Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

12 hostages. 24 hours. 1 Partridge.

Steve Coogan bringing Alan Partridge to the big screen has been long awaited. Was it worth said wait? Yes, it probably was! While other comedies build up to huge, though sometimes disappointing, funny moments, Alpha Papa delivers clever, funny dialogue from start to finish.

There is always the danger that a comeback will ruin the franchise, but Alpha Papa has no such concerns. It does a fine justice to the Partridge legend.

We went to Everyman Cinema, which once again offered an excellent experience. We meet up with Chris and Carly beforehand for pizza in the restaurant that delivered to its usual standard as well.

While in Flamborough we stayed at a bed and breakfast known as The Manor House. It was perfectly located right in the centre of the village and offered a large garden with hedges that entirely cut off the outside world.

The house only had two bedrooms, and we had the master. This contained a large double bed and ensuite bathroom. You can see pictures of it on their website.

Positive points: it was very quiet. The bed was comfortable and I slept really well. Our hosts, Leslie and Jeffrey were lovely. The traditional furnishings were nice, we had a beautiful view of the garden from our bedroom and the breakfasts were very tasty – the home made plum jam in particular! The living room slash library was a great place to relax on an evening, especially as we had it to ourselves.

Points for improvement: no showers in the bathrooms, we only had a bath, which made washing our hair difficult. It was rather dusty and a little cold, even in the warm weather.

Overall, a lovely stay and I think we’ll go back again.

The Seabirds is a pub slash restaurant in Flamborough village.

It’s a relatively small place and the service was snappy. I started with the prawn cocktail which was a bit of a disappointment. The salad bed, usually lettuce, had lots of other ingredients in including celery, pepper and cucumber. This over complicated a simple dish and with a shortage of sauce on it, didn’t produce a good result. Elina fared better with her goat’s cheese.

My main was an improvement. The posh surf and turf consisted of a rump steak with half a lobster on top. Some of the steak was cooked correctly but a lot of it wasn’t (it was two halves of different thicknesses) and the lobster was covered in a cheese sauce – I have yet to decide whether this was a good thing or bad thing.

We finished things off with a cheese cake that was delicious and had a surprisingly amount of alcohol in the base. An enjoyable meal but for the price, I was expecting the food to be a little better.

Naked Fish claims to be Bridlington’s only seafood restaurant. If you’ve walked round the town it is understandable why – very few of the food outlets would really be able to call themselves restaurants.

I started with the prawn and lobster cocktail. It was huge, providing far too much food for a starter, but nevertheless very enjoyable. Elina’s herrings were stuffed with onion though (not mentioned on the menu) and when we asked about it they said they couldn’t even prepare it without them as that is just how they came.

They did offer to prepare something else and we settled in the Bridlington crab but charged us for both starters which I thought was rather shameless.

My main, a sea bass fillet, was also very tasty, as were Elina’s mussels, though once again a smaller portion would have been more than sufficient.

Last week Editors released their new album The Weight of Your Love. It follows a similar sound to their previous works and while none of the songs instantly buried themselves into my memory, it does have the appeal of an album I would want to listen to again and again. It’s too early to say whether I actually will or not, bur definitely well worth a listen.

Watching Star Trek Into Darkness was also my first experience at Everyman Cinema. I’m sold.

I thought the improvement in the experience over your traditional cinema was well worth the extra money. We dropped by for dinner first and the food was good, the sundaes were even better. Unfortunately the restaurant is separate to the cinema bit so we couldn’t pay our bill and buy our glasses at the same time.

Having a bar and being able to take proper drinks into the cinema is great. Everyone was very friendly too – several of the staff commented in detail on how good the movie was (without giving any spoilers) and the ushers show you to your seat when you arrive in the cinema.

The sofas are probably the best bit – it was far more comfortable than regular seating and allowed me and Elina to cuddle up together like we would if we were watching a film at home. There was also plenty of isle room and a ledge and enough room to put your feet up without reaching the row in front.

It isn’t quite how I first imagined it – a sprawling mess of mix match sofas – they are all the same, fairly small for a sofa and in rows like a traditional cinema, but still far better than your usual experience.

They also had carpeted floors that somehow weren’t sticky and unisex bathrooms in which every cubicle had it’s own sink and hand dryer. It was clean and even had rolls of toilet paper out.

All in all, for the amount I go to the cinema (not often) I think it is well worth paying a few pounds extra for the Everyman experience.

Obviously the new Star Trek films completely ruin everything with their inaccurate depiction of events (you know, when they really happened in the original films). But that being said, I did rather enjoy the new movie.

I imagine there will be spoilers before the end of this article.

I had no problems accepting Benedict Cumberbatch. I struggle with Doctor Whos in other things, but for some reason he isn’t set in my mind as Sherlock. Or maybe I was so distracted thinking about how he looks almost identical to Keanu Reeves playing Neo in The Matrix. That was annoying.

I was also very close to jumping up and screaming “KHAN!!!!!!!!!!” at the appropriate point.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the British girl, who seemed more like she had been added to bring another pair of tits than a deep and meaningful character and it was a bit shallow at times – Admiral Marcus was a bit too much of a stereotypical evil villain.

Ultimately though, any film with a tribble in is going to warm your heart.

While in Torquay, we visited their costal zoo, Living Coasts. I had read some dubious reviews of it online, and some of the points were valid – they did have quite a few exhibits closed, above and beyond the otters that we knew would be missing when we entered. Kids might get a little bored too. But given the range of wildlife we got to see and the range of talks and feedings put on, I thought it was well worth the £11 we paid to get in and the pricing structure seems in proportion to what you would pay at Chester Zoo.

I’ve finally got round to watching The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. It’s the first in a trilogy of films based on the book The Hobbit, which is a lot of films given the whole of Lord of the Rings was covered in the same time. As Elina points out, if you have time for a song at the start, your film is too long.

Overall, I didn’t think it that good, but I wasn’t disappointed (because I had already lowered my expectations).

I didn’t like Martin Freeman as Bilbo. I like Martin Freeman in general, but we spent most of the film asking why Arthur Dent slash John Watson was running round Middle Earth. Not a problem I’ve had before, but he seemed a little more out of place here.

While The Hobbit was always a lighter book than Lord of the Rings, I felt the film was almost comic and silly. For example the orc king in the Misty Mountain was just a silly joke character and the fact that they survived that while being mobbed by such huge numbers was one bridge of disbelief too far.

Despite that though, it held my attention for the whole time (though we did watch it over two evenings) and I’m looking forward to seeing the remaining films.

While I was at QED, I stayed at the hotel the conference is in – the Mercure. It is a good hotel for a conference, as it had the facilities right next to the bar, as I discovered when I was there last year for PHPNW. However, staying there, I was a little disappointed.

I will say that the staff were very friendly and accommodating – which really made the stay a lot better than it could have been, and they are a real asset to the hotel.

However, I’ve clearly been spoilt by too many stays at The Marriot. The room was small and if you wanted room service, there was a £3 tray charge. The room had internet listed as a feature, which I naively took to mean free internet. I’m told it wasn’t free, but I couldn’t even find out, because it wasn’t wireless and I hadn’t brought my little adapter, so I didn’t have a network port.

When we got there on the Friday night, we ate in the restaurant bar, which took ages to order and even when we only ordered two burgers, took around 35 minutes to arrive.

At breakfast, I felt the food was rather overcooked, and their lunchtime sandwiches, that master of ceremonies Brian Thompson joked “cheap sandwiches are available – I don’t know if that means inexpensive…”, were £2.50 and lacking in filling.

Given the Britannia Hotel is just across the road, I’m not sure the Mercure represents best option.