Yuletide Wishes & Season's Greetings everybody

Yuletide Wishes and Season's Greetings to all my family and friends. I hope you all enjoy your holidays and time off no matter how you celebrate! Le anpetu ki wo waste yuha (There is goodness in this day). However you celebrate (or even if you don't) have a fantastic day. Peace, light and love to one and all.

Twas the night before Christmas....

....when all through the house,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.  OK, OK, I know I do his every year LOL
We've opted for a proper tree this year covered with home made decorations. It looks lovely.

We started prepping food for tomorrow, we ate some delicious mackerel pate that mum made and watched a load of guff on the TV.

Despite having watched Scrooged recently we found it on the box and so watched it again! Even better was that it was followed by The Snowman, The Snowman & The Snowdog, The Muppets Christmas Carol! Happy Christmas viewing with the Muppets being one of my all time favourites!


Dinner came courtesy of Rishta as nobody wanted to do any cooking.

The evening played out with wrapping the last of the presents and watching more guff on the TV LOL.

Star Wars Christmas fun

Nothing says Christmas like videos mashing up Star Wars and Christmas

Last year we were treated to the Darth Santa video:


This year we have a new update called Darth Santa STRIKES BACK


I've just discovered this delight too:


Christmas wouldn't Christmas without some lights. So here's a well lit house and some well known tunes:


ENJOY my friends :)

Family meal at Ziyafet

After work today Toni, mum and I hopped on the bus to Eltham to go to Ziyafet for a family meal that Bob organised. Along with Bob we were joined by Leanne, Irvin, Shivaani, Indie, Bodhi, Jade, Aaron, Jamie and Colin.

We all had a wonderful time and the food was amazing. The prosecco was most welcome too.

There were many calls to make this an annual Christmas tradition going forward. I have a feeling this might happen :)

New Rogue One featurette and other Star Wars updates...(potential spoilers)

So what we have here is a new Rogue One featurette and a few snippets of other Star Wars updates (Rebels, Episode VIII and Han Solo)....  The Rogue One video appears before the **POTENTIAL SPOILERS** section.........

First off here's the Rogue One featurette called Locations

...and now you are about to enter the SPOILER ZONE
**POTENTIAL SPOILERS**
**POTENTIAL SPOILERS**
**POTENTIAL SPOILERS**

Saw Gerrera (from The Clone Wars and more recently Rogue One) will be making an appearance in Rebels . It is believed that Forest Whitaker will be doing the voice rather than the usual Andrew Kishino (who voiced him in The Clone Wars).

..and here's a clip:

Billie Lourd (Carrie Fisher's daughter) will be reprising her role from The Force Awakens as Lieutenant Connix in Episode VIII. She's said that she should be getting more than one line this time and has more to do. Here's a video of her from a promotional tour for Scream Queens where she mentions the Star Wars stuff around the 17:20 mark. If you haven't seen Scream Queens it is well worth checking out.


In other Episode VIII news it appears that there will be some new furry friends coming on board in the form of inhabitants of Ahch-To (the place were The Force Awakens ends). It is being reported that creatures have razor sharp teeth and are a mixture of the terrifying and the adorable (the Episode VIII version of Ewoks perhaps?).  Luke has a rapport with them but Rey does not, these creatures don't think Rey has a right to be there but Luke does. There is also a strong rumour that, as part of her training with Luke, Rey will do battle with a large sea creature and defeating it will get her the approval of the new creatures.

The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Donald Glover about his upcoming role as Lando Calrissian in the Han Solo standalone movie which is due out in 2018. He talked about how he was approaching playing the part, "I remember Lando really well. He was like the only black guy in space. And he was the cool one. I just realized, he still has to be cool. And cool is an interesting thing. It changes(...) I was watching Black Mirror, and there's an episode where they go through time and in the '50s, there's a nerd, and by the time he gets to the 2000s, he's just a hipster. He's not a nerd anymore. Cool changes depending on the perspective. Also, it's fun because [the Han Solo movie is set] before [Empire Strikes Back], so he's still figuring it out a little bit, which is fun."

The Han Solo movie also stars Alden Ehrenreich as Han and Game Of Thrones star Emilia Clarke in as yet unknown role.

Happy Winter Solstice

Happy Winter Solstice. Winter has arrived and it is the shortest day of the year.

To celebrate here's a classic slice of The Dolmen with Bring The Outside In from their Winter Solstice album



We talk about love, we talk about peace and we talk about a revolution

Carol concert @ St. Helen's Church

It's becoming a bit of a tradition now that some of us from the office pop over to St Helen's Church for their Christmas carols concert. This year it was called City Carols.

St. Helen's is a lovely little church and they always make it look nice at this time of year

The service was the usual Christmas fare with the birth of Jesus message. The final bit of food for though was done by a most jolly chap who was very dynamic and amusing. He was actually a joy to watch in action and was a vast improvement on last years speaker.

I do love singing along to the carols and this year we belted out:
Once In Royal David's City
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
O Little Town of Bethlehem
Joy To The World
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
O Come, All Ye Faithful

I may run on a different spiritual path but I always enjoy carols at Christmas and I like the underlying message of peace and love on earth. It was nice little lunchtime excursion.

Rogue One thoughts (** SPOILER ALERT ** SPOILER ALERT **)

** SPOILER ALERT ** SPOILER ALERT **
Please do not start reading this if you don't want spoilers of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
** SPOILER ALERT ** SPOILER ALERT **
** SPOILER ALERT ** SPOILER ALERT **
** SPOILER ALERT ** SPOILER ALERT **
** SPOILER ALERT ** SPOILER ALERT **

** SPOILER ALERT ** SPOILER ALERT **

Now that we have the warnings out of the way please note that what follows are my thoughts on Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and this will include spoilers so no getting upset if you read on and haven't seen the film yet.

** SPOILER ALERT ** SPOILER ALERT **

It was back to Cineworld Bexleyheath for round two so I thought I'd share more detailed thoughts afterwards. What follows lacks real structure, it's just a brain dump of things that I thought of.

Rogue One starts in a manner we have all become accustomed to watching a Star Wars movie....

...and then it is all change. There is no opening crawl, there is no traditional Star Wars theme fanfare. This isn't a problem for me (although I've seen others complain about it). For the record the soundtrack for Rogue One is not scored by John Williams (who is busy doing Episode VIII) but is instead done by Michael Giacchino. He does an excellent job of imitating the feel of Star Wars music and there are lots of noticeable nods towards Mr Williams' legacy of work.

In the absence of fanfare of crawl we go straight into the action and in that we do have some familiarity. Large planet and a spaceship looming into view. What we have next is a flashback scene setting the background for how Galen Erso ends up back working with Orson Krennic and how Jyn Erso was spirited away by Saw Gerrera. The Death Troopers look absolutely awesome and I love the presence of Krennic, you dislike him from the start.

Lots of people have made comments about the CGI return of Grand Moff Tarkin. On first viewing it was clear that it was CGI but on watching A New Hope again you really appreciate how good a job they made of it. Second viewing you can suspend the CGI bit and just enjoy the return of TARKIN! Personally I LOVE that they did this and it really helps bridge the gap between Revenge Of The Sith and A New Hope. The tensions between Krennic and Tarkin comes across really well.

I really loved Rogue One, it's up there near the top of my favourite Star Wars movies. It was a bold move by Disney/Lucasfilm to go and do a standalone but it worked really well. The costumes and set were perfect and as mentioned before Michael Giacchino did a grand job on the soundtrack to keep everything on point.

There are plenty of little nods to other films like blue milk and a plethora of brief cameos from characters from other parts of the Star Wars universe.

General Dodonna (A New Hope)

Mon Mothma (Revenge Of The Sith, The Clone Wars, Return Of The Jedi)

The Ghost (ship from Rebels)

Hera Syndulla (Rebels - pilot of The Ghost. We don't see her but there is an announcement calling her on Yavin 4) 

Chopper (Rebels)

Rian Johnson (director of Episode VIII)

Warwick Davis (The Phantom Menace, Return Of The Jedi, The Force Awakens)

RA-7 (Death Star Droid)

Mouse Droid
Viper Probe Droid

AT-ST (from Return Of The Jedi)

Red Leader (A New Hope)
Gold Leader (A New Hope)

Red 5 (who dies thus opening the vacancy for Luke in A New Hope) 

R2-D2

C-3PO

HAVw A6 Juggernaut transport (Revenge of The Sith)

Coruscant

Mustafar

Pondo Babba (A New Hope)

Dr. Evazan (A New Hope)

Captain Antilles (A New Hope)

Whills (Chirrut Îmwe and Baze Malbus ware known as “Guardians of the Whills”. George Lucas' earlier writings for Star Wars were called Journal Of The Whills)

Tantive IV (A New Hope)

Bail Organa (The Phantom Menace, Attack Of The Clones, Revenge Of The Sith, The Clone Wars, Rebels)

That's all the stuff that I know about or noticed, there's probably a couple of other subtle ones I've missed too!

There are lots of questioned around things that were shown in trailers that clearly weren't in the movie but I'll save all that for a blog post somewhere down the line.

The thing that really impressed me with the end of Rogue One was the fact that they took a risk. There was no wishy washy escape for any of our band of young rebels to get a feel good factor. After getting the job down they ALL died. They all had good deaths in various manners with Jyn and Cassian's being particularly poignant

Delicious irony reigns supreme as Krennic meets his ultimate demise at the hands of his own weapon. The scene is beautifully shot..

Then of course we have THAT scene with Darth Vader. Just before the Tantive IV gets away we have Darth Vader go on a wonderful little rampage where he destroys a lot of rebels through the use of the Force and his lightsaber. Based on this scene alone I would be over the moon to see them create a standalone Darth Vader movie at some point!

To cap things off we even get a CGI Princess Leia at the end which was brief but most welcome and it lifts the end of the movie to a happier place leading into the film that started it all off.

Once the credits roll we do go out with the traditional Star Wars theme/fanfare which was great to hear.

Dolmen Grove Essex & Kent Moot Yule Ceremony

With Kwik Fit sorting out our car problem first thing today it was off to Essex for the Dolmen Grove Essex & Kent Moot Yule Ceremony.  Bel conducted a lovely Yule ceremony that brought us all together at this wonderful time of year. It was fantastic to have so many people there today as well. The altar was beautiful:

After the lovely Yule ceremony it was time for a drink and to grab some food. The kids took this as a great chance to lark about. So attractive LOL

Next up Chris and Dee treated us to a delightful show of magic and stories designed for adults and children alike.

Everyone was captivated and enjoyed themselves

Next up was an alternative basketball competition to find our 2016 Essex & Kent champion.

Couldn't resist getting this caught on video:

After all the fun and games things rounded off with a story about a mouse

We wrapped things up with the raffle and secret Santa following which I channeled a bit of masculine energy :) I am not convinced that this is really my thing LOL

It was an absolutely brilliant day with the Dolmen Grove Essex & Kent community coming together for the last time this year to see things out in style with good fun, laughter and friendship.

The best laid schemes.....

o' mice an' men, gang aft a-gley. A-gley the schemes did go, bugrit!

Today we were supposed to go to Stonehenge to take part in the Dolmen Grove Winter Solstice access. We jumped on the car with mum to go and pick up Giselle and the car made some loud noises that Toni was not very happy with. We got to Giselle's and dropped off some stuff that we had transported for her and I did a crawl around to see if I could work out what was causing the noises. I came up blank and as Toni didn't want to take any risks driving such a long distance and back we decided to abandon the Stonehenge plan. We were totally gutted.

We had a cup of tea with Giselle to calm down a bit and then headed off to Kwik Fit to see if they could take a look at the car. Sadly they were really busy so told us to come back tomorrow just before they opened and we'd definitely be sorted then. Disappointed we headed back home and en route went and bought lots of lovely things from Tesco for dinner and snacking.

Toni cooked up a delicious fish pie for dinner and we chilled out watching some ice hockey, Disney's animated Christmas Carol from 2009 and some QI.

Despite the plans all going wrong we still ended up having a really good day.

A few Rogue One bits and mum has come to stay

Rogue One has now had it's UK and US releases and my self-imposed embargo is still in place. It's frustrating not being able to blog properly about Rogue One yet but I thought I'd give it a couple more days before I do a full write up. It will probably after I go and see it again on Monday for those of you that are interested.

If you haven't seen Rogue One yet then you probably won't want to watch this video as it contains some reveals of some of the easter eggs hidden inside the film.


In other Star Wars news it is probably safe to announce that John Williams has already started recording some of the music for Episode VIII with full scoring expected to happen in the spring. Kathleen Kennedy has said that we shouldn't expect much in the way of Episode VIII promotional until at least spring as they want to give Rogue One a good innings first.shooting for the Han Solo standalone is expected to start in February so it's all go on the movie front for Lucasfilm.

You'll all be relived to know that the Star Wars content is likely to go down a bit, at least for a short while.

Mum arrived at the house this afternoon. She'll be staying with us from now until after Christmas. It's good to see her again and to be able to spend some quality time.

New countdown has begun

Is it too soon for this?

Episode VIII is out in just under a year LOL. I promise to go easy on the countdowns for a short while so that everyone can get Rogue One out of the way.

Talking of which, I know it's out in the UK now but it hits the US tonight so there are still some TV spots being released for us to enjoy.


This looks like it is the final piece of video publicity as it is a teaser trailer called "Tonight" (obviously aimed at the US market)


Like I said in my other blog post, go and see Rogue One, it's a really good Star Wars movie!