Red Shoes

I hate multiplexes grip on film distribution,

.......give me some culture!

Mais.......

Thank the Lord for the No.6 Cinema that will be playing this gem next week.

Though after seeing Kate Bush's adaptation I am a little nervous

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9W9XTxbnWI

BOYS

Ok so I feel I should get this out there, relieve my mind a little

BOYS

I have a guy friend that I have been spending a lot of time with recently. He is about 7 years younger than I and when you are only 25 this is a bit of an age gap (kind of like when you're at school and someone is in the year below/above, that year makes a BIG difference)

He is adorable, totally sweet and well yeah he is attractive.

But I'm not interested, it comes down to age I think, or maybe because he is too nice.

I don't want to date a boy, I want to date a man... maybe that's why I'm so obsessed with all these old movies the gender relations are so much simpler.

Well anyway, people have begun to tease, friends, parents. Even my Step Grandmother suggested I take him as my toyboy!

I'm trying to forget it, and carry on as normal, but they've started this niggling in my brain.

a) May I inadvertently be hurting him / leading him on?

b) Is there something wrong with me and should I be liking him?

c) Is it actually possible to be friends with a boy?

Somewhere in Time

Standing in HMV yesterday I had two choices

Spartacus or.........

Somewhere in Time

As you can tell I have been on a little Jean Simmons binge and wanted to continue along that trend.

But looking at the synopsis and featured picture on the sleeve I surmised that Jean wasn't going to be a leading lady.

I wanted sex, romance, tragedy and here on the other DVD cover staring up at me was Christopher Reeve and the beautiful Jane Seymour (before being typecast as a stripping MILF)

Synopsis

The story of a young writer who sacrifices his life in the present to find happiness in the past, where true love awaits him. Young Richard Collier (Christopher Reeve) is approached by an elderly lady who gives him an antique gold watch and who pleads with him to return in time with her. Years later, Collier is overwhelmed by a photograph of a beautiful woman (Jane Seymour). Another picture of this woman in her later years reveals that she is the same woman who had given him the gold watch. Collier then becomes obsessed with returning to 1912 and the beautiful woman that awaits him there.

Come on would you not buy that, I mean it sounds pretty shit I admit, but aren't you just the little bit intrigued?

When home I found I had bought into a cult classic that even had it's own massive fan club

Well I can tell you that this probably is one of the worst movies ever made but it was crappily AWESOME!

(I will be returning to buy Spartacus tomorrow)

Jean Simmons

Another great gone, I was totally born in the wrong decade.

Favourite role: Hattie in The Grass is Greener, beautiful costumes by Dior, perfect comic timing, I wanted to be her friend.

Incidently does anyone reckon Emily Watson looks a little like Jean Simmons?

oooooh who wouldn't want to be their friends? They ARE nice people, we do KNOW them, they're not just actresses right?

Nine

9 ***SPOILER****

Three main characters really

Daniel Day Lewis - Italian accent distracting at first especially as he maintained in his number, but you got use to it. Quite a good performance, but you're probably meant to end up with a lot more sympathy for him if it wasn't all his own fault

Marion Cotillard (THE BEST) - His wife Perfect, beautiful, two siniging numbers, a weepy one and a 'fuck you i'm leaving song' that was really good

Penelope Cruz - Mistress unbelievably sexy dance number, got quite a set of lungs on her. Good acting in the film as wel

then there is......

Judi Dench - Brilliant in the film, disturbing dance number in a bodice, but tastefully done all considering. hay she's old but good on her.

Kate Hudson - brilliant dance number, fun hip but part in the film was utterly pointless

Fergie - the best dance number, massive group of dancers and a lot of sand, like chicago, worked well, plays the whore he pays to see as a child, also totally pointless part.

Sophia Loren - Ghost of his mother, what she represented was pretty crucial but the talking to his dead mother thing was a bit cliche.

The whole premise is that Contini wants it all, as Marion's part says, 'you're like an appetite, once you're full you are nothing' (good line bet that was on of Minghella's) They have also tried to emulate part of that Fellini style, like its not reality, but the use of the dance numbers being just in his head is just, well too realist, if he had walked round the corner of the collesium into a dance number.... I just remember thinking it was too fractured, it wanted more fluidity between the scenes and all the women are kept very seperate so it is like a series of parallel storylines that never meet.....Perhaps all these big names thought 'way hay' this will be fun, but had forgotten to consider each others performances.

.....I'll probably wake up tomorrow morning and realise I love it!

Nicole Kidman - very telling i forgot her until the end of this email. utterly Beautiful but only in the film for about 10 minutes and I had to pee during her song. something about being in love with him (oh dear not another) but he keeps all his girls on pedestals and she had had enough.

Ingrid Bergman

Ingrid Bergman, Ingrid Bergman

Let's go make a picture

On the island of Stomboli, Ingrid Bergman

Ingrid Bergman, you're so perty

You'd make any mountain quiver

You'd make fire fly from the crater

Ingrid Bergman

This old mountain, it's been waiting

All its life for you to work it

For your hand to touch it's hard rock

Ingrid Bergman, Ingrid Bergman

If you'll walk across my camera

I will flash the world your story

I will pay you more than money

Ingrid Bergman

Not by pennies, dimes nor quarter

But with happy sons and daughters

And they'll sing around Stromboli

Ingrid Bergman

This old mountain, it's been waiting

All its life for you to work it

For your hand to touch it's hard rock

Ingrid Bergman, Ingrid Bergman

- Billy Bragg & Wilco

The Heart

coeur / heart

This word refers to all kinds of movements and desires,

what is constant is that the heart is consituted into a gift object

-- whether ignored or rejected.

Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse

Private Lives

on the second of january BBC Radio 4 featured Noel Coward's 'Private Lives' as its saturday play.

i ADORE this play and unfortunately only got to listen to half of it as i was @ work.

the half i listened to was really good but off putting. It didn't match the tone and style i give it when reading it myself, Bill Nighy was a little too dead pan and Helena Bonham Carter was a little too excited.

i'm still disappointed that i missed Lindsay Duncan and Alan Rickman as Amanda and Elyot.

they performed it in the wrong decade,... the 'noughties' would have been far more convenient for me.

the next to take on the role is Matthew MacFadyen (lovely but perhaps not sarcastic enough)

and Kim Cattrall (ummm dubious choice, she comes across as a bit dominating in her roles and I always saw Amanda and Elyot as equals of the same part).

Should I go see it and forever ruin my perfect image of a play i already have in my head ?

Books bought

found a new bookshop with _ today.

stacked to the ceiling with goodies and all priced £4.

(persuaded _ to buy 1984)

bought a new copy of Moll Flanders purely because it was

..... Pink!

had illustrations by Nigel Lambourne throughout

See photos attached (if i can figure how to get them on here).

First Entry

ok, so i'm new to this blogging thing, but i was with a friend that has always kept a journal, and she said that she didn't write in it as much as she used her blog as an outlet.

i thought that was pretty cool. The idea that you can have a public diary. But I have decided to take that a step further and create the anonymous public diary.

there is something exhilarating about being as creative as possible without fear of judgement. that's not to say that any of my acquaintance are particularly judging, or that i am ashamed of anything that i write.

i don't know maybe it is that it is quite empowering to reach out into the unknown, to people you never have or never will meet. So here goes...