The Squeee

It's been AGES since I last did one of this - in fact, just under two years. Time do do it again, I reckon. Could do posts about everyone in Harry Potter, but I'm going to start with someone who really has changed a LOT: Matthew Lewis, who played Neville Longbottom in the films. Cast your mind back to 2001 ... *wibbly wobbly effect and harp music* Awwwww! Neville's a clumsy little loser, basically, who can't even keep track of a pet toad. He's bad at everything except Herbology, but he still manages to stand up to his friends and say enough is enough. A true Gryffindor, and we love him.

Before I completely forget, I have to quick recall what little I remember of a dream I had last night: Richard Armitage had got married. ♫ "IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME!" ♫ His new missus was an author and scriptwriter, but not well-known at all. Not heard of full stop, I should say. They had met on set of ... Captain America or something?

SingStar is pretty much the only game I play on the Playstation 3. Have got a bunch of the discs, and today I played around with the 90s one (PS2) I got most recently but hadn't tried yet. Being Swedish does not guarantee a love of ABBA. I, on the other hand, let out a squee when finding out SingStar were bringing out an ABBA special. Why SingStar rocks: It's all the fun of karaoke! But with ... scores! highscores! the original song (and video!) playing in the background, not some cheap and nasty instrumental cover version! bars to show how the melody goes up or down a nice, uncheesy interface the ability to turn the microphone sound up or down as you choose (down to 0 in my case - I love to sing, not to HEAR myself sing) no echo-y reverb effect thingy (seriously, how cheesy is that?)

This really has to be seen to be believed. Battleship the bloody movie. I kid you not. That's right, they've turned THIS: into a film. And not just ANY film! No, it has a plot and everything (kind of). Thus spake Yahoo! Movies : Taylor Kitsch and Alexander Skarsgard play brothers and naval officers facing off against an alien invasion. I really don't remember there being any aliens whenever I played Battleship. Do you? Anyway, here it is, in all it's ... err ... traileryness. (Yes, I really can't think of a more descriptive word.)

James Howson as Heathcliff in the upcoming Wuthering Heights adaptation: With thanks to @Film4 for sharing this on Twitter. :) Doesn't look too menacing here, does he?

According to the show I just caught the second half of on ITV1 (sources say it's being re-run on Saturday - HELL-O DVR!), the greatest moment from the Harry Potter films is ... none other than the first glimpse of Hogwarts. (Second and third being character deaths, #3 from HP7:1, and #2 from HP6 - you know the ones I mean. Of the two, I preferred #3, because of the words that are spoken just before, because they make what happens next even more sad.) Do you remember the first time you saw Hogwarts on screen? For the first film, I went to see it at the cinema with my mother, who has read and enjoyed the books too. I remember sitting there in the darkness, and then Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry came into view, and I was completely blown away. How magnificent it looked, perched up on that cliffside! It was so incredibly BIG! In fact, my comment at the time was that it was just like I had imagined it, only much bigger and with a vastly better 3D rendering. It was AMA...

One of these days, I should make a post with the pictures I took when skulking around Wollaton Hall, but they're not all that interesting. You can't see anything, as there was a wall and a gate and stuff in front and from the angle you could see into the park, you could only see a car park in the distance. So instead, here's the teaser trailer:

You can ignore it. Oh, and while I'm at it: Steps are re-forming , apparently. Was it the last thing on your mind as well? ;) By the way, if you're signed up to getting email notifications of new posts to this blog ... could you let me know in a comment whether or not you've been receiving any email updates recently? Thanks! Just trying to make sure things are working like they should.

Dear Richard, You have delighted us much recently by posing for pictures with a beard and then there were those Captain America shots as well and the film opens tomorrow in the US (next Friday in the UK) and you attended the red carpet premiere in Hollywood and everything. Great to see you looking so well and sounding so well too. I particularly like this one. (Screencap by RichardArmitageNet.com ) However. We need to have a talk about that new beard of yours.

When someone asks me, what is my favorite book, I answer “Wuthering Heights”. In one of the student organization I belong to we have had book-nights a few times. The first time I took this book with me, and someone actually asked, why this book. I just answered, that whenever I move (and as a student, I have moved a lot!), this is the book that always comes with me! My history with “Wuthering Heights” goes back into the year 2002 or 2003, when we had to read it for our English Literature course. It was out from all the libraries so I found one from the antique bookshop, which is great, because now I have my own personal copy =) Since 2004 I have read it every year at least once. Have already done it in 2011 and not long ago in June. I think I still don't know, why exactly I love this book so much! Is it the plot, the characters, the setting, the era or something else. Or perhaps all of these together. I'm not an educated literature aesthete, especially when I'm not read...

If Heath Ledger and Martin Freeman had a love child, this is what he'd look like:

Considering it's a mere 2,5 months until the thing is set to come out (probably more like two months, as it's supposed to premiere at the Venice Film Festival, which I think is in the first half of September - don't quote me on that), I really hope there's no more changes to the casting of Wuthering Heights (2011). This doesn't look Twilighty at all, no siree ... (Source: Charleybrown at Enchanted Serenity ) According to the little information available, at least with the amount of research I'm willing to do on the subject at the moment (it's my birthday, I'm allowed) ... the cast list is surprisingly lacking. I don't mean it because I don't really recognise any of the names based on names alone - when I look up pictures in a bit, I reckon there will be a lot of "oh it's HIM/HER!" (no good with names) - but because they only list nine people. Where's Nellie? Where are everyone else? Like ... Hindley? Cathy/Edgar's ...

Nine hours (ish) until Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and it's very distracting. It's about six hours (not as if I'm counting down or anything ... *cough*) until we see Part 1, because the Squeeze got us tickets for the double bill. Part 1 followed by Part 2, yay! The only midnight showings were for the 3D version of the movie, but as we weren't too impressed last time, and this is a movie that I really care about ( Green Lantern ? Yeah, whatever!), I didn't want to screw it up by needing special glasses. Unless they're Spectrespecs And the only way we could see the film in 2D at midnight on opening day is to see the double bill. So that's what we've got tickets for. Also, it's great seeing both parts together, as of course the novel was split in two, so this is like JK Rowling intended. Awesomes. :) We were originally going to see it in the morning, but we have a wedding to attend tomorrow, so don't want to rush about, and beside...

Wuthering Heights has been adapted for the screen many times, not even counting spin-offs like Sparkhouse or parody clips and such. Here is a chronological list according to IMDb : Wuthering Heights (1920) Wuthering Heights (1939) Wuthering Heights (1948) Wuthering Heights (1954) Wuthering Heights (1962) Wuthering Heights (1967) Wuthering Heights (1978) Wuthering Heights (1970) Hurlevent (1985) - French Arashi ga oka (1988) - Japanese Wuthering Heights (1992) Wuthering Heights (1998) Wuthering Heights (2003) Cime tempestose (2004) - Italian Wuthering Heights (2009) Wuthering Heights (2011) The last one says 2011, gasp! So ... what do we know about the latest version, number 16?

So yeah. These are some badges I quickly put together, so they're not brilliant. And none of the Fassbender ones turned out great. :/ But yeah, feel free to use, download, display on blogs, and so on. Might do some more (and might turn these into animated gifs), but of a different style, as in not looking anything like these ones, and of other sizes as well (suggestions?). If anyone's out there with actual photoshopping skills who'd want to make the Team Rochester community some goodies, that would be even better! :) Anyway, got two of each, aside from '34 and '49 (but the less said about them the better ...) and the two most recent ones - as the two most recent productions are the ones with the biggest amount of photos floating about. I've included every Rochester actor I could think of*, in character, so in reverse chronological order:

Nothing to do with Wuthering Heights , but this is too exciting not to post about! :) It's the trailer for the forthcoming Tintin movie. Tintin is a young, Belgian reporter and the film is based on the comic books by Hergé, which is something I've grown up with. Have read each and every single one of them, many times, so this is quite exciting! Here it is: My first thought was "well, I'm not keen on the animated Milou" (Snowy in English) ... and then I realised that actually, the whole thing is animated. I thought it was meant to be a live action thing? Apparently not. Oh well. A computer animated take on Tintin might actually work better than a live action thing anyway. It's not the same as the Swedish audio recordings where Tomas Bolme is Tintin and Åke Lindström as Captain Haddock who shouts "bomber och granater!" ... but it will do. :) At least it fills me with less trepidation than the forthcoming Smurfs movie ... Are you familiar with...

This week will be celebrating everything Wuthering Heights . Wiley windy moors? Check! Passionate love story? Check! Guest posts from fabulous people? Check! (Well, okay, I'm hoping to receive the ones I'm waiting for ASAP, otherwise it's "person" rather than "people", to be fair.) Because I've already gone through and reviewed all the Wuthering Heights adaptations I have, as well as reading the book, here's a re-cap of those posts: Book review: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847) Paper/essay review: Witches and Devilry in Wuthering Heights by Jamie Freeman (2011) Miniseries review: Wuthering Heights (1978) Miniseries review: Wuthering Heights (1998) Miniseries review: Wuthering Heights (2009), part 1 / part 2 Miniseries review: Sparkhouse (2002)

Back in the day, for some reason, the music channel we received at home (in Sweden) was MTV Germany. I rather enjoyed this channel. Not that I ever saw any Modern Talking on it (admittedly the reason for watching), aside from a few commercials, but it didn't matter. There was a lot of music and bands that I'd never heard of before but whose music I really enjoyed. Here's a random sample of songs I remember from those days:

In the countdown to Harry Potter 7:2 giveaway , there were a total of 16 tickets spread over five participants. Here are the ticket numbers: 1-2 Byron 3 Nick 4-6 Spirry 7-13 Koleen 14-16 mimz The winning number, using Random.org , is ... Number 5! Which means ... Spirry ! Congratulations! :) Hope you'll have it in time for the premiere. To everyone: thank you very much for stopping by and participating! Another giveaway will most likely be around some time later this year.

Have a look at 01:11 if you can't wait to see Heinz Kruger on the silver screen! :D Now I just need to plug in a pair of headphones to actually hear that wonderful voice. He talks for a good 15 seconds. :) EDIT, now that I've heard the audio as well as seen the video: Here's a transcript of what Richard Armitage says in the clip: I mean it-it's one of those gifts when you work on a film, umm, when you work with an art department as brilliant as these guys are ... it-it's sort of 60% of the ... of the work in kind of stimulating your imagination. Not overly coherent, but there you go. Great to see him interviewed for a behind the scenes clip! :D

Soon, my preciousssss! [Source: Fabolaktuko's blog ] Have I been too quiet about Richard Armitage these past couple of months or so? I think I have. Of the things that drive traffic to this blog, Richard Armitage is one of the biggest, and here I am, writing virtually nothing about him. It's just not right, is it? There's a reason for it, though. Actually, there are a few, probably, such as the boring "there are only so many hours in the day and I have to prioritise writing reviews as this is kind of meant to be a review blog" and it was probably a couple of months ago or so that I decided I was going to try writing a review a day, Monday to Friday, which meant less flexibility with other posts. Sort of. (I've told myself I'm at liberty to write whatever I like outside of one review a day, so it's not as if I suddenly have to stop writing posts that aren't reviews.) No, I've found the biggest reason for not posting about Richard Armitag...

What's your guilty pleasure? Here's one of mine ... and I feel more than a little embarrassed to admit it, but that's why they call it "guilty pleasures" after all. Britney Spears. There, I said it. It started the very first time I saw Baby ... One More Time on TV, which was when it first came out, so help me gods. But then again, when the talented Heathra makes videos like this, it feels just a tad bit acceptable anyway, don't you think? ;)

Found this picture while googling for images from North to Alaska , and just had to share it: The Duke looks a lot like Sean Bean. Never in my life would I have suspected to be able to put the words "sexy" and "John Wayne" in the same sentence, but there you go. Have a great weekend and remember to check back on Monday morning for the North to Alaska review! :)