muninnhuginn | "Flee, you fools!"

Hanging by his finger tips over an immense drop, Ian McKellen yells out his final request to the rest of the fellowship.

Oops! Wrong movie. But not quite.

Actually it was Zebedee and his instructions were to find the diamonds. The reference, however, was inescapable.

Yes, we all trooped off to see The Magic Roundabout on Sunday morning. I tried to duck out of this one--M was quite willing to take Looby Loo and allow me to miss it (I loathe The Magic Roundabout) especially as I'd done cinema duty on Thursday too--but Little Miss was adamant (as I've said before: name your daughter after an empress and... well, obey, mainly). The knowledge that Tom Baker's voice was going to be used ameliorated the prospects.

Watched the trailers, which rather indicate we've a lot of trips to cinema coming up: after a dearth of movies suitable for younger children, like buses, plenty are coming up together). Unlike Thursday, we didn't get the one for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with what looks like an intriguing performance by Johnny Depp. But we did get one for Pooh's Heffalump Movie, which lodged Two Princes firmly in my brain (it's the most pernicious earworm--ever) until I Love to Boogie displaced it partway through the feature.

The movie started. It wasn't bad: the calibre of the actors used to provide the voices was impressive, tho' Kylie's accent slipped on a couple of occasions and Ian McKellen and Bill Nighy are now typecast to all eternity as benign wizard (with a habit of suffering defeat and being brought back from apparent death) and fading rock star respectively. Tom Baker was, naturally, the evil ZeBadDee. It was all very cleverly allusional: skeletal warrior straight out of Harryhausen, LoTR writ large.... There was a moose--blue for much of the story--but no cat--blue, or otherwise. There was a soundtrack full of nostalgic tracks for the adults. But what continually disturbed me was the fact the Ermintrude/Azalée could bend in the middle. She still couldn't sing, but the addition of flexibility was, well, just plain wrong.

Zebedee didn't go boing, either. But he did say "Time for bed!"

Thursday, to back track a little, we saw Laura's Star which was pleasant enough with a soundtrack that was an odd mixture of pop songs and classical themes (flute for Laura, harp for the star, 'cello for Laura's cellist mother). Strange mixture of drafting styles in the animation too: some that resembled the book's pictures, with very animé features to the characters' faces and a quite detailed, realistic townscape. The latter, especially, highlighted the lack of detail in the characters' clothing which is true to the book maybe but made for a strange contrast. I cried at the crappy 'cello theme. They get me every time.