Its an all age service at church tomorrow – and I am leading it.

This is the last Sunday service of the decade I am really excited that this is a great opportunity to look back at the last ten years and also look forward to the next 10 years.

So I have got a quiz lined up and some life journey exercises for everyone to do together.

Is the quiz too hard- though – how many faces would you recognize?

End of the decade all age quiz

The Bible passage for tomorrow is Simeon’s song, (also known as the Nunc Dimitis)

NUNC DIMITTIS

Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
you now dismiss your servant in peace.
For my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the sight of all people,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel.”

What a great passage to look at the future with hope because of the difference Jesus makes to our perspective on the future.

With the Copenhagen Summit just days away – I am hoping that Christians around the world will be praying for wisdom for our global leaders as they make decisions about the ecological future of our planet.

But I just got an email from the European Leadership Forum explaining that this year’s keynote speaker will be Professor Wayne Grudem.

I owe an enormous debt to Professor Grudem because his was the first systematic theology that i read cover to cover. It was a really engaging book because he didn’t duck out the juicy bits of theological discussion (at least the juicy bits when i was 19 years old – speaking in tongues, prophecy etc).

I enjoyed the book despite holding very different views on the end times and the roles of men and women. Grudem’s work was a standard part of my discipleship training for the young people I was working with.

But today as i scanned through Prof. Grudem’s previous talks at the ELF I heard him argue that global warming was wrong.

“There are those who say that the production of carbon dioxide is creating a greenhouse effect and is causing the earth to warm, in fact it does not appear to be born out by empirical evidence, all of the evidence for global warning is based on computer modelling and many of the assumptions of the computer models are highly suspect. Within the last month we had 30 000 scientists who signed a public declaration that they were high sceptical of the warnings of global warming. “

As i listened to Dr Grudem share his views on the subject and also provide an extensive list of websites where global warming is disputed – i was hoping that he would balance it out with alternative views to his own – but no this was an important part of his message to emerging and established leaders in Europe.

As i listened i thought about the significance that Grudem’s writing came from a North American context, which has the incredibly influential oil producers funding all sorts of research programmes to rubbish the claims of global warming.  It reminded me of  the need for a truly global conversation about global warming. If this had been a dialogue rather than a download there might have been an opportunity for Professor Grudem to learn as well as teach. But he seemed very unaware of the impact his cultural location had on his position. As a result a noted evangelical theologian is a global warming denier and is encouraging European leaders to follow him. This is an issue of huge apologetic significance – as the Christians are seen to be the equivalent of flat earthers which can’t be good for the public reputation of the gospel.

As I reflected more on this I noticed that Dr Grudem had a pivotal role as the General Editor for the ESV Study Bible. The ESV approach to translation includes the idea that:

“The ESV is an “essentially literal” translation that seeks as far as possible to capture the precise wording of the original text and the personal style of each Bible writer. As such, its emphasis is on “word-for-word” correspondence, at the same time taking into account differences of grammar, syntax, and idiom between current literary English and the original languages. Thus it seeks to be transparent to the original text, letting the reader see as directly as possible the structure and meaning of the original.”

I am no linguistic expert but even in the experience of becoming fluent in the Albanian language when we served as missionaries there in the 1990s this “word for word’ translation principle would seem naive as it seems to show a lack of understanding of how languages work. So once again a lack of awareness of the nature of culture has influenced a conservative evangelical US global export. (there’s some interesting articles I have found on the challenges of ESV’s approach to translation and culture here)

The other aspect of Professor Grudem’s work I am now re-examining is his approach to male and female roles in the home which often appear to me to seem to find ways of baptising the model of a 1950s home in the USA as a cultural model for the rest of the world.

How do we facilitate a genuine global conversation on these subjects so that we don’t remain locked in our cultural bunkers – recognising that both sides have things to learn? Only this way will we be able to commend the gospel effectively and credibly.

Christmas is more than just buying presents, filling up on Turkey and tinsel.  Christmas is all about the birth of Jesus. But so that you can focus on the real meaning of Christmas I have done some searching online to find the best ideas I can for great christmas presents that will stand the test of time and keep the kids amused  until next Christmas. I have five children so kids christmas presents are my specialised subject…

1. Books

We are big fans of our local library – we regularly max out our library cards. But some books you’ll want to buy because the kids will read them over and over. Here are some top picks:

Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engine’s Quartet- great for 10+ year old boys -

I’ve been reading this series to my older kids and they have been hooked. It’s gritty, it’s got great action sequences, and there’s relationships too – so not bad for a mixed audience.The series is set in the future after the 60 min war – which leaves a devastated post apocalyptic earth at the mercy of the great steam powered traction cities. There’s some great twists and turns in the story line – so all is not as it seems. Enjoy the ride…

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The Roald Dahl TreasuryThis is a beautifully presented book on really good quality paper (I am big fan of books feeling good as well as reading well) It has lots of great illustrations and some real treats from the wide range of children’s books Roald Dahl crafted. From Matilida to the Nasty Nursery Rhymes. Well worth the investment as kids won’t want to give this book up and they’ll hold onto this book into adulthood.

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Magyk – we have just started this series and we’re really enjoying the pace and the clever ideas in each chapter. Its got a great hook for a begining, and Angie Sage does a great job of brining the character to life – giving them a real grace and humanity. Series are great because once a child is hooked on one – they’ll normally want to keep going – which is great for literacy.

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Tales of Prydian – this is the best fantasy series to read with 8-11 year olds. There are five books in the series and they are really engaging – great stories with powerful messages and dare i say great wisdom. I’d read a chapter a night with my two sons (8 and 9) and they would always beg me to read more. Don’t be put off by the really quite terrible Disney version of book 2 (The Black Cauldron.) I can’t recommend these books highly enough.

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NG Kids magazine £26.50 children aged 6 and above…

This is an amazingly good kids magazine combining some really good information about the natural world with news about films, computer gamesetc. You would not believe the number of conversations that my 9 year old started with my son introducing a fact at the right time – so the other day I burnt my tongue on a hot drink and my son says:

Son: “Dad, did you know it will take a week for you to grow a new taste bud.”
Dad: “How did you know that? “
Son: “it was in my NG kids magazine.”

In fact it has been a standing joke in our house, that if my son knows anything it’s from NG kids magazine. It’s been a great present that my Mum gave him last year and it’s so exciting for young children to get regular post through the door each month. There’s normally a free gift: a micro kite, a 3D booklet, a book sampler etc.

Lion Graphic Bible

As Christmas is a Christian festival – it might be worth helping your children get an angle on the Christian story. This is a very well produced version of the Bible with excellent full colour art work and gives young people a really good overview of the whole Bible. I used it with my oldest children and we read it together at bed time. The images are really well done and give a great sense of the dynamism and action of a lot of the bible stories. It literally starts with Genesis and ends with revelation covering both the narrative sections and a quick overview of the epistles.  It could be a great entry point for a lot of young people with the Bible.

Manga Jesus volume 1, Siku, Hodder and Stoughton

Graphic Artist Siku does an excellent job in capturing the drama of the gospel. This is a short book it is in black and white but printed on very high quality paper. It is artistically of an even higher standard than the Lion bible despite being in black and white. There are some very clever artistic touches that adds another dimension to this retelling of the gospel story.

2. Board Games

OK I admit it, I am mad keen on board games. They are a great family time investment – they teach co-operation, strategy and the art of losing graciously (and maybe winning graciously too). Here are our family favourites that will make some fun present options:

1. Pictureka

This is a very simple game, the object of the game is to find objects hidden inside a very detailed game board. There are individual and group challenges .Its great for a range of ages and is one of the few games that a 6 year old can play with adults. Its fast paced, family fun. We got this for Christmas last year and still play it regularly. Enjoy…

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2. Settlers of Catan

My sister bought this for me a couple of years ago, she got into it in Canada and it is an excellent game. Its has a level of complexity that makes it fun to play over and over but the basic rules are simple enough that my 7 year old regularly beats me. Its a trading game that is a cross between Monopoly, Risk and Sim City. We have the basic game plus a number of expansion packs – including Cities and Knights and Sea farers. All of the expansion packs we have really do add value to your original investment – but the basic game is very good in itself. Highly recommended.(WARNING – We played this with some friends at a dinner party, we all got so into the game that we had to take the Robber out of circulation as it was leading to some heated discussions !)

3. Uno

This is an all time classic – if you need a stocking filler for a neice or nephew this could be it. Very simple and compulsive game to play. You can get all sorts of varieties of the game (we had the Spiderman version for a while which had some special features – and a nice tin which made the game easy to store and very robust). There’s a fun Dr Who version too. If you happen to have the good taste to support liverpool fc there’s a great european heroes version ! But the basic game is probably still the best. A great game to take on holiday.

Lego

I know lego is expensive but for sheer playability and durabilty there is no other toy like it. My parents carefully preserved all my lego and so my kids are playing with bricks that are 20 years old. My sons and daughters still love the stuff – we have an amazing lighthouse that my 6 year old daughter built shining out in our lounge at the moment. beware the lego that has too many large parts that don’t allow you to change very much. The Star Wars and Harry Potter stuff isn’t that good, but the good old basic lego is unbeatable! Enjoy. Amazon have some deals on at the moment…

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Geomag

This is a great gift that kids and adults will want to play with. One part executive desk toy , two parts kids building block toy. Geomag is a collection of magnetic linking shapes, ball bearings and panels that fit together to make interesting geometric shapes. They are very compulsive to play with – and you find yourself driven to make all manners of shapes, spinning toys, pyramids etc.

We left it out on our coffee table and all our visitors got stuck in and started making structures with it.

A great toy for all ages.

3. Gadgets

Sometimes rather than getting relatives to buy lots of little presents, we have experimented with a joint present.

Mobile Phone? – tough one this – when is the best time to buy the kids a mobile phone? For our 10 year old this year was his year. We bought him a pretty cool phone which he has used mainly for games, music and the occassional text message. it’s nice being able to phone him when he’s round a mate’s house or when he’s out with my wife but her phone battery has died !

Camcorder – we bought this for our daughter last year and she’s made some cool movies with it when we were on holiday. It was better than a straight digital camera for her – though the stills on a dedicated digital camera would have been better.

Pocket digital camcorder , 5 megapixel camera and 2.36 inch screen £29.50

I tried to buy my kids a cheap digital camera kast year and I was really disappointed with the results. Even a 5 megapixel camera proved to be a bit of a dud producing really blurry pictures. So somehow the guys at vivitar have managed to make a handheld digital camcorder which does a great job of capturing video and replaying it on the generously sized lcd screen. I am so excited by this present can’t wait to give it to the kids this year ! It records straight to SD card so there’s no messing around with DVDs or Video tape. You can output the video to your PC / Mac and should be able to edit the movies on windows movie maker or imovie.You’ll need to buy an SD memory card.. but they are so cheap these days you’ll be fine.

For £30 you can’t go wrong with this camcorder and maybe you will end up with the next Spielberg or Fellini… enjoy.

Digital Camera – the boys made cool stop motion videos with these and also enjoyed being able to take their own snaps when we are out and about. This is the best of the relatively entry models you can get.

Nintendo DSi – this has some genuinely cool features – the downloadable pocketmoney priced games and the digital camera have been a hit in our home. It allows you to take pictures and then manipulate them – a fun feature is being able to compare two people in a picture to see how much they resemble eachother. Though there don’t seem to be any dedicated to DSi cartridges yet so you could buy a normal DS lite if the budget is short. Though Amazon are offering a DSi with a game for only £5.

4. Wii games

Wii games have a long shelf life in our house – FIFA09 was a major hit last yearas was Lego Batman as they have played it pretty consistently. So this year I would recommend:

Wii Sports Resort The motion plus device  adds a whole new dimesion of game play to the wii – with pinpoint accuracy in its response to movement. We trialled a few of these games at a festival this summer and games such as the frisbee, the fencing, jet skiing and the aerial dogfight are all really good fun. You will need to get another wii motion sensor for the two player games – (you get one free with the grandslam tennis )

Mario Party 8 (fun turn based family game – think Monopoly meets the Wii) £32 I really like the pace of this game. Its like playing a good old fashioned board game – but with some fun twists and mini games. In fact you get more than one game in the box – so its like having a family compendium. It crosses a lot of age boundaries.

Wii fit plus We bought a wii fit this year and it really is addictive – there are some really fun games like the Hula Hoop, Football headers, Down Hill Ski Slalom and other fun balance games. There is also a more serious side to the game – it will measure your Body Mass Index, your centre of gravity and will give you a digital display on how your weight is getting on each day. Its really fun and compulsiev too – I was doing really well until I ate a kebab and it showed up on my weight check! Wii fit does actually help you lose weight or stay in shape and the new version has even more games to make it fun. if you have got wii fit already – the  £16 wii fit plus might give it a new lease of life.

Mario Striker’s Charged this is a great fun game – highly addictive and a very good deal at the moment (£11.61) so its a great stocking filler. This is a very addictive high speed football game featuring all your favourtie characters from the Mario universe. You can play on your own, with a friend against computer generated teams or against your friends. You do need two num-chuks for multi-player mode. The genius of the game is that it keeps the action simple so passing , tackling and shooting is very easy – but there are also extra items to pick up, and special moves that add to the fun. So you can be playing a game and suddenly Mario goes super size or the Mole burrows under the goal keeper and shoots. I think this is a great soccer game for younger children and adults too – if you want realism go and buy FIFA 10.

Guiness World Records the video game This has been a real hit in my family. Loads of really fun minigames – including Fridge Throwing, the loudest burp in the world, Landspeed record. The great thing about this game is that if you only have 1 remote and a nunchuck you can still play 4 player mode on this. Colouful graphics and lots of really playable games. It’s a bargain game too – which is always nice. Buy this one you won’t regret it.

Super Smash Bros Brawl This is a fun game. You can play as a vast range of characters – from Sonic to Mario to Pokemon to the cast of Final Fantasy. Up to four players can play at the same time and you can use throws, punches, kicks and special attacks to try and fight against your opponents. The backgrounds are amazing and take their cues from video games new and old – my favourites are from the Game and Watches of the 80s. There are lots of characters, objects, soundtracks and special moves to collect so there’s lots to reward you for keeping on coming back and playing again. You don’t have to have a numchuck to play this game but it is definitely easier if you have. It’s really come down in price so snap it up as a stocking filler.

My Sims My 7 year old daughter loves this game. It has all the sociability of animal crossing but with the additional creativity and fun of its own. You create towns and villages, desigining and decorating houses, building your own furniture and then you go and make friends. My daughter made a fridge, decorated her own room and went prospecting for “essences” and was “being nice” to random people she met in her world not long after getting the game. With bright graphics and lots to explore this is a great game for kids who like being creative rather than competitive.

More ideas coming soon…

I had a really fun time with a great bunch of students at Cliff College in Derbyshire yesterday.

Here is the PDF from my lectures on evangelism.

cliff college krish kandiah

In the lecture I presented an alternative to pietistic, dualistic presentations of the gospel. I have written this up in a book called Destiny.

Cheers

Krish

The mens’ 100m sprint has always been the blue ribbon event at any athletics meet. But put Usain Bolt and Tyson Gay in the line up and you have a clash of the titans. The camera zooming into each runner before the race – shows how this event has changed. Only Tyson was relatively focussed, Usain speaks to the camera “I’m ready, are you ready? Let’s go!” he then gesticulates and pulls his classic pose before blasting the opposition off the track. Breaking his own world record by some distance and making Tyson Gay who ran the fastest time any US citizen has ever run look like a pedestrian – some 2 metres behind.

“lightning does strike twice” says the commentator.

There seems no limit to this man’s potential – he is still only 22 years old and the world is literally at his feet.

Watching him power down the track in slow motion – was awe inspiring. Ofcourse it reminded me of Eric Liddel in Chariot’s fire….

God made me for China, but he also made me fast and I feel his pleasure when I run…

Liddel had a whole other side to his life, his faith and his calling to China as a missionary was central to his life. Where do you go after you have accomplished the thing for which everyone will remember you? The Apollo astronauts had the same problem, Borish Becker experienced it after winning Wimbledon at 17. What do you do when you know nothing in your life is going to be as good as what has already past?

In my book Destiny I wrestle with some of these issues and quote C.S. Lewis who says:

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

It’d been 18 years since my last U2 gig – I tried to hitch hike with a friend to Paris (we ended up catching a bus…) but we did get to see Velvet Undergound supporiting the great U2 on their ZOOROPA tour on a gorgeous day in the open air.

Last night I witnessed the 360 event in full flight on u2’s opening night of the UK leg of their world tour.

Great things about the gig:

1. Visuals

The 360 claw is an amazingly imposing structure. It looks like a Klingon Space cruiser has landed. The screen is very impressive even when it is on TV mode when the warm up acts are on. But when “Vertigo” kicks in or “Crazy Tonight” it really comes online – I have never seen anything like it. It makes you feel you are on a theme park ride and you are travelling at a 100mph when in fact you are quite still and the screen is the only thing moving. Our seats were pretty high up – so having the screen was a must.

2. Energy

The band basically did a 2 hour set – with only a 60 second break – Bono’s stamina was very impressive he was bopping and dancing almost the whole time. His voice held out really well too. I kind of felt sorry for the rest of the band because he is such an incredible front man – we hardly heard from the rest of them. Larry Mullen Jnr on drums had a great night – but he has gone from looking like the youngest member of the band to the oldest. Adam Clayton ( I just found out he was born just up the road from me in Chinnor) was wearing some very bizarre sparkly shirt – I still can’t believe Naomi Campbell and him were an item at one stage…. Edge wore his trademark hat all night even though it was very warm where we were so under the billion candlepower lamps he was under I don’t know how he managed to keep the hat on and the lumberjack shirt… So the energy the guys generated was incredible. Elbow had an enourmous ensemble and yet they did not produce half the sheer presence of this four man band.

3. Elbow

It was such a treat to have Elbow as the supporting act. I’ve been a fan since this last album. Guy Garvey the front man came across as a very affable bloke. He must have been either very drunk or very nervous because his eloquence so apparent on the album was completely missing in his banter with the crowd, which mainly consisted of “are you ok?” , “are you ok over there?”, “are you still ok?” But his voice was amazingly pure, strong, clear and pitch perfect. Elbow did an excellent job – and would gladly have listened to another hour of them. Most people didn’t bother sitting down to enjoy Elbow and it wasn’t until they played “One day like this” that the audience really got involved with the music.

4. Back Catalogue

I am not a fan of the new album, “No line on the horizon” but U2 still kicked off with four songs in a row from the album. But it felt like the gig only started when started when the band played “Beautiful Day”

Here’s the complete setlist

Breathe
No Line on the Horizon
Get On Your Boots
Magnificent
Beautiful Day
Elevation
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of
Unknown Caller
The Unforgettable Fire
City Of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Pride (In The Name Of Love)
MLK
Walk On
Where The Streets Have No Name
One
Mysterious Ways
Encore:
Ultraviolet (Light My Way)
With Or Without You
Moment of Surrender

Having given the new album a good listen and after the concert – Unknown caller has grown on me.

So that means i now quite like: Magnificent, Stand up for your love, Unknown Caller and a little bit of Sexy boots – so the album isn’t a dead loss…

5. Political dimension

The emotional heart of the concert was Walk On which was dedicated to Aung San Suu Kyi, pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace laureate. Bono sung her MLK almost as a lullaby. Not that many people had a Aung San mask to wear – but I love the idealism, the passion and the commitment to the poor this band show.

More will follow…

I  was optimistic about this Nicolas Cage film after watching the trailer. Its been a while since he’s been in a good film – actually to be honest I can’t remember a film he has done well in. There was the bubble gum fun of Con Air and The Rock. I didn’t enjoy Leaving Las Vegas and NEXT was so bad it’s not worth mentioning. I have been reminded of Raising Arizona, which was one of the quirky Cohen bros early productions (and I haven’t yet seen Adaptation).

This film is about a young boy – Caleb, who in 2009 is given an envelope that has just come out of a time capsule that has been buried in his school for the last 50 years. Whereas all the other children are given pictures of space ships and flying cars as the children of 1969 were asked to draw their depictions of the future – little Caleb is given a page of numbers. When he gets it home his dad, John (aka Nicolas Cage) can’t sleep as he is grieving his wife’s death and manages to stumble across the numbers. Now luckily for Caleb his dad works at MIT and so he is able to work out that these numbers are accurate predictions of when major world catastrophes will take place and how many people will die in them.

SPOILER WARNING (So far everything I have told you is clearly depicted in the trailer. But if you read on it will spoil the movie for you.)

The movie then wrestles with the question of what you would do if you knew the future. As on the paper are three more dates and death tolls that have not taken place yet. Its an interesting dilemma and could have been a philosophically exciting line to follow in the film – but it is quickly skirted over.

Ever since the piece of paper with numbers has landed in Caleb’s hands he has been seeing spooky blonde haired dark suited men who whisper to him. They also drop strange black stones into his hands while driving pretty lame american cars around.

When we finally work out that this prophecy buried for 50 years is a warning about the End of Everthing we might ask why the spooky blonde guys only gave the world a week’s warning as they were shortsighted enough to leave the prophecy buried for 50 years? What was the point of giving us the future if there was nothing we could do about it?

There are a number of interesting biblical links:

1. Caleb – he was one of the spies into the promised land described in the Old Testament. Caleb along with Joshua was one of only two people of his generation that made it into the promised land – the parallel is that the Caleb in the film is also only one of two people who makes it into the new promised land.

2. John – he was the New Testament prophet who was given a vision of the future that in the Bible is called the book of Revelation.

3. Ezekiel – the book of Ezeikiel features in the movie quite a bit – mainly through a picture that the children colour in. When the space ship finally arrives at the end of the film it does have wheels within wheels – which Ezekiel the prophet describes:

¹⁵ As I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the ground beside each creature with its four faces. ¹⁶ This was the appearance and structure of the wheels: They sparkled like chrysolite, and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel. ¹⁷ As they moved, they would go in any one of the four directions the creatures faced; the wheels did not turn about as the creatures went. ¹⁸ Their rims were high and awesome, and all four rims were full of eyes all around.

Ezekiel 1:15-18

This picture of God appearing to his people in Exile in Babylon was designed to encourage them that no matter where they went God was with them. in this picture there are also four Angels / spiritual beings and that corresponds with the film’s depiction of the four spooky blonde haired men who are transformed into translucent beings. So they are supposed to be angels in the movie – they are not able to talk however and they do the strange thing with the black stones and why do they have to drive cars?

4. The Tree of life - the two children who make it through to the next life – a new Adam and Eve as it were and they head off towards a beautiful alien tree of life that is described in both the book of Genesis and the book of Revelation – symbolising that God provides human beings with life and he wants us to enjoy life with him – and the pages of the Bible between these opening and closing books describe how God is able to give life to humanity despite human sinfulness.

The film interestingly replaces God with aliens and offers no redemption to the planet only doom with only two children escaping the cataclysm . (There were other pods but I didn’t see anyother people). It plays off of the growing sense of apocalyptic doom that is present in our movies about the future but offers no hope to most of us. The children both brought an rabbit with them – so there are probably echoes of Noah’s ark too…

If you want a different view take a look at my book Destiny… which presents the big story of the Bible in an accessibly way and provides a hope for the future by exploring God’s picture of the end of the beginning in the book of Revelation.

It was very weird ending to Sunday’s Top Gear as Jeremy Clarkson eulogised rather than gloried in the Aston Martin V12 Vantage. Some are rumouring its the end of the show forever.

I wonder if it was more about Clarkson knowing the bitter sweet satisfaction of finding something as close to perfect as he can imagine. There’s that weird twinge you feel when you walk down the road with your toddler hand in hand with you skipping down the road with the sun on your face, feeling one day all this will be gone, the toddler will be grown up and won’t want to be seen dead holding your hand or skipping in public. Perhaps the finitude of life hit Clarkson…

Perhaps it was the temporality of all the greatest joys we know on earth.. that as CS Lewis tells are just

These things – the beauty, the memory of our own past – are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited.”

Could it be Clarkson was having a spiritual encounter in an Aston Martin pointing him to the Creator in one of humankind’s finest engineering creations?

In a Summer that has seen more dog films than I can remember.

My top dog films this season are:

1. Hotel for Dogs

2. Bolt

3. Beverly Hills Chihuahua

4. Marley and Me

Why does Marley and Me come last? Well I don’t think the film makers knew where to pitch it. It could have been a romantic comedy along the lines of the excellent Knocked Up or it could have been a romantic kids movie along the lines of equally excellent Enchanted or it could have been a dog movie along the lines of Hotel for Dogs which was the best live action kids and dog film I have seen since “Old Yeller.” but instead it fell between the stools and we get neither a kids movie nor an adult movie – just a sentimental journey which occassionally features a misbhaving dog.

I love dogs, I really would love a dog, but as a foster parent with 5 kids in the house a dog is not going to be practical for a while. This film did make me want a dog, but I didn’t want to be watching it with my kids. it wasn’t a funny enough, there weren’t enough dog related capers and there were a lot of sexual references and long bouts of dialogue that made the kids bored as Aniston and Wilson wrestly with infertility, miscarriage, birth, postnatal depression and midlife crisis. Yet I am not sure i would have watched it as an adult either.

The film also suffers from the most long and drawn out death scene I can remember since Philadelphia. Now i don’t mind a good blub, I remember sitting and crying my eyes out with the kids as we watched the Disney classic Old Yeller, but the death of the dog in Marley and Me went on for about 15 minutes. (check out my 10 year old’s review)

There were moments of great fun but really this film has gone to the dogs…

If it’s raining outside and the kids need to let off a bit of steam…

Here are the ultimate Summer wii games:
1. Mario Power Tennis

At under £20 this is a complete bargain and is my favourite wii game at the moment. it’s very demanding and you really have to “hit” the ball hard to return some of the serves. i love it and i think the kids think its great too. there are lots of mini games – gimmick courts but the main tennis play is excellent. I am a big fan of mario games and this is no let down. It’s well worth the money and even rivals mario strikers charged as the best mario game ever.

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2. Wii fit

we just got this as a birthday present in our house. Its really addictive and every one has their target fitness levels. It has lots of content ranging from full on press ups to really fun balance games like hula hoop and tight rope – this is a great game and is easy to get hold of now for around £50. I am currently king of the slalom and you’ll love the header compeitions and ski jump too.

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3. Wii Sports resort -

this looks amazing and comes with a complementary wii motion plus add on for your controller. The best games appear to be the frisbee throwing, fencing and table tennis. We haven’t got this yet but the reviews are excellent. let me know how you get on with it. I like the look of the plane dog fighting flying game – where you hold the wii remote (with motion plus add on) like a toy aeroplane and whizz it around the room.

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4. My Sims

if energetic fun isn’t for your kids – this is a great game for the more creative and social types. I bought this for my 7 year old daughter and she loves it. It involves exploring a really colourful environment, making friends and building a house and decorating it using various resources you have collected. It can be very addictive.

This again is on a bargain deal at Amazon for only £12. Which is cheaper than a family trip to the cinema and you’ll get more hours per pound ;o)

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5. Dora the Explorer rescues the Snow Princess

with its easy controls this is just the ticket for our three year old who likes having her own wii game to play with. the older children want to play too – but this really suits toddlers best. We thought we got a bargain from amazon for £17 but its only £9.95 now.