deceptive appearances © Lilly Schwartz 2011
Yesterday we just had a quiet Sunday and didn’t do much. I was reading a little in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go which I will tell you more about when I’ll have finished it and we were also watching some films.
One of the films was The Remains Of the Day by James Ivory with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. It’s a strong story about the butler and the housekeeper in the household of Lord Darlington. It is acted incredibly well and Anthony Hopkins’ performance as the butler is very believable with the typical stiff upper lip. The relationships of the characters are bleak and distanced, and they just seem so odd to the observer. One wonders why the butler has such difficulties admitting his feelings towards the housekeeper, but then quickly the portrayal of Britishness explains it all. The film is based on another novel by Kazuo Ishiguro with the same title as the film. I haven’t read this other novel yet, but Never Let Me Go strikes me as very British too which might give an indication of what to expect from The Remains of the Day. I’m curious about it since Never Let Me Go shows this Britishness more in a contemporary setting. To come back to the film: It is very good. It might be a bit on the bleak side, but nevertheless it’s really worth watching. Already the wonderful acting is reason enough.
As a strong contrast we also watched Transformers: Dark of the Moon. It doesn’t even deserve much of a review since it’s just a waste of lifetime! The dialogues are among the worst I’ve ever seen and the female lead (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) is actually a model. The latter can explain why her acting consists mainly of an idiotic looking pout involving her unbelievably ridiculous fake lips. Whenever her lips appeared in a frame Ezequiel would start to laugh and I would jokingly tell him off for ‘ruining the romance’. I’ve seen children’s cartoons with better dialogues. The amazing thing is that they actually must have made an effort to make the film as bad. Even the most untalented script writer would have at least recognised how bad the dialogues really are! In any case: Don’t torture your poor brains with this non-sense. The special effects are really not worth that kind of pain.
Yesterday’s picture shows the strange fruit Rambutan. It’s like a bigger version of a lychee with more pronounced spikes. It also has a bit of a more pronounced taste which I quite enjoy.
Very interesting…
I have never seen (or tasted) a fruit like this. It almost reminds me of a gumball seedpod…
nicely done! 🙂
I have no clue where they grow, but I could pick it up in one of the big supermarkets here. What’s gumball seedpod? I googled it but couldn’t really see whether it was edible or not …
I didn’t know Never Let Me Go was based on a book. I saw it , liked it, but now I am so going to read it! Thanks for the info! 😀
Glad to be able to help 🙂 I definitely liked it a lot!
I know Rambutan. We have a lot of those in the Philippines!
Ah, there is my answer as to where they grow. I just picked it up from a supermarket around here. It’s a strange fruit …
I’ve never seen The Remains of the Day but I have been to the manor where some of it was filmed. How in the world do you eat that fruit?
The film is definitely worth watching! Bet that manor was quite impressive …!
You peel the fruit actually. The spikes actually bend and won’t hurt you.
Rambutan are ubiquitous in Malaysia – They are much juicier and sweeter than Lychee, maybe that’s because I ate my bagful fresh :D. Nice & intriguing closeup!
So, Malaysia too! Now I get the picture where they’re from, thanks! And thanks for your comment Scott!
I love “Remains of the Day”, and I know I would probably love Rambutan because I like lychee. Great photo, love the color.
If you like lychee, then you’ll definitely like Rambutan too! Thanks for the comment Shelley 🙂
I love this image, the gorgeous rich colours and shallow depth of field.
Thanks! It was taken with a macro converter which enhanced the d.o.f. And it took me quite a few shots to get just the right perspective. I don’t like it when the focus in macros is not in the foreground, but it was hard to make it interesting that way. I’m happy with it now!