Lilies of the Field, When Eight Bells Toll, The Empty Beach, Firefox, Ivanhoe

13. I discovered that it now possible to renew my motorcar tax disk by an automated phone system just tapping in the reference number which triggers first your name particulars and can then check that you are insured and have a valid MOT without you having to supply any details. Clearly now there is a requirement for this to be registered centrally and which also means the police can check on the last registered owner, their tax, insurance or and MOT status on any vehicle seen on the road from their on board vehicle.

14. There are so many films to re-see at Christmas although finding new ones is nigh on impossible. One was Lilies of the Field, an excellent vehicle for Sydney Poitier in which he has become an itinerant jobbing builder who is prayered upon by a small group of new immigrants nuns to America (who escape over or under or through the Berlin Wall to minister to a small community of American Mexicans/Indians) into building a chapel, and who then moves on to make real money and continue an empty life when the next projects of a school and a hospital are mention, thus rejecting the offer to become a valued member of a community and possibly a wife and children The Oscar winning performance has no backstory and potentially no earthly future, but his effort to build the chapel is a gesture, and insurance against the possibility that heaven does exist as a self aware after life.

15. After that the film experience was downhill with When Eight bells toll, brought together Robert Morley as a gentleman club and gentleman's value M with a very young Anthony Hopkins as a Bondlike who saves the nation gold bars, and the lives of the hostages in a splendid Scottish island/peninsular setting.

16. Even less can be said for an Australian private eye hired to find the miscreant husband who committed suicide or disappeared rather than face the music of influential and powerfully rich characters one of whose rackets is to warehouse imprison the elderly for their pension books, other state benefits and savings, burying their remains in the garden when they die from malnutrition, disease and neglect. The Empty Beach also included Ray Barratt as a baddie who gets his come uppance even watched Firerfox once more as Clint Eastwood steals the latest Russian Plane.

17 I have been reflecting on the plethora of film available to be seen, viewed, experienced or as in my case to be used as a backcloth or screen saver to trigger memories and stimulate new thinking. Because of this if I am busy I do not re experience the more important offerings such as the Motorcycle diaries, Good Will Hunting and the History boys. But I do intend to experience with my full attention the Girl with a Pearl Earrings(DVD). Others in this category included Merry Christmas about the 1914 cease fire. The Enemy Below which along with morning Departure are two great films about submarines. Pan's Labyrinth contender for top 100 special for because it is about the Spanish Civil War, at one level, and all war. The English Patient is another war film (DVD) with a top 100 The Bridge over the River Kwai. Two great romantic films on offer were Casablanca(DVD and Video and Brief Encounter DVD. Combining war, adventure and romance between the unlikeliest of couples Bogart and Hatherine Hepburn in the African Queen. The Western Unforgiven along with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,(Video). One comedy Groundhog Day. One good film because its music but otherwise overrated The Third Man and a top 100 crime drama Get Carter (DVD and Video)

18 I do not fault the Barry Norman Christmas Family film selection oh please bring back Barry to replace that who is he Jonathan Ross. Gone with the Wind(video), Doctor Zhivago,(Video) It a Wonderful Life(Video) for the mums and dads with the oldies. The Teenagers will enjoy the Great Escape and everyone ET, the Railway Children(video) and the Wizard of OZ(Video) Miracle on 34th Street deserved its mention. He should also have included The Red Shoes, Babe, Annie. Oliver, Marty Poppins, Chicken Run, Black Beauty

19 I am less sure about the early evening viewing of Robin Hood which I have only seen episodes11 to 13 and which appears to be a precursor to the more commonly known tale as the greater part of the final two episodes shown on Saturday comprised Robin and his men chasing after the Sherriff who go to the Holy land with Guy of Gisborne to kill King Richard taking Marian with them as a prisoner because Sur Guy wants her as his woman and the Sheriff to find a way to get rid of her after she has attempted to kill him. In fact the only likeable characters in the series who appear to have the usually spherical male attributes are Marian and fellow goody Arab girl who tells the truth and opens up her heart to one of the men who decides to stay and live happy ever after, as he also speaks Arabic The sheriff reminded me of Rick Gervais and King Richard came across as a stupid unreliable git. And therefore King John as a better prospect of turning the Kingdom effectively doing what Kings have to do. I think the writers were modelling Richard or player and the Iraq war,

19 Give me the original films or Ivanhoe with Elizabeth Taylor as the Jewess daughter who saves his life after injury in a Joust. Felix Aylmer played the chief money raiser for British Tribe promised to be given a place in their new homeland if they provide the bulk of get ransom for King. In order to save her from being burnt as a witch Ivanoe is forced into a dual with the excellent the Kings Champion who gives up his life out of love for Elizabeth, weren't we all although her time would come with Caesar and Mark Anthony, and Richard Burton.

20 Other oldies on offer included Changing Lanes worth seeing once. Fiddler on the Roof Video remains several times watchable along with My Fair Lady Video which I tool the aunties to see in the West End.. Mr Deeds goes to Town. Ryan's daughter, More recent oldie is Mrs Henderson presents, the story of the Windmill Theatre across the way from the Cy Laurie Club. The Queen. Primary Colours Political comedy (DVD) Von Ryan's Express seen at Sorrento, Mrs Brown on Queen Victoria and her relationship with John Brown. Spartacus the epic and everyone should see once the Rick Horror Show to understand why some people see it 100 times and know all the words and act the script. Samson and Delilah and why I grew long hair, Quatermas and the Pit, the first of the modern sci fi Horrors. Havana, Rob Roy and Local Hero and several hundred more if only I had the time to work through the Radio Times listings. River of no Return which I did see with Marilyn Monroe

21. A Quirky programme was the self congratulatory 30 year anniversary of the years of M*A*S*H although I enjoyed the film. I suspect the fund and games of the field medical unit is closer to the truth than most would admit to. Another programme which is of interest to social anthropologists , those who went their and found the love of their life or a one night stand, the story of the Hammersmith Palais.

22 It was also anniversary time for Saturday 5pm Sports report and it appropriate that Desmond Lynham should get an OBE. It was interesting that an OBE also went to the retiring rugby star, while the new English coach only got for an MBE

23. A one year old child is savaged by a dog when staying at the home of grandparents and left in the care of a sixteen year old aunt and two other children one a six year old. My sense of horror is mingled with anger at where were the parents?

24 I went by my former home of 30 years today four times and this will account for having a dream about going back to the house to see what changes have been made, but also linking in with a dream I have had before about another house which was part of a lager property, but which in turn was bigger than its appearance and was part of extensive grounds. I have had this dream before in various form but with the same core experience and appears to include a mixture of actual homes, and day dreams about a home I would like to have had. I understand part of the significance but not the whole which brings back to my work of cards each representing an hour in sets of 24 about my life and those of my extended family, back through time to the present.

The Race for Yankee Zepher, The Boyfriend and more

Yesterday the Pakistan Opposition Leader Benazir Bhutto was killed in a gun and suicide attack, as she returned to her country to contest he forthcoming general elections. My day had commenced without attempting to engage in great thoughts other than an awareness that December and the year were drawing to an end, but hopefully not my life, although it continues to ebb away against the tide of my wishes. I felt on top of my work although I am not up to-date because there some 50 or more sets of work requiring Artman cards and then to be photographed recorded. The delay is the need to conserve photo cards until I can track a new inexpensive supply. One local supermarket has indicated there will be a good offer at the end of the second week of January and I will need to check Staples and Neat ideas before then for some additions in the interim so that I can recommence the completion of the second volume of Rivera 2007. I will also look out for white card although I have at lest three months supply as present work levels. Yesterday such was the progress that I completed the first two master volumes of creative work and memorabilia about my mother and almost completed a six or seven set volume about films experienced prior to 2003.

The work was such that that I continued to watch films, trivial frothy films to begin with. In the afternoon trhere was the Race for Yankee Zepher which starred Donald Pleasance is a good role for him as an drunken old codger with a conventional daughter by one of his marriages, whose help he seeks to enable him, and his friend, who runs a dilapidated helicopter, to embark on an expedition in a remote mountainous region of New Zealand to recover the contents of a US plane Yankee Zepher, which the audience is instructed at the commencement of the film contained 50 million dollars in gold 1939-1945 prices ( no inflation adjustment is made), and which disappeared on a pre Christmas flight intended to provide for the American Troops fighting in the Southern hemisphere. Our anti hero discovers the plane having been dropped into a lake by his partner from a rope under the helicopter which for some inexplicable reason has never been discovered until several decades after its disappearance. Would today such a valuable transport be left in the hands of one pilot and one plane, but then the information on 25 million Britain's on computer disks has recently disappeared and cannot be found!

The old codger brings back some pristine medals which he finds in the wreck unaware of what he is leaving behind and more interested in the crates of Christmas Cheer. He sells the medals to a local dealer for 75 dollars apiece to raise cash for booze and gambling at cards having had no difficulty in making the trek home, despite his age and the isolation of the location, although as we subsequently learn the area appears to be inhabited of a race of mountain hard drinking and gambling fearless aging mountain men. The creation of the stake money, sets in train the arrival of Mr Big, the baddie, played in as comic way as he can by George Peppard, who although has no knowledge of the location of the plane comes in a convoy of off the road vehicles, a helicopter and two boats capable of skimming through the only entrance to the lake because of the shallow waters.

It is never clear how the gang learn of the find and are so quickly are to assemble the items necessary for the expedition, including full arsenal of modern weaponry, and arrive in the area without attracting the attention of the authorities. However as this is the Land of the Lord of the Rings one must accept that anything can happen. There then follows a James Bond type adventure in which the two partners and the reluctantly involved daughter, race ahead or behind the baddies to get to the plane to claim the treasure. It lacks the credibility of Bond in the sense that Bond lives in a world of violence, whereas the famous trio are able to participate in the death of their adversaries as if something experienced on a regular basis. Although by the end of the film the treasure has sunk to the bottom of lake along with several baddies, with others disposed of along the way, by luck rather than skill and endeavour a box of gold bars is retained to enable them to live happy ever after, for we are told along with the credits that the old codger is now running a dubious bar in the most unlikeliest of locations, convincing the more gullible of cinema goers that this story is based on fact. The film was directed by David Hemmings.

There was no such pretensions with The Boy Friend which I first say as a show at the Streatham Hill Theatre in the later 1950's taking my mother my aunt and another aunt to see Sandy Wilson's energetic song and dance, having first seen a performance on my own earlier in the week. The musical opened in London in 1953 as a small scale show but quickly transferred to the West End and to Broadway(1974) and ran for five years and over 2000 performances. The musical captured the nostalgia of the British middle classes for the roaring twenties of the Charleston era and who were able to afford their summer on the French Riviera. There are several catchy songs whose words I learnt having purchased the ten inch long play record, and the script is suitable for children and middle aged church going folk such as my aunties. The film was given the Ken Russell Treatment in 1971 with Twiggy in the main female role, supported by Glenda Jackson and Barbara Windsor. The Russell idea was to have a small time seaside theatrical company performs the original show on the night that a big time film producer happens to visit and when the leading lady is injured and understudy Twiggy is give her big moment. The film stage production has props more West End and than end of the pier and is augmented by Busby Berkeley type moments, extending the original song and dance routines into a film lasting 2 hours and 17 minutes. It is very colourful but despite the energy of the dancing routines loses for me the vitality and freshness which the show brought to a still drab post war and ore sixties country, Despite having the early success in the USA in 1954, the film was not a box off office success although there was a Broadway revival in 1970 and a North American Tour in 2005 after Julie Andrews directed a New York production in 2003. There were also smaller scale reproductions in London in 1995, 2006, and 2007, thus confirming my reaction 50 years before that this was harmless frothy entertainment one could take a maiden aunt or two to see, or in my case three.

There was a plethora of films to see again in the evening at 9pm and I opted for The Queen, the film which Dame Judy Dench played her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. As I thought at the time when I saw the film in theatre no one comes out very well except for the Queen, with Tony Blair shown as a twit who reveals himself as a secret monarchist and ties to help her understand and respond to the public reaction. Coming worse off are Mrs Blair and Tony's inner circle who are seen to want to seize the opportunity to push the nation towards a republic, Having watched the wall to wall news coverage including that of the US news channels on Sky and then visited London during the funeral week I also understood the public reaction as did the Prime Minister. The public mourned Diana, not just because she was glamorous trend setter, or her good works, but because she came across as being a flawed human being like the rest of us, willing and able to exploit her talents and position to the maximum of her capabilities, and to be honest about her lifestyle and interests. She captured the mood of changing Britain. The initial failure of the Queen and her Royal advisers was not to realise that the public needed her to do what she subsequently was forced into, according to the film, and join them in public demonstration of mourning while her natural instincts was to express feelings in private and concentrate on the welfare of the grand children. It is understandable that the Queen recognised that Diana had become the catalyst which threatened not just the future of the Monarchy but the future of the old order and a stable quartet of nations at the heart of the Commonwealth

The significance of the Blair Premiership will not be Iraq but that he completed the transformation of the UK initiated by Prime Minister Thatcher into an elitist, competitive, global money making enterprise in which Prince Andrew has become its chief salesperson and Princess Diana its Icon.
As the recent TV series on the Queen at work has demonstrated, the Royal firm led by the Queen has learnt to survive better than before. The ban on Foxhunting has been circumvented and the democratic and essentially republican reform of the Lords put on ice, I suspect on the duration of the lifetime of her Majesty. If the monarchy in the UK is to survive then it will need to jump a generation sorry Prince Charles and Camilla, as what will work, is a good marriage and a next generation Kingship, although the situation could change if the Queen is able, like her mother, to continue for another decade, or two.

At one level the protracted inquest into the circumstances into the death of Diana (and what I expect to be an inconclusive conclusion but rejecting the wilder conspiratorial speculations) will aid this viewpoint that to skip a generation will protect the Monarchy and traditionalist Britain until the Chinese need an Emperor to lead their economic imperialism, as a buffer to the Russians who are moving back towards a contemporary Tsar, while, the Indian Sub continent will move towards an identified aristocracy to counter the need for Pakistan to have a dictator if it is not to quickly become a fundamentalist state with its independent nuclear weaponry which in turn would precipitate the third World War and potential the premature ending of all our self conscious beingness.

OK so this is all wild and fanciful at the end of a workmanlike day full of froth and frills! Or is it. I hate to admit but without knowing anything about the reality of Pakistan, the last thing we and the world in general needed is a genuine free for all democratic elections in which the Muslim fundamentalists could gain legitimate power. The premature death of Benazir Bhutto is a tragic loss for her family and her political party, and it may be for all of us unless a strong single minded anti Muslim fundamentalist government can be established in that country for at least the next decade, while Europe and he USA adjust to the rise of China, the development of Russian and India
Moreover back home the Labour Party is playing the wrong card in accusing the opposition of having no policies and the Liberal Democrats of thinking they need to have different ones from the other two parties. What the British nations need is good mature government and leadership. It does not need lots of new policies, new legislation or new anything. It has enough new to cope with thank you. It wants good government and a government it can trust. Gordon Brown was able to provide this over the first months after Blair and then there was some madness that he had have a General Election and a vision which requires changes in policies and lots of legislation. The Queen is now more popular and secure as a concept that ever before because she had the guts to face the music, as did Queen Victoria when she came out of her long period of mourning for her husband. The only danger I can foresee to her now is that the stronger a symbol of Britishness she becomes, the more she will be a threat to all those who want to see a divided and disillusioned people. This is an era for strong leadership, g

Straight Story, The Terminal, Flag of our Fathers and the Old Curiosity Shop

Another twenty four hours when it could appear that all I have done is watched films, the experience of life of others artificially created. Sometimes I do feel that my life is like that even when I am not watching a film.

Yesterday, that is Christmas Day, the film was about an old man old man who had fought in World War II and encountered another old man, and they were able to share the nature of the horror they had experienced which cannot be shared with anyone else who has not experienced the shock and the horror of war. At least now there is now excuse for anyone not knowing this and at least there are indications that the new Western armies are not treating the lives of their colleagues so cheaply as was done throughout almost the whole of the twentieth century. This man has also known what it is to bury a wife and to share with her the loss of children childhood and the loss of children when they grow up and leave home, or just grow up and become themselves. In his instance he had the attention and interest of a daughter who was slow but knew how to run a home and because she was slow and three children when of these died in an accident while not in her care, the other two were taken into care and the old man and to love with the grief which he knew his daughter felt. The old man had a brother with whom they had been close and spent the summer nights together talking under the stars making the most of things before the harsh winter months returned to dominate their existence, and then in later life as they approached old age brothers being brothers they fell out and did to communicate for a period of ten years. And then the old man learnt that on top of his difficulty in walking and picking things up from the floor he had to change his ways, including the smoking of cigars which had become his one joy in life although he had given up the alcoholic drink. And so he decides it is time to make peace with his brother who lives just over the border of the state across the Mississippi river but also involves a trek across his home state and this poses a problem because his poor sight means he can no longer drive a car on the road and he cannot bear being driven by others for long distance so what does he do?

He attempts to make the journey on his ancient lawn mower, pulling a makeshift camper which comprises a coffin type box to sleep in, on top of other boxes for food, clothes, tools and his walking sticks. Of course he does not get very far when the vehicle breaks down beyond repair and he has to return just like home made boats which attempt to cross oceans and home made planes that jumped of cliffs in order to try and fly like the birds, so what did he do, he uses his savings to buy another second hand lawnmower up to the task of driving at five miles an hour up and down hills for six weeks. This is the Straight Story made in 1999 and directed by David Lynch and based on the feat of Alvin Straight. It is the kind of film which the majority of today's film going generation will find boring, where is the action man? Or the sex?

A similar kind of stubborn determination to finish a task is the subject of the Tom Hanks 2004 starring film The Terminal. However because it is Tom Hanks and there is a romantic interest with the delicious Catherine Zeta Jones many more of twentieth century film goers will have enjoyed this tale of another stubborn man who decides try and fulfil a simple forty year ambition of his recently deceased father, involving a trip from his homeland to the United State and New York and when the task could be completed with moments of locating the whereabouts of one individual. Unfortunately he is not given an entry permit and then finds that his [passport is no longer valid because of civil war back home and he is imprisoned in the JFK airport for month upon month. In this instance the film does not claim to have been based on a true situation which went on for years when an Iranian was required to live at the Paris airport Charles De Gaulle, not for months but for years because his refugee status papers were stolen while in transit, and in fact trhere has been film with a similar story line called Lost in Transit. In this film there are several stretches of the incredulity but the film has the kind of charm and sensitivity of experience that can be expected from Steven Speilberg and while the man completes his mission he does not get the girl, who although she knows her own problem and its solution knows that only one person can break down the walls and release her from the chains, and he does not wish to do so while she remains the delicious woman that she is. The film is harmless entertainment which leaves one feeling good about human beings who will do the right thing when push comes to shove.
The reality of us was not long acoming, first with the second of the Clint Eastward's two films about the taking of the Japanese island rock of Iwo Jima. The first in Japanese provided their viewpoint as to how they fought and died and was based on the discovery years later of a stack of letters written home, but which had become unintentionally hidden.

The second film Flags of our Fathers focussed on the reality of the battle which last thirty five days and the truth of what happened when a handful of men, six, raised the USA flag on a hill overlooking the bay where the vast force has disembarked from the vast navel fleet. The first was a spontaneous gesture which inspired a nature which longed for a meaningful victory over an enemy which had inflicted Pearl Harbour and which occurred only five days into the battle, during which three of the six died. When a fight arose over the ownership of the flag and the need for some permanent record a second flag raising episode was created with a new flag. Thousands of men lost their lives or were maimed for life by the battle and those who raised the original flag while the battle raged as well as those who repeated the venture under order were not heroes because of this action, but were heroes for being part of the force which won the battle against a well defended and organised Japanese force who knew they would lose and die but wanted to do their duty and forestall the US advance for as long as they could.

James Bradley grew up without his father ever talking about what he did in the war or revealing that he was the one naval person seen in the photograph which has become the symbol of American heroism and victory. It was only after the death of his father that he discovered the story and that his father had received the naval cross for valour. He decided to find out about the five other men and the battle.

The Island was of strategic importance in terms of its navel and airbase facilities for both sides and as stated on the fifth day the flag was erected on Mount Suribachi and the Naval Secretary of State, a politician knowing the significance of the action requested that the flag be sent to him as a souvenir and the six men who put up the photographed replacement became the heroes especially when three died in the subsequent fighting without knowing anything of the popularity of the action. Bradley's father has been responsible for arranging for the corpses to be brought home and therefore he quickly learnt how bodies are mutilated war, and in particularly the tortured body of his best friend. By not talking about the experience he was able to marry his grade school girlfriend and become a prosperous undertaker raising a normal family as part of a local community. The film is concerned about how the three survivors were used on their return home to persuade the public to invest in War Bonds. One was a native American Indian who was the subject of segregation and abuse along with the black Americans , while the other was never provided with work opportunities offered when he was today's news worthy man. Controversy also centred over the identity of the sixth soldier with parents only subsequently learning who he was and whom he was not. The film provides universal truths about the nature of war and wartime and its aftermath. The men, and now the men and the woman are required to perform a role and are honoured if they die. The treatment of those who are maimed physically and mentally has remained questionable, because the general public want to forget the reality and subsequently generations do not want to know, and those who did the fighting and he surviving do not want them to know.

The fourth film was at the depressing end of the reality of human nature. The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens. For the most part it was unbearable Boxing day viewing with perhaps only one of the adults surviving the tale with any integrity or honour. At the core of the story is the willingness of most adults to exploit children, including their own, and the willingness of children to try and do what their parents want, irrespective of how they are treated. Now we like to think this was only a situation during the 19th century and not something which was carried on in varying degrees throughout the twentieth. Unsurprisingly the behaviour of the adults to each other was no better.

I spent the morning listening to radio Gibraltar who covered the Boxing Day swim organised by the Caletta hotel and given the size of the Gibraltarian population the reported numbers were commendable comparing favourably with the 1000 fancy dressed mostly young people who participate in the swim organised by Sunderland Lions at my former home beach of Whitburn sands at Seaburn. A number of prizes were on offer for anyone who answered one of three questions which included the name of the Sunderland football manager who would be shaking the hand of Sur Alex Ferguson at the Stadium of Light. On my 2004 visit to Gibraltar I had had lunch a couple of times at the Man U supporting club close to the former church of my mother and father as well as visiting the Toon on the Rock a grander pub given over to Newcastle United. Part of my email was read out including my prediction that Sir Alex would be the disappointed man at the handshake. Later in response to a request from the programme presenter I gave a more honest assessment anticipating that we might lo a couple of early goals and then fight back during the second half. This proved to be the case although we gave away a third before half time and were never able to master their defence, giving away a fourth and only escaping a home humiliation by good luck and one suspects Man U staying in second or third gear for the greater part of the game. The gulf between the two teams was evident and it is evident the pack will have to be significantly shuffled in January if an immediate return to the Championship is to be avoided. The match of the day was at Chelsea where Aston Villa nearly brought off, and some will say should have brought off the first home defeat in the Premiership for close on four years after going 2,0 up at half time but overall the 4.4 draw was a fair result with Chelsea down to 9 men and the Villa to 10 by the end of the game.

Mother Russia and The Riviera Christmas

Although I was up early I did not develop enthusiasm for writing until 11pm. I had written on and off about Christmas and this will be the basis for something about my actual day when I hope to welcome to my table the ghosts of time past, present and the future.

This evening, tired after a meal of a pizza, I was awoken again by a surprise, the 1999 Oscar Best Foreign film East West, a film which some critics savaged for being melodramatic and others for being overambitious. There have been two films, until now which, captured the epic nature of what happened in Russia immediately before and since the revolutionary period between the Two World Wars but also provided the human dimension seen through the eyes of the creative artist and individualist. The first was the idealised and romantic poet Dr Zhivago and the second Reds which featured the American journalist and poet Jack Reed who only survived until 1920. The 1999 Best Foreign Film Oscar winning East West, is not about a creative artist, but concerns a real life Russian born man who was raised in France, became a doctor, married a French woman and who accepted the 1946 invitation of Stalin to bring his talents home.

The invitation was a general one to individuals and their subsequent families who had left Russia at the time of the revolution. There appear to have been two main reasons for the temporary lifting of the iron curtain. The first was the genuine need to replace the technical skills lost through the revolution and the second World War. Those who accepted the invitation and could make the mind bending adjustment from liberalist and capitalist democracies and become good soviets as define by Stalin would be rewarded with better living conditions than the majority and gain other privileges. In the instance of Dr Alexei Menchikov he was told before disembarking that he had to rid himself of his French born and raised wife and that if he did he would immediately be provided with an appropriate Russian wife. When he declined and realised that he had placed his family in immediate peril he was softened up for the reality of post World War Russia by the brutal interrogation of his wife and the deployment as the doctor to a 2000 employ factory in the industrial city of Kiev. Had he accepted then he could have been given a more prestigious post as head of a hospital, and provided a two bed roomed apartment. There was likely to have been a more sinister motive.

It would be surprising if all those who responded had not been thoroughly investigated and carefully watched to establish their political ideology. It would be better to have potential enemies, actual and potential spies and subversives within the system where they could be dealt with one way or another. In the film the first arriving group once disembarked were met with armed troops and the political commissar divided everyone into two groups those to be imprisoned, sent to work camps or who had to be immediately killed because of their potential threat, and those who might fit in and prove useful.
It is sometimes forgotten or overlooked that while millions of Jews gypsies, the physically and mentally disabled from throughout Europe were butchered by Germany, in Russia the purging of similar numbers was indiscriminate. In both countries extensive use was made of labour camps and throughout the Soviets and German occupied countries, regimes were established in which citizens knew they could survive and better themselves if they spied on their neighbours, reported anti government behaviour and denounced. Many did this for no other reasons than jealous, spite, and the power to blackmail and extort money until themselves were denounced. It is a method used by all governments and we are openly encouraging Muslims to do this in Britain today. However the check and balances that we try and maintain to limit excess and misuse become non existent in fast moving revolutionary times and subsequent totalitarian regimes.

In the liberated Western style countries we should all be careful not to be seduced into democratically voting for or accepting the creation of the police and secret service state. The increasing widespread use of surveillance cameras, the developments in digital technology and databases which enable instant recognition and tracking, the attempts to change from the jury to a professional judicial system and the detention of individuals without charges, and then holding for increasing lengths of time without trial are as dangerous in a democracy as they are in a dictatorship.

Having failed the first test set him Dr Alexei and his wife and child then had to adjust to the post war living conditions of the working classes in Russia but which were in fact no different from the cities and towns throughout war devastated Europe, or which had been the situation for the working classes who moved away from the land in the industrial revolution.

In Dr Zhivago we learnt of the impact upon the middle class when houses similar to my present home were requisitioned and given over to families on the basis of one private room a family, with shared kitchen, bathroom and toilet facilities. In Dr Zhivago we were not shown these facilities but in East West, the toilet seat was kept outside the loo and the indoor bathroom could be used by each family for washing clothing and bathing on an allocated day each week. In Dr Zhivago a common bucket was used on the long train journey to the family's former estate when all the travellers were treated like cattle.
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However at the same time as they experienced such conditions which will have horrified younger generation cinema goers in 1999, I spent the greater part of the first decade of my life sharing a double bed with three adult women, in a house slightly smaller than my present one, full of adults young people and other children. We did not have a bathroom until after the war and had to make do with a tin bath in front of the fire. We were then allocated a flat in a requisitioned property which was not handed back to the owners until the 1950's. My mother in law lived in a council house without a bathroom or inside toilet until the late 1960's when improvements were made.

Similarly workers in the East and West were expected to work hard from early morning until bedtime with limited breaks and days off until the end of the 19th century. Before then in the US and British Colonies of the West Indies in particular, slaves were used and then indentured workers and in Victorian Britain workers lived in squalor until they dropped dead or were struck down prematurely through illness or industrial injury while those who survived such calamity, and their families, had then to rely on the workhouse. In 1963 I narrowly avoided being ejected from my professional training course after disclosing the nature of tenement housing conditions in Birmingham to Member of Parliament who I already knew and he then spoke of the twilight zones in a Housing debate which achieved national publicity and only in the past month I listened to a radio story about housing conditions in Glasgow where the new Europeans had been housed in appalling conditions in property owned by dubious shell companies registered in tax havens.

East West is not intended as a political or social statement but the political and social conditions are the backcloth to an amazing love story in which it appears that the couple separate beyond repair, and take lovers as they adjust in different ways to their new way of life while relinquishing dreams of escape., Because it is a film highly recommended and the most emotionally engaging of this year, I will not chronicle the rest of the story in case what I write is read by someone who then wishes to borrow or buy the video, If so beware that it has a wonderfully inspiring but sad ending.

This experience contrasted with two films about the reality of Christmas, first around an American parental Catholic table, and the second a British made for TV special about getting away from it all in a seaside hotel, the Riviera. I missed the start of the first and instantly forgot its title, but it was a good slice of the reality when families with come together because of parental loyalty and wishes when they lead different lives in different places and appear to have nothing in common except having been brought up in the same household as children and young people. The mother has been the dominating force within a traditional Catholic background, setting down clear rules for her children and now for their grandchildren and finding it difficult to accept any behaviour which conflicts with her own and very willing to use emotional blackmail to get her way. At one level it is possible to criticise the children for not playing the game for a few days one or twice a year. But there are two forces at work which makes this impossible. Each individual cannot detach themselves from the reality of their lives just like that, especially when hours before relationships might be ending, and work issues predominate.

I would dread the approach of the Christmas season each year for close on two decades. This was the time when I was expected to prepare a list of expenditure savings, usually involving reductions in services and staffing, sometimes their abolition, together with proposed developments and cost neutral service changes. These had to be kept secret with knowledge restricted to a handful of those required to do the costing and provide the information on the staffing implications. By the time of sitting down at the Christmas Table I had a good idea of the likely decisions which the controlling politicians would first put to their political colleagues in private and then through to the formal process of Committee, the service committee, the finance personnel sub committees, the policy and resources committee and then the Council meeting to determine the budget for the coming year and local taxation rate level. For the greater part of the period we operated in the context of zero budgeting which meant that changes were not restricted to the listed options for growth or reduction but the whole budget was under scrutiny and indeed management structures could change and departments become amalgamated as they are from time to time at Westminster. Nowadays the approach is to privatise, changing the approach to structures, wages and working conditions. Knowing what the impact would be on those dependent on services and on staff and their families made it difficult to switch off and into the family Christmas. People get ill, people die, have accidents, jobs and homes are lost, and relationships come to an end in the way that they do on every day of year, men and women are fighting in war while others provide emergency and essential services and none of this can be held over because it is Christmas.

Similarly in every family however happy and content the parental relationship, and however loving and caring the parenting there will be the disappointments, the rivalries and sense of injustices, the unfulfilled dreams, and inevitably, the family gathering becomes the opportunity to make comparisons, to remember slights and lacks of attention and consideration, sometimes with explosive and destructive consequences.

So the solution for many is to get away from it all, or from each other in some form. One way is to avoid the stress of cooking the family dinner and going out on Christmas and or Boxing Day, or go for the whole holiday with the family, or without all, or part of them to a restaurant or to a hotel at home or abroad. I missed the first hour of Riviera while experiencing East West but if the second hour was a good indication of the whole then this is also a film to see again. It had the kind funny moments which contain horrible truths although it all ends far better than each individual anticipated. The programme highlighted the difficulty of running away from ourselves and our problems and there is much to be said for the security of home. There were some great moments albeit moments which would have been unpleasant for some viewers. The couple who go for walk and encounter their child, partner and family believed to be away skiing but staying with friends because they refuse to put up with the obnoxious behaviour of the father towards them and his treatment of the mother who is also in on the deception, played magnificently by Barbara Flynn and Warren Clarke. Then there is the Vicar, divided between running off with the sexy curate and his alcoholic wife who needs to keep hold of if he is to become a Bishop.

There was also the widower and son where his wife's ashes get used for the Turkey stuffing and the stuffing becomes the ashes, and where father hits it off with a woman whose cancer prognosis is that that she might see her two year old grand child reach primary school.

The message of both films is that we cannot usually get away with trying to be a different person because it is the Christmas holiday but for the sake of others we should all at least make the effort. However I am tempted to suggest that governments should take the revolutionary step of only treating the day as a bank holiday, and special for practicing Christians, and that to qualify for the holiday they should have to get at least half a dozen non Christians to vouch for them. This would enable true Christians to make their day and the rest to continue to behave as they usually do. Of course a similar holiday would have to be granted to all other religions at appropriate occasions for them with a similar requirement to have to submit references from no believers to obtain the additional holiday. This would also help integration ay local and national level.

This is not eliminate the seasonal national holiday all together which could still be extended over a week but become spiritually and religiously neutral and take place to mark the end of the old and the new year. The rest of the commercialised business of trees, cards, lights and other decorations, gifts and sales, parties, dressing up for football matches, the shows and films designed for children and their families would also continue although the sexist notion of a Father Christmas and the damaging influence of make believe nursery stories and pantomimes should be abolished.

Woody Allen's Celebrity

During the day I sorted completed work cards into one pile and generally worked out what to do over the rest of the week. I was not planning to go out unless the weather prevented play in the Test match at Chester le Street. I then watched Celebrity in the evening. You either tune in to the way Woody Allen looks at life or you do not. Most critics did not like Celebrity his1998 black and white film about those who seek fame and the company of the famous

Kenneth Branagh plays a would be serious novelist who first attempts were critically savaged but still has ambitions while working as a journalist and bored with his highly strung and unconfident wife becomes sex obsessed with any and every young woman who crosses his path. The film is full of excruciating social situations, art show and film previews, parties and fashionable restaurants. One interest is Melanie Griffiths who he first meets as a film extra and with whom the later establishes a relationship after meeting her again when she is living with someone and he has just arranged for his girl friend to move in and have her possessions brought over. She, Winona Ryder, then destroys the only copy of his novel in revenge. That he has no copy is one of several absurd points which removes credibility from this piece of well trodden nonsense.

The film is amusing for the appearance of Leonardo Di Caprio who invites Branagh to participate in a four way swinging session. Another is the cameo appearance of Allison Janney (CJ of the West Wing) interviewed having a posh nosh, Charlize Theron plays a super model who is turned on which ever part of her body is touched but abandon Branagh when he gets so excited that he turns his Aston Martin into a store window.

Judy Davis plays Robin his neglected and abandoned wife who is picked up by a TV executive who for some reason enters the cubicle where she is waiting to see an eminent plastic surgeon and who compliments her on the work that has been carried when she has decided not to have any. Why the man finds her personality and appearance more desirable as a potential wife and mother given the opportunities previously and subsequently is a further flaw although that he is able to get her a job when she has no talent or experiences in the industry probably is not. I liked the ending in which Branagh meets his happily married and confident former wife who has become a celebrity interviewer in her own right whereas he still struggles to write his book, finding out that someone else has made a success of a similar theme and abandoned by all the girl friends including Melanie Griffiths. He is genuinely delighted with the outcome for his former wife. It was time for an early night.

The State of Play as Brighton Rocks

On Friday in the morning I explored central Brighton on foot, the shopping centre and shopping street parallel to the sea front towards Hove, and then in the evening the North Laine and the South Lanes and the cultural area around the Royal Pavilion. In the afternoon I went to the pictures at the Odeon Cinema adjacent the travel Lodge.

Yesterday or perhaps the day before I wrote about my understanding of Brighton having become several distinct communities, conference and holiday centre, two university and recreation town, commuter, retirement and gay town. I did not set out with any intention to establish how far I had correctly judged the situation but now a couple of days later I have to express pleasant surprise at its cosmopolitan sophistication. On my first evening I had a brief conversation with a young man in the lift on his way to watch the match and drink beer with friends and discovered that he came from Jesmond in Newcastle and therefore knew South Shields well but wished to move to the south coast. I now know why.

After two days watching cricket, one day in the sun but with a chill wind, and the second hiding from the bitter cold behind glass or clinging to the back of the lower member’s pavilion on a park bench against the wall, I needed recovery and exercise. As forecast there had been rain overnight and it was after eleven before the skies brightened. I had eaten croissants and drank coffee around between six and seven and then snoozed before undertaking some writing and making my way to the car to transfer the remains of the evening meal and to begin to sort out the rear before the transfer to the Hove Travel Lodge the following morning. As the skies still looked threatening I decided to make my way first to the Churchill centre and do so without climbing the Hill.

Brighton and Hove has a population of 150000 and is located at the western edge of the county of East Sussex. Worthing which I was visiting next has a population of 100000 and is the largest town of West Sussex and in between is the unexpected port of Shoreham by sea, unexpected because I had no idea before visiting that there was such a large port in the form of a waterway created by the mouth of the river Adur and a huge bar which extends to Southwick and Hove. Its population is around 20000.

Brighton the town is built around a hill with shopping and recreation district south of the railway station going down towards the sea front. The main shopping road extends for over a mile east west and part of this road is restricted to buses and taxis and in order to get to the major car parks it is wise to first reach the sea front coast road and then taking the turning past the Brighton centre, which also contains the Odeon cinema, the Travel Lodge and with the Grand Hotel also on the sea front adjacent. I made the mistake of trying to enter the parallel road on my way to the Hove ground on the second day and had to enter the bus only road area at one point. It was all very confusing until working out the system operated.

On Friday I missed the easiest entry into the Churchill shopping centre development which takes on into the Debenhams store with entry from the road between the Travel Lodge and the NCP Car Park. I did find a way from the outer centre car park which involved negotiating incoming and outgoing cars, noticing as I did that a stay here of more than 12 hours to 24 costs a massive £25 designed to restrict use to shoppers and day visitors. I joined a number of passengers from the car park basement who knew that the main entry level into the shopping mall was on the fourth floor and then take the escalators up the next level to reach the front centre street level and the buses.

I felt peckish and made my way to the highest level where there is small food court, MacDonald’s, Spud U Like, a ubiquitous Subway type filled baguette outlet and an healthy organic fruit drinks and hot good restaurant. I was in the mood for a MacChicken, French fries and diet coke and knowing this was unhealthy managed to tip most of the coke onto the floor, a just punishment I felt for the eat the food at a table overlooking the central area where down below a stage had been erected with a cabin like changing area for five tall models giving a professional fashion show with music, lighting, a compere and the designer taking a bow to the bemused shoppers who had intended to pass by.

I picked up a copy of a free magazine Latest 7 which combined property advertisements with articles about local entertainments and I was impressed by a piece by Will Harris on Britain’s I got talent and the sensation of the Scottish singing lass Susan Boyle. I must send him an email later.

It was time for a walk so the decision was taken to travel the shopping road east west towards Hove. I had forgotten that the only Wilkinson’s on this part of the South Coast was at Worthing and not Brighton so misguidedly went in search and to buy lottery tickets of the evening’s £80 million Euro draw. The street and the walk seemed longer than indicated by the return journey or went travelling by bus.

There were two noteworthy discovering and both involved food. La Fourchette is Brighton based with adjacent restaurant and separate bar restaurant and a separate restaurant in Kemptown, a patisserie and a Kemma bar. The place had contemporary European style and a mouth watering menu which needed a partner in gastronomic indulgence for the main course and pudding as well as the wine choice.

For starter I could not make up my mind between Mediterranean King Prawns sautéed in a parsley sauce, garlic and butter £11 or the Pan roasted red Mullet salad with oven dried tomato sauce and a petite salad £7 but the wine choice was a half bottle of Pouilly fume Chateaux Favray 2007 £13. Then we would share a shoulder of lamb slow braised and marinated in 25 spices with mixed vegetables and sautéed potatoes and a bottle Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon 2006 £20 and then a shared pudding of Assiette Gourmande, a chef’s platter of portions of all the sweets on the menu for £14 drank with Bollinger £55 and followed by Liquor Coffees for a total of £9 about £150 for two including gratuities.

The second discovery was Taj ( Mahal International) in the Mediterranean end of the street. This was the most interesting store encountered on my travels with a stupendous selection of olives in 2 kilo kegs, tins, cans bottles and served loose and fresh from large vats and with every size and stuffing.

I then went back to my room which had been cleaned and tidied for a second wash and a cup of tea and relax before going to the pictures in the afternoon. After a cup of tea I went out on an evening explore. There was still the cold wind but it had brightened up although I was not inclined to follow those heading for the pier along the sea front. My first destination was towards the cultural area and as I walked up the hill I was joined by a young man with a pedal bicycle hording on the pavement accompanied a young woman guide leader and a part of about ten young women dressed in green frocks and sashes advertising but can I remember what. Before getting to the cultural area I saw a number of younger people remembering everyone under sixty is young heading into the Lanes to my right, twisty and leading down to the sea front and was tempted by a piano at the Friends meeting House where for a modest few pounds there was a 90 minute concert and a light buffet. I needed to explore and to exercise so I passed and the various inns crowded out in preliminary for the rest of the evening entertainment. There are by the some 400 inns, pubs, restaurants and clubs in the town ranging from the sophisticated already mentioned to the tourist sea front, everywhere chain, earthy environmental and those used by the gay community the largest in the UK including London with its annual Gay Pride event.

The cultural area lies next to the Brighton Pavilion and a wide traffic free piazza before theatres and facilities used for the fringe performances leading to the North Laines. Here environmentalism, the organic and bohemianism was much in evidence and an interesting hotel whose name I forgot which had a lounge bar in a shop window. And then there is the Komedia a multi performance centre boasting 700 activities a year with two most nights featuring comedy, cabaret, club and music as well as performance for young people. Before going home I bought a two glass bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon with two cheese twists but what else I had I did not note or remember. The lights on the seventh floor were fused at one point, perhaps a lady used the wrong voltage hair dryer was one suggestion but it was soon fixed and I Found out that only five of the twenty rooms on the floor were occupied at the time. I conveyed one lot of luggage to the car and then bought a diet coke with ice at the bar around 11pm. There were lively sounds from the young until the early hours.

Fort anyone who has not seen State of Play and intended to do so Goodbye for now. It was my most enjoyable film of the year, requiring constant attention and a great plot with an ending twist which I worked out the bare bones but only just before it was revealed.

The film is an American update of the equally brilliant six part British BBC TB drama series in 2003 which won awards for Nighy and David Morrissey and also starred James McAvoy and concerned the death of a young woman researcher to a Member of Parliament.

The film opens with a black man running for his life and being executed for the metal case he is carrying. You it is more than a drug killing the police believe because the behaviour of the assassin indicated a professional hit and he also attempts to kills a pizza delivery man on a bicycle. Chasing this story for a national newspaper is Russell Crowe, long haired unkept but at the top of the job with Helen Mirren as his editor boss concerned about impressing the new owners of the paper .

Congressman Stephen Collins is participating in a committee investigating the activities of Points Corps a mercenary force which is involved in conducting work on contract for the army abroad as part of a government out sourcing operation. His research assistant appears to have committed suicide or had an accidental death on her way to work and fellow journalist who concentrates on the internet edition is investigating the sexual aspect in terms of the relationship between the assistant and the married Congressman. An added complication in the story at this point is that Crowe roomed with the Congressman, Ben Affleck at college and also had a relationship with the wife of the Congressman during their college days. As the story develops it emerges that the girl researcher was placed by Media Point to spy on the work of the Congressman but she stopped doing so when she fell in love and became pregnant by him. It began to look that she had been killed by Media Point when she failed to deliver further information and their involvement might become known as a consequence of the relationship.

It also emerges that in addition to the overseas involvement, Media Point is responsible for the creation of a raft of companies successfully bidding for multi billion homeland security contracts and the reason for knowing about the research of the Congressman and ensuring that he is silenced or removed from the committee. At one point a female friend and club hostess alleges to the press that she and the murdered girl were involved in group sexual activity with the Congressman as a further means of discrediting and eliminating the threat he poses. A later revelation is that the senior politician who suggested the girl as a research worker is also linked with Media Point who have an operation at the Watergate building!

And the twist in the tale comes from the efforts to find the killer of the black man in the opening sequence. He and his druggy girlfriend operated a racket of stealing brief cases of businessmen and then selling them back to feed their habits. In this instance the case contained surveillance photographs of the murdered and a weapon which suggested that a hit was being planned. The pizza delivery man is then killed while under police protection in hospital by a riffle at a distance from an adjacent taller building and Russell barely escapes with his life when discovering the base use by the assassin. The congressman with support from his wife agree to make a statement to the paper about his knowledge of the situation but Russell holds publication of the story when he puts together the actual scenario. The Congressman and served with the assassin in Vietnam and the twist is that the Congressman began to have suspicions about the role of his assistant and also the seriousness of the relationship and the implications for his marriage and political career. He argues that he intended for the girl to be frightened and that his former military colleague had gone to far. However this is shown to have been a further attempt to limit responsibility because of a telephone conversation between them on the need to kill the pizza man and the girlfriend of the black drug addict, four deaths in total. It is also true that Points Corps were prepared to go considerable length to protect their growing financial interests.

The film covers the problems of media ownership and political interests and the problems faced by newspaper media by 24 news TV and Blog writing stories. It has a relevance given the stories about Ministerial and parliamentary expenses and how to use the system. It was a good day.

Belle Epoque and They Who Dare, politics

I have previously written about the formation of special forces created by David Stirling DSO OBE was part of the infamous Clermont Set. The Daily Mail War Movie Collection film They who Dare features the early raid of the SAS on the Island of Rhodes where I have spent a short holiday and visited where the films the Guns of Navarone and Force Ten Navarone, based on the Alistair MacLean book, were set and filmed.

The film was made in the 1950‘s and the portrayal the Greek people is typical of the approach to all Western Europeans at that time. Eight specially trained men led by Dirk Bogard, with two guides who had left the island before it fell to the Germans, are taken by submarine to blow up the planes on two airfields. Remembering this is a fictional story, these early raids were designed to test the capabilities of the new force rather than any expectation that they would be successful. Stirling’s belief was that despite the overwhelming odds, in this instance there were 30000 enemy troops on the Island, it was possible for well equipped small teams to cause considerable damage and suffer significantly fewer casualties than the traditional assault approach en masse.

I listened to a radio discussion this morning that the Conservative party is questioning the need for Trident replacement or the creation of two new Super air craft carriers and there is also call for a review of the need for heavy tanks as the likelihood of Britain becoming involved in he kind of military wars fought in the two World Wars recedes at a time of exceptional call on public finances. However I also share the concern that any review must be thorough and carried out in conjunction with NATO and in specific instances with G20 nations in general which includes Russia and China. This is because the situation can change dramatically. The Soviet union effectively collapsed within 30 months, just as the recent world economic collapse occurred within six. One new threat is that of piracy and we, even NATO do not have the number of Frigate type vessels to effectively police the Indian Ocean and Russia and China are helping out. However the solution is not to build up a new long term Frigate fleet but deal with how and why the Piracy problem has occurred. This involved the failure of the Somalia state. There are more failed states in the world at the present time than effective ones.

Dirk Bogarde was born Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde in a nursing home at 12 Hemstal Road, Hampstead, London, of mixed Flemish Dutch Scottish ancestry, and baptised on 30 October at St. Mary's Church, Kilburn. His father, Ulric van den Bogaerde (born in Perry Barr, Birmingham), was the art editor of The Times his mother Margaret Niven was a former actress.

Dirk served in World War 2, commissioned into the Queen’s Royal Regiment in 1943. He reached the rank of major and served in both the European and Pacific theatres, principally as an intelligence officer. He retained a profound hostility to Germany and its people throughout his subsequent life.

In the film he portrays a man wracked with doubt about his decisions and leadership abilities and is full of guilt at the loss of men and the impact of the assignment on the civilian population.

During the film I was constantly reminded of a similar venture in which a high ranking German officer is captured and taken from the Greek mainland or a similar Island and which involved cute Greek children. In that instance a single boy misleads the Germans and enables the SAS to get to the waiting vessel. In this film there are two boys who help villages provide the force with water and food which enables them to continue with the mission. Only two members of the party, Dirk Bogard and Denholm Elliot manage to escape the island, by swimming towards where they should have been several hours before but are picked up and sit at a table laid with ten places for a promised steak and kidney pie. Three have been killed and five captured but the objectives were successful. However this is fiction and my understanding is that overall the actual early mission of the special forces group were not and serious consideration was given to abandoning the project.

I was disappointed by the Spanish Language and directed 1992 film Belle Epoque which won an Oscar for best foreign language film and also got nine awards in Spain. It also features Penelope Cruz and although her name appears first in credits she plays one of four sister whose parents steal the show and where the main character is a former seminary student, army deserter during the Spanish Civil War. There in two very different films interwoven as one and the two do not work together although I can understand why the film was given awards at the time.

The main story reminds of a film which featured the sexual exploits of a window cleaner and other similar occupations which bring the “hero” into contact with women in their own homes. In Belle Epoque the young man is taken home by a local supporter of the Republican cause which he meets at the local brothel where he was attempting to spend the night lying low having escaped custody of the national guards. The following day the army deserter is about the catch the train to Madrid when he meets the four daughters of the local republican supporter and pretends of have missed his train to spend another night at the family . All four sisters are interested in him from their different perspectives and interests. He has relations with all four and there is some mild bodice ripping although apart from the wicked concept, it is very mild fare compared to after 9 pm contemporary TV and parental guidance films shown in theatre. Our hero is in fact seduced in the first ‘conquest‘, the sister who is a vet has shown dominating male tendencies since childhood so when the guest admits to her father that they have become lovers, father is delighted but young man is quickly disappointed when the young woman declares that this was just a one night fling and she has no interested in further involvement.

The second sister is engaged, of a kind, to the son of a wealthy woman who is a devout Catholic, and he claims to be a Carlist as well as staunch Bible quoting Catholic but he is under his mother’s thumb and again after the seduction it emerges that this is only a single experience they will share. Carlism was an important political force in Spain for one hundred and fifty years until the death of Franco, and adherents wanted the re-establishment of a particular line of Bourbon Monarchs

The eldest sister is a young widow whose husband died in the local river and this nearly happens again when as passion between her and the army deserter flares up she pushes him away and he falls into the river and nearly drowns. Their coupling again proves to be a once only experience. Penelope Cruz plays the youngest sister, a virgin and in this instance the inevitable coupling is halted until a marriage takes place and they are presented as living happy ever after.

What makes the film different from a hundred others of a similar ilk, Tom Jones, Casanova, Confession of a Window Cleaner etc., is that the film is set during the Spanish Civil war and unlike most films which highlight the ruthlessness and brutality of both sides and its impact on communities and families, this is an irreverent and satirical look at what is was like, some of it successful but other ideas are not. It has an Almodovar quality and is an understandable way in which many Spaniards have been able to cope with ending of Franco’s Fascism without resurrecting too many long standing feuds and sense of injustice arising from the Civil War. One has only to think of the reaction in Britain to the Life of Brian, Jerry Springer the Musical to know how difficult it is to poke fun when it is interpreted as poking fun at strongly held beliefs.

In the opening of the film the two Civil Guards are close family friends involved in the capture of the deserter and who suddenly fall out when one suggests they should act on the basis of who will come out on top of the conflict while the other takes the view they must not sides other than representing the established order, unless that order changes. The film reminds of the time the population was divided between communists, monarchists, Carlists, Republications believers and non believers and which divided individuals families as well as communities and where each side retaliated on those who support anyone else, even if they had to under duress. The majority are presented as wanting to be left alone to enjoy the fiestas, go to mass on Sundays, and the local brothel on Saturday night. One guard shoots the other in a rage and then kills himself when he realises what he has done. There was much madness between 1936 and 1939. Aspects of the film shocked the average Spanish audience from the sister who dresses and behaves like a man at the fiesta and the deserter who dresses like a woman in a direct parody of Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in Some Like it Hot

I enjoyed the role of the father, Manolo, played by Fernando Fernan Gomez. Although he has a regular card playing fixture at the brothel he does not partake on what is on offer because he has erectile dysfunction except with his wife. This is a problem as his wife, spends most of her time abroad with her wealthy impresario lover who finances her wish to be recognised as an opera singer although she is as good a singer as the wife in Alo Alo. When the wife returns home to see her daughters her main wish is to go to bed with her husband because of his prowess and it is the lover who becomes jealous and upset. The film is much about the hypocrisy extreme right and left states and which is revealed when free of tyranny the people quickly revert to their continuing held traditions and beliefs. As Berardinelli and Mark Leaper point out in their reviews this film is more fun than art and more farce than political satire and this is its problem.

The Daily Mail in trying to reflect the opinion of the middle class is committed to ending the Brown administration as quickly as possible and therefore can be accused of presenting a biased selection of Labour Party views about the present leadership although a careful reading of Saturday’s news story by James Chapman, the political Editor, does attempt the balance the chorus of quoted former Ministers calling for a complete make over at the top with, or preferably, without Gordon Brown. The problem is that any change of leadership without a General Election will reinforce the claim of a leadership which has not been put to the electorate for approval and calling a General Election would be suicide for a large number of individual Labour Members of Parliament who if they hold firm have a minimum of a year to plan what to do next or hope for a sufficient political recovery to personally survive as a Member of Parliament even if this result is to become an opposition Member of the Commons, a role which many would prefer as an alternative to having to continually support government policies and decisions with which they are opposed.

The knives also continue to be out for my Member of Parliament as in a separate article there is first the disclosure of an internal memoranda from the within the Foreign Office seeking views on how to mark and celebrate the diversity of faiths within the UK and the world, which is highly appropriate but destined to annoy the bigots of the Church of England and British right wing establishment. That David has been honest and declared his agnosticism has fuelled those who are horrified with his leadership potential. Fearful that David could fill any void if Brown goes or when he goes because he such an all round good guy with an international outlook and special links with the USA through his wife and two adopted children, the piece goes on to accuse him of pushing political correctness and “devotion to gender and race equality together and then claims his inertia and weak leadership is crushing the spirit of those working there according to a Human Resources Consultancy. The Mail does not point the inherent contradiction of the alleged statement because he is accused of being a weak leader while insisting on gender equality and race equality, which if is true confirms suspicion that there is in the Foreign Office still the right wing reactionary and male bigotry they were once branded as being and something which I understood had been systematically rooted out once Labour took control.

The Daily Mail then nailed its flag to the mast in remaining cautious over the centrist leadership of David Cameron, in an editorial calling for him to be more like Margaret Thatcher and then giving the adjacent centre spread and essay by Peter Osborn headed Where’s Maggie Thatcher when we need her.

Quentin Letts also sees the forthcoming vacancy of Governor General of Gibraltar as an opportunity for the Home Secretary especially as the territory has an excellent Pay to view Television service for her husband to enjoy. He also mentions an enjoyable but wicked form of encouragement in that one duty, as the Queen’s representative, is to have lunch every Wednesday with the Chief Minister Peter Caruana, describing him as spidery small town lawyer full of his own self importance. Peter Osborn has two bites of the cherry pie this week with a second piece with the heading, So, who’ll hand him a loaded revolver and a bottle of whisky? Guess who he is talking about?