Summer tinged with grey

This has been our wettest summer in many years and our coolest in fifty years so it was a pleasure today to have a brilliantly sunny and warm day albeit one with a cooling breeze. Picnickers were out in Centennial Park (above) and amateur footballers were sweating their way through a game of soccer (below). I think the footballers were mainly expats as I heard thick Scottish brogues amongst them. I had a leisurely hour walk through the trees and around some of the lakes.

I also took two hours out of the sun to see Margot at the Wedding one of the movies recommended this morning on Radio National.

Nicole Kidman has appeared in many quirky movies and this is yet another. The film begins and ends in motion, a moving train to start with and a moving bus to conclude. In between is mostly static. People sitting and talking, people standing and talking and occasionally people walking and talking. Lots of talking.

That is not necessarily a bad thing but in this movie all that talking bored me witless. I didn't stay long enough during the end credits to learn if this movie was based on a play but it wouldn't surprise me.

The characters are mostly unpleasant and mostly disturbed and frankly I couldn't care less about their problems. The characters talked about people we never see and not very much happens. An apparently gay mature couple appeared in one scene but I have no idea who they were meant to be or what they brought to the story other than as the butt of the other characters' comments.

Most of the scenes were filmed in dull grey light so that the few sunny moments came as a stark contrast.

A movie for insomniacs only in my view.