Fans Have Asked for Their Money Back After Seeing The Artist
It is being reported that fans are asking for their money back after seeing The Artist, because it’s silent.
It appeared that most of the requests were in Liverpool. Knowing the city well, it was probably a try on or people being funny.
As it was at the Odeon, which is a national chain, I suspect that the cinema staff were less attuned to the quality and nature of the film, than they were in the Barbican.
ITV Chooses the Wrong Film
Today on ITV3 at 12:55, you could have watched that glorious film, Carry on Cruising.
Isn’t it rather a bad choice considering the news at the moment? But then ITV doesn’t have a Taste and Tact Department.
The Artist at the Barbican
I went to the Barbican Centre last night to see The Artist.
It was well worth seeing and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
It is very much a feel-good film.
Perhaps, I’m being sentimental, but I also felt it was about how you get over loss. The main character had lost his career because of talking films and was very much on the point of suicide after a downward spiral. He was in the end saved by his dog and another actor, Peppi.
I hope it wins the Oscar for best film, but will this happen as the film is French?
All I want now, is my Peppi to come along.
McQueen on the Green
I took this picture as I passed the Screen on Islington Green.
McQueen on the Green
It’s nice to see humour and creativity in something as mundane as a cinema advert. I can’t imagine a major chain doing something like this.
Miners Have a Go at the Iron Lady
The BBC has reported that the Iron Lady film has had protests in Chesterfield, which lost their coal mines, when she was Prime Minister.
My view is straightforward. Coal is a dirty fuel, that causes lots of ill health and is a major cause of global warming. Even with the small number of pits we have now, the death of miners is not unknown.
Mrs. Thatcher may have been the Prime Minister, who actually shut the mines, but in my view it was done about twenty years at least too late.
North Sea oil and gas, gave us the opportunity to abandon coal production and it should have been done in a managed and gradual way. I’d love to know, whether Prime Ministers before Mrs. Thatcher had thought of shutting the mines. After all, when the railways abandoned steam engines, a lot of coal wasn’t needed any more. So do those who want more mining jobs, want steam trains as well? And domestic coal fires, which created the smog of the sixties? Many days, I had to walk home from school in thick pea soup.
I should also say, that I’ve met quite a few people, from mining families and all were advised to get an education and avoid going down the pits.
How have other countries weaned themselves off coal? I found this article about the rise and fall of the German coal industry. It seems that German industry has managed to survive the loss of its prime energy source.
I suspect they have managed the run down of their industry much better. I can remember a proposal in The Guardian to use redundant miners to insulate our rather poor housing stock. Nothing happened, as far as I know!
We don’t learn either! Most of our vehicles are powered by fossil fuel, which don’t help the stopping of global warming. So when we bring forward proposals to help like wind, wave and tidal power, new electricity networks and rail lines, the Nimbys come out in force.
We can’t have it both ways, even if the Americans and the Chinese think they can.
I think I’ll prefer to go to hell on my two legs, a bicycle or a New Bus for London, rather than a fossil-fuel powered handcart.
The Man Who Stabbed Errol Flynn
Bob Anderson has just died and his obituary is in The Times today. He had been an Olympic fencer and fencing coach until he started coaching actors in films.
Reading his credits, you get the impression that he was involved in organising the sword fights in every film that had one in the last few decades. He was also a double for Darth Vader in the Star Wars films.
In one incident he actually stabbed Errol Flynn. However, they remained good friends.
The Ladykillers
I went to see The Ladykillers last night.
Shaftesbury Avenue is very easy for me, as I just got on a 38 bus all the way. Although, I did think of walking the last kilometre or so, as the traffic was so bad, as all the world and his wife, seemed to be driving into the West End.
The play was really worth seeing, with one of the most spectacular and innovative sets, I’ve ever seen in the theatre. The story and script stuck very much to that of the film, although with a few modern changes. I hadn’t realised before but the original very English screenplay had been written by an American, William Rose, who dreamt the whole thing and then wrote it down with the help of his wife, when he awoke. He later went on to write Guess Who’s coming to Dinner?
The Hitchcock Gallery at Leytonstone Station
I’d never been to Leytonstone station, that I can remember until Wednesday. So I hadn’t seen the gallery of mosaics in the subway dedicated to Alfred Hitchcock and his work.
There are always things to delight like this, as one travels around London.
An Old Cinema in Liverpool
Liverpool is a city, where I can walk about the city centre and find loads of memories from my time in the 1960s, there both post and after the time I met C.
An Old Cinema in Liverpool
This cinema in Lime Street, was a bit smaller than most of the others and generally showed less mainstream films. I’m trying to remember what I saw there with C, although I can remember seeing The Collector there with another girl.
One memory of the cinema was that in 1968 or so, a film called Sixteen or something like that was released. It was a feature length film made with sex education in mind. You had the strange site of nuns herding school-girls into the cinema to see it.
I wonder if it had any positive effects. No-one knew what the nuns thought of it.
London’s Floating Cinema
When I was watching the MS Deutshland leave, there was an interloper.
London's Floating Cinema
It is London’s floating cinema, that cruises the canals and rivers in the east of the city.
The Anonymous Widower 