The Lovely Lion King

On Friday Varen & I got Ghazal's take-out (yummy!) and went to watch Knocked Up.

From the director of The 40-Year-Old Virgin comes a comedy about a one night stand that became something more. Allison Scott (Katherine Heigl) is an up-and-coming entertainment journalist whose 24-year-old life is on the fast track. But it gets seriously derailed when a drunken one-nighter with slacker Ben Stone (Rogen) results in an unwanted pregnancy. Faced with the prospect of going it alone or getting to know the baby's father, Allison decides to give the lovable doof a chance. An overgrown kid who has no desire to settle down, Ben learns that he has a big decision to make with his kid's mom-to-be: will he hit the road or stay in the picture? Courting a woman you've just "Knocked Up," however, proves to be a little difficult when the two try their hands at dating. As they discover more about one another, it becomes painfully obvious that they're not the soul mates they'd hoped they might be. With Allison's harried sister Debbie (Mann) and hen-pecked brother-in-law Pete (Rudd) the only parenting role models the young lovers have, things get even more confusing. Should they raise the baby together? What makes a happy lifetime partnership after all? A couple of drinks and one wild night later, they've got nine confusing months to figure it out...

I mostly enjoyed it ... I mean it has the usual expected schmaltzy Hollywood ending, but there are some fabulously funny bits during the movie that I could totally relate to - I mean I fully expect to be that sort of crazy person (kicking him out the car and leaving him stranded!) when I'm pregnant (based purely on the sort of crazy person I am usually). All in all an entertaining story about two fairly lovable charaters :) Although I must say that the sister & brother-in-law sub-plot was a little thin and dull (except for the Fantasy Baseball moment).

Saturday was fairly un-busy. Went to Doppio Zero for breakfast and then I headed off to have my hair cut. There shall not be much further discussion on this topic as I am only just accepting that there is nothing I can do but wait till it grows out and work thru my current depression over just how bad I think the cut is :( The colour came out really nicely tho :) I wanted to go for a dark brown but Varen has this thing about red hair (boys everywhere?) so we compromised on a really dark reddy-purple sort of colour. Not a natural look, but funky none the less. Still, it's unfortunate that it's been cut too short and I will probably only stop having to wear a brown bag over my head in a few weeks ...

That evening we got all dolled up and headed to Maraschino's in Sandton (no web presence?) for JofH & YogaCherryl's engagement party (yes, they got engaged back in July so, the party was a touch delayed). It was a blast and they had a fabulous "Pink Martini" theme :)

On Sunday we saw the two of them again when we went to see The Lion King at Montecasino's new Teatro. The show was superb and the opening scene was one of the most spectacular I've seen. Although to be honest, the acting and singing weren't what impressed me most (I found I couldn't always hear what was being said above the music) but rather the set design, use of space and the most incredibly thought out animal costumes. It was brilliant!

I love how they managed to take the most distinctive thing about an animal and use that in the costume design. Sometimes it was hard to remember there were people behind these animals :) My favourites were the giraffe & zebras (who had a purely "walk-on role"), Pumba the warthog, the hyena's and Scar the Lion (who was the best actor in my opinion - reminded me of Tim Curry, actually!)

A lovely weekend of entertainment :) Sorry to be finding myself back at work today because, to be honest, I'm not especially happy here lately ...