The Academy Award winning movie Argo is now out on DVD, and with an evening to ourselves for the first time in ages, we settled in to watch it.

Those of you saw Saving Private Ryan way back when will remember D Day veterans saying that watching the movie was as close as it could possibly come to capturing the sheer terror of being on the Normandy beaches. I would imagine that those involved in the Iran hostage crisis of 1979 would probably say that Argo does the same job for those at the American Embassy that day.

Argo follows the story of six American embassy staff who manage to escape before the embassy is besieged and take refuge in the Canadian embassy. (As an aside, the British Embassy had a hand in their escape, although this is not shown in the movie – this link contains plot spoilers). The CIA come up with the most outlandish plan of all time to get them out of the country – one that could only happen in the movies.

Argo is beautifully acted and keeps maintains a high level of tension throughout. We thoroughly enjoyed it and would definitely recommend it for a grown up, quiet night in.

Available via Amazon.

This review was based on a review copy kindly provided by Warner Brothers.

On Monday, the world is due to receive its seven billionth person.

Find out what your number is here.

Here’s me!

If you already know who Nanna Birk Larsen is, you must already have seen the Danish crime drama The Killing. I missed it the first time round. Or, more accurately, I saw a growing band of fans developing on Twitter but by the time I got myself over to iPlayer the first few episodes had gone. Recently BBC4 reran it, and I recorded all 20 hours. The plan was to watch 1 episode while I had my lunch each day.

Ah well, plans are made to be broken, right? It is totally addictive, beautifully acted (my Danish is a little rusty *cough* but the subtitles did not detract from the acting) and superbly plotted. My hour a day grew and grew as I accelerated through the series, desperate to know whodunnit. Ironically enough my earliest guess was right – but they had led me down so many blind alleys I had changed my mind 15 times in the interim.

It’s brilliant. If you haven’t seen it, do so, but be prepared to put your life on hold.

(By the way, it was remade in the US, so do be aware that there are two series floating around with the same name).

…. please read this. Optimalist is the way to go.

Around the country thousands of students (my cousin included: well done!) have been logging in to pick up their A Level results. Those of us of a certain age will remember getting our results on a tear off computer printed page (no, I am not quite old enough to have received them on parchment via carrier pigeon).
My school was so antiquated that they sent the results out by post, meaning that we got them a day after everyone else and therefore were a day behind in the scramble for clearing places. Nice one. I was first up in the family, got what I needed and was off to uni. My brother was three years behind me, and I was away for his results, so rang home to find out how he had got on.

In traditional teenage boy style he was asleep when the post arrived, so my mum had gone in, shaken him awake and then hovered undiscreetly by the door. Only to hear the ripping of an envelope followed by several loud expletives. He needed 3 Bs. Mum burst into the room to see her devastated, bleary eyed son staring at the computer print out. “I….. I failed Music”, he croaked. There was a silence as Mother and Son looked at each other. Followed by: “I…… I didn’t take Music”. Yes, the school had sent him the wrong A Level results and my brother was staring at someone else’s D, E and Fail. And somewhere, on the other side of town, another kid had ripped into their A Level results and was doing back flips at 3 Bs before they realised that they hadn’t taken History. It all got sorted in the end but not until lunch time, my brother having surely the longest wait for his results until UCAS introduced an overloaded computer system.
If you have got results this morning, I hope it went really well for you.

Image courtesy comedy_nose

Today I have a guest post about having an only child over at Mummy Matters – would love to see you there!