The one good thing about flying for 22 hours whilst on holiday is that you generally have the opportunity of watching a few acceptable films......hummm how wrong can one film fanatic be???British Airways presented me with the following:-
Last Chance Harvey ( a dire "romantic comedy with a lacklustre Dustin Hoffman and the generally excellent Emma Thompson) 5/10
The Day the Earth Stood Still yawn yawn yawn yawn yawn....5/10
P.S. I Love You (another romantic comedy...with " face like a bag of spanners "Hilary Swank in the starring role as a grieving widow) 5/10
Inkheart (Tosh) 3/10
Thank god for Australia (2008) at least 2 hours were wasted away on this enjoyable emotional romp
I had to wait until last night (Jetlagged and wide awake at 2am) to be able to watch a little gem of a tv programme. "The Street" was a tv series created by Liverpudlian Jimmy McGovern three years or so ago. It centred its stories on the "gritty" lives of a working class community in a run down Manchester street, and I was lucky enough to catch episode nine entitled "Demolition"
The storyline was nothing hugely new. It centred upon a working class builder Vincent Regan, a married father of 2 children, who consistently worked away from home to support his family. He shares accommodation with a fellow construction worker (Will Mellor playing against type as a closet gay man) and unexpectedly the two men become romantically involved with traumatic results.
Now this kind of tale ("straight guy confronting his sexuality) is not a particularly innovative storyline...and to be honest I found much of the plot lines (Regan being ostracised by his redneck colleagues for example) rather hackneyed and stereotypical, but what really impressed me was the towering performance given by Vincent Regan (above left) .
He dominated the screen with a tortured and complex portrayal of an ordinary man suddenly faced with an opportunity to be himself after more than forty years . I was incredibly moved by his performance despite the jet lag. Make sure you watch it if you can
9/10
Sadly, I never caught The Street, but I have to prioritize my viewing, although I tend to love that genre of vernacular drama that seems to slip casually in and out of reality. I don’t know whether you ever caught 1991’s The Lost Language of Cranes. It became a constant talking point for me and Howard at the time. If you didn’t, I’m sure you’d have something to say about it. I have a great fondness for the Queer/'Gay' movies of the late 80s/early 90s: partly because they marked a certain point in my life, and partly because of the creative enterprise that they communicated. I know we’ve discussed this on other occasions (and disagreed then, too), but for me they beat the pants off anything post-1992, including the mawkish Philadelphia and, of course, that toe-curlingly awful “important” cowboy movie that I can’t even bear to name....but I know that I’m in a minority of one, there.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, sorry about Robina, hope you had a good time, and I promise that Chris will receive his birthday pressie as soon as Ebay obliges! Welcome back Nx
thanks Nige
ReplyDeleteactually I liked the Lost Language of cranes.....
Tom Wilkinson played the father as I remember
nopee it was Brian cox
ReplyDelete