The Man from U.N.C.L.E

The only night we found time to see a movie with our friend in Lund was tonight, so we couldn't see Jag är Ingrid, which starts tomorrow, drat. As WiseMan or I have seen this or that movie (Woman in Gold is fabulous, didn't manage to write about that one, it's a must-see), the only thing left was The Man from U.N.C.L.E. I wanted to see it because I loved the series as a kid (boy, that dates me, doesn't it?) and WiseMan has vague memories. Our friend was curious as there were so wildly different reviews of the movie, from crap to fantastic.

So we, and 12 others, found ourselves in the 120-seat theater in the early evening to see what was up. And hey, it was fun! Okay, maybe because we got lots of the references (we really raised the average age in that room....), but the dialogue was downright witty at times. Of course everything was implausible spy stuff, but hey, that's what the TV series was like, too! The only real bitch I have is them calling the computer tape a "disk", but whatever, can't have everything. I don't want to give away the twists and turns of the plot, but there is English, German, Russian, and Italian spoken, much was shot on location, and there's a bit of silly World War II footage in there that doesn't really make sense, it's the Cuban Missile Crisis, for crying out loud!

The film is entertaining, you get some laughs, and not too much blood-and-gore. And some smashing dresses the women are wearing! Go for it!

Cutting down trees

Where did July & August go? Okay, end of semester, then vacation with the princesses in Japan (which should have been worth lots of posts) and diverse other excuses for not writing. Back in Sweden, I have some time to write.
This afternoon our neighbors had some trees taken out. It should have been only 6, but it ended up being 8. WiseMan and I stood around with the neighbors watching in fascination how the process works. Here's a picture book story:

The truck has a lift arm on it with grabber pincers that grasp the tree.
Right below the pincer there is a chainsaw mounted, that cuts off the tree.

The lift arm is controlled by the truck driver with a little
remote control thingy that looks like a big Wii control.
This is an actual job that you can do
if you are good at computer games, I suppose!

Grab and saw

And lift that branch up and over the telephone wires!

Bang it on the ground to break off the branches.

And now go back for more.

This is the prize piece - a 3 meter trunk that can be sold for building wood.

All neatly packed on the truck flatbed and ready to go.

In about four hours, he was done. He then had a look at our trees, we have many old birch trees that could possibly fall on the house in a storm. I love the trees, but I also like the house. So tomorrow he's coming to take 4 trees in our front yard. To think that another neighbor spent and entire summer and fall taking down some 35 trees in his yard all by himself with a chainsaw. This is much faster - and safer.