h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The Ruling Class.

I really don't know where to begin with this one or what to say about it, other than it's exactly the kind of film I like. I was rather surprised to note that it was made in 1972 - it's so 1960s. It reminds me of films like Wonderwall, The Bedsitting Room, Girl Stroke Boy, The Wrong Box, How I Won the War, Entertaining Mr Sloane and Loot, and The Knack... and How to Get It. Those, and others like them, have a particular feel, a quality that goes beyond their oddness and surreality, which I'm completely unable to explain, but it's something that strikes a chord with me every time.

Lady Claire Gurney: "How do you know you're God?"
Jack Arnold Alexander Tancred Gurney, 14th Earl of Gurney: "Simple. When I pray to Him, I find I am talking to myself."

Oh, yea... that's one of my faves.


I think Netflix recommended I watch Zardoz after that.

Zardoz Yeah, I had that one out last year and reported on it somewhere in the backlogue. It's... pretty awful, but I can understand why they might link it to The Ruling Class. The two films are poles apart in quality though.

For a favourite quote, I can't make up my mind between these three:

"Come, doctor, you said he needed a harsh dose of reality. Well, you can't get a harder dose of the stuff than marriage."


Dr. Herder: Remember he's suffering from delusions of grandeur. In reality he's an earl, an English aristocrat, a member of the ruling class. Naturally, he's come to believe there's only one person grander than that: the Lord God Almighty Himself.
Sir Charles: Are you English?
Dr. Herder: No.
Sir Charles: Ah.


Dr. Herder: He can't forget being rejected by his mother and father at the age of 11. They sent him away, alone, into a primitive community of licensed bullies and pederasts.
Sir Charles: You mean he went to public [for our American readers - private] school.
Dr. Herder: Exactly.

Another one of those 'Good grief, I had no idea he was still alive' stories. Richard Widmark.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7315340.stm

I seem to have posted that last one into the wrong thread and didn't even notice it until just now

Any road up.

Plenty.
I don't remember Sting being in it. And even less do I remember a love scene between Sting and la Streep. Very good music.

Unfortunately it's becoming more and more difficult for me to see the TV screen. I really need to get my eyes tested.

Nah!... Prices are falling. Get a 50 inch DLP HD telly instead.

Actually I plan to ditch the TV altogether, get a really nice monitor and hook up the DVD player (multi-region, multi format) to the PC (which will also have a DVD drive) so that I can watch everything on that.

Heh... I plan on hooking my computer to my 50 inch DLP.

Well that's just plain ornery. Ain't no two ways about it

I've been going to the theatre lately instead of the cinema.

Most recently it was "All in the club" a farce about Euro MPs starring James Fleet - which had some very amusiing lines in it. -

Gendarme - "Ah bonjour. Vous etes Mousieur Barlow ? Je desire parler avec vous - "

UKIP MEP - "Hold on lad. Whilst I am one who supports the usage of declining languages like French I don't speak it my self."

The same guy then later says. "English ? Listen lad - there's 3 types of people in the world. Them who were born in Yorkshir. Them who wish they were born in Yorkshire - and them with no ambition."

The next night we went to see One Night in November - basically a play about Coventry's destruction being a sacrifice to protect the fact we knew about the Enigma machine.

I enjoy the theatre more than the cinema, because people are building up things in front of you with limited props - you have to participate in the illusion to support it.

Also saw scenes from a marriage last month - the lead actor had an absolutely fantastic wig - which only became apparent in the second half.

I do miss London theatre (I know you don't live in London but this is a carry-over from that Gosho Misses London thread elsewhere in my journal).

Three or four weeks before I left for Texas I went to see Peter O'Toole at The Old Vic in Geoffrey Bernard is Unwell. You just don't get stuff like that in Austin. I really miss the... oh bloody hell, what's that theatre... the Shaw? No, that's the one over by St Pancras. The Bloomsbury! I seem to have gone to that one more than almost any other. Viv Stanshall, John Shuttleworth, and a bunch of others. I think I even saw a friend in a play there. The Peacock Theatre in Kingsway - I think I saw Eddie Izzard there and I know I saw Tori Amos. The Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn - National Theatre of Brent's The Greatest Story Ever Told. Tom Conti in Jesus My Boy... can't remember which theatre that was. Leonard Rossiter and Paul McGann in Joe Orton's Loot. The Mousetrap, of course. Spike Milligan at The Palladium (possibly his last ever show).

Hmmm, I did go to The Shaw Theatre once... no idea what or who I saw there. Maybe that was Eddie Izzard too - I think he had a residency there for ages. And what was the name of that place somewhere near University College where I saw The Nualas? And while I was still at school we got taken to see Cleo Laine in Showboat. That was the first time I ever saw anyone singing live, professionally. I went to The National once - saw Michael Hordern heading off into the khazi. The Whitehall Theatre for Anyone For Denis? Saw a production of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists at the Theatre Royal Stratford. And so many fringe/pub theatres. Gawd, I even went south of the river to the Latchmere once! South of the water! There's dedication for you.

Sorry, I've gone off on a ramble haven't I

I see your London Theatre's and raise you The RSC !

Yes - I noticed whilst I was driving around (bank holiday no congestion charge ) the fantastic number of theatres. I quite fancied the importance of being Earnest, which was on at (possibly) The Bloomsbury - Or the History Boys was on just down the road - must be fantastic to have that choice.

Nowadays it's quite the thing to come out of the theatre and be taken home in a rickshaw - pedalled by students.

Just until they get the real paupers in to do it of course. Probably they'll re-instate the London slave market and get them to pedal them, with the fares going to the Olympic fund !

Oops - I'm off now.

The RSC. That's somewhere I think I'd liked to have gone to at least once.

Lost in Beijing (Austin Film Society presentation)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0949489/

For kids who are growing up now, China will probably be just another country, but for people like myself it's still a place full of mystery and intrigue, having been all but off-limits to most foreigners for virtually all of my life. The many - almost gratuitous - shots of Beijing's roads, skyline, people, open spaces in this film were therefore fascinating for me. Apparently the version shown in Chinese cinemas had more than 30 cuts by the censor because those parts of the film show the city in a bad light. I don't know which scenes those might have been, but one thing that came across from the city skyline hots was cranes, cranes and more cranes, as well as hundreds upon hundreds of new buildings, most tall ones, virtually none of which bore any semblance of a Chinese style.

The film seems to be about the haves and the have-nots, and perhaps lingering on the building boom is showing us that the gap between the two is only going to widen in the future, a future not far off. And the roads which I remember seeing pictures and footage of from the not too distant past as being full of people wearing Chairman Mao style clothes and riding bicycles are now clogged with Mercs and Beamers.

Atonement.

Well... it was okay, I guess. Good acting, nice cinematography, good design, interesting twist at the end, but all in all not a *great* film, I thought. It somehow seemed a bit thin, and that soundtrack, with the typewriter continually reappearing as some kind of percussion, really irritated me. Whatever the composer's reason for it, I didn't care for it at all. Too contrived, unlike the morse code motif in the Inspector Morse theme which at least has the good sense to disappear underneath the music after a while, or if doesn't it becomes very unobtrusive and seems like it's disappeared.

I didn't buy the Dunkerque scenes at all.

I found it quite a surprise to see Vanessa Redgrave though. I didn't know she was in the film and I sort of half recognised her face. Then I caught the unmistakable voice and I knew it was her but I still had to look again to make sure. It's been so long since I saw her in anything that I was a little taken aback by how old she looks, but then she would, given her age.

Perhaps if I'd seen it at the flicks I might have been able to give it a better rating.

How Green Was My Valley.

They just don't make 'em like that any more It's one of my earliest cinematic memories. There's a handful of films or scenes from from films that stick in my mind from early childhood, and this is one of them. Interesting that so many of the 'Welsh' actors were Irish...

Any road up. I think the fact that it won so many Oscars, including best picture with Citizen Kane as one of the nominees, which I suppose comes to mind for far more people when you say 'Think of a classic film' speaks reams about its quality (although I must say, I think Kane is vastly overrated). As a Hollywood portrayal of a Welsh mining village around the turn of the 20th century it's not bad, particularly since the war meant they had to shoot the whole thing in California.

It might (or it might not) be in Jilly Cooper's book 'Class' that the working class are divided into Respectable Working Class, Working Class, and Beyond the Pale. The Morgan family (leastways, the parents) in How Green... are respectable working class. God-fearing, houseproud, right of centre. In 1980s London they might have owned a semi in Bromley and voted for Thatcher. They'd have been overjoyed at their daughter marrying the boss's son - that's a way into the middle classes.

The Grand.

It's definitely not Best in Show or Spinal Tap, but it's a lot better than A Mighty Wind or For Your Consideration. Well, it's got Woody Harrelson - how could it be anything but good? It's an interesting little piece of froth, worth seeing if you don't expect too much.

Kind Hearts and Coronets

Dug out a freebie DVD looking for something the whole family could watch - you forget how good the comedies were out of Elstree.

They were very, very good. One of the first films I rented from Netflix was The Ladykillers.

Macbeth (The 1979 Thames Television production of The Scottish Play, directed by Trevor Nunn from the 1976 RSC production with Ian McKellen, Judi Dench, Bob Peck and John Woodvine).

What can you say about Shakespeare that hasn't already been said. I watched one of the DVD extras where Ian McKellen was describing how 'minimalist' the original production was. Almost no scenery or props, no costume changes, the entire cast sitting around a circle where the action takes place, each of them providing the sound effects and doing things like applying blood to Macbeth's hands, in full view of the audience, which only numbered 100 or so because of the small size of the theatre.

Shakespeare is so rich in word and content that you can easily do that. Perhaps partly because there weren't lavish stage effects and lighting at the time and more was required of the audience's imagination. But what do I know of Shakespeare? I've only seen Macbeth and Henry V (both Olivier and Branagh) all the way through, I think. Maybe a film version of Hamlet too, but I don't recall it. I had to study Macbeth for O level English and hated every minute of it, mostly because I couldn't remember quotes for the life of me. But a seed was planted, and almost 40 years later I find that I can appreciate the Scottish Play all the more for having learned it back then.

I think if I was ever to experience more Shakespeare I'd prefer it to be in the form of radio drama.