While we’re away lotus-eating on Crete, supping and splashing about, here are a few random snaps of Norwich, ‘a fine city’ according to the civic slogan – to remind us that, as Dorothy said in Oz, there’s no place like home. As dedicated friends of Dorothy, we are in full agreement.
We took our seats at Cinema City for Nothing Like a Dame, a film that captures four great thespian dames – Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Joan Plowright and Eileen Atkins – in conversation. We had great expectations and we weren’t disappointed. All the director had to do was point the camera, say ‘action’, sit back and watch them rock. And rock they did with gossipy warmth, wit and insight, humour, naughtiness and modesty – without a hint of the pompous luvviness you might expect from these titans of the stage. It really hit me when I released that Joan Plowright, who could out-act anyone with just a look, is now blind. I had no idea. Despite this, the film was a voyeuristic joy, and it was a privilege to see it.
And so, in the best pansies tradition, here’s the trailer…
Middle England or middle America? Imelda Staunton or Frances McDormand? Who could choose? Not us, so we did both.
First up, Imelda was finding her feet in Finding Your Feet, ably supported by a sterling cast of foot-tapping veterans. The trailer doesn’t really do justice to this winter warmer of knobs and snobs, free love and last chances. Charming, witty, a little bit sad and very, very British, I’m so glad I didn’t let the underpowered promo put me off.
And what can anyone say about Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri? I’ll leave it to Ann Hornaday at the Washington Post who wrote…
The film is as dark as they come, a pitch-black, often laceratingly funny look at human nature at its most nasty, brutish and dim-witted.
Amen to that. Frances McDormand bristles with benign menace and the film is pitilessly brilliant, blurring the lines between right and wrong. Oh, and there’s an awful lot of swearing in it too. Here’s the trailer. Best change channels now if you’re offended by the C word.
Liam suffers from acid reflux – indigestion from Hell – which he controls with early dinners and prescription drugs. In rare cases, the condition can lead to oesophageal cancer, something most sufferers don’t know they’ve got until it’s way too late. Early diagnosis improves the odds massively. If only there was an effective screening programme for those most at risk.
Enter stage left, the boffins from the University of Cambridge. They’re trialling a low-cost diagnostic tool which, if successful, could be the answer. Enter stage right, Liam the lab rat. He swallowed a large pill attached to a length of twine. Going down was the easy bit (isn’t it always?). The pill dissolved to reveal what Liam described as a Brillo pad which was tugged up through his gullet, scraping the sides as it travelled. It was quite a performance by all accounts.
To get over the shock of the drama, Liam took himself off to Cinema City to watch Stephen Sondheim’s Follies broadcast live from the National Theatre to 2,500 venues globally. Liam is a huge Sondheim fan. I’m not, so I didn’t crash the party. The last time we watched a live performance beamed to cinemas was Billy Elliot. Now that’s my kind of musical. It’s a great way for the fiscally-challenged to watch a top-notch West End show at a knock-down price.
I joined Liam later for a bottle. He was delirious after Sondheim – almost losing his mind with the pleasure – and needed a large red to bring him down to planet Earth. Throat well lubricated, we raised a glass to the miracle of medical science. It’s keeping us alive, after all. And now we’ve both done our civic duty for the greater good, we’re feeling rather smug.
Cheers!
We’ve seen a few films recently, most notably God’s Own Country, a windswept tale of romance and raunch between a monosyllabic, emotionally-repressed Yorkshire hill farmer (Josh O’Connor – the literary one from the Durrells) and an enlightened and worldly-wise labourer from Romania (a superbly self-possessed Alec Secăreanu). It’s a kinda coming out tale for the Brexit generation and a tad ironic given the reception gay people usually receive in Romania. Liam thought it was all a bit too Wuthering Heights. I enjoyed the desolation but only because it was finally relieved by a bit of boy-gets-boy at the end. The critics praised the film but damned the redemption. Critics seem to love grim tales that leave you reaching for the gin and pills.
We also saw The Party, a dark satirical farce filmed entirely in black and white about a soiree of smug, fizz-swigging Islington intellectuals whose lives (and leftie credentials) visibly unravel before your eyes. They wriggle while the vol-au-vents burn. I really wanted to like this film but didn’t. There were some great lines…
“You’re a first-class lesbian and a second-rate thinker,”
…and a great twist at the end but it all got a bit too slapstick – and not half as clever as it thinks it is. I nearly reached for the gin and pills.
And then came the main event. Murder on the Orient Express is arguably Agatha Christie’s most ingenious plot. I’ve seen the 1974 star-studded version many times so I know whodunit but did I care? Kenneth Branagh’s re-make (both as director and as Poirot – the Belgian sleuth, sporting gravity-defying face furniture) may be slightly less stellar, cast-wise, but it more than made up for it with spectacle and opulent period detail, dishing up characters less cardboard cut-out than the usual Christie servings. The famously snowed-in train provided an afternoon of pure escapism that really dried out a rainy day. It sparkled – from the dramatic Istanbul skyline to Branagh’s anguished Poirot. Later, we raised a gin or two to the new Hercule. No pills required.
Billed as the road movie for the silver generation, ‘The Time of Their Lives’ stars Collins’ Joan and Pauline supported by ex-Italian stallion, Franco Nero. Clapped-out former screen goddess, Helen (played by Joan – no typecasting there then), hearing about the death of an old squeeze from her glory days, escapes the knacker’s yard, determined to ham it up at the funeral in France. Along the way, she picks up dowdy and downtrodden housewife Priscilla (Pauline) and the grey fugitives race côte à côte in a stolen Renault Captur. Franco Nero is the old stud in a battered 2CV with the hots for Pauline. There’s a full-frontal scene where he jumps naked into a pool. Now I know what perked up Vanessa Redgrave all those years ago when she played Guinevere to his considerable Lancelot in Camelot.
‘The Time of Their Lives’ has shades of ‘Thelma and Louise’ and ‘Shirley Valentine’ about it but, sadly, it’s not a patch on either. A tighter script and better lines would have helped. For us, the funniest moment came when the Norfolk broad in the row behind us dropped her gin – over her lap, over her seat and over her giggly companion. And with the best will in the world, Trump-loving ‘national treasure’, Joan, can’t match her fellow theatrical dames for pathos (or politics). Nevertheless, it was a charming excursion and diverting way to pass a Sunday afternoon.
Lauded as a return to the great Hollywood musicals of yesteryear, the very thought of ‘La La Land’ made Liam go weak at the knees. Must be the gay gene. Either that or arthritis. So we sank into our comfy seats at Cinema City, big drinks in hand and surrounded by the wealthy wrinklies of the county for a grey hair-raising, foot-tapping, old school show. Sadly, for me, the hype didn’t quite live up to the reality. The plot – a love affair between a failed actress and her down at heel jazz player – was engaging enough. I’m partial to a simple boy meets girl romance (or boy meets boy, girl meets girl for that matter). But the ambitious and much-praised opening danceathon at a traffic jam on a LA freeway was underwhelming and the other song and dance routines peppering the film seemed a bit random. Emma Stone was dazzling in the lead but Ryan Gosling as her beau, while very nice to look at and not at all bad on his feet, was well, flat, acting-wise. The film was atmospheric and partially redeemed by the closing ‘what if?’ scene so I suppose the moral of the story is that love doesn’t always conquer all.
With a full chorus of rave reviews and gongs galore, the film will undoubtedly conquer all at the Oscars so what do I know? And Liam loved it.
Here’s the official trailer. It’s better than the movie.
Was it? Well… yes and no. Naturally, we had to see it and naturally it was accompanied by a glass of fizz (that would be Prosecco – our austerity-era budget doesn’t quite stretch to Bolli). The history of transferring much-revered TV sitcoms to the big screen is littered with ignoble defeat. For me, the Ab Fab experience was more of an inconclusive skirmish. The plot was paper thin, just a flimsy device for the outrageous antics of Edina and Patsy. But then, the strength of Ab Fab was always in the characters rather than the storyline. I did find the endless rollcall of celebrity cameos a bit wearing and the humour, though funny in parts, more miss than hit.
But I couldn’t help empathising with poor Eddy, way past her dump-by date and hopelessly floundering in a multi-media world she no longer understood. Maybe she should have sold the big house in Holland Park and retired to a converted cowshed in the French hills? A few years in Provence? There’s no story in that, is there?
It was last knockings for Eddie the Eagle as we took our plush seats at Cinema City. The film’s been out for a while and we were two of four in the audience. For those unfamiliar with the story, the film chronicles the flight of Michael ‘Eddie’ Edwards who battled against considerable adversity and mean-minded ridicule to compete for Britain as a ski jumper at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics. He was the first British competitor in the sport for six decades – hardly surprising given they don’t get much snow in Cheltenham where he grew up. The stuffed shirts of the Olympic establishment loathed him and did their very best to knock him off piste. But the crowd loved the plucky little fella with his jam jar glasses, silly tash and aquiline antics. Everyone likes a trier and try he did. Eddie may not have kept his eyes shut as he chucked himself off the 90 metre ramp, but I did. He came last in both his events. It didn’t matter. A star (or sorts) was born.
I suspect the movie stretched the facts a tad but I was hooked right from the opening scenes as the little boy in callipers dreamed of Olympic glory and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Sheer joy.
A foul afternoon of driving rain pushed us through the doors of Cinema City to catch ‘My Old Lady’, starring Kevin Kline, Kristen Scott Thomas and the incomparable Maggie Smith. We sat in the back row and watched the film above the nodding heads in fifty shades of grey. Kevin Kline plays a penniless, ex-alcoholic, never-to-be-published New York author who inherits a rambling run down Parisian apartment from his philandering father. He thinks he’s in the money but finds out that he’s also inherited a sitting tenant in an equity release arrangement, French-style; she can’t be evicted and he must pay rent to her. Step forward Dame Maggie as the feisty old madame with her foot in the door and Kirsten Scott Thomas as her brittle spinster daughter. It’s a salutary tale of how your parents fuck you up (along the lines of the Philip Larkin poem) and how not to let the truth get in the way of a fine romance. Set in the trendy Marais district of Paris, the BBC production oozes cool Gallic va va voom laced with arty pretensions. The film has had mixed reviews but we found it well worth stepping out of the rain for.
Perking the Pansies 