The Darklord of Derkholm review

This is yet another wonderful book by (the late) Diana Wynne Jones! It's one of her earlier books but I only just got a chance to read it because it was so hard to find. If you liked the Harry Potter books and the Discworld series, chances are, you'll like this too.

It starts off in the thick of a meeting between various people which throws a lot of info at you in a short period of time. It takes quite a few pages before you understand what is actually going on and who's who but once you get there, the story sucks you in completely. So even if you find the beginning rather confusing, don't give up! The story that follows is worth it.

As always with her books, the setting is amazingly fantastic but because you can relate to the characters, the story feels real... despite the fact that four of them are griffins :P. I loved her characters so much, was dying to read more. Lucky for me, she had written a sequel called Year of the Griffin which is even better. 

The first book reminded me a lot of Terry Pratchett at first because of the guilds and wizard university but her style is very different. The second book is set in the wizard university quite a long time after the first so you find out how all the characters end up. 

After I finished though I was really sad about the fact that there'd never be anymore :-( 

Diana Wynne Jones was such an amazing and gifted fantasy writer, I'm really going to feel her loss. All her books on my shelf are little gems of humour, imagination, intelligence and heart. I hope one day I can be as good a writer as she was.

Dark Knight Rises... ¬_¬ and sure took his time

Just a quick review, my initial feelings about the movie. It sucked...

It had a predictable and forced plot that felt unnatural, a stupid back story for the villain that felt like something out of a bad bollywood film and way too much dull boring crap in the middle.

I liked parts of Dark Knight Rises, especially the ending. But most of it was blah and badly written dialogue which was either cliche or so boring I can't remember a single line. Catwoman was actually good. I wasn't expecting her to be but Anne Hathaway outdid herself. I also like Gary Oldman's character and I loved Jospeh Gordon-Levitt but I couldn't give a rat's arse about any other character.

The emotional scenes between Alfred and Bruce Wayne just felt too fake. Also, what a great idea to make a villain who speaks even worse than Batman. When they talked to each other, it took me a few minutes to figure out what the hell they were saying. Let's get Mumbles from Dick Tracy to be the next villain eh? That would be fun.

Street Fighter Cake Pops!

Street Fighter Cake Pops

I made the cake pops and they came out pretty hilarious :-p. The kids loved these. I added nutella to the buttercream and it came out yummy.


Cammy and Chun-li look alright but Ken and Ryu not so much. I dipped the cake balls in melted white chocolate but it didn't look smooth enough to make a face on so I rolled out some flesh coloured fondant and used that on top of the chocolate. The reason the guys look weird is that the chocolate wasn't smooth enough on those ones. 

Joystick Cake :-D

This weekend it turns out I was only making the one cake because the other was postponed. I don't mind though because it meant I had more time to make the joystick cake. 


It came out pretty good and I'm really proud of it. I did the easy part first, making the basic shape, adding the buttons and joystick and details in the icing. Then I steamed the cake to get that smooth shiny finish and put it in the fridge while I prepared myself for the difficult part.

Here's the cake in its unpainted melted stage

Arcade Joystick Cake

The cake inside is vanilla sponge with a raspberry jam and buttercream filling. 

For the design on top I wanted to make it look like Street Fighter but I'm not a good enough artist to paint a character. Well, maybe I could with time and stenciling but I was afraid of ruining my lovely cake :-p. 

So in the end, I decided to just have the street fighter logo except instead of writing "street fighter" I'd do "happy birthday" and instead of "IV" I'd put the birthday boy's age which is 32, written in roman numerals as "XXXII". Very long indeed, I wasn't sure I'd be able to fit it on the cake :P. At the bottom there is usually a capcom logo so I put his name in the capcom colours.

The cake is a bit smaller than the actual size of the joystick so I couldn't do all the details exactly perfect (like writing 'turbo' on button). I was disappointed that I couldn't find a Street Fighter IV font anywhere online to make sure the letters looked perfect but I don't think he'll mind much.

Here is the finished cake:

Arcade Joystick Cake

Snow White...again

It's one of the few weekends I haven't gone to the movies. What I'd really want to watch though is Snow White and the Huntsman solely due to, of course, Chris Hemsworth. Aw there he is :-) I've seen about a dozen different versions of Snow White and this one seems interesting enough.

Charlize Theron as the Queen

Also, you just know that Charlize Theron will be a kickass evil queen. I always thought she had a real coolness to her bordering on icy. It's like she's hiding a side of her that keeps glancing through her eyes thinking, "look at those turds". I don't know, that's just the feeling I get. Plus, no one can deny she is pretty beautiful. 


I saw the other Snow White movie, Mirror Mirror, when it came out and it was a lot of fluffy light-hearted fun. The girl wasn't the best actress but she also wasn't the worst (I'll be talking about the worst later on) but she certainly looked the part and could pull off the sweet innocent character very believably. I didn't originally think Julia Roberts was the best casting because although she can be pretty, I wouldn't call her beautiful. However, the way she pulled off the role was great and hilarious. I loved her as the queen.


Now we come to the Snow White from Snow White and the Huntsman. Kristen Stewart ¬_¬ W in T absolute F! Seriously, couldn't they have found a worse person to play opposite these amazing actors? It's almost as bad as when they got that awful kid in Jingle all the Way to play Anakin in The Phantom Waste of Money.


I mean, look at her-

Even with extensive photo shop they can't make her look anything less than bland and dopey (in every sense of the word). Not that I think every actress has to be beautiful. Of course not. But when you're supposed to be the "fairest of them all" no one in their right mind would think of Kristen.

But it's not her looks that annoy me. Her fidgety, awkward, cold turkey acting makes me want to throw tomatoes at the TV screen (thank God I never wasted time and money watching her at the cinema) and the last movie I saw her in, I had to fast forward most of the scenes just so I wouldn't be driven to suicide. Why choose such an awful actress to play such a huge movie part?

WORST OF ALL this is the woman they get to play against Chris Hemsworth!!! It's a travesty, it really is. I think I would have been able to go and watch this movie perfectly happily if she wasn't his love interest. As it is though, the thought of them kissing and cuddling makes me want to puke and I don't think I could take seeing it on the big screen. That's like Hermione dating Dobby. You wouldn't want to watch that.

So, unless I can train my brain not to hate her acting, I don't think I'll be watching this movie. 

Shame.

Can't wait for Thor 2.

Preparing for a Cakey weekend

So someone asked me to make 30 cupcakes a few days ago. Things seemed fine but then my cakes sank. Never happened to me before (I swear) and I couldn't figure out why. That is until a few hours later when I passed by the other side of the kitchen and saw a bowl of eggs I'd forgotten to put in 0_0


It wasn't a complete disaster because they weren't all the eggs, I did remember to put half :-p. Therefore, I'll be using those sunk cupcakes to make some cake pops later when I manage to buy some lollopop sticks. Meanwhile, I made another batch, remembered all the ingredients and they came out fine :-p (pics coming soon)


So this weekend have two Birthday cakes to make; one a pretty birthday cake with flowers etc and the other a replica of a Street Fighter PS3 joystick. 


My friends and I saw the cake online, made by Love & Sugar Bakeshop (all her cakes are amazing, do check 'em out) and were blown away! My cousin wanted one made for her husband but as the bakeshop is in Canada, I'll be attempting it myself.


It's an amazing cake and I know I won't be able to do all the painting on it so not really going to attempt it :P but the rest looks simple enough.

Joystick Cake by Love&Sugar

I've also been asked to make some cupcakes for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in a few weeks which I am really looking forward to. Will be making crowns, roses and maybe union jacks if I get time. All cake pics will  be uploaded on my facebook page.

Dark Shadows...oh dear

I've always liked Tim Burton Movies, even before I knew what a director was. I loved and still love Beetlejuice, the first two Batman movies, Nightmare before Christmas, Big Fish and Sleepy Hollow. But the ones I haven't liked, I've really hated, couldn't bear to watch them again.
So when I heard about Dark Shadows I had mixed feelings. I hoped it wouldn't be the load of crap suggested by the trailer, hoped that after his last few disasters, Tim Burton might be back on form. 
I was severely disappointed.
The movie was pure stupidity with a few good jokes thrown in. You couldn't sympathise with the main character because he was just a git with no redeeming qualities. He has strong family loyalty (wow how amazing ¬_¬), but that hardly makes up for how evil he is. 
In fact, all the characters were awful people except the extremely bland heroine (who's barely in it anyway) and Michelle Pfeiffer (and there wasn't enough of her). It could have been so much better. 
After the backstory (which almost bored me out of the cinema), the scene begins with the heroine and seems to be centered around her... but then she disappears God knows where, only appearing for a few seconds in collages and to say a sentence in scenes trying hard to be romantic but failing. 
Johnny Depp has overly dramatic vampyric makeup on and weird fingers and yet, he gets away with pretending to be human. In fact it's a huge shock to everyone when they find out he's a vampire. It would have make more sense if they were more like "oh right, that explains everything." Even so, what's the obsession with over-the-top makeup (Mad Hatter, Willy Wonka) it doesn't do anything for the character, it just makes him look ridiculous.
There's barely a story to speak of, lots of loose ends that are left dangling and an ending that just wasn't good enough. The ending actually made it even worse. 
I am so glad I didn't pay to see it (I have an unlimited cinema pass) . What a waste of time! I would rather have watched Avengers for a 3rd time