Lion around

Lion Island, as seen from Paul Landa Park, Pearl Beach (2011).

And a recent trip with the school choir, into the recently-revamped Sydney Town Hall in the CBD, had me noticing these stone "lion head" gargoyles (below). I guess I'd always known they were there but I hadn't really examined them closely before, nor noticed that each one had a different expression!







Then, of course, there are two lions in the school library:


Alex from "Madagascar" and "Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa"


Alex and friends

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Library lion

And, it's almost Chinese New Year!

Catch up pics

Just back from Armidale, with my quota of images for my 365 Pictures project. We passed Tamworth's "Big Golden Guitar" on the way up to Armidale on the Thursday, but there wasn't time to stroll back to it and get a photo, hence the solitary, yellow bloom I found swaying in the breeze in the main street of Armidale in the afternoon.



Friday's pic features some bizarre signage at the host school of the teacher-librarians' conference I travelled up to attend. I realised, while lining up the shot, that the two circles seemed kinda reminiscent of female breasts. Or have I just heard too many lectures on visual literacy at this conference?



Finally, here's Alex the lion, a souvenir of Armidale. Alex the lion (voiced by Ben Stiller in the animated features, "Madagascar" and "Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa") will grace the school library in time for the current Book Week theme, "Book Safari".

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

Escaping the string of high-temperature days out here in western Sydney this week, some friends and I went off to see the animated film, "Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa", sequel to the popular and successful "Madagascar".

Predictably, it was a clever mix of slapstick humour for the ankle-biters in the audience, and some clever parodies and homages to famous films and TV shows for the adults. Again we follow the misadventures of a lion, zebra, hippo and giraffe (and some manic penguins and a few monkeys). Last time they escaped Central Park Zoo and ended up, not in Africa but Madagascar. This time they try again for Africa.

Certain sequences were tips of the hat to films such as "West Side Story", "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Born Free", and classic TV's "The Twilight Zone" (William Shatner's oft-parodied "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" episode).

Voice actors Chris Rock (Marty the zebra) and Ben Stiller (Alex the lion) did a very funny promotional interview for this film on "Rove", a few months ago, and they mentioned how weird it was when their voices get dubbed into foreign languages, and yet they're still the headline stars who travel the world to discuss the film. Essentially they are promoting their names on the film poster! (Mind you, the fictional characters have inherited lots of quirky traits of all the cast. Melman the Giraffe is a close cousin to Ross of "Friends", thanks to the contributions of David Schwimmer.)

Some will say it wasn't as funny or fresh as the original, but for me it certainly pushed all the right buttons. Well worth a look. Escape... 2 the cinema.