Wet weekend

To the flicks this rainy weekend to see the new Ken Loach film, The Angels' Share.

It's wonderful and I can't recommend it enough. Broadly, it's a comedy about friendship and love, whisky, kilts and violence. If you enjoy watching This is England on telly, you'll love this movie.

At the end of the film, the audience broke into spontaneous applause. I can't remember the last time that happened at the flicks. 

And then to the National Glass Centre in Sunderland to see the final year glass and ceramics degree show. There was some amazing work, most of it well above the maturity you'd expect at undergraduate level. Gorgeous glass from some very talented Sunderland University students.

View it until June 22nd. Miss it at your disadvantage.

The Artist

To the flicks to see The Artist. It's a brand new, black and white silent movie and it's fantastic. I can't recommend it highly enough and I'd love to see it again.

Watching it silent and in black and white makes you aware, much more than in a regular film, of the music, the lighting, the shapes, the textures, the cinematography and of course the acting.  It really is a brilliant film and if you're wondering whether to go and see it or not - do. It's just what's needed to clear the January blues, a real 'feel good' movie and worthy of all the awards it's now won.

The Girl who went to the pictures

To the flicks this week to see the final film adapated from the Steig Larsson trilogy: "Girl with the dragon tattoo / Girl who played with fire / Girl who kicked the hornets' nest."

Having loved the novels, now I've seen all three films in their original Swedish with English sub-titles, I've got closure. All of them read, all of them seen, all of them enjoyed a huge amount.

It's hard to know how the Hollywood versions of the three films, currently in production, will beat these Swedish originals as they've been so damn good and true to the books.  Actress Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander will be impossible to beat.

Scott Pilgrim vs The World

To the flicks this week to see Scott Pilgrim vs The World and what a cracking comic film it was. Apparantly Scott Pilgrim is a comic book hero but I'm not young enough or cool enough to have known that. All I do know is that it's a wonderfully funny, clever film, even if my chap and I were the oldest people in the cinema. 

Oh, and we turned down the cashier's offer at the box office (aka the ticket counter beside the pop corn) for a VIP seat at £1.60 extra. VIP seats at the pictures? When did that happen?

At the flicks

Reading Kaz's post here about Saturday mornings at the cinema prompted a rather disturbing memory of my own. I used to go along quite happily each Saturday morning with my mates, my brothers, my brother's mates, to the now long-gone ABC cinema in Sunderland's Park Lane each week to watch Children's Film Foundation films back in the late 1970s. But the disturbing memory was of being pelted on the back of the head by the bad lads who sat at the back of the cinema and threw the shells from whelks (or willeks, as we used to call them) everywhere. The bloody things didn't half hurt if they caught you on the back of the head. Which they often did.

Notes on a Scandal

Went to the flicks to see Notes on a Scandal. I’d read Zoe Heller’s book so long ago that I couldn’t remember the story but it didn’t matter as this was a very good film standing on its own merit. It was dark, intense and moody and whatever you think of Judi Dench (and I know my boyfriend doesn’t rate her and took some persuading to come and see this film with me) there’s no denying what an amazing actress she is. Our shared bag of Revels were well lovely too. I liked this film a lot although not as much as I enjoyed this one last year which won’t half take some beating.