Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Italy through the big screen!

Have you ever seen a movie and then just fallen in love with places...Every time i see movies like: Only You..Under the Tuscan Sun..Letters to Juliet..i just fall in love with Italy ...the landscape, vineyards, food, fruit orchards...I would love to go to Italy and rent a stone house in the country with a market near by and just stay there for a while.

Only You
Faith believes in soul-mates so one day she asks the Ouija board, who her soul-mates was... it moved and spelled out: D-A-M-O-N B-R-A-D-L-E-Y. Later, at the carnival, a fortune teller syas that she sees a Damon Bradley in the Crystal Ball and Faith is convinced that he is her missing half but the woman also tells Faith: "You make your own destiny,...don't wait for it to come to you", but from that day she looks for Damon.
15 years later, she is engaged to a (boring) podiatrist and is making wedding plans but one day, she gets a call from one of his classmates, who is on his way to Venice, Italy. His name is..... Damon Bradley. She storms out and goes to the airport to see him. But she misses him and decides to go to Venice, Italy to find him.
Faith and her sister-in-law Kate embarks on an adventure that takes them on a car trip through parts of Italy, together with shoe salesman, Peter and Giovanni. Will they find Damon? And there is one more person that have a big roll in this story....Larry....Faith brother!


Faith have been waiting 15 years for Damon ... but when her soul-mates shows up ... with the wrong name but with the right love....she can only see the name...not the love ....
Cast
Marisa Tomei - Faith
Robert Downey Jr. - Peter
Bonnie Hunt - Kate
Fisher Stevens - Larry
Joaquim de Almeida - Giovanni


Under the Tuscan Sun
Frances is a happily married writer living in San Francisco but when a man comes up to her at a party, changed everything. She learns that her husband is having an affair with his wife! Frances divorced and moves into an apartment building for (what it seems) separated .. depressed people. In an attempt to make her feel better, send her friends Frances to Tuscany on a bus trip (because they could not go themselfs because one of them was pregnant). On a walk in Tuscany, she stops by a window and sees a house for sale. When they later have to stop the bus for a bunch of sheep on the road, she sees the house and bus continues ..... without her. Frances buys the crumbling villa and she hires a group of immigrants builders to repair the house and well....they are a bit odd...sweet...but odd.During the years it takes to fix the house, Frances becomes friends with a group of different people, she learns to cook, build a house, to enjoy life...But will she find love again?

Cast
Diane Lane - Frances
Sandra Oh - Patti
Vincent Riotta - Martini
Pawel Szajda - Pawel


Letters to Juliet
Sophie travel with her fiancé, Victor to Italy, in the belief that they are going on a pre-wedding honeymoon, but Victor has another love .... food! All he tastes, smells ... it's love at first sight. Victor, who is opening a restaurant, becomes more and more absorbed with eating, tasting wine & cheese and Sophie becomes more and more bored. She decides to explore Verona herself and end up in Juliet (as in Romeo & Juliet) courtyard. She sees women leave letters (asking for help with love,family,money..what ever the problem is) for Juliet, which is later picked up by a woman, who turns out to belong to a group calling itself: Secretaries of Juliet who respond to the letters. Sophie decides to help them but after she replies to a 50(?) year old letter from Claire , an angry Charlie shows up to talk to Sophie. Charlie, who is Claire´s grandson, think Sophie's advice to his grandmother is nonsense but Claire, Sophie and Charlie end up going on an adventure to find an old love....and maybe new love.

I like this ... It is a light and sweet romantic movie. I think we may have a new Hugh Grant in Christopher Egan!!
Cast
Amanda Seyfried - Sophie
Christopher Egan - Charlie
Gael García Bernal - Victor
Vanessa Redgrave - Claire


Trailers: http://www.youtube.com/user/FindingASilverLining?feature=mhum

Monday, April 25, 2011

Goonies

Ever dreamed of being a Goonie ?
I remember seeing Goonies .... I wanted to be on the pirate ship ..to stay there... A pirate ship in a cave with sea-green water! Who did not want to be a Goonie and get to play there?
 

Mikey Walsh and his family was being forced move because developers wanted to build a golf course in their neighborhood....But if they could just raise enough money, they could stop the construction of the golf course. When Mikey finds "One-Eyed" Willy's treasure map to his hidden fortune, Mikey and his friends Lawrence "Chunk" Cohen, Clark "Mouth" Devereaux and Richard "Data" Wang, also known as The Goonies, set out on a quest to find the treasure in hopes of saving their neighborhood.When the school's most popular girls stumble in to the adventure, Mikey's brother, Brandon,decides to join in the search.But when Mama Fratelli and her sons Jake Fratelli, Francis Fratelli, and Poor Lotney "Sloth" Fratelli ( who they keep in their basement) find out whats going on, they start to hunt the Goonies, to get the map. Will the Goonies save there homes? Maybe...With some unexpected help....anything is possible.

I love this movie...The Goonies was the schools geeks, the odd kids ... the bullied kids and THEY try to save the day...Not the toughest, not the most popular but the Nerd, the Inventor, the Chubby one and the Troublemaker and the rest of the gang.
Cast
Sean Astin - Michael 'Mikey' Walsh
Josh Brolin - Brandon 'Brand' Walsh
Jeff Cohen - Lawrence 'Chunk' Cohen
Corey Feldman - Clark 'Mouth' Devereaux
Kerri Green - Andrea 'Andy' Carmichael
Martha Plimpton - Stephanie 'Stef' Steinbrenner
Jonathan Ke Quan - Richard 'Data' Wang
 
 
 
 
 

Friday, April 22, 2011

Les Chansons d'amour

I saw Love songs/Les Chansons d'amour,a french movie, last week. It's a musical and is about Ismaël och Julie,a couple who decide to have an open relationship. Julie & Ismaël  begin see Alice, who works with Ismaël. One day tragedy occurs and Ismaël has to re-evaluate his life,especially when he meets Alice's boyfriend's brother.....

I liket the story, it was.....melancholy but still not gloomy...The movie wasen´t funny Haha but the songs has a whimsy or...a poetic language that made ​​me smile.

As-tu déjà aimé ?
For him wanting love
For the beauty of the gesture,
The worm in the apple
We glide between teeth.
It gnaws at our hearts,
The brain and the rest
We empty slowly.

But when we dare to love
For the beauty of the gesture,
The worm in the apple
That slips between the teeth,
We embalmed heart,
The brain and leaves us
Its fragrance within.



Director/WriterChristophe Honoré

Cast:
Louis Garrel-Ismaël Bénoliel 
Ludivine Sagnier - Julie Pommeraye
Clotilde Hesme - Alice
Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet - Erwann

I found a trailer for the movie and i have it on my Youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/FindingASilverLining?feature=mhum

Sunday, April 17, 2011

The Party cheesecake update!

My brother and sister in law had my nephew's naming ceremony this weekend, it was very nice! The cheesecakes? Well.....the frozen banana cheesecake ..... was still frozen but the chocolate truffle sauce melted directly and ended up here and there!
People was kind and said they liket it:o/ Next time ( if i make it again!) i will either have none or little truffle sauce on it because I thought it was really messy and that was befor the cake had even thawed! We had a great laugh about it but it was a shame that it was not thawed after 2 hours in the car (but it was in a cool bag).
But Raspberry cheesecake, I can´t say any thing about it.....it disappeared before I could taste it! Woho!
This is a mini banana cheesecake that I made ​​to taste. You can see that the truffle sauce starts to run after 1 minute!

Cheesecake with raspberry topping ..... but it looks like blood!

But this raspberry sauce I made​​! It wouldn´t get thick so I went out into the snow and chilled it but then it became too thick ... so I had to re-heat it! Eventually the cake got a raspberry topping, decorated with chocolate figures. But there was no other chocolate decorations on the big cakes because they broke =0(

O well...better luck next time!

Saturday, April 16, 2011

The wedding planner! ...nah...I think I'll keep my day job.

My parents decided to marry after 30 years together
 and I became a wedding planner!
There was a small ceremony with only immediate family but with a small party afterwards.

In the country we haven´t alot of shops to choose from and with a small budget, you take what you can. Flowers from the store, jars from a flea market, a party tent on sale
& old patio furniture was painted white.


We had patio furniture that was brown or that have goten gray, so we painted them all white.Some of the patio furniture was hand mad by my dad´s uncle.





I did a wedding bouquet out of pink roses and carnations.


 
An old tub that I filled with water and then added flowers... but they floated together so I took fishing line and tied the roses, one by one to old cap nuts. The nuts sank and made the roses stay put.





I had some roses left over but not so many that I could do more bouquets ... what do you do? I took some oasis and cut out a circle and put it in old glass jars. I pressed the rose in the middle and then sprinkled sand over the oasis, until i can´t see it.


It was a insane day! And to end it... our dog got on the table and took some of the food when I locked him in the house..but thats another story!

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Let's talk ... let's talk about cheesecakes!





 MY  first official assignment as Aunt Elly, is to make cheesecakes for 40 people!
My nephew gets his name this weekend and I´m making the cakes!

My nephew is the silver lining, but the cheesecake is my dark cloud!

They don´t always work out...When my parents got married, I made one with a hint of gingerbread flavor and one with a hint of orange but they got a bit grainy (grynig)... But they did disappear....very quickly!
 
So I´m thinking:
Cheesecake with banana and chocolate truffle (a frozen kind).

You have mashed bananas into the batter and chopped chocolate ... and if that was not enough, you top the cake with chocolate truffle sauce (or is it called Ganache?)!  We have a little guy that can´t have eggs coming so after looking around,I found this! But I'll make a big one, so more people can taste (if they want!)
 
A plain one with raspberries on it and maybe a chocolate bottom...I don´t know yet.
If I get hold of fresh raspberries or strawberries, I think I will decorate with those but I'll make a raspberry sauce with gelatine, so it stiffens on top of the cake.
 
 
I´m going to try  to make chocolate decorations to put on the cakes ..... His name .. maybe!!
 
I will take some photos and put on here later...on either beautiful cheesecakes or a train crash! Who knows!
 
Elly