Month: February 2016

Movie Review: Testament of Youth (4 stars)

Testament of Youth

Released: January 2015

Watched Netflix BluRay: February 2016

Read Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain: January/February 2015

Rating:  4 out of 5 stars

Synopsis:  In 1914, Vera Brittain overcomes the restraints on women of the time to become a student at Somerville College, Oxford. When World War I breaks out, her brother Edward, her fiancé Roland Leighton, and their friends Victor and Geoffrey, are sent to serve at the front lines. Brittain follows their sacrifice, leaving college to join the Voluntary Aid Detachment as a nurse tending the wounded and dying (both British and German) in London, Malta and France.

My Thoughts:

I watched this with my husband on Sunday afternoon, Valentine’s Day.  A less bleak day than Saturday the 13th (overcast and never above 25 degrees).  Today is bright and sunny and in the 50s.  Almost spring like.  I’m beginning to think  I should have watched Testament of Youth yesterday instead of the Water Diviner.  Continue reading “Movie Review: Testament of Youth (4 stars)”

Movie Review: The Water Diviner (4.5 stars)

The Water Diviner

Released: December 2014 (Australia) and April 2015 (America)

Watched Netflix BluRay: February 2016

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis:

Four years after the Battle of Gallipoli, Australian farmer Joshua Connor (Russell Crowe) travels to Turkey to find his three sons, who never returned home from the war. When he arrives in Istanbul, he meets others who have also suffered losses: hotelier Ayshe (Olga Kurylenko) and her son, Orhan, who befriends Connor; and Major Hasan (Yilmaz Erdogan), a Turkish officer who fought against Connor’s sons and now may be their father’s only hope in finding closure.

My thoughts:

My husband and I watched this on Saturday afternoon, Valentine’s Day weekend.  I did not expect there to be a touching romance, but was pleasantly surprised to find one midst all the death Joshua persevered through in his search for his sons

Continue reading “Movie Review: The Water Diviner (4.5 stars)”

My Son Turns Thirty

I should have scheduled this post to publish just after two o’clock this afternoon, which would have been thirty years to the hour marking the birth of Derek Randall Moss.  But, I couldn’t wait that long to welcome my son to his third decade.

As you can surmise, this blog post will be a trip down memory lane for me.  And unfortunately I don’t have many photos of Derek from his first decade.  It was the age of film cameras and I owned a very cheap almost disposable 35 mm camera that I took a few snapshots with.  I later scanned a few of them to create digital copies, but many of them still languish in shoe boxes in the storage room.  Oddly, I have more video footage of both kids on old mini-VHS than I do still photos.  At least until we reach the mid-90s when digital photography really started taking off.

First Photo taken of Derek (9 Feb 1986)
First Photo taken of Derek (9 Feb 1986)

I won’t go into the gory details but some interesting trivia from the night before.  Continue reading “My Son Turns Thirty”