Hi to everybody...hubby and I decided as there was nothing worth watching on the TV tonight to go to Sky Box Office and there I spotted a film I thought would be good...and it was...here are the details...
Love in the Time of Cholera (Spanish: El amor en los tiempos del cólera) is a novel by Nobel Prize winning Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez that was first published in Spanish in 1985, with an English translation released in 1988 by Alfred A. Knopf.

The film adaptation was released in 2007, directed by Mike Newell and starring Giovanna Mezzogiorno as Fermina, Javier Bardem as Florentino, and Benjamin Bratt as Juvenal.

It spanned just over fifty years in the lives of Fermina and Florentino...was full of pathos, humour and obsession as Marquez's novels usually are...wonderful story that held your interest all the way through...the acting was excellent on everybody's part and the scenery breathtaking as well in parts...It's not dubbed or subtitled as they all speak heavily accented English in it but that didn't detract from it in the slightest...I can highly recommend this film if you want to sit down and see a beautiful film....

Hi to everybody....have just watched 'Black Snake Moan' with Samuel L. Jackson, Christina Ricci, and Justin Timberlake...It was much better than we thought it was going to be...the story held together well and there was a real underlying tension that was so tangible you felt it all through you that something was going to go terribly wrong in the end...I won't spoil it by telling you what happened, but the acting was excellent and the characters convincing...can recommend this film...

Hi to everybody...tonight, hubby and I sat down to watch a film that was up for an Oscar and has been praised to the hilt by the critics...'Away from her' with Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsett...two thirds of the way through both of us were bored out of our brains...we have no idea why it has been so lauded...it's tedious to the point of being mind numbing...and, yes, I know it's about Alzheimers, but I don't know whether the writer deliberately kept the story confined to just a couple who apparently had no friends, family or neighbours, and you didn't find out what Fiona, the wife suffering from the disease, did throughout her life, just what the husband did. His performance was so understated and unemotional even though he was supposed to be falling apart without her that we wanted to put a squib underneath him to get some human reaction...Julie Christie appeared to go into the disease with such acceptance and ease that she cast off her past life like an old overcoat and galloped into a relationship with another Alzheimers sufferer who she just happened to remember from her past and with whom she had had one date...hmmm...I'm beginning to think film makers have forgotten how to make gutsy, emotional, and moving films anymore...sorry, if anybody here has seen and thought it excellent, but we didn't...thought it was a bad, bad film...don't think it brought the full horror of Alzheimers out at all...in fact, I think it did all those who suffer from it, and who are affected by having a close relative with it, a huge disservice....
Forgot to add, Olympia Dukakis was the only one who we thought was excellent, but she's a brilliant actress...

1. If you try hard enough, you can outrun an explosion.

2. If your town is threatened by an imminent natural disaster or killer beast, the mayor's first concern will be the tourist trade or his forthcoming art exhibition.

3. Natural disasters only occur after the local mayor scoffs at the possibility.

4. If an expert makes a prediction and is disbelieved, then it will come to pass exactly as he predicted. If he makes a prediction and is believed, it won't happen.

5. Women staying in a haunted house should investigate any strange noises while wearing their most revealing underwear.

6. Women's skin and hair can't be damaged by natural disasters, though their clothing can be shredded -- except for the bits required for minimal decency, which are made from completely indestructible fabric.

7. If a man and a woman are exposed to the same conditions and the same environment, the man will need to wear more clothing than the woman.

8. If a man and a woman meet under circumstances under which any two normal people would instantly hate each other, they will marry before the picture is over.

9. Deadly reptiles will always attack a woman first, even if she's in the presence of thirty men.

10. Women are immortal unless they take off their shirts or they're ugly.

Hi to everybody...before we went on holiday we bought three DVD's of Spanish films, which we both like very much...tonight we watched 'The Orphanage'.
Here's a synopsis of the film by Jason Buchanan. It doesn't give anything away about the source of tension in the film and the outcome, which I will say nothing about...

Pan's Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro produces director Juan Antonio Bayona's gothic frightener about a long-abandoned orphanage with a particularly troubling past. As a child, young orphan Laura spent her formative years being cared for by the staff of a large orphanage located by the Spanish seaside. Those were some of the happiest years of Laura's life, and now, 30 years later, the former charge returns to the dilapidated institution with her husband, Carlos, and their seven-year-old son, Simon, to reopen the orphanage as a facility for disabled children. However, something ominous haunts the darkened hallways of this silent, stately manor. When Simon's behavior begins to grow increasingly bizarre and malicious, Laura and Carlos start to suspect that the mysterious surroundings have awoken something ominous in the young boy's imagination. It's not long before Laura, too, is drawn into this disturbing web and the repressed memories of the past come flooding back in a terrifying torrent of tension and deeply disturbing revelations. With opening day drawing near and their situation growing increasingly grim by the hour, Carlos attempts to write off Simon's bizarre behavior as a desperate bid to get more attention from his distracted parents. Laura isn't so easily convinced of this theory, though, and soon embarks on a desperate quest to unearth the terrible secret that lurks in the old house, waiting for just the right moment to inflict devastating damage on both her and her family. - Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

While Guillermo del Toro produced it, it doesn't quite match up to his abilities but, nonetheless, is a well made film, which doesn't rely on special effects at all, just suspense and tension....I can recommend it if you like a disturbing ghost story...it is as good as 'The Others' another ghost story, which I've seen and thought was very good as well.

Hi to everybody...just a quickie....tomorrow night on Sci-fi, they are showing again the reworking of the Wizard of Oz. It was an excellent three part series and I can highly recommend it. It's called..Tin Man.
If you missed it first time round, try and catch it this time because the story is very different from the original and the effects are great and it's a real nail biter.

Charlie Chaplin in 'The Idle Class' - one of his short films that I think you can get as an extra if you get 'The Kid' on DVD. Glad this was on Youtube, someone else shares my passion for it.

NB: The note he reads says that his wife is leaving him until he gives up drinking.

Have I killed my humour? Browsing through IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes to see what other people thought, I was suprised to learn the great reviews that the film Run FatBoy Run and Big Nothing got.

Run Fatboy Run is a film starring Simon Pegg and is shit. Anyone wanting a quirky funny film with original script and plot development - avoid. If you're looking for a Notting Hill-ish lite comedy with predictable character development and a seriously underused cast, watch this film. There are moments where you'll miss the jokes until you reach the end and say "oh, THOSE were the jokes. I thought that was regular conversation."

Big Nothing I was disappointed with, firstly as again it has Simon Pegg, and I'm a big Spaced fan, but also had David Schwimmer who out of all the Friends I believe had the best comic timing, even though he was an annoying character.
Firstly I was put off by Pegg's horrendous and embarressing American accent. Then the plot develops badly, entering into a completely unbelievable situation - this does not make it funny however, you're just kept wondering whether this is in fact a prolonged dream sequence. THis may be a slightly unfair review as I didn't actually finish watching it as I was distracted by a spider building a web.

I really want to know what others think, were they disappointed or did they find them hilarious?

Confused, London

Hi to everybody....last night we bought 'No Country for Old Men' on Sky Movies and found it to be very watchable while being extremely gory as well...Javier Bardem as the assassin sent to recover the money stolen by Josh Brolin was thoroughly chilling as a man who was basically a total pyschopath...Tommy Lee Jones was excellent as well with a dry witty script to carry him through the film...the most surprising thing about it though was the ending, which we didn't expect...won't spoil it by saying any more in case you haven't seen it, but well worth a viewing...
This afternoon, we went to the cinema to see 'Hellboy 2', which we've been waiting for and Ron Perlman was excellent as the main character again, and so were his supporting actors...Guillermo Del Toro's touch was definitely apparent throughout the film, and I didn't realise that he wrote the story as well based on the Hellboy comics...it was a very enjoyable trip to the cinema and, if you like the comic book hero films, then this one is a must for you...
That's it for now...GBHs...

I've seen three classics recently, thought i should post some comments here:

Orson Welles' magnificent Touch Of Evil starts with one of the most impressive opening shots you're ever likely to see. From there the rather innocuous event of a car exploding on the US side of the Mexican border leads to murder, corrupt police and an innocent wife being framed for drugs. Charlton Heston and Orson Welles star as the battling protagonists, the moralistic local and the bitter old american cop respectively who hate each other as much as they respect each other. Henry Mancini's music is a wonderful accompaniment (and strangely he conducted the music on the second of my viewings) and a great reminder that he produced more than just dull lounge music in his career. But it's the photography that really stands out here, every shot is like a monochromatic painting that you could freeze and hang in your house. The version i watched is as close as possible to Welles' intentions, but as with a lot of his films the studio re-edited his original cut adding in addition footage to change the tone of the film (which lead to a 58 page memo from Welles asking the new scenes to be removed). This doesn't have the sense of greatness that you get with Citizen Kane, but actually i have to say it's far far more entertaining, intriguing and tense than his earlier masterpiece.

Lifeforce is the Tobe Hooper film time forgot. He made his name with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist but Lifeforce is where it's at. Space crew go off to Haley's comet, then come back with a hot naked female vampire intent on turning every person she meets into an exploding zombie. Cheesier than your local deli counter it's simply enjoyable in every sense of the word. It probably has more pull with men, because Mathilda may spends most of the film naked, but for women there's the sheer sillyness of it all; even the great Patrick Stewart snogs a man in it. Miss it at your peril and dont offer naked space vampires a biscuit because they'll probably kill you.

Finally i saw On The Waterfront. Elia Kazan may be a hated director for what he did under McCarthy (he grassed up a whole bunch of left-leaning directors, writers and producers in order to save his own skin) but by george his films were terrific. He made this and Streetcar named Desire, what else is there to know? Well, Brando's as great as you've heard in this, wonderfully backed up by a superb supporting cast and framed by Kazan's immaculate camerawork throughout. The story of a docker who has to chose between what's right and mob is one that grips in the opening scene and never lets go, as great today as the day it was released - along with Casablanca i easily rate this as one of the greatest films ever made. A pure, fierce, intense masterclass in film making.