It's All About The Sky

With a very good weather forecast, I felt the need today to make the most of the arrival of this little buffer of warmth before the rapid descent into cooler and shorter days. I took the afternoon off work to get a few things done and get out on the bike. It's been a little while since I had a decent ride and it told! In fact, I hadn't quite bargained for the very strong and blustery wind. Being a lightweight myself on a lightweight bike, I was getting quite tossed around by the gusts. It took a bit of handling!

The cloudscapes were stunning this afternoon. It was like an ever and rapidly changing watercolour, all pastels and sweeping brushstrokes. I never seemed to be in quite the right place to capture the best of the clouds against a good foreground, but I rather love the backdrop for these spindly pines. I've shot them quite a few times, but the clouds have never quite worked for me ... until now. This will do nicely!

The unanimous opinion here was that The Hunger Games was a brilliant adaptation. I can wholeheartedly recommend it. The plot was a little simplified for the film, but the devices used to keep the viewer informed of the backstory, which is far more detailed in the book, were clever and rather well done. We thought the casting was quite superb, and the performance of Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss was quite brilliant and completely authentic to the character. I first saw her in Winter's Bone and that was remarkable too. She's a very great new talent. Donald Sutherland's gently smouldering malevolence was also pitch perfect. I'm usually disappointed when I see the film of the book, but not in this case. We were all captivated from beginning to end.