy a blueberry ice cream.lol Cos blueberry is borůvka in czech and čučoriedka in slovak and to me the word is so funny. I had to concentrate a lot to say it.lol

Now I´m back in lowland and missing the scenic view at the mountains.

View at Lower Tatras

Me on our way to Ďumbier, Lower Tatras

This is what I call romantic.

My friends during a break on a the way to Ďumbier

Guidepost

Vlkolínec, UNESCO

High Tatras, Lomnický peak

Me taking vid of the beauty

And the clouds came

The cottage we rented

Drink of the week - B52. Bailey´s, Kahlúa and Absinthe, then you light a fire and drink it with a straw. My friends were obsessed with it and made me drink it, repeatedly. Absinthe is disgusting, kids.

Orava castle, me and a random slovakian guy

Bojnice Castle

First week of vacation

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:40:10 GMT

My two weeks vacation was really good. I don´t even remember the last time I had two weeks off. It really made me forget about work and just relax.
Ele came to visit me from Dresden the first week. My parents were in Crete so I invited Ele to my parents house in Nymburk. I had a birthday so she called herself a present. lol
The first afternoon in Nymburk we rode a bike to a near lake. I like it there, it´s the place where people from Nymburk go to swim. I like to go there with my dad in spring too, just to walk around a have a beer in one restaurant, overlooking the lake. It´s always peaceful. I wanted Ele to see it and it´s also a nice bike ride through woods, small village and lots of horses along the way. I made Ele to drink a beer there too. She acted like it is scandalous to drink beer during a day. Not in my country.lol Ele liked it there and wanted to go there the next day again to swim cos the weather was supposed to be hot. So we did go and it was perfect. It was the first time this year that I felt it was summer holiday. Laying on the beach, swimming in a lake. Perfect. Relaxing. And of course we both got sunburned.
We had to go home in a late afternoon cos Kat and Con from Berlin agreed to visit us in Nymburk too. We picked them up at the station and went to a dinner in my favorite restaurant. It was good to have all the girls there. We then strolled around the town for a while and watched Katharine Hepburn movie back in our house. The next day was total opposite, raining all day since morning. So we packed things in our house quite soon and went back to Prague, cos frankly, there´s nothing to do in my tiny town when it´s raining. We hit KFC, bookstores, Coffee Heaven and then decided to go to cinema. There was nothing interesting on so we chose to see Accidental Husband with Uma Thurman and Colin Firth. It was typical cliche romantic comedy. I don´t remember much from it anymore. I didn´t like it that much. There were some things that I didn´t find logical or well constructed.
Ele was leaving next day in the morning. It was a short visit. I went to see her to a station, said good bye and then run to catch my train to Nymburk in different part of Prague. My parents were coming home from Crete that day so I wanted to clean the house a little and wait for them. On the way home I got a call that my 2 years old notebook, that I gave to the service earlier that week, wasn´t so easy to repair and that it would cost me lots of money and I was recommended to buy a new one. That was a downer. I didn´t have that much money on my account and clearly I need a notebook, I´m addicted to being online, so I bought one and now I´m in a debt. Achjo. The same day I got a herpes on my lip. How I hate them. And of course I got it right before my vacation in Slovakia. Always in the most inconvenient time. Luckily the day got better when my parents came home all excited about Crete.

The next day, Thursday, me and my dad went to a trip to Bohemian Paradise. It´s my the most favorite part of our country. We had been going there for random trips since I was kid so that´s why it´s so special to me. Beautiful nature, sand rocks, old castles. We chose to go to a little town called Malá Skála (Small Rock) this time where there are ruins of castle build in a rock. It was cool to climb it up and down. Then we walked to Frýdštejn castle and back to the town. We walked only like 7 km, but we were kind of tired at the end. Apparently we were out of shape.lol We went to a typical czech restaurant for a dinner and went home. Nice father-daughter day.

I went to Slovakia with my friends on Friday but I will write about it next time.

Goodbye Ben

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 07:26:43 GMT

We put my beloved dog to sleep last monday, two days after his 16th birthday. I got him when I was 10 so I had him for most of my life and I miss him terribly. I´m dog person, I think dogs are the best thing on the world, so my own dog was a big deal to me. He was the oldest Yorkshire terrier in my town, we had him long before they became trendy. I don´t feel like writing about him, first, it makes me cry and second, I don´t need to, I know I will remember him forever.
The house is so empty without him, I miss the fluffy ball running around...

BEN (11.7.1993 - 13.7.2009)

How we grew up together

October 1993

1994

August 2007

Christmas 2008

HP6

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:03:08 GMT

I went to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince yesterday and I was pretty excited about it. I liked it cos it was good to see a new HP movie again but there were lots of parts that disappointed me. I´ve never minded the „book to movies“ changes in HP movies until now. And I read the 6th book only one and half time so it´s not even that fresh on my mind and still I had problem with the movie.
It was kind of nice that the movie had lots of funny moments and the whole first half was quite worry free, but. I didn´t like that because of the focus on the relationships there was no time left for more memories about Tom Raddle. In the book there were so many memories in so many chapters and in the movie Dumbledore included them in two sentences. I think they are important to understand where Voldemort is coming from. So that´s what I missed.
The relationship between Harry/Ginny and Hermione/Ron were also strange. I wouldn´t even get from the movie that Ginny and Harry were together at the end if Harmiona didn´t comment that they should avoid kissing each other in front of Ron. And their kiss in the book was sooo much better. So I felt that even though they focused on the relationships big deal it wasn´t executed that well.
And I kind of felt that all the important, action scenes were there just to keep goodwill. The attack at Weasley´s, very short, not explained at all. Even the Harry´s trip with Dumbledore to find Horcrux was kind of meh. The fight with the dead people was more impressive in the book. And when Snape killed Dumbledore in the book I was holding my breath and then cried like a baby. I felt like „wow, Dumbledore is dead, the world is really fucked up now“. No emotion yesterday whatsoever. I missed some gradation in this scene.
On the other hand, I liked that there were lots of jokes and I really enjoyed the part when Harry drank Felix Felicis. He acted so cute and child-ish. I loved when he sat at Hagrids, listening to stories of professor Slughorn and then his „puff“.cute:)) The actor who played prof. Slughorn was really great. He kind of reminded me of Alan Alda.lol

Well, even though I´m disappointed with some parts I will go see it again next week:D

The cinema was sold out, that was such a great atmosphere. Although I hated that there was intermission in the middle of the movie. Why do they have to have intermission in the evening screenings I don´t get. Ok, have them during the day for kids, but in the evening? Sometimes multiplexes suck.

And I just remembered, when I read this book, I was in 4th year in college and I lived in a dorm. I tried to be spoiler free so I was avoiding to read anything about the book, but it really didn´t work cos my lovely roommates had fun of me and where asking me every ten minutes „Have you cried yet?“, „Have you cried yet?“. I so wanted to kill them.lol

Ok, bring on the last two movies, I´m ready:)

Ice Age 3

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:29:57 GMT

I need to distract myself so here´s some writing.
I went to see Ice Age 3 last week. I love Ice Age, I think it is my the most favorite animated movie, mainly for sentimental reason. It was the first „new age“ animated movie I´ve seen. I liked it much more than Shrek.

The movie was good but I thought there was too much action since it´s meant mostly as kids movie. There was happening something all the time, some running, fighting, falling and so on. So much different than the first mellow movie.

I didn´t get to see the 3D version cos we were late for that. I bet it was more interactive in 3D cos there were lots of places in the movie where I thought that the particular scene could be pretty cool in 3D.
The normal version was just an enjoyable movie for one afternoon after work. I loved Scrat again, did like his new lady too. She wasn´t threating him that well most of the time and during one scene my male friend leant down to me and whispered „typical woman“, gasp.lol But what was with the ending? Poor Scrat.
Oh, and I thought that pregnant Ellie was there mainly for emotional blackmailing of viewers. Pregnant mammoth in dangerous situations. We were supposed to be worried about her and I found it kind of annoying cos I knew they wanted me to feel scared.

Saturday on Skates

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:46:00 GMT

I´m in the mood to write something so I thought I could write about last Saturday. I was spending my weekend at my parent´s house and we got finally some decent weather and so my dad asked me if I want to go skating with him. We have this great cycle track in our town, which goes along Labe river on one side and woods and fields on the other. The cycle path is on both sides of the river and it connects several towns so it´s quite long. I usually skate or cycle to the town Poděbrady which is a nice small spa town, the town where I went to the high school. The towns are only 8 km apart. When I was in high school I usually rode a bike to the school in the warmer months. That was really cool.

Whenever I´m in town and the weather is good my dad and I go to skate. My in-lines are pretty old, I got them as a present when I finished high school and I still have the same wheels on them. I should probably replace them but they work ok so far. Last Saturday we went 19 km on the skates and it took us only little over a hour. There was no wind, the weather was warm but not hot and it was just so perfect that it made me really happy. I love when we are on our way back and we see kids sculling on the river, the town is in front of us and the sun is down, it´s always such a nice calm atmosphere.
Unfortunately the track was recommended in several newspapers and so it´s quite crowded now. That´s why we usually go skate during lunch time or later in the evening.

We were pleasantly tired after the ride but there was a beer celebration in our town brewery and it´s always a big event so I thought I should go take a look, especially when my favorite czech band was playing. It was pretty crowded, well, the entrance was for free and the beer was pretty cheap.lol I bought the beer and some food, sat on the grass, chatted with some random guy, listened to the music and was waiting for Kryštof to be finally on stage.
I saw Kryštof live for the first time so it was nice. They played for a hour so they play only their hits so it was great. Kryštof has been winning awards for the best band these past years, I like them.

Here´s their current hit if you want to know how they sound like. (although I really don´t like this music video)

New in Town

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:18:31 GMT

When I was in a cinema with my friend like two months ago we saw a trailer for New in town movie and we laughed a lot so we made an appointment to go to see it together once the movie hits the cinemas. In the meantime our movie magazine totally shred the movie to the pieces so I kind of lost the desire to see it but since there was nothing else interesting in cinemas and cos we really liked the trailer we sticked to our plan and went to see it last Wednesday. If I like the trailer is still more important to me than any review.

The movie stars Renée Zellweger and she was ok and it had lots of funny scenes but the story itself, especially the end was pretty predictable and too cheesy, so cliché.
Renée´s character Lucy lives in sunny Miami and works for some big company. She´s very ambitious and wants to become a vice president of the company. The company sends her to manage a little factory in snowy Minnesota where she´s supposed to fire 50% of employees. ¾ of the movie is about differences between people from big cities and people in small towns. Some of the jokes are really funny though, even when they are kind of easy. I loved Siobhan Fallon who played Alice´s assistant, loved her accent. She was so adorable, the best character in the movie.
And of course Alice becomes friend with the townies at the end and is trying to save the company . The end contains a tapioca pudding, Alice buying the factory and big kiss at the end in the middle of a circle of all the employees. Do you see the cheese? I literally rolled my eyes.lol

But well, we didn´t expect much from the movie so it was nice girls night out. We laughed and that´s what matters. Although… it was weird to see this heavily winter movie in June. That was good timing.lol

Votvírák 2009

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:36:56 GMT

Summer is almost here and that means season of open air music festivals too. The season started officially last weekend with a big free open air music festival called Votvírák (Opener).The festival is 25 km far from Prague and pretty close to my hometown, plus my friend from high school lives right in the town where the festival takes place and she invited me to spend a weekend there.

The festival lasted for two days, from Friday to Saturday and unfortunately there was way better line up on Friday but I was at work so I coudn´t go. All my favorite bands and singers played on Friday and then on Saturday…well, nothing much. I knew all the bands by their names but I didn´t know their songs and I wasn´t too eager to learn them.

I arrived to Milovice at 2 p.m., went to my friend´s place, put my bag there, used a civilized WC for the last time and then we headed to the festival. We picked my another friend from high school, Iva, who I haven´t seen for one year on a way there. I was happy to see her again, she´s the most sarcastic person I know, she pointed and commented on everything, it was pretty funny. I hope I´ll see her more often, I made her to join facebook.lol

The festival took place in a big old airport. It had four stages and it was huge. There were hundreds of tents all around the area. Tons of stands with food and drinks too. My friend lent someone the schedule of the festival and we couldn´t find a new one so we were pretty lost on who performed on which stage. Smart. We were waiting to see Jaksi Taksi and then we found out that we were waiting at wrong stage and that Jaksi Taksi are already over. Nice. The only band I knew a bit.lol there was also an open air „cinema“ so we sat there and tried to watch My Blueberry Nights. It´s a french movie with lots of Hollywood names but the story was strange and so we left after 30 min. we were walking all over the area never staying too long for any band. Iva left home at 8p.m. but my other friend was so jazzed about having a festival in their tiny town that she wanted to enjoy it as much as possible and made me stay there till midnight.

I realized I´m too old for rock festivals apparently.lol Lots of dirt on the ground, long lines for portable bathrooms, lots of drunk people. Im sure I would have enjoyed it more if there were bands I like. Maybe next year.