Les Miserables (2012)

(Gif of Bertie Carvel- on my first viewing, the highlight of the film for me. Nothing beats the Trunch)
I think it's probably too late for me to think about reviewing this. And anyway it'll be completely bias, I've seen it five times and each time thought 'that's enough now, I don't need to see it again' but then, sure enough, about 6 days later I always thought 'I must go and see... IT!!'
But this wasn't what I thought would happen. As soon as I found out it had a gimmick, live singing, I'd decided it would be terrible. After all, I've never liked the musical, when I finally did bow to pressure and go and see it I thought it was rubbish, ok songs but terrible staging. The prospect of a film at least had that in it's favour, it would at least have amazing scenery and fighting and things even if actors were sobbing through the songs they were attempting to sing.
But as you can guess I realised that as well as the excellent art direction which I expected the singing and the actors were all excellent. Hugh was of course wonderful, again, as expected! He was great in the National Theatre's Oklahoma, a video I watch annually. But I was really surprised by how good Russell Crowe was! And even more surprised that people don't rate his performance! He was brilliant! Javert's songs have become my favourites because of him! What a pleasant surprise!
Can't wait for the video!

A Dangerous Method (2012)

Good to watch after watching In Treatment, my mum said she hadn't realised because she didn't know much about it but Paul is obviously a Jungian and Gina; Freudian. That was the only thing we got from it though! It was boring and now, three days later, I can't remember anything about it apart from Keira's comedy Russian accent and her using that jaw of hers to her advantage (pulling mad loony faces). Yep Keira is shite. I watched Seeking a Friend for the End of the World as well this week, it was fucking terrible. Not just the script but Keira especially. Playing a 'kooky English girl' no, she should stick to period pieces. But no, actually she's rubbish in them too. I've seen all her films, why? Because I like her.
Why do I like her? This is something I can't figure out! I think it's because I like HER, the real her, the her I see in interviews and being paper doing normal things and being a normal person. And I like the fact that even though people go on about her being too thin it's obvious she is just made that way! She isn't too thin, she's just funny looking! She's got silly little legs, little chunkers, I don't know if anyone;s ever noticed that, but she's not an anorexic little model, she's a funny little British girl who has a funny flat face! It's only beautiful from certain angles, other angles it's just weird! And I like that about her!
I'm waiting for her to make a good film, she does very well in those magazine adverts modelling for perfume- even the tv ad where she's on that motorbike is shite! But no, she was terrible in Pride and Prejudice, Bend it like Beckham, Atonement, Love Actually, Never Let me Go, even Pirates of the Caribbean, which I really enjoy, she's just a bit naff.

Lawless (2012)

 Guy Pearce was the best thing in it, typical Guy Pearce creepy psycho weirdo. And Gary Oldman was actually good as well, and I'm so used to him being the same these days that I forgot how brilliant he was in Leon, he was just as psycho violent in this. Rest of the film disappointingly boring and I don't want to see someone being tarred and feathered, that's too violent for me and will give me nightmares.

A Marvelous Year for Plums, Chichester Festival Theatre

A matinee in Chichester, I wasn't staying there again, two years previously I stayed in the kind of hotel people get murdered in, mismatched sheets on my twin beds and stains on the walls! Night terrors! I'm glad I managed to see this one, my favourite scene was probably the meeting between Anthony Eden and young John Prescott on board that cruise ship, apparently it's all true! Anthony Andrews was great, very emotional, liked the scene with the breakdown and liked Nick le Prevost and Imogen Stubbs smooching, I've always liked her loads. Don't remember much else, loads of coughing old people as it was a matinee and god it was hot in there, someone even had their westie with them, he looked like he was wilting, all fur in the boiling heat. May was about as hot as it got this year!

Great Expectations (BBC2)

It started off well, Young Pip and Magwich and the Fens were all perfect. I've never seen the setting done so well before, well done whoever was in charge of location! Miss Havisham was good too, gross and creepy and weak, really weak, I've seen her played strong too many times and of couse she isn't at all, she's a nut.
Then suddenly Pip grew up and was played not by a normal lad like the lad who played him as a child but by a Robin Hood/Merlin boy-bander with a face that was completely out of the wrong period.
Twenty five years ago the British leads were Anthony Andrews and Nigel Havers types, the guy playing Herbert Pocket, Harry Lloyd would have been cast as the lead not as the bumbling best friend! He was thin and charming and British looking, whereas the boy playing Pip in this Christmas' BBC drama looked like a gay Egyptian.
I mean why go the whole hog on everything else then totally miscast the lead? Everyone else was good! A good British character actor everywhere you looked and Justin Fucking Bieber standing in the middle of it all!
Anyway, they rushed it all, it should have been over four episodes.
And what the hell? Why was there a happy ending?! He's supposed to realise Estella is a bitch! Not live happily ever after with her! Ugh!! Crap.

The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff (BBC4)

Words cannot describe how disappointed I was by this.
I love Bleak Expectations on the radio but it's transfer to TV was utterly dire and lost all humour it once had.
Only one small joke made me laugh and that's because I like Una Stubbs.

Jane Eyre (2011)

I had doubts about yet another Jane Eyre, especially as I love love LOVE the 2006 BBC version. But the trailer, though it looked practically the same as the BBC one, or maybe because it looked the same, made me want to watch it.

I wondered would it be exactly the same, would they deliver all the lines and shoot it the same. They didn't. It is so worth seeing! It's great!

The only bit that I found very similar was the school bit with Jane's pal dying, but I suppose you can't do that much different.

I loved how they mixed it up a bit, put all the boring St John bits at the beginning, that's the bastard about the series, episode three is SO boring because it's just St John talking. Ugh! So that was great, breaking those chapters up with Jane's childhood and then ploughing into the sexy story!

The sexual tension was so well done! Bloody loved it! Got me all riled up. Jane seemed hardly to say anything through the whole film which really worked and she looked like a munter (I thought much more than Ruth Wilson's duckface) and Rochester was an angry shouty bastard but he was serious and it made me realise how camp Toby Stephens is! They cut a load of it though (not much of Mrs Rochester freaking Jane out and Grace Pool wasn't even in it), there was far too much Judi Dench and I can't stand her, it was a serious story but they some how managed to give Judi Dench loads of jokes- It's like they wrote more lines for her.

The ice queen was far too cute played by lovely Imogen Poots and the little French girl was too sweet as well, she is AWESOME in the 2006 version, she grates on you as much as she does on Rochester, love it! Anyway, thumbs up, well done to everyone doing Yorkshire accents too.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)

Ok. I didn't want to see it, but then last sunday BBC2 showed Curse of the Black Pearl and I watched it and loved it- because it is good. Then I got in the mood for the second one, because I actually really liked that one, the special effects were great and Norrington was in it a lot looking handsome- also Jonathan Pryce did some hero-ing, helping Elizabeth escape, and I liked that. The second film is actually my favourite one. That's why I was so utterly disappointed by the third film, it was all over the place and lacked both Norrington and JP.
So I didn't want to see this one, what if it was as bad- or worse!- than the third film?! But we'd watched them all last week and after seeing the third one again I realised Pirates 4 couldn't possibly be as bad as the third one! So we went to see it.
And it was ok, a good adventure plot and lots of swashbuckling. It wasn't as terrible as three but it wasn't as enjoyable as the other two, it just seemed to lack feeling.
It lacked this because Jack did not have his pals around him, he had no one to banter with, when Gibbs showed up it was great, they were great together, funny and warm, but when he was among the new cast it was like he was alone, he never connected with them and as we learned from the third film, Jack on his own is not funny, he's boring and he looked bored in this film.
Blackbeard's beard wasn't as terrifying as it could be, Penelope Cruz was ok and came closest to being the replacement pal that Jack desperately needed. The missionary and the mermaid seemed superfluous, Jack never spoke to them so we the audience never cared- The films are about Jack! He wasn't even a Captain in this film! That's like, 80% of who that character is! no wonder he seemed so lost!
Anyway, the thing I actually enjoyed in the film was Barbossa, who I never really cared about, it's just in this one he seems to have the most thought out plot! He looks to have gone straight but he's joined the navy to get revenge for losing his ship (and leg), he gets his revenge in the end and gets a much better ship so his plot was all nicely tied up. When he was with Jack the banter returned. Also he had fun scenes with the British, Uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths) as the King and two officers from the other films (the only returning characters aside from Jack, Barbossa and Gibbs!) Gillette and Groves- not sure which is which.
So I was happy to see the handsome officer from the first film, the one who stands behind Norrignton and says "That has to be the best pirate I've ever seen!" I always wondered why he didn't get more screentime, he was there throughout the film and soon became my favourite character- though as soon as he took his wig off I was glad he got shot at the end, good profile and eyebrows, hair not good. Sorry mate.

A Dance to the Music of Time (channel 4, 1997)

Like a cross between Brideshead Revisited and the Camomile Lawn in that some of the characters are charming like in Brideshead and then all the actors were replaced by older actors who look and act nothing like them in the final episode- like in the Camomile Lawn.
BUT the Camomile Lawn did this much more successfully because throughout the wartime episodes they cut to the 1980s scenes and showed some of the older-selves so that the audience had time to grasp who was who, also they used Jennifer Ehle's mum, Rosemary Harris, to play her so that was really good casting! It was only at Max's funeral when we had to believe that formerly handsome young secondary characters had grown into the most hideous of old extras that it disappointed- this is what happened in ADttMoT, except it wasn't secondary characters, it was the lead.
My mum told me that when my parents first watched it they honsetly believed that the actor who had played the lead (James Purefoy) through the first three films must have died. It was the only explanation they could think of to why they suddenly had another actor play him! That's how much it disturbs the flow of the story! Ok, this might sound odd but here's the real issue, it wasn't that they replaced the actors- it was that they replaced SOME of the actors and put aging makeup on others, and it seems completely at random! James Purefoy suddenly turns into John Standing, Miranda Richardson gets no age makeup and is the same age in 1943 as she is in 1963, Simon Russell Beale is Simon Russell Beale aged 14 to 84 but with bad prosthetics. Why replace some actors and not others!?
Ho hum, I'll get away from the casting problems and onto the story problems.
The Camomile Lawn has no real story, it's about a bunch of inbred poshies bonking during the war. This pretends to have a story but is basically the same sort of thing but with less bonking. I compared it to Brideshead because it follows some boys from school after the first war, Oxford, through their jobs and up to the second war. Also there's the usual characters, James Purefoy as the lead is the Charles, Paul Rhys is the Sebastain but there's also a rake and a fop and a marxist amongst the bunch of pals AND, most importantly there is the brown-nosing flesh-crawly creep, Widmerpool (Simon Russell Beale). It was like watching Brideshead if suddenly Brideshead was not about beauty but about that fat fuck Boy Molcaster and all the boring shit he got up to!
Simon Russell Beale was really good as the creep but- and I know this sounds weird, considering he's so theatre famous- I've never seen him in anything before and I've always assumed he would be like that in every role he plays. He has never appealed to me, he practically lives at the National Theatre, collecting awards a dozen at a time every year, but I just have no desire to see him or any of the plays he appears in. Obviously if he decided to do a play with young Rory Kinnear I would have to make an exception and maybe I'd see the light, but until then he just makes my flesh crawl and this show really didn't help.
In conclusion Paul Rhys was the best thing in it, his Sebastain-esq story was extremely tragic and well acted, his end was horrific.

Les Aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec (2010)

I imagine if I had read the comic, rather than just looking at the collection of cards that my dad has taken from the comic strips (he's a fan of the artist Jacques Tardi- French comic artists are way better than American), I might have known to expect such a weird film. There were no pictures of the pterodactyl in my dad's cards! Just Adele with her tits out!

Anna thought it was terrible but I enjoyed it, if it wasn't for the hatpin incident, the tits (French film) and the Egyptian mummies it would have been a good kids' adventure film! Anyway, I liked her. Her face was great.

Old Reviews 2: Rebecca (a Glasgow Theatre, March 2005)

Play time! I went to the theatre and everyone else in the audience was over 65, millions of old women, probably Nigel Havers' groupies, and no one my age- or even under 65 to be honest. I had a good seat in the Dress Circle in the middle near the front. The play started and Nigel is just so thin. And as I remembered the story I thought 'This is such a terrible play for him to be doing', in the whole first act it's like his wife died and he never got over it. Nigel's wife just died!! (last year) This must be awful for him, why is he doing it!?'
So Anyway, the girl playing the new wife was Paul McGann's love interest in that Poirot episode that I watched with Lauren one night!! The set was kind of cool too just a screen with different backdrops projected on it, but props were very minimalistic.
I liked the smooching scenes.
I bumped into Evil Dave on the way home, apparently food makes him burn things so he's not coming to the meal, but he is coming to the party afterwards.

2011 Author's Note: So begins my friendship with Evil Dave.

The King's Speech (2011)

And speaking of ensemble pieces... What a vast array of British talent in the background of The King's Speech! Yes, Colin Firth was brilliant (even in the mandatory British film sweary routine- fuck bugger fuck tits, etc.) Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter were their usual good support but look at the rest! And I'm not talking about Timothy Spall (they wheel him out for every Brit-flick) or Gambo or Luvvie Jacobi, I'm talking about Anthony Andrews! Adrian Scarborough! Claire Bloom! Jennifer Ehle! All these people lurking in the background having barely a line between them!
Bertie Portal stood behind Colin Firth in practically every scene! That man is a joy on stage! It's ridiculous!
I loved spotting them all and knowing their names, I am such a geek.

Small Island (2009)

I finally got round to watching this series last night with Anna. I watched half of the first episode when it was on but gave up after Ruth Wilson was dancing about in the air raid, I tried to remember why I stopped watching it, because really it was ok. I think I stopped because it was on the week that the Cambridge boiler was broken and it was just too cold to sit in the living room and watch it!

Anyway, funny that I should review this today as yesterday my pal Susie reviewed the book on her blog! She totally slated it! And it's all true, but as a 3 hour drama it was much better I reckon, for a start there are some fabulous shots of Jamaica and the rest of the art direction was fab too, it looked great! Then there's Naomie Harris and David Oyelowo both brilliant, they were why I enjoyed it. Ruth wasn't great and I'm usually a fan but she just wasn't right for the boring part and I didn't think her accent was up to much- it seemed a waste of Cumberbatch too but the guy playing his shellshocked father was good.

Anyway, like Susie said, the story was nothing special but I thought the two leads were very good- especially Naomie- and it made me want to go to Jamaica.

Elizabeth (1998) and Elizabeth: the Golden Age (2007)

Anna told me just as I was away to watch these films "Look out for Tom Hardy and Lilly Allen, they make cameos."

Alfie Allen was in the first one and apparently Lilly was in the background of a scene, I didn't see her, Tom Hardy on the other hand was in a TV drama with Ann-Marie Duff as HM. But because I was on the look out for Tom and Lilly I noticed loads of other folk I might not have seen if I'd just been paying attention to the plot!

David Threllfall as John Dee, Adam Godley as Geoffrey Rush's brother and David Armand as Geoff's spy!

Who's David Armand?

"She's a witch!!!!" from Sorry I've Got no Head.

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (RSC 1980)

I have finished watching Nicholas Nickleby, all eight hours are gone. What the heck am I going to do tomorrow?! I am quarrantined with some sort of flu, the second bout of tonsilitis in a month is over and has been replaced with this new sickness. Bloody irritating. But if I hadn't been ill for so long I don't know when I'd have got around to watching this.
And what a rollercoaster it was! It was beautiful! I wish I had been there! In the theatre that is, seeing it live, not living a Bleak Expectations sort of life (series four is currently playing on Radio 4). The cast were amazing, I'll get to that in a minute, I just want to stress first how perfect the production was in every sense; music, costumes, stage direction and design, wow! I'm so glad it was filmed and that thirty years on I got to see it.
Ah, now, actor-fest! That will cheer a sickly Amy, spotting character actors and trying to place them. I loved John McEnery most of all, he played a number of outrageous drunk characters, including the madly dressed Mr Mantalini, you know I have a weakness for charming drunkards. Bob Peck as the heroic yorkshireman and the villain after Kate was brilliant in both roles, I liked him. Alun Armstrong was his usual, but I expect this was before we knew what his usual was, so he was really fantastic as disgusting arsehole Mr Squeers, I liked how the audience cheered both times he got the crap kicked out of him but weren't really involved in the rest of the eight hour recording at all! An assortment of brilliant comic turns from ladies and Suzanne Bertish and Janet Dale and damn near everyone else too!
And the leads, David Threlfall very moving as Smike (not nearly as annoying as I've seen him portrayed before), Roger Rees, who- being a bear of very little brain and not keeping up with the West Wing- I recognised instantly from Cheers, was excellently foolish and angry in the title role and as his sister Emily Richard was equally charming and tragic. Best of all the Nicklebys however for me was Ralph, the cold, evil uncle! (Good old Dickens) Played by John Woodvine - the only cast member of David Tennant's RSC Hamlet who I actually saw walking around Stratford, oh wait I saw Tennant too, he was eating dinner in the same restaurant as me, I was more excited by Woodvine though!- he was my favourite. He handled the unravelling of the character very well and delivered a bonus performance as the opera singer in the show Kate went to see!
And unfortunately, though I found Edward Petherbridge's Tony nominated performance of Newman Noggs brilliantly entertaining I couldn't help thinking that with his mad hair, grim countenance, sickly palour and pinkish nose that in my present state I look exactly like him.

Mad Men Series four (BBC4)

I have to say that this series of Mad Men has been my favourite. Probably because I watched it like you're supposed to watch a series, one a week for thirteen weeks making me think about it a lot more than the usual buy-and-watch-in-a-day I went through with the first two series and then watch-in-the-wrong-order I did with series three.

My pal Suzie told me she didn't like this series as much, maybe because it wasn't as safe in it's formulaic setting like the first three, the work at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce [& Campbell!] was not stable so all the characters became even more unstable than usual- but I love character! So this series full of everyone's characters freaking out, breaking down and making out was just a joy!! Jared Harris' episodes were brilliant, Joan and Roger, well, I'm all about that! Pete, excellent and Peggy! Peggy is so flipping ace! I love her more each series.

Bit of a strange series finale, not as exciting as the past finales have been but I'm still excited to see what happens next for Don and his new fiancee... He made the right choice, I think.

Secretly I think the reason why Suzie didn't like this series is because her favourite character, Betty, was shown as the total fucking fruitcake and uber-bitch we all know she is all the way through!! Ugh, she's such a loathsome character! So well written and acted!

The English Patient (1996)

The English Patient is my sister's favourite film, she carries this picture of Ralph Fiennes and Kirsten Scott-Thomas dancing together in her wallet. My favourite film is The Elephant Man, I do not carry a picture of John Merrick.

I think what Anna likes about The English Patient is the passion between the lovers, it's pretty intense! I think she likes how real and horrifically painful their love seems to be- and it helps that they're both gorgeous! The film is gorgeous, it looks beautiful and it sounds beautiful, it has a really good musical score. It's a tragic romance and that's what Anna likes to write about.

So what do I like to write about? Isolation and loneliness, horrible nasty bastards and drunks. I love The Elephant Man, it has the real life tragedy yeah, I like tragedy too but more importantly it has over the top theatrical performances, which I adore, it has a good musical score and it looks like a black and white illustration. I watched Anna's favourite film with her last night but no one ever wants to watch The Elephant Man with me.

The Devil's Backbone (2001)

Lauren and I watched a lot of films last night, Green Card, Three Men and a Baby, Lesbian Vampire Killers, Sleepy Hollow and The Devil's Backbone. Jeez, that is a lot, we did have the most appalling hangovers though, so it was ok, and we were in bed by 0ne (that gives you a good idea what time we started watching).

Anyway, apart from Lesbian Vampire Killers I had seen everything before- Three Men and a Baby is so sexist! How did I never notice?! It was horrible, like feminism was something that happened to other people. Luckily we made chocolate brownies and had dinner with that one just playing in the background. Sleepy Hollow is great fun, I love a good British ensemble! Claire Skinner was in it! Never noticed her before! Lauren saw that The Devil's Backbone was on Film4 after Sleepy Hollow and said "that's a great film!" so I said; "let's go!" We had bought the Shining and planned to watch that as our scary movie finale but I'd have much rather seen something I hadn't seen before and Lauren was asleep anyway so I watched it quietly, spellbound.

Much better than Pan's Labyrinth! Way better! So well acted!! It was scary but compelling, the supernatural element didn't get in the way of the Spanish Civil War story at all! I was gripped by both stories, more by the real one though- I did find the ghost boy a bit terrifying so I was glad that it mostly focused on the relationships of all the alive people in the school!

A young man to make out with and an older man for poetry? I get it.

Danton's Death by Georg Büchner (National Theatre)

Tobes was his usual handsome, charming, brutish self as Danton but the real stand out performance was creepy, calculating, repressed Elliot Levey as Robespierre. Man, he was horrifyingly cold!! He even got booed at the end when the actors took their bows, which luckily he found quite amusing.

Great production- terrifyingly real guillotining at the end!

Cold Comfort Farm (1995)

I don't know why I never got around to reviewing Soccer-Aid on here, that was the last thing I watched on TV and really enjoyed! I always enjoy Cold Comfort Farm. Every time Anna and I have a visitor we educate them in the ways of the world through DVDs, usually with a Bronte TV drama to accompany their inevitable trip to Haworth and then after a walk in the countryside around our house Cold Comfort is usually (appropriately) viewed.

Anna's guest was American Maddy, she is not the first American to be subjected to Cold Comfort and Jane Eyre (Ruth Wilson & Toby Stephens), next thing Maddy knows she'll be sat in front of Brideshead Revisited or the complete Blackadder, that's what I did to my American...

This is going to be a bold statement: I like Cold Comfort Farm as much as I like Withnail & I- and not just because some of it is filmed in the same tea room-it is all extremely quotable. It is of course almost word perfect to the book but the casting is what really makes it a joy every six-months (I could watch it every week I reckon). It is an all-star cast, but none of them probably as massive in 1995 as they are now. And it is the role, out of all he has played on screen, that Rufus Sewell is most perfect in, the role that he should have lived, hell, if he really was Seth in 1930 he would have been a HUGE movie star. The way they shoot his scenes are brilliantly funny, he is perfect for that role. Le sigh! And lead Kate Beckinsale is adorable, if she'd have stayed in Britain she wouldn't have all the fame and riches that she has now in Hollywood but she would have continued to shine in lead roles in TV drama, her film roles of the last ten years have been nothing special, look how bloody funny and sharp she was in this! Jesus fuck! Brits are wasted in America!

Anyway, I like word perfect adaptations of good books, this one is one of the best (and the bits they changed I don't care about! Rennet and Reuben are good together!). I even like Stephen Fry's comic turn, though I suppose it was made before he was on EVERY channel EVERY night in self-indulgent TV documentaries.