Blow up the Liffey Bridges - Theatre (review)

To be honest i was not in the mood to write a about this comedy just after it finished last Wednesday at the Docklands theatre in Dublin. I needed some time to think about it, Was it that bad? why i didn't laugh all the way as promised? Well after 4 days i haven't changed my mind. They even wrote that Ronan Keating may show up for a performance, he could have.. honestly to save the day..at least someone who could sing could have come up on stage! We were very disappointed due to different reasons, let me start. Firstly, they could have exploited much more the differences between North and South Dublin , instead this "comedy" had a very poor plot with no so clever dialogues and very poor singing. Secondly, i didn't know it was supposed to be a musical , too was their bad singing supposed to be funny?? because it was annoying!!. To be fair out of the 8 actors only 2 were kind of o.k., the rest specially the girl who pretended to be a Northsider and her mum , gee somebody should have thrown them a bucket of water! When I wrote "pretended to be" was exactly because of that these 2 could not imitate well the Northside accent and it was replaced by annoying shouting and swearing, you could tell that they were from the South side,no doubt about that. I think that out of the 2 hours we were at the theater i only laughed once when the Southsider guy playing the assistant of the exaggerated posh Southsider actress told her to "fuck off" lol i actually wanted to tell her the same because she was fking annoying!!

To be fair the Southsiders played a better role maybe because they were just playing them selves on stage lol not sure. I'm just glad we went with a city deal offer because tickets were not cheap and i felt sorry for the guys who actually paid the exact fare and the theater was almost full.

If you ask me if the rest of the audience liked it, well it's simple to see if a theatre play is successful or not, just check the way people applaude when the play is over. In this case , i felt like people were clapping just for the sake of it and of course for a very short amount of time and with low intensity and only once! They didn't go back to stage and believe me Irish audience is an enthusiastic one ,if they like something they shout , applaude heavily ,anything! It was even embarrasing when some of the actors/actresses ended up singing a song sometimes people clapped sometimes only one person clapped and when it was awful nobody clapped lol. I'm still confuse of the message whoever did the script of this comedy was and yeah the producers were supposed to be good because they had a smash hit with a play called "one night in Istanbul", well maybe next time these producers should choose better with more imagination to write the scripts and better actors!!!

Yeah I have watched Eurovision contest 2011, so what?

More than 1100 songs have been performed in the history of Eurovision. This year, great show and hosting from Dusseldorf presented by Anke Engelke, Judith Rakers and Stefan Raab with a big budget. Anke as funny as usual (I used to watch her show when I lived in Germany), same for Raab, he even played the guitar and sang last year winning song(if i remember well he represented Germany once in Eurovision years ago..).

Almost 2 hours of performances with 25 countries.

Eurovision has gone mad!Most of the countries sang in English: Finland, Bosnia and Herzegovina ,Russia,Germany,Romania, Austria, Azerbaijan , Stonia (I liked this song),Slovenia (a bit rockish style, too),Iceland,Denmark, Georgia, Ukrania ,Sweden,Switzerland, Moldovia ,Hungary... The French sang in Italian, Lithuanians sang in French and Italians sang in English,too. What's going on Europe? What's up with the amount of different languages that we have? Shouldn't we use them and promote them in our own Eurovision contest?

Only Serbia, Spain and Greece sang in their own languages! Well done in this respect!

Brief comments on the performances, let's start with the first 3 classified:

The winner song is from Azerbaijan, to be honest i dont even know where it is..do you? the song didn't have any special for me and i kept thinking what was the song like since i didn't remember it! In my opinion Italy should have won, specially when they had Rafaella Carra for the votations! I haven't seen her for so long!! she still looks the same!

Italian jazz style song was very original but in my opinion they should have sang in Italian , which is a beautiful language! (second place!)

Swedish male singer very good looking but the song didn't convince me. (They got on third place!)

Greek sang in Greek but the song was horrible, however it got many votes (i wonder why??!!)

French guy sang very well but a horrible hair cut, he will not get a job as a hair gel TV advertiser.. and opera style is not really Eurovision material..

Russian singer looked like John travolta in Grease but in blonde, the song was catchy !

I loved U.k. song from consolidated band blue but I didnt like it on the Eurovision performance. The background while they were singing, a bit egocentric with their photos behind them. Hated the dresses and seeing themselves dancing in the screens again behind them ..uff

Moldova kind of ska song very original, loved the Simpson Marge hair style and the fairy with a trompet in pink although she was stealing a bit the protagonism of the singer lol

Slovenian's song was a bit Britney Spears/ Cristina Aguilera like ,she is very beautiful and has a strong voice but the song wasn't amazing..just o.k.. she still managed to get a good amount of points. I kept hearing Andres, "oh she is beautiful".

Lena, German singer very arrogant, didn't get the 5 dancers dressed like spermatozoids ! I'm glad she didn't win, specially due to the bad comments German tv made about Spanish song previous to the contest, o.k. it was crap but they are no-one to criticize it and their song was not that good as they thought, ad of course in English! Why they don't sing in German??!!! At least the Spanish singer sang in her own language, a crappy song but in Spanish lol.

Romanian group, hotel FM very pleasant song and looked like nice smiley guys.

I actually liked Stonia's song, too and they got very few votes, not sure if they were the last ones on the classification but close.

Who chose Austria's song to qualify..she is a cheap version of Witney Houston.. very boring..buu, her hair style looked as if she was wearing a helmet!

Spanish song, dont get the palm theme, horrible stupid song..gee, not surprise that we are in the 4 or 3 bottom countries (i stop looking at Spain classification at one point..)

Ukraine original performance with an artist drawing with sand diff siluettes .. beautiful! She reminded me of the Evanescence group. THey also got a lot of points! well done Ukraine!

Dannish rock style song, i didn't love it.. his hairstyle reminded me of my manager's, nothing bad about that, only a comment lol

The contest finished with Georgia's performance with kind of rock style song imitating Linkin Park, not my cup of tea to be honest... but the female singer was good.

Worse songs: Iceland, Greece, Spanish, Switzerland, Austria, Georgia and Serbia

Final votes:

Macedonia gave the first 4 points for SPain ,at that point i thought, o.k. at least we are not gonna have 0 points! and France gave Spain 12 points! (I was surprised about this..to be honest..

).

The voting was very exciting, Ireland even got to be on the 4th place at one point, polemical Irish twins: "Jedward", who ended up in the 8th place. It has been talked about disappointment for Ireland but I think They did very well, even if they have many detractors, no doubt that they passionate, energetic, committed and their vocals were not that bad, at all!. It was hard to tell who was going to win! At one point I thought it was going to be Denmark, then Ukraine and then Azerbaijan started to get many more points than the rest. You could also comment live on the Eurovision facebook page (very entertaining lol i know i'm a freak!) and it was funny to see what people around Europe said about the different songs lol.

Denmark and U.k.gave 12 points to Ireland (Ireland only gave 6 points to u.k. lol), Poland only gave 1 point to Ireland (I was surprised about this..) and of course Portugal gave Spain 12 points (Thanx Portugal, you are deaf! but thanx!).

It had been a very entertaining show ,i only hope next year Spain chooses better our representative.. maybe we should sing in English too?? lol!! just kidding!!

Some of my favorite moments in video:

Check out the energetic performance of the Irish twins John and Edward! Even when Ireland voted for other countries, the Irish host was wearing a Jedward "wig" lol, love Irish!!

Free online photo editor for photography lovers like me!

I dont need to write much,i only wanted to share with you one free online photo editor that i have just discovered! It's great! you can edit your pictures and save them on your computer! Pixl even has a blog where you can learn new features they have to edit photos like the night vision one or the hope effect. You have it available in different language, have a look!

http://pixlr.com/ (here is the homepage)

and if you want to go to the photo editor directly from your browser go to:

http://pixlr.com/editor/

Once you have edited the photos you can upload them directly to flickr,picassa,facebook or your computer! isn't it great? Here you have one example of one photo i have just edited.

Enjoy it!

Movie Recommendation for superhero lovers: Thor (2011)

Class movie directed by Kenneth Branagh ! First time i have seen a film directed by him ,I only knew him and respected him as an actor, now I respect and admire him as a director! This film has mainly been made for 3D screens but we saw it in 2D because my eyes can't stand 3d movies, don't ask me why.Spite of this, we enjoyed the great effects, quick movements of cameras, iced villains and most importantly the gorgeous looking and my lover-platonic-to-be Australian actor Chris Hemsworth, playing the warrior Thor. GEE not even this time again Natalie Portman (she is in all movies this year..give me a break!!) could steal his protagonism, gee where has Chris been all these years??!! He reminded me a bit of Brad Pitt in his young times (only the face,of course..). Well but not only Chris was good, the film is entertaining, thrilling, exciting and even funny, sometimes. There is nothing i didn't like about it. WARNING: Please go and see it in the cinema, do not waste your time uploading it on your computer, this film is definitely to be seen on a big screen with popcorns!!

I'm not going to tell you much only that i loved the end and that i missed the small part when they give some info about the second part of this film, it happens when the credits are on the screen and people are just leaving, so stay a bit longer!! Some of my favorite parts were when Thor goes to earth and does not know how to behave himself and when his loyal friends go to pick him up on earth. And of course his brother, his father played by Anthony Hopkins and the iced villains! This film is one of those that makes you feel good at the end of it.

Of course you have to be into this type of superhero/comic style movie, otherwise do not go!

Thanx Andres for making me to go this film, i would not have gone on my own! I wanted to see Hanna, this is the next one on my list!

Aruba : Things to see and new experiences!

For those of you who are wondering where Aruba is , it's located only 27 kms from Venezuela and it belongs to the known "ABC islands" : Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao, in the southern warm and beautiful blue Caribbean Sea. I'll start giving you some tips and my opinion of our trip to the island. How to get there? From Ireland there are several options, the easiest are either to go from London or from Amsterdam. From London it's usually cheaper. We flew with Martinair from Amsterdam since it suited better the dates we wanted to travel. Martinair is cheaper than the Dutch company KLM. The plane was very old, not enough space, you had to pay to see movies and meals were not abundant/nor snacks. I had to put up with a huge obese Arubian woman by my side so my 10 hour flight from Aruba to Amsterdam were not very comfy.

Aruba has its own small airport with all commodities. Our luggage came on time from Dublin , so no complaints. No issues on the border, nothing. We took the bus to go to the hotel on time and in the hotel, Holiday Inn, thanx to my husband charm we got one of the best rooms with a very nice Sea view! About Holiday inn i have to say that i'm very pleased with the service they offer to be a all-inclusive resort. My only complaints are about the phenomenon of the queueing to book sunbeds (people there from 5.30 a.m.!!) and to book for restaurants at 8.00 a.m. I think i woke up earlier every day in Aruba than here to go to work! (never later than 6.30 a.m.). Due to the intensive heat in Aruba it can reach up to 35 degrees (humid temperature), you cannot afford not to have shadow on the beach (So leave the jackets in your country!)! Only stupid tourists all burned due to the sun did that, we even saw a woman with a bandage due to the sun-burns. You cannot play with the sun in these days!! Going back to the queueing issue, i know it's the same in most of the resorts, so nothing specific from Holiday Inn. It's a good hotel more family type, not very romantic for couples. A very busy hotel and a bit loud some times but being in the Caribbean loud music cannot be an issue! Last afivce about Holiday Inn try to avoid eating in the buffet "Coral restaurant", food is much nicer in the "sea breeze restaurant" or on the Italian one (of course you will need to book for dinner but for lunch , See bree breeze is o.k. to go without reservation)

We were in the area of Palm Beach, the most tourist one ,specially with U.s. tourists which meant that all was very expensive. Even the shops and restaurants were built in a very American style, I felt like in U.s.a. ,specially when they did not have the local currency: Arubian florins and asked us to pay in $ !! In the end we ended up exchanging our Florins to be able to get by!

Yeah, depending on what part of the island you are going to stay, exchanging Arubian Florins is not going to bring you much, I'd advise you to take $, otherwise the mess will start when you pay in one currency and they give you another one! 1 euros = 2 Florins.

We thought that being the island a former Spanish and Dutch colony , it would have a Spanish and/or Dutch influence. Well in relation to the Spanish, there is actually influence, most of the natives speak Spanish! English and their own language Papimento. In relation to architecture , we didnt see any Spanish or Dutch influence, only a fake mill on Palm beach imitating the Dutch ones. There are many chalets in different colours and many American influenced buildings/restaurants.

Most beautiful beaches for me were: Baby beach (hard to find, you need to go by car) and Eagle beach. Palm beach is very nice if you want to have an infrastructure for toursits with plenty of sunbeds/water sports and small bars on the beach. It depends on what you are looking for.

Landscapes have a vulcanic vegetation : Cactus everywhere and beautiful divi divi trees ,which look like big Bonsais! I was fascinated by them specially!

Where to go on the island and hoe:

Best option is to rent a jeep. If there is no budget for a jeep, you can rent a car for 65 $ a day (this was the cheapest we found) but you will not be able to go through all the roads of the national park.

Dont miss : National Arikok park , natural bridge, the caves, Californian Lighthouse (go to see the sunset there and have dinner in the restaurant!)Eagle and Baby beach (good for snorkling!). For shopping or Casinos (There are plenty of them) you can go to Palm Beach or the capital: Oranjestadt. Do not expect good value shops , most of them are very expensive brands like Louis Vutton ! It was hard for me to find small typical pottery from the area!

To eat: There are loads of grills to eat meat but also diff restaurants from around the worldfor those who are not brave enough to taste some of the local dishes like turtle soup or iguanas (They told it tastes like chicken, I was actually eating chicken all the time so i hope they dont give me iguana instead!). I have to say that it was not easy to find places with local food where we stayed and they also told us that it was forbidden to cook the iguanas. (shame on them!)

Dont forget: Plug adaptor (like the one for U.s.a or Canada, will do) , Sun cream with very high protection (sun is very powerful there!), Mosquito repellent! (specially at night!), bring a good camera with you to take nice pictures of the sunset! (one of the most beautiful i have seen!), look for a hotel with internet (it's not easy to find internet connection, if you dont have it in your hotel), bring your driving licence ! (forget about renting a bike, as i wanted to, there are no bikers and it's a bit dangerous, traffic can get heavy on the island!).

My First time..

I had never seen iguanas before and I was fascinated by them ,running loose ! They only came out in the heat or at night and were not dangerous at all.

First time i was on a jeep on a dessert-like landscape! First time for Andres driving one, too! He did a good job, the American tourists that were in our jeep also agree, very nice couple celebrating their anniversary: Bob and Melanie.

First time i tasted the Daiquiri cocktail , tasty!! and sweet!!

First time i actually drank water on a Caribbean island, in Aruba it's safe to drink running water everywhere, it was fab!

First time i lay-down on a sun bed inside a swimming pool, i loved it! but i actually got a bit sun burn due to this.. it was so comfy..

First time I flew with Martinair, dont think it's going to happen again if i can avoid it..

First time on Curacao island, only at the airport but it looked very nice, similar to Aruba with the divi divi trees!

First time i saw Divi-divi trees!! spent time looking for one i saw on a book and we found it on eagle beach! fab!

First time i have heard Papimento language (couldn't understand a thing!) and first time i have met locals from Aruba, very nice people!!!

First time i see so many Italians on Aruba!! I didn't know it was so popular in Italy!! Even Berlusconi has a house there! From the rest of Europe there were only Dutch.

Aruba has also many offers for people who want to have a good time, drinking, there are drinking tours on boats and special buses from the island.

It's a very safe island, we could leave the bags on the bags on the beach and nothing happened, we didnt feel unsafe any time.

We had a great time, specially enjoyed the sunsets, beaches and jeep tour around the islands with the agency palm tours. If you want to see my best photos of the islands visit the following link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/belendelgado/sets/72157626665373512/with/5696806860/

As a conclusion, the island reminded me a bit of Lanzarote due to the vulcanic landscapes and although i liked the island, i dont think i'll be going back, it's definitely too expensive and to me, i prefer more authentic islands with true natives. I love Caribbean, who doesnt? but in the future, we will go to the Colombian Caribbean, it's half price, also safe and more authentic!!

Your Highness (2011) - Very funny movie!!! It will raise your spirit!

Again not my choice to see this movie, it was actually Andres the one interested, i had little expectations to be entertained and even to laugh. How wrong was I, I actually laughed louder than Andres LOL,LOL!! Rotten tomatoes audience scored it with 51, to me i would have scored it at least with 70! Within this range of funny American movies, one more time the director of Pineapple Express,David Gordon Green, did the trick! I didn't expect some of the best hilarious moments of the film like the one with the little fairies or the trophy of my favorite personage of the movie: Thadeous, a trophy of his first victory in a fight in the quest to rescue "Belladonna". Nathalie Portman is also in this film and yeah, she is everywhere this year lol , male audience will be happy when she bathes in a lake,naked (not sure if it was her real body, uhm.., i know it's pure envy !!) . The female protagonist of another great movie: "500 days of summer", Zooey Deschanel, plays the role of the kidnapped bride of the gorgeous looking : James Franco, Fabious. Both are hilarious! I liked every single character in this film! It's a good parody of all those chivalry ,adventurous films with some very original flashes. It has also some thrilling moments and it has a plot, indeed, and thread to follow, it's not one of those films like "scary movie", where there is no connection and it's full of stupidity. Of course, needless to say that you have to watch this film in English! Sit back, relax and have some fun!! If you don't laugh with this film at least once..you are a very serious,serious person who needs to laugh more!! Laughing is a good therapy and i do recommend this film in order to achieve some good entertaining moments!!

The Roommate (2011)

And you are wondering now, why did Belen go to see this thriller set in a college? well,the answer is simple: it was the only movie starting at that time when we were at the cinema, there is no other special reason. We didn't even know what was about. Rotten tomatoes critics give this film a score of 4 but the audience gave it a much higher score of 39%. To be honest it was entertaining to see women in there thirties playing college girls lol. The psycho room mate is called Rebeca, gee im glad im out of college now. There is even one scene in memory of hitchock's movie "Psycho" , the famous scene of the shower with the knife;teens who may have seen this film,may not have noticed but oldies like me, get good things even out of these predictable, not-engaging, predictable American films. Other good things were the good-looking guys: the ex boyfriend of the protagonist, who only lasts 15 mins in the film, i think, he gets killed too quickly (damm it!) and then the current boyfriend, who had a bit too many wrinkles to play a college boy but i didn't mind that lol. There are a couple of lesbian scenes , so guys in the audience were entertained by this, too. So ,no don't see this movie.. i said i'd write about any film i see so that's why im writing this , take is also as a warning!! stay away from Rebeca!!!

Liberad al pato Willix con X de Mixta - No te lo pierdas!

Ja ja el mejor!! Liberad al pato Willix, que lo hace por mantener a su familia!! genial!! echarle un vistacillo!! GRacias Martire por compartir este link conmigo ,genial jaja

2 Irish movies : "Rewind" and "Snap"

I have the purpose this year of writing about any movie I see ,whether i like them or not so here i am writing about 2 Irish movies i have seen recently. I was not convinced by any of them but one was actually much worse than the other, here you are:

Starting with : " Rewind" geeee, what an Irish soap opera!! and of course you could predict what was going to happen. Some positive aspects of it: I liked their Irish accent and the work they do with the photography is great, playing with being out and on focus all the time. It reminded me a bit of Almodovar. Let's say it was an o.k. film but i'd have loved to have chosen a different one!! When it ended , we weren' t sure whether we liked it or not..,you know this kind of feeling. But now after thinking of the other Irish movie we went to see (see below) i think this one was actually much better.


Going on with another Irish film: "Snap" geeeeeee, this one i could only cope with it for 20 mins..,we actually left the cinema (Yeah ,this is the worse movie i have seen this year so far..). First bad sign was that there were no more people watching it ,only us, then 7 more people came and at least 3 of us eft, so only 4 people were brave enough to staty, i wonder if they managed to stay until the end. What i saw was a woman swearing all the time talking about a child that was kidnapped, they were trying to make it alternative with the camera again being out of focus but to me it was disturbing and not well done (with the other Irish movie: REwind, it was very well done). AFter 20 mins of swearing and flashbacks of a kidnapped baby, we decided to leave geeeeeeeee, what's going on with Irish movies lately??? No wonder that Irish people don't actually go and see them!! Believe me that i usually go and see Irish movies and i have seen some good ones, only with these 2 i have not been lucky..

Recommended movie: Source Code (2011)

Rotten tomatoes termometer scores this movie with an 87% (audience score) and i couldn't agree more (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/source_code/)! What a good thriller, from the beginning to end, i didn't want to move from my seat! Yeah, it may not be that original since it inspired in "back to the future" and the 90ies movie "Groundhog Day" where the protagonist wakes up and it's always the same day. In "Source code", the soldier Colter Stevens,played by Jake Gyllenhaal, has only 8 minutes to change the future and find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. I wasn't a big fan of Jake Gyllenhaal but i'm now, my respect, he played an excellent believable role and yeah, he also looks good in the movie! I happened to be in Chicago last year because of work, well i only saw the airport and i saw the city from the plane,only, and it looked beautiful, in this movie you can see the skyscrapers of Chicago. I want to go there again!!! But this time , get actually out of the airport!

Going back to the movie, people who know me well know that "back to the future" is one of my favorite 80ies movies and since then, the topic of travelling in time has always interested me. In Source code, they do not go too deep into time travel but they dealt with it in a very thrilling way and it makes you wonder if there will be a source code once. After the film ended i was thinking what would i change if i had 8 minutes to to go back and the past and then i thought that i would go back and tell my father how much i loved him.. What would you do with 8 minutes? so, go and see this film! You won't regret it!

Spanish Flamenco guitar concert, National Concert Hall (Dublin)

Last Saturday, 2nd of April, we were delighted by the sound of the Spanish guitar played by Spanish musician, Juan Martin, who comes from Malaga, Andalucia (my region). Such talent playing flamenco can only come from the South of Spain! His fingers moved so quickly that it made it look so easy, gee! Juan spoke in perfect English between each song and explained when he played at the 90 th birthday of the famous painter Picasso, who is also from Malaga and who asked him to improvise at his birthday. There was another Spanish "cantaora" (singer) from Malaga with a very clean and neat flamenco voice and 3 more musicians, one playing typical instruments from Marroco and the other two played flauta and clarinete. It was beautiful to see the mixture of the Arabic music along with classical flamenco guitar: Rumbas, bulerias and alegrias. There were 2 dancers, as well, one female who was o.k. , i wouldn't say great but o.k. but the male dancer, geeeeee he didn't feel the music, he reminded me of a Spanish comedian #chiquito de la calzada#, in the way he walked lol the Irish audience didn't notice his lack of skills but we did because we are used to seeing flamenco shows. Anyway, this male dancer, can't even remember his name, didn't make us forget talented Juan who deserved all the applauses he got! I felt back in my region, Andalucia for 3 hours ! thanx National Concert Hall!