Meet cute Monday #10

For this week’s meet cute I chose another Gregory Peck clip (after Roman Holiday featuring when I first started this meet cute series). It’s my birthday today (I’m 53) and on Wednesday, April 5th, it would have been Gregory Peck’s 107th birthday. It feels nice to celebrate my birthday with my first big actor crush and at the same time to also celebrate his birthday this week with this clip.

I could have picked any number of other, flashier Gregory Peck movies for this week, but somehow the quiet, gentle meet cute in The Purple Plain from 1954 spoke to me. It’s not such a well known film now anymore but it was quite successful in its day and Gregory gives a very good performance in this.

The movie is about the end of the Second World War. Royal Canadian Air Force pilot Bill Forrester (Gregory Peck) is a pilot in the Burma campaign, depressed after having lost his wife in the blitz and basically trying everything to get himself killed, but instead becomes a war hero. In Burma, he meets Anna (Win Min Tan in her only film role), who, in her gentle way, guides him back to caring about living and gaining emotional stability.

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The love story part of the film is admittedly a bit flimsy but that doesn’t take away from it really being worth a watch. A lot of the film is also about a mission Forrester must go on after he meets Anna and during which he decides to go for life. In addition it feels respectful of Burma and its people, which I like. The film has enough action but is really more of a character study and Gregory was really good in this which makes it worthy of this week’s meet cute post.

Meet cute

According to the online Cambridge dictionary a “meet cute” is defined as:

(in a film, etc.) a humorous or interesting situation in which two people meet, that leads to them developing a romantic relationship with each other

I completely love a good meet cute in a movie. I was searching for a few the other day (how I came to do so doesn’t really matter) but they never seem to show them quite how I want them, i.e. they only show a small part or I can’t find them as a scene as such. So, I decided to open an Instagram account and share some meet cutes in movies and on TV that I like! Not sure how long I will be able to keep up posting meet cutes but this past weekend I posted three as a test and it’s fun, so I’ll be continuing this for a little while at least.

I started with a Ronald Colman one from the 1931 movie Arrowsmith:

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… followed by the wonderful meet cute from one of my fave movies ever, Roman Holiday…

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This evening I posted a third from the 2011 movie The Adjustment Bureau which has one of my fave meet cutes ever.

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Well, I say this is one of my favourites but I have so many that I love! And so I will keep exploring and collecting them on my new Instagram account and will link to them here on blog as well. Posting 3 meet cutes may be a bit of initial overkill. I already have more clips lined up, but will post them another time. Maybe I will make this a “Meet Cute Sunday” item on my blog? We’ll see where this little journey will take me…

Gregory Peck for breakfast

Every morning I eat Weetabix for breakfast. It always has been cereal for me in the mornings, pretty much ever since I can remember, whether it’s cornflakes, rice crispies, muesli with yoghurt or in recent years primarily Weetabix. Unlike my husband and daughter, my son is the same, he loves a cereal in the mornings too (usually honey loops).

Anyway, I have these big (soup) mugs I eat my cereals in and not long before my birthday this year I broke one of my favourites and still needed to replace it. My daughter noted that and for my birthday she had one made for me. I didn’t post about it on the day all those weeks ago as the delivery had been delayed at the time and mini me’s gift came in two days later. I already loved the gifts I had gotten (especially the Bailey’s wooden case with pictures of junior and me from my son) and her gift turned out to be wonderful as well.

Skip to this morning. I was eating my Weetabix in between online meetings and realized I’d probably never shared my awesome breakfast mug before. Not that it’s necessary to share but I suddenly did feel the urge to do it. So, I took a quick picture with my laptop camera and now that I’m winding down work for the day, here it is…

Yes, she had a mug made for me with pictures of Gregory Peck that she had selected herself from the internet! They go all around the mug, from younger Peck to older Peck (eight pictures in all). The section you see in this picture has Gregory in Roman Holiday and To Kill a Mockingbird, which happen to be two of my fave Peck movies. Mini me assures me that selection happened purely by chance, she had only picked picures she liked without considering what movies they were from. She has a good eye. 🙂

I have memorabilia with other actors but very little with Peck so, yes, I was thrilled with this gift. Every other day I use this mug for my breakfast (well, it was more like lunch today) and I love it. Maybe I should have another one made with Richard Armitage… Hmm, should have probably thought of that before Mother’s Day… Then again, I could also just have it made myself or I can wait till Christmas. Let’s see how long I hold out.

Marry Me – 7 fantasy husbands

Nell participated in a challenge on her blog to name 7 fictional characters that she would marry on the spot (this is originally a challenge from another German blogger). I’m always one to fantasize, so I figured I’d just jump in and join the challenge as well.

The rule is that it’s all about the character and not about the actor who portrays him (all men, in my case). I know actors of course do influence my choice because favourite characters lead to favourite actors for me and vice versa. So, actors can not be completely ignored and characters played by my favourite actors are naturally on this list. 🙂

OK, on to the challenge: which 7 fictional characters am I so in love with that I could marry them?

1. I just had to pick a character portrayed by Richard Armitage and I considered Harry Kennedy from The Vicar of Dibley because he just feels so familiar, like I could know him in real life, or John Porter from Strike Back, a tough guy who can think for himself, but in the end I would just go for John Thornton. Ah, the way he and I could change the world together! And he sure can kiss…

2. Nell mentioned Joe Bradley, the reporter in Roman Holiday (as portrayed by Gregory Peck) and I thought I’d pick him too but then I thought of a few other characters Peck played who I wouldn’t mind marrying either. James McKay in The Big Country springs to mind, the quiet Easterner in the Wild West who has such moral fibre and is made of sterner stuff than most people think, and of course Atticus Finch who, in a way, reminds me a bit of my own father. I’ll just go with the Oedipus complex choice and pick Atticus Finch from To Kill A Mockingbird. He’d be a good daddy to my children too.

3. Prince Edward (Richard Chamberlain) in the Cinderella movie The Slipper and the Rose because he was the first character that touched my romantic childhood heart.

4. Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) from The Mentalist because life would never be boring with him around and you know how deeply he can love once he lets you in.

5. Amenadiel (D.B. Woodside) from Lucifer because who wouldn’t want a fierce looking but soft hearted angel at your side to fight for you?

6. Mark Darcy from Bridget Jones’s Diary. Yes, he’s uptight, but underneath all of that… woof! And he’s smart too, changing the world one high profile human rights law case at a time.

7. Captain Frederick Wentworth (embodied most perfectly by Ciaran Hinds) from Persuasion, a self-made man with a faithful heart and I would get to travel the world with him aboard his ship.

Compiling this list, I chose the characters that popped up in my mind quickest and another one of them was John Keating (so brilliantly portrayed by Robin Williams) from Dead Poets Society, so he gets an honourable mention.

I know that makes it technically eight men I would marry and if I think a little longer I could probably think of 10 more (ooh, maybe hotshot lawyer Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) from Suits or honourable FBI agent Jack Hudson (Yannick Bisson) from Sue Thomas F.B.Eye or even Charles Ingalls (Michael Landon) from Little House on the Prairie) but I’ll just leave it at this.

Easter, day two

We have a “Second Easter Day” here in The Netherlands, it’s always good to have an extra day off. After having a few sunny days and 20 degrees Celsius (68 F) last week, today it’s 3 degrees Celsius (37 F) and we even had a little snow earlier!

Ten minutes after that the sun was shining again, this weather is mad…

A code yellow weather warning for this evening has been issued, saying there will be strong winds and slippery conditions on the roads, thanks to hail and snow particularly in the north and west (and we live west-ish).

So, no Easter walks out today (like Mr Esther and I did yesterday), we’re just huddling up at home. Time for helping mini me with a small percussion assignment for school (using wooden boards that we use for breakfast, a milk carton and spoon and sprinkles, end result here, we’re not that talented but it’ll do) and taking an interest in Mr Esther jr’s computer game…

Mr Esther is in his study now, doing something with his Heraldry organization that he is a board member of and I am trying to figure out what to pick up on doing next. I wanted to do something with what feels like my brotha from anotha motha, Gabriel Macht (just pic spamming here, love his grin and seeing him with wife and kids and his colleague and close friend Sarah Rafferty from Suits and her husband)…

… but the starring roles he did have before Suits I’ve already seen and the other roles are smaller roles and I don’t want to stomach a whole movie that doesn’t particularly interest me, just for the few Gabriel Macht scenes in there. Maybe I’ll do another Suits video I had in my mind or I could do some necessary chores around the house… Nah… I won’t do the latter. Or I can finally start the Obama A Promised Land book, but no, that is too much of a time commitment, I need something shorter and sweeter… Ah, the endless possibilities of indoor activities… Ooh, or there’s always re-watching Gregory Peck! Today would have been his 105th birthday.

Yes, I think I can do worse than spend some time with Gregory, even checking out videos for this post has already been fun (and has conisderably delayed my posting this)…

Off to some more Gregory Peck, Gabriel Macht or maybe even Richard Armitage fun, i.e. will I finally try Spacesweepers? Time will tell…