You may have noticed a sidebar titled 'Watching...' over here >>>>>>>> and it may then be obvious that, along with the multitudes, I have succumbed to the tempation of the £20 Amazon gift voucher if I took out a one month trial subscription to LoveFilm. I could reserve three films in that time and if I didn't like it I could cancel the subscription before I paid the £5.99 fee.
With the £20 Amazon voucher burning a hole in my computer screen I invested in a boxed set of all Jacqueline Du Pre's cello recordings. Seventeen sublime discs which have been playing non-stop in the Bookroom as I work and play.
Now getting to the cinema is quite a palava from here. We do have a local Arts Centre and I know a few people who read here and who love it and support it. I would if the seats were more comfortable, but fifteen minutes into a film my back is killing me, Bookhound's feet are under his chin and we have the sweet paper rustlers fore and aft, so we walk out at the end all irritable and bent double and are hobbling around for a week afterwards. Nearest after that would be Plymouth and not much change from £50 for a night out, so this £5.99 a month for three films arriving in the post and viewed from the comfort of my sofa seemed quite appealing.
I didn't get off to a particularly auspicious start because having settled down to watch The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the first in the Stieg Larsson series, it quickly became apparent that I had ordered The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by mistake, the third and final film in the series. Now this was all fine for me because I had at least read Book One so could get the drift, but I made a quick decision not to own up to Bookhound, who had reluctantly started watching in a fog of confusion and then drifted in and out of consciousness for the rest of the film. So we have made the decision that I won't try and please the pair of us with my selections. I'll just wallow in a vat of nostalgia on a winter's afternoon, with a pot of tea and some knitting, and catch up on everything he hasn't really wanted to see.
My rental list currently stands at fourteen films in the queue and I'm having a lovely time, and I suspect there may only be about two people out there who haven't seen these next two films.
Julie and Julia was a complete delight as a young woman in New York decides, whilst in a spate of the doldrums, to cook every recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Childs within a year and to blog about it. So cue some five hundred recipes, a husband who keeps saying 'You won't put that on the blog will you' and the parallel life of Julia Childs as she was writing the book in the 1950s, and played magnificently by Meryl Streep... and you have the makings of a really enjoyable film, some of which I could identify with (not the recipes, not the book writing). It was delightfully funny and completely absorbing, the lives of two women trying to find their feet in alien worlds, Julia as the travelling diplomat's wife, Julie in a post 9/11 New York city. And with the food as a central character, seriously hilarious when it came to the murder cooking of the lobsters and best not to have any chocolate in the house or there would be precisely none by the end of this film.
The Devil Wears Prada was actually not on my rental list, it's been lurking here for ages, but now that I don't have to ring up a child to tell me how to work the new DVD machine, and having realised it wasn't working because the scart lead had fallen out of the
back. I've been round the back of the television and probed the morass of wires which takes a lot of guts I can tell you, so I'm good to go and getting a bit more adventurous. But it also demonstrates how woefully far behind I am with the film world...2006 to be precise for this one. More Meryl the Magnificent as Miranda Priestly, the glamorously ego-centric editor-in-chief of Runway magazine. Miranda the high-priestess who runs the world fashion scene with a nod, a shake of the head or a pursing of the lips, and inexplicably and most reluctantly takes on a rather geeky-looking deputy personal assistant who to her horror is 'fat' at a size 6 and with little dress sense. Andrea reluctantly starts to fit into a world she has held in disdain, enjoys dressing accordingly whilst being at Miranda's beck and call and unwittingly slaying the opposition, namely the head personal assistant. But of course Andrea will have to decide whether to be true to herself and take arms against a sea of Chanel or live in this overtly aggressive world.
But just how does Meryl the Magnificent do it??
I know she's an actor and that's what they are supposed to do well, but two entirely different film roles played to perfection... the whacky, quirky, eccentric Julia Childs and the cool, elegant understated Miranda Priestly and perfect comic timing in both. And it would seem Meryl can make herself look, sound and talk like just about anyone, we have her much-vaunted take on Margaret Thatcher to come.
Yes, I love our Meryl and I love LoveFilm, here's my rental list so far and I would really welcome some more suggestions from you. I doubt I will have seen it.
The King's Speech
Mildred Pierce
Revolutionary Road (next up)
Enchanted April
A Handful of Dust
Girl With a Pearl Earring
The English Patient (have seen this before but ages ago)
Children of a Lesser God
Vera Drake
Possession
Another Country
A Handful of Dust
Tea With Mussolini
The Wind That Shakes the Barley
Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky
and some of your suggestions copied from comments so you can cut and paste ...thank you!
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Steel Magnolias
A Room with a View
The Flight of the Red Balloon
The Red Balloon
It's Complicated
Strictly Ballroom
Amelie
Big Night
Bull Durham
Good Night and Good Luck
Shadowlands
The Belstone Fox
Tess (Polanski version)
Testament of Youth
Deep Blue Sea
Balck Swan
Archipelago
Bagdad Cafe
Paris Texas
Metropolis
Ran
Hairspray
A Fish Called Wanda
Terminal
Innocence
McCabe and Mrs Miller
Wings of Desire
Bicentennial Man
The Pianist
Life is Beautiful
84 Charing Cross Road
Into the Wild
Mrs Brown
The Bucket List
Chariots of Fire
Remains of the Day
Atonement
Crossing Delancey
The Station Agent
The Visitor
The Reader
An Education
The Chorus
Paint Your Wagon
The Nativity
Living in the Material World
Gosford Park
Winter's Bone
Il Postino
Cinema Paradiso
Priscilla Queen of the Desert
The Shawshank Redemption
Let the Right One In
Truly Madly Deeply
Fanny and Alexander
The Others
Sissi
Out of Africa
Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont
The House of Sand and Fog
The Age of Innocence
Shakespeare in Love
Dirty, Pretty Things
Die Marquise von O
Klute
Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
Hilary and Jackie
Easy Virtue
The Last Station
Eat, Drink, Man, Woman
The Story of the Weeping Camel
Tous les matins du monde
Wings of Desire
Downfall
The Lives of Others
I've loved you so long
Hidden
Notes on a Scandal
Another Year
The American President
Mrs Harris Goes to Paris
Bright Star
Precious
Midnight in Paris
The White Ribbon
Captain Corelli's Mandolin
The September Issue
Mamma Mia
Etre et Avoir
House of Angels
Jour de Fete
M.Hulot's Holiday
Fur
Oscar and Lucinda
Out of Africa
The Illusionist (Sylvain Chomet)
Belville Rendezvous
Max and Mary
As It Is In Heaven
Keeping Mum
The Help
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