Le Ballon Rouge

I'm surprised that this was the first time I'd seen this 1956 film.  Beautiful film shots, as the boy becomes possessed by or the possessor of a balloon with a will of its own.  An odd, poetic short film.

Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore - a review in episodes . . .

I downloaded this after visiting Thomas Tresham's unfinished summer lodge, Lyveden New Bield, earlier this month.

June 7 2013:
I started reading last night, and am finding the first section pretty hard going. The idiosyncratic representation of the language and thought processes of "a half-witted man-child",  as Neil Gaimann describes the narrator of this section almost gets in the way of what he is saying. I'm hoping it doesn't go on too long. So far it reminds me , but only a little, of Thursbitch by Alan Garner, which I love.

June 9th: I'm still struggling through this bit, and not sure how much of the story I'm following. Keep skipping pieces and getting annoyed with the syntax. 

June 10th:
I skipped all of that bit - not sure the next section is going to grab me either. Things can only get better - I hope.

September 15th:

I think I shall not return to read the book.

Les Miserables

I started to read the book, but Victor Hugo goes on a bit for 21st century tastes.  I think the film covered the chapters I've read in about ten minutes.

Not impressed though - too sentimental for my tastes, too dark and dismal in colouring, and I can't remember any of the songs - they sounded the same to me.

Some pretty people, and a bit of comic relief with the landlord and his lady, but all in all, I'm glad I have seen it, and even gladder that it's over.

Drop Dead Fred (1991)

A quote from the Wikipedia entry:
It was savaged by critics; Leonard Maltin stated that "Phoebe Cates' appealing performance can't salvage this putrid mess ... recommended only for people who think nose-picking is funny."  

Well - I guess I think nose-picking is funny! A light-hearted film with serious undertones about a poltergeist-like imaginary friend, who returns to help Lizzie when her marriage breaks down.  An entertaining film to while away an evening. Main characters played by Phoebe Cates and Rik Mayall.  Now, how come an American kid has an English imaginary friend?

The Help (2012)

An engaging, too good-to-be-true, movie about racial attitudes to black maids in Mississippi in the 1960s.
Very watchable, and some lovely performances, particularly from the two main black characters,  Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minnie (Octavia Spencer),  the white ultra-racist, Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard) , and the white-trash Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain). Skeeter (Emma Stone) is a young writer who initiates the plot.  She  persuades the black maids to  tell their side of the story. From this slightly improbably, but inspiring premise flows the comedy and the seriousness of the film.
In the end I found it a bit lightweight.

Jane Eyre (1940 version)

Very rushed through and a lot of the essential story line and development omitted. With a young  Elizabeth Taylor as Helen, the girl who dies of TB in Lowick Hall. Screen play partly by Aldous Huxley.

Verlaine and Rimbaud set to music

Wigmore Hall, Feb 18th 2012.

mf