Chick Flicks

I got some really interesting responses to yesterday’s entry – maybe I should be philosophical more often…

However this entry is not going to be at all philosophical. Instead, it’s going to feature movies and chocolate 🙂

“Chick Flicks” had its inaugural movie night last night. We went to see Mad Hot Ballroom, which is a documentary about a programme in New York where schools in disadvantaged areas give ballroom dancing lessons to their grade 5 (I think – 10-11 year olds, anyway) classes, culminating in a city-wide dance competition after 10 weeks. The programme’s been running for a few years, and is having amazing results, giving the kids self confidence and self respect, and in some cases totally turning around kids who were on the edge. The documentary was filmed in a similar style to that one about spelling bees (which I’ve completely forgotten the name of) – it followed several classes from the first lessons through to the final competition, interspersed with interviews with the children, their teachers, and their parents. But there was less of that uncomfortable feeling of ultra-competitiveness that the spelling bee documentary had, probably because the kids were competing in teams rather than individually.

After the movie, we went to the restaurant in Rydges (which I still keep calling Noahs, despite the fact it hasn’t been called that for years) for coffee and dessert. Rydges is a very posh hotel, so I was dreading what the prices in their restaurant would be like, but they were actually very reasonable – about the same as we’ve been paying at Cafe Bleu, in fact! Lytteltonwitch and awhina are in the Chick Flicks group too, so we were discussing whether we should have a Bookcrossing meetup there one month. The restaurant manager said if we wanted we could arrange a set menu (and set price) in advance, which could work out really well. So we’re going to discuss it at the next meetup.