Dallas

My photo was inspired a little by my hero. Evidently I cropped my pic to preserve my modesty...

My big plans criticized on CNN

Don't know how long this link will work, but my plans have been criticized on CNN here . Naturally I'm in a bit of a huff about this...

¡Oye Esteban!

First some extra comments about the last few films.

Last Orders - Surely some of the best in-car filming ever?

Spidey II - Another great shot was of Tobey running up to the edge of the building - just before the "I'm back / my back!" joke - his face as he was running in slow-mo was very good!!

Not really a film review, but watched Morrissey's DVD ¡Oye Esteban! last night. Was very pleased to spot the sportswear brand references were exactly the brands I've bought into (sold out to?) recently in my new sporty-fashion phase - namely Fred Perry (Moz wearing it in "Boxers",) Lonsdale (the band in "We hate it when our friends become successful") and Umbro (kit bag in "Sunny") On reflection I realise these are the main all-British brands so it's probably no surprise I went for these. Surely it wasn't a subliminal effect of the DVD?

The world of Morrissey is really about English masculinity. I guess this is partly the reason behind my Perry/Lonsdale/Umbro obsession. How does it sit with my rejection of things British? With irony. It's the juxtapositions that wearing a Lonsdale polo shirt makes that are interesting - sporty/sport-hating, skinhead/gay, British / anti-British. It's all a mass of conflicting images. Who would have thought wearing sportswear would do all that? I guess Morrissey is on the same territory.

The DVD ¡Oye Esteban! is maybe the only "pop video" collection that I can watch over and over. There are some real stand out tracks. The opener is “Everyday is Like Sunday” shot in Morecambe maybe? Surreally it incorporates Billie Whitelaw and the Cheryl Campbell from Coronation Street – the one who shared with Gail (later) Tilsley in Elsie Tanner's house – back in the 70s when Corrie was great. The final shot of Morrissey through a telescope has his hair at possibly its most vertiginous... “Suedehead” takes us on a moving trip to Fairmount Indiana and a hommage to the life of James Dean. Still hard to believe he was just 24 when he died. "Too fast to live, too young to die."

“Interesting Drug,” featuring the backing vocals of the late Kirsty MacColl, camps it up with cross dressing schoolboys, Diana Dors on the NME cover and Hawtry High School for Boys.

"Will Never Marry" is a touching song about Morrissey's written proposals from his (female?) fanbase. "I'm writing this to say in a gentle way, thank you but no / I will live my life as I will undoubtedly die, alone..." The video is a sequence of clips of fans climbing the stage to show their devotion to Moz in the traitional manner. It only gets a bit ugh when the girls and long-haired blokes are doing the kissing.

The black and white shot vidz are really more beautiful than should be allowed for a pop video. “My Love Life,” is achingly melancholic – Morrissey and the band in a Rolls driving through Phoenix. Wonderful stuff. But Morrissey obviously is not driving. The looks of longing on Morrissey's face are quite unbearably poignant. “Tomorrow” is a video I remember seeing in Boston on MTV back in the summer of 1992. The continuous tracking shot through the back streets of Nice is really memorable, the band members wandering along in the background horsing around. Morrissey almost breaks into laughter at one point as the guys mess about... “Seasick yet still Docked” is again more poignant that a pop video deserves to be. Who are the people in the home movie? It is definitely the US in the 1950s. You can read so much family history in these short clips. The older guy who is obviously the patriarch of the family – he is clearly a strong personality but I wonder about the darker controlling sides of his character.

Later we get the full on deconstruction of the British male - “Boxers” featuring the haunting music from Britten's Peter Grimes Moonlight interlude, and the wonderful Cornelius Carr who formed the backdrop to the stage in Morrissey's 1995 tour. And yes this is where you see Morrissey in a Fred Perry polo! Dagenham Dave must be totally incomprehensible to anyone outside of England. I know this part of Essex slightly more than I want to. As ever with Morrissey, Essex man is given a twist with the line “He'd like to touch but he's afraid that he might self-combust / I could say more but you get the general idea,” and Dave / Moz in the windscreen of the XR3. How drole! Boy racer features Jason Rush from the “Last of the International Playboys” video looking a bit older and fuller as the eponymous anti-hero of the song in his Sierra Cosworth. He also makes off with Dag Dave's girl at the end of the previous video. Surely it's Martine Escutcheon as one of the girls with chips? Again Morrissey homoeroticises the thing - “He's got the whole world in his hands / standing at the urinal..” and at the end of the song Moz repeats “He's just too good looking, and, and, and, and....” Oh Steven!

Spider-Man 2

Oh dear, my first venture to the cinema in, what, over a year. Always a disappointment, always. I admit not to having seen the first instalment of this franchise, though frankly if you see the trailer and making of then you've pretty much seen the film, so everything made sense to me. But what appalling CGI. How could they blow $54 million on making it look like a second rate PlayStation game? When will they realise that you can't yet substitute real actors with these avatars without looking stupid. Why bother to have the actors at all? And when will someone in the FX community get round to reading about Newton's laws of motion? Especially the third which may as well never have been invented. No you can't rip off a vault door with superhuman AI arms without ripping your spine out, crushing your torso and bending your legs in two. Really these things irritate me beyond anything.

And the false science stuff was too far from believability. Creating a fusion sun in a warehouse room without any heat protection? Come on. And then dousing the sun in the Hudson? Right. And then these AI appendages – where did they get their power? And if they are impervious to any heat, why did they fizzle and splutter in water? Stupid, stupid stupid!!

Tobey Maguire was disappointing too. Maybe it was not his fault. I didn't really feel the loneliness and isolation of the character which I would have thought is essential to the character's feelings of being different. And how come he is so poor yet his best friends are an actress model and the son of a very rich industrialist?

The dialogue was pretty bad, especially the love scenes, but does one expect anything better these days? The photography was flat and uninteresting, and as for the special effects... Why so bad?

Let's try and find some good things. The scene in the launderette was sly and funny, when Spidey's suit runs in the wash and streaks his underwear red and blue. Where the film did work emotionally was after Spidey stops the elevated train and loses his mask – the moment where the common people carry him to safely and notice it's just a boy. But by far the best and most joyful scene was the Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head sequence. Yes they actually used the original recording from Butch Cassidy! And yes it was very funny and touching, almost a hommage to Tobey. The freeze frame of Maguire's bespectacled face at the end was really very good. Yet this two minute sequence was the only part I actively enjoyed out of the whole film. And none of the reviews I've read have mentioned this sequence. Am I somehow different from all the rest?

Last Orders

Once again this is a film by a director that can do no wrong. Fred Schepisi's other films such as the Russia House and Six Degrees of Separation are among my top movies.

The first thing to mention is the composition – Schepisi always uses a very wide aspect ratio (just checked it to be 2.35:1.) In this film it allows him to show all four of the characters on the journey to Margate at once in beautiful almost painterly detail. I'm thinking of the stop over in the Rochester pub. In the trailer this is cut to just three of the characters and you lose more than a quarter of the effect. After the glamorous locations of the previous films, such as New York, Moscow and St Petersburg, North Kent looks pretty good too. Somehow this is a great achievement.

What to say about the principal actors? Either you can say it a distillation of England's finest or a collection of old (East?) Hams. Michael Caine probably has it in the acting stakes as he literally plays his old man dying of cancer. David Hemmings almost has it for, well, being David Hemmings. It's such a shame he will not appear again in anything new. What a wonderful career he had from working with Britten, Antonioni and finally this film. Tom Courtney gets points for being the most restrained. Bob Hoskins gains for not going too over the top. Ray Winstone is thankfully unobtrusive. Helen Mirren finishes off the main cast acting against type as a very plain woman, a sort of ageing DI Tennison without the glamorous job.

The young actors are also very good, especially Michael Caine's double. But the biggest shock goes to Hemmings' younger self, who looks incredibly like the Blow Up era Hemmings, especially in the after-fight scene where he has a steak over the eye. Astonishing... (Should have checked IMDB first, the young actor is Hemmings' real son Nolan, with Gayle Hunnicut...)

A slow sad piece, but with a lot of laughter then.

Afterglow

Alan Rudolph's films have a strange hold over me. Ever since I saw what I still think is his best film, Trouble In Mind, in the 1980s, I have not found another film maker that creates such a unique look and builds such off-centre stories. Another plus point is his use of the city and architecture to create the feelings of alienation for the characters. His films are always grounded in a real place, Seattle as Rain City in Trouble In Mind, and this time for Afterglow we are very much in Montreal.

In a way it's a hommage to four actors. Julie Christie gets the full on star treatment by the camera. There are some wonderful glamour static shots of her waiting at a table, sitting behind dark glasses and so on. But also there are honest scenes of her with no makeup, sitting in nightclothes watching her younger self on VHS in what looks like a hammer horror movie – though in the credits it says that the film was The Pit and the Pendulum I cannot find a reference to this in IMDB, nor could I see an appropriate film in Christie's filmography. The final scene of her character crying in bed I found quite disturbing, as the actor is evidently trying so hard to cry her guts out. It's a bit uncomfortable and also a bit false. Anyway, it was a deserved Oscar nomination.

Nick Nolte I just find irritating. I guess the character was not likeable but showed some redeeming features, I just wish it had been a different actor.

Lara Flynn Boyle was equally irritating (so hurruagh for the English actors!) but this suited the role. The character was really just a little girl in a big bad world type thing.

Jonny Lee Miller is a very strange person indeed. It shouldn't work – his face is so impassive and the acting is on the surface extremely wooden. Yet somehow it does work. I don't know what he does, but it is some kind of gift. I remember feeling the same in Regeneration. Somehow he shows a real rounded character underneath the mask. It's no coincidence I'm sure that the softly spoken English actor was married to Angelina Jolie at the time of the film, who described him as wild.

But mostly with Alan Rudolph's films it's about the setting and mood. And it's all very well captured.

Psycho

This film held such big expectations for me. I don't know how I managed not to see it for so many years. I suppose it was inevitable that it would be a let-down. For how long have I known the story? I remember my best friend at school saying it was his favourite movie. Then there was the song by 80s electro-pop band Landscape, with the repeated line, “My name is Norman Bates, I'm just a normal guy.” Not great art, though it did contain some lines from the film, “Mother, oh my god!”, “Norman Bates no longer exists,” and “He wouldn't even hurt a fly.” On top of this it is just part of western cultural history, the shower scene and the cross-dressing as mother. It was a shame that although I was watching the film for the first time, I knew the plot, and this reduced the experience for me.

In essence the film appears to be about apportion of guilt, who the viewer sympathises with and how everyone believes the motive for murder is money, but in the end it's just psychological disturbance. I guess the $40000 is the classic Hitchcock McGuffin. Not providing a moral hero must have been quite daring in the 50s, though having said that I can think of other films with big moral ambiguity from that era, such as Maltese Falcon, Kiss Me Deadly, Casablanca. Actually the more I think about it, the more moral ambiguity seems to be more prevalent in the immediate post-war era than today. Of course I always forget how conservative the times we live in are today.

Ebert's review mentioned “Detour” which I haven't seen for ages and would love to “own.”

The Herrmann score really impressed me in its simplicity. I could detect three basic elements in the small string orchestra score. The title theme, the slow rocking music first used in the slow pan across the Phoenix skyline, and the stabbing slashing music. I read that Herrmann studied with Percy Grainger in New York. I cannot think of two more different musical styles than these two.

Anthony Perkins' performance is very nicely nuanced. The stutter only starts when he is under duress. When the '57 Ford is sinking in the swamp he bites his finger nervously and this created sympathy with this viewer. I almost wanted the car to sink. During the film I got the feeling that this was the work of an accomplished stage actor.

Ultimately the film is about confounding viewer's expectations. The heroine dies at the end of act 1. We are led to feel compassion for the murderer. We are lead to identify with the criminal activity, knowing that we might do the same thing in the same situation.

The Last of England

Poly Toynbee's essay in today's Guardian neatly encapsulates all my vague feelings of distaste at the state of my native land, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Alternative Car Park

...is the name of the mime artist played by Rowan Atkinson in the 1980's "satirical" comedy sketch show Not the Nine O'Clock News. It just came into my head.

Found a blogger not one million miles away from chez moi - Have a Look. This blog onepointzero is another Brussels based one.

No new films to report, though I did watch the alternative musical soundtrack to Battle of Britain and the commentary track to Vertigo.

The original soundtrack by Sir William Walton for Battle of Britain appears to have been lost for a long time. It's nice that the age of DVD can reunite things in this way. However I can understand why his music was junked for Roy Goodwin's version. The Walton track is too classical, whereas Goodwin's is much more cinematic which I guess in 1968 was important for a mass market film. One positive of the Walton version is that there is much less musical melodramatic emoting in certain scenes, such as Suzannah York's reaction to the dead WAAF's after the first bombing of the airfield, and Ian McShane's reaction to the Rest Centre where his wife and kids were sheltering being flattened. As an aside the McShane character appears to take the loss of his family very well, as in the next scene we see him not entirely traumatised. I guess later at the end of the film as the Spitfire pilots wait for the scramble that finally never comes, the Ian McShane character looks pretty stressed out... One positive about the Roy Goodwin version, apart from being more suitable for a mass market film, is that when the Walton section “Battle in the Air” does come along the music sounds very special and really makes the montage scene.

The commentary for Vertigo doesn't add much to the documentary already seen on the DVD. Still it's was a good reminder of the amount of work that went in to the restoration. I didn't realise they had used a separate original recording of the soundtrack which meant they had to remake all the foley effects – this was a little obvious as things like rustling paper sounded too false.

Le Mans

The first dialogue in this film comes at 37 minutes after the first glimpse of Steve McQueen's Porsche 911. That about sums up the priorities of this unique film. Apart from McQueen, the actors are not terribly well known, it's the cars that are stars – the Porsche 917 and the Ferrari 312P.

For someone who has fallen out of love with motor racing this movie really involved me. I wasn't aware that it was the British Grand Prix this weekend, though I could have easily predicted the winner. Ferrari is no longer a romantic name for me. There is no plot in the film, and the action is episodic. Yet again, this is a film that cannot be made today, and a part of it is a big chunk of nostalgia. The atmosphere of rural France in 1970 is really palpable, and the dirt and danger of the racing is apparent in every frame. Also the use of lenses and focus and film grain is very beautiful.

The on track scenes are really fantastic. The two major crash sequences are beautifully filmed in slow motion and somewhat horrifically beautiful. The way the cars bounce between the rails is almost balletic. The knowledge that one of the stunt drivers lost a leg in the making of the crash sequences adds to the poignancy. This was a real film, a quasi-documentary, shot with real cars on the real track with real drivers like Jacky Ickx and Steve McQueen himself

The acting, what little of it there is, works very well as it is so restrained. The melodrama is kept to an absolute minimum. The off track story never lasts more than a few minutes and usefully breaks up the on track action. The Michel Legrand score is lovely and complements the film without distracting from the raison d'etre – the cars and the race.

Again I am watching films from the late 60s / early 70s. This period really feels like the end of an era, after which films started getting more commercially oriented, more marketing driven. Another film of the same ilk is of course Grand Prix. From what I remember this has much more melodrama off track, but as the main leads are Yves Montand and Eva Maria Saint, that's OK by me. Of course Grand Prix has the benefit of being able to see on screen the racing starts of the day, memorably spoofed by Robbie Williams in Love Supreme. And the split screen racing shots stick in my mind too. These days racing is just not dangerous enough.

Where Eagles Dare

“This is Broadsword calling Danny Boy, Broadsword calling Danny Boy.” I just wanted to get that out of the way.

Another nostalgia trip to the 1960's view of the 1940's. Just like The Battle of Britain, this is a favourite film from childhood. I wonder if this film, and BoB were remade today scene for scene with modern actors and modern production values, whether the film would still be as enjoyable? I think not. Is it nostalgia getting in the way again? Unashamedly so. The teaming of Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood is really delightful, if a bit wooden. Well the woodenness adds to the charm of course. Watching these actors I know that there will never be the likes of these again. Richard Burton's character in particular is completely beyond realism, yet I can sympathise with him in a way it is impossible with a James Bond. This guy is tired and weary, he shows fallibility under fire, yet still unmasks all the moles in MI6 by the last reel. Still there is nothing about his life, apart from his wife who he covertly brings along for the mission. The twists and turns are all beyond belief and the script is pretty bad. But Burton hams his way thorough the frequently glorious Austrian Alps scenery and all is forgiven.

What can't be forgiven is how many German troops Clint Eastwood wastes in this film without even an over quaffed hair out of place. The hair is as un-1940's as Mary Ure's shoulder length mascara... The same apples to Mary Ure's shooting skills, but again all is forgiven as her character is obviously a very capable and deadly woman. Even by today's standards she is remarkably un-weak, never mustering anything close to a scream and doing all the derring-do that the men do too.

The minor characters are a bit of a waste of acting talent – Peter Barkworth, Donald Houston and William Squire (Khachaturian in Palmer's wonderful Testimony) do nothing after they are unmasked except looking scared and remorseful. The cable-car-top fight with Burton vs Barkworth and Houston is fantastically memorable though... Derren Nesbitt makes a memorable Gestapo officer. A big contrast to his other role I have seen him in Room at the Top. What a shock it was to see this ueber-mensch as a jealous Yorkshireman! Ingrid Pitt was a joy to see again – the only other film I can think of with her in it is The Wicker Man.

The final star is the Alpine landscape. It really is joyful to behold, and chilling to imagine this part of the world in the early 1940's. For Alpine atmosphere this one is up there with On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Why can't people make wonderful Alpine films anymore?

Vertigo

What a strange, strange film. This viewing was my second – I must have seen it before in the cinema when it was re-released in restored format in the mid 1990’s. The strangest thing is that I had forgotten the twist in the tale that happens two-thirds of the way through. That came as a bit of a shock – it was really like seeing the film for the first time, only worse as I was convinced what I was seeing on the screen was not there the first time. This added to the disorientation that the film naturally creates.

My impression from watching the film the first time was the wonderful atmosphere of 1950’s San Francisco, before the spate of tower blocks that grew in the 60’s and 70’s. Hitchcock’s films always have this wonderful veneer of artificiality, especially with external shots, which in many cases were internal with back projections of course, as he famously hated working outside the controlled world of the paramount studio. For me this gives a unique charm, especially with Hitchcock’s colour films. It’s something that spreads to the general surreality of the cars of the time (in this case a Jag and a DeSoto.)

This time I felt less of this atmosphere I caught the first time. Of course the famous shot of Kim Novak standing in front of the Golden Gate dropping flowers into the water is a masterful shot – perfect composition and lighting – the strange mystery of standing under an enormous bridge.

This time I was struck by several things. I actually think Kim Novak is quite ugly and plain in this movie – and this adds to the strangeness of the piece. Why would a man be so obsessed with this plain girl – a plain canvas perhaps to load on all his desires? After “Madeleine” falls from the tower the first time, I thought this is where the film ends. The dream sequence really surprised me. Barbara Bel Geddes was a delight – but why keep her so frumpy behind the specs? And what happened to Midge after the hospital sequence? The section in the Sequoia Sempevirens forest made me very sad with its reflections on mortality. It was a very effecting moment, beautifully shot. The image of Madeleine’s gloved hand marking out the birth and death of Carlotta on the tree section is very haunting indeed. And the music was a wonderful Herrmann score – modernist in the opening credits and romantic when required.

But what does it all mean finally? Is it the guilt of a fat man’s obsession with young blonds? I always thought Vertigo was fear of heights, but now I find that it is just the dizzying swaying sensation. This could be a description of mad love too, or obsession. It’s a study of mental collapse then. Maybe after the screen goes to black the Jimmy Stewart character jumps after his lost Madeleine?

The Battle of Britain

The Battle of Britain has always been a favourite of mine, right from childhood. I imagine in its time (1969) it was a bit of an anachronism. It was one of the last WWII films, and 60s Britain was really about leaving that wartime generation of austerity and moral rectitude behind. (By the way hurragh for the 1960s, my life would not have been so good if it wasn’t for that decade…)

I love early James Bonds and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and this film is really a remake of these – Saltzman producing, Guy Hamilton directing, the same production teams. All the plusses of Goldfinger and Chitty, and with beautiful shots of Spitfires, Hurricane, Me109s and He111s. All the star turns are a treat, particularly from Larry Olivier, Suzannah York, Ian McShane, Michael Caine (though his death is sudden and unexplained,) Robert Shaw, Trevor Howard, Kurt Juergens, Peter Cushing, and more.

The film gives nice sympathetic coverage of the Germans too – genuine sadness at the dinner table with the missing’s places filled with a solitary candle. The vaudeville actor Hein Riess plays a wonderfully pompous Goering.

The DVD is very well presented – the picture is better than Close My Eyes, twenty years its junior. The "making of" is a contemporary piece happily devoid of too much marketing tat, lovably introduced by Caine in his native East End. There is a wonderful interview with a BoB pilot with a smashing handlebar moustache. He comes across as a loveable guy who realizes he lived through a great time but does not have a hint of the “I fought for people like you” crap that afflicts (afflicted…) many of that generation. The 60’s haters I mean…

Historically the DVD points out that at that time no-one knew that Dowding had access to the Bletchley Park decrypted messages of Nazi High Command. This puts an interesting spin on the film’s words from Dowding as he invokes a miracle. The film also has the non-revisionist view that it was the plucky few (plus the Poles and hopefully not Ben Affleck for the USA) that rebuffed Operation Sealion, whereas nowadays it is more accepted that it was Hitler’s idea to look east that probably saved the day. Operation Barbarossa was being planned at the time I guess. Or was it too early for that? If the BoB ended in autumn 1940, and Barbarossa started in June 1941… It did show that the Luftwaffe’s change of plan from attacking the airfields and radar to blitzing London was a major error. The old maxim that you can’t bomb civilian populations into submission comes in to play. Except if it’s an atom bomb I guess. Did razing Dresden hasten the end of the Nazi’s? Difficult to say.

Anyway, it’s a wonderful romp. One of the scenes that I remember is Robert Shaw waking up in a Kentish cottage early in the morning looking in on his children before driving off to work. I guess it is the mundanity of the scene which is surprising against the fierce deadly battles being fought by this character. And Shaw is always a watchable, if slightly crap, actor.

And the Walton section of the film “Battle in the Skies” is truly great film music. I have yet to watch the DVD with the 100% William Walton soundtrack.

Close My Eyes

Close My Eyes was truly one of my favourite films of the 1990's. Partly what made it memorable was the fact I saw it in a special screening on its release at the Cambridge Arts Cinema in the presence of the director Stephen Poliakoff.

OK, the film’s big thing is that its central characters are brother and sister having an erotic affair. This fact seems to polarize completely the opinion of the film. In general most US viewers comments are coloured by the moral degeneracy without punishment angle. Other commentators like it because of the way it is filmed but despite the incest, while others saw it because Alan Rickman was in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.

My angle is this – it is really quite irrelevant to the story. In attempting to think of how the writer came up with the incest line, I think this is the only way to have a credible adulterous affair with the husband accepting that the wife and her lover are close without suspecting anything. This does create some interesting dramatic tension and brings the three corners of the affair very close to each other.

In more broad terms, the film is about disturbing change – the long hot greenhouse effect summers, AIDS, the changes in society during the Thatcher years, the stock market and property bubble of the late 1980’s, Docklands, New Money. The affair between the brother and sister is a retreat and a reaction to this change – a retreat from incomprehension of the changes happening in the world into the last taboo. Very mysterious.

The film is really a historical document which deals with that most difficult of subjects, the recent past. Watching it now in 2004, fifteen years after the event, it starts to become comprehensible. Global warming has become more and more real; even if we don’t know what the effects will really be it has become part of everyday life. We have had another stock market bubble rise and burst, perhaps more violently than last time. The property bubble is again near its peak in the UK. Looking at this film is like looking in a mirror of our times.

The film looks absolutely wonderful, even though the DVD transfer is very poor. The filmmakers were very lucky with the long hot summer of 1989, and the Home Counties (Oxfordshire, around Cliveden) look heartbreakingly beautiful, as shot by Witold Stok. As one of the characters says, “I never thought the Home Counties could be so beautiful.” The contrast with the city of London shots if very well done. A gorgeous film to look at. I just checked for Witold Stok’s other work, but there is nothing I have heard of, bar the Comic Strip’s Eat the Rich. The string quartet music by Michael Gibbs really adds a lot of depth to the film – a sad wistful melody threads through the work. Really wonderful haunting stuff. Again he has not done anything else major.

As for the acting, the three stars are all highly proficient and work together very well. Clive Owen looks very young and boyish for those that are used to seeing him in more recent work, such as the great Croupier. My comment on his suitability as the next James Bond is - no he shouldn’t do it. He looks far to vulnerable and he is really far too good an actor to waste on such a meagre rôle. Saskia Reeves does a great job of turning from the ugly Sheffield duckling with a broad accent to the Home Counties wife, sullen but living a perfect life. Alan Rickman exudes strangeness and otherness.

Key images of the film – the first time we see Saskia Reeves’ character in her new life, making a summer pudding – the first real colours of summer and of the film, the bright red of the berries. The static shots of Canary Wharf being constructed. Clive Owen’s character in tears in the Ritz tearoom. Walking barefoot through a London Sunday morning. The Thames in any shot with the parched grass and perfect cottages peeking out from the woods. The great Niall Buggy’s cameo as a rapacious property developer in red braces. The brother and sister returning to the party after their fight with cuts and grazes everywhere and their clothes dirty and torn. So many others.

Still one of my favourite films of the 1990’s after this recent viewing. In the DVD’s accompanying interviews with the cast and directors, Stephen Poliakoff mentions that Richard Curtis said it was one of his favourite British films. This one is really a classic that future generations will come to love, I think.

The beginning of the rest of the year

So it's July 2004 and half the year is over. It seems this year is going by faster than any before. Strange how our perception of time changes with age.

The weather here in Belgium is terrible, so unlike last year with its "Eté sans fin."

It is high time I started to give my film reviews again. What did I see recently? Close My Eyes, The Battle of Britain.