Got a bit of a back-log so I'll run through it now. Saw Welcome to Dongmakgol a while ago, very cute, funny Korean film set in the war where 2 Soldiers from the south, 3 from the north and a crashed US pilot all find solace in a small, isolated, hidden village in the mountains. The villagers are totally clueless and don't even know what guns are and there is huge tension between the rival soldiers initially. This is such a cute little film. South Korean films tend to strain towards the cheesy at times and this doesn't do it as much as some and I like it for that. Entertaining couple of hours.

I caught a mid-40s Katharine Hepburn film on tv the other week, Undercurrent, bog-standard noir in the vein of Suspicion. This should really have been a Joan Crawford film, it's exactly the type she was getting up to in the mid-40s - Hepburn excels with the material she's given, she goes above and beyond but Robert Taylor wasn't very interesting. Good to see Robert Mitchum doing something different early in his career. Overall, not a great effort but a decent enough way to spend a bit of time.

On to a couple of very short comedies. The first was a British film called Someone Else, which I rented from Lovefilm solely because it had Lara Belmont in it (who was so ridiculously brilliant in The War Zone). She's only in it for a handful of scenes though which was disappointing as it's a fairly ... I don't want to be harsh on this film because there's nothing really wrong with it, it's just ... alright. Stars the bloke from those annoying mastercard adverts who is juggling a girlfriend and Lara and then after dumping the girlfriend Lara dumps him and he's left single. That's pretty much it really - contradictory messages at the end, only bright spark is Lara's scene with him in the bar where it becomes apparant she has lost none of her natural abilities in front of a camera. You need to do more work, love, oh if only Mike Leigh could get his hands on this girl...

Anyway, second short comedy is my 3rd Pignon film I've watched recently (which you'll know if you're one of the 20 people who it seems will always read my blog ) - this one called The Dinner Game. Basic plot is Brochant and his friends host a dinner every Wednesday where they each bring along an idiot and the one with the dumbest guest wins. Brochant hasn't found his idiot but when a pal of his meets matchstick model-making taxman Pignon on the train the pal gives Brochant Pignon's number and he invites him to dinner. However before they can go Brochant pulls his back out and gets stuck with Pignon all night.

This film has about 6-8 absolutely MONSTER laughs in them and the rest is stringing it together in as amusing a way as possible. Jacques Villeret is an absolute hoot as Pignon (probably the best Pignon, although the other films have situations designed better to get more comedy out of it) - my only real problems with the film were the criminal underuse of the divine Catherine Frot and that every time he says "goodbye" you know he's not leaving. It did have a very stagey feel to it being set almost entirely in Brochant's apartment and subsequently it was no surprise at all for me to learn later it was based on a play and Villeret had played Pignon hundreds of times. So some huge laughs and a very silly film that I'd really recommend.

Well, I've wanted to see this for a couple of years ever since seeing the cast - a Downfall reunion with Alexandra Maria Lara and Bruno Ganz in a Francis Ford Coppola film. Now this got one of those traditional "3 cinemas in London" releases and never got here so I was very glad to see this online today. The downside of seeing it online is the cinematography, which is excellent, suffers - apparantly this is getting a dvd release in a couple of months time and I will definitely be renting it then.

The plot set-up is basically this : In 1938 Dominic (Tim Roth) is an old man who has "failed" in his life's work on the origins of language. He travels to Bucharest with the intention of committing suicide but before doing so is struck by a bolt of lightning whilst crossing the street. Suffering burns over all of his body he is temporarily rendered mute and unable to move but soon his speech and mobility come back. He is 70 years old, but when the bandages are removed he has the appearance of a man half that age and he sprouts a new set of teeth and a full head of hair.

So our man is given a second chance in life to finish his work. He soon discovers the lightning has mutated him and aside from regenerating his memory and physique he can do many things, e.g. know the contents of a book merely by touching it, he has a "double" (another Tim Roth) who he talks to and gets advice from. There are many plotlines - we see his past relationship with Laura (Alexandra Maria Lara) and later on she appears again as another character called Veronica. We have Roth's dodging the Nazis through the war years and other intrigues later.

It's a very ambitious film and I naturally like ambition in a filmmaker. Whenever I see a film described as "a folly" I amost invariably want to see it - don't always like them but like to see a director pushing himself and tackling difficult subjects. I think Coppola has made a very interesting film, some might say impenetrable, but I think after a first watch it's not *that* "bad", it's certainly not a mind-f**k like David Lynch would do as there is much more tangible stuff going on. A point is being striven to be made, albeit not in the most accessible of ways. He's not tying everything up in a neat little bow and I like that he's challenging the audience, but I also like that he's not just doing it for the hell of it.

The acting is very fine indeed, Roth comes across as such an ego-less actor, this is not a showy "look at me, I'm acting!" performance, he is giving us the character. Lara proves yet again how naturally gifted she is at conveying emotions and she gives a striking turn as Veronica (her Laura is a glorified cameo). Ganz provides very able support as the doctor who helps Roth come to terms with his new "condition".

So, a beautifully made, very ambitious film that does sprawl, it does continually re-start (apparantly it took editor Walter Murch 6 weeks to view all the footage shot for the film) but I think that is very much the point of some of the philosophy this film is about. Like I'm Not There though it may give us a film in the style of the subject but it may not serve the film best in terms of storytelling. Flaws? Probably. Interesting? Definitely. Worth a rewatch to discover more? For me, certainly.

I do find it rather contrary that on the day of the oscars I saw this and My Blueberry Nights again (the latter as a rather lovely time-filler between Nic Cage and red carpet) but ... that's how I roll (sorry, I've been wanting to get that phrase in the blog for a while, I got "the goods" in during the Blueberry review so at least I'm amusing myself ).

This was ... not good. I saw the first film on tv and while it wasn't the greatest televisual experience of my life it was incredibly stupid but quite fun. This is just as stupid, but lacks most of the things that appealed to me about the original. Firstly, I cannot believe it's written by the same people, the original was full of one-liners, Justin Bartha stole the show and Cage seemed to be genuinely enjoying himself. This one though seems to go for "silly" comedy a lot more and combine that with the stupidity of the general plot anyway and you're guaranteed to lose a few brain-cells watching this one.

Kruger is probably the only person to improve on the performance in the original, Cage snoozes his way through the film and is joined by fellow sleepwalkers Jon Voight and Helen Mirren, playing his parents. Ed Harris is on cruise control, it's just a very flaccid effort on all fronts from everyone involved.

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On to the oscars. Virgin screwed me over ... twice. Was watching it on Sky Movies Premiere ... that died after an hour so I missed Amy Adams ). Then 20 minutes later (after missing Javier's win) I found it on Sky Screen ... and then that died at 4am around the time of the cinematography award. Just said the channel was not on air . Yet all the other sky movie channels were working, I was furious, I have no idea what was going on. Came upstairs and tried to find it online for 30 minutes (whilst simultaneously swearing a lot at someone on MSN ... forgive me, it was a stressful moment ) before realising ... I actually didn't care who won director and best film and decided to sod it and go to bed.

As you can see from yesterday my tech predictions completely sucked. I think they did a terrible job overall - the year was bad to start with, then the nominations were really poor and not representative of the best of the year and on top of that I only agreed with a third of their decision *just based on their nominees*. Awful oscars this year in terms of what they went for, but a very entertaining hosting job from Jon Stewart and a good performance from La Chenoweth.

Right, I've been completely obsessed with the wait for and aftermath of My Blueberry Nights for so long I've actually forgotten the oscars are coming. So I'll do a few things here, all vis-a-vis the oscars. Firstly, 2 sets of predictions. The first one will be the "real" predictions, the cold, cynical, conservative choices I think they'll go for, then in brackets the "out of left-field" possibilities.

Picture : No Country For Old Men (could be anyone's, but if they were going to go different Atonement is the most their thing)
Actor : Day Lewis - There Will Be Blood (same)
Actress : Christie - Away From Her (Marion Cotillard - La Môme)
S. Actor : Bardem - No Country For Old Men (if anyone beats him it's Holbrook - Into the Wild)
S. Actress : Blanchett - I'm Not There (this could be anyone's)
Direction : Coens - No Country For Old Men (same, but only PTA can beat them I think)

O. Screenplay : Juno (same)
A. Screenplay : No Country for Old Men (same, although I would ADORE another Ron Harwood shocker for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)
Cinematography : The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (No Country for Old Men)
Editing : No Country for Old Men
Art Direction : Atonement (same)
Costume Design : Elizabeth : The Golden Age (same)
Sound Mixing : No Country for Old Men
Sound Editing : No Country for Old Men (There Will Be Blood)

VFX : Pirates of the Caribbean 3 (Transformers)
Make Up : La Môme ( POTC 3)
Song : Falling Slowly - Once (That's How You Know - Enchanted)
Score : Atonement (same)

Animated : Ratatouille (same)
Foreign Language : The Counterfeiters (if anything, Katyn)
Documentary : No End in Sight (same)

And doing that has bored me so much I have no desire to talk about anything else, lol. All I'll say is, in the major categories the *only* people I'm rooting for are Linney, Viscount Hoffman (because I hate category fraud, but Casey is the best performance nominated so I wouldn't mind a win that's not going to happen) and Julian Schnabel. The rest, AMPAS did such a horrendous job in an already poor year it's almost impossible to *want* anyone to win. I mean, I think No Country... is the best of the BP films (wouldn't make my top 10 of the year though...) but I'd find it HILARIOUS if Juno won, just so I could say "Yes, but the oscars think the best films of the last 3 years were Crash, The Departed and Juno!" and it would also be amusing for anything to beat the Coens' film just to see people who like that the best whine their asses off.

Well, I saw it.

There, see?  This will either be my best review or my most completely useless, but I'll say what I can. I'm really glad that the whole point of doing this blog was to get my thoughts on films down without resorting to something as subjective and restrictive as giving it a rating, because this is not a film that you insult by doing something as churlish as "giving it marks out of 10". This film is like meeting someone, in my case a woman who is *exactly* my type, and spending a while talking to her. You don't come home later and think "Oh great girl, she's a 9" or "oh if only her nose were a bit different...". As I wanted to know so little about this as possible prior to seeing it I'll just talk about the acting and the filmmaking - I'll take them in order.

The film starts with the Jude Law section and is shot almost exclusively in a cafe that Jude runs. I think the editing in this section is its most spectacular, the cinematography, well, normal superlatives don't cover it - it's an aesthetic delight. Jude is doing a normal English accent (in this case a gentle Lancashire - "Eliz-ur-buth" ) and I adore Wong Kar-Wai for letting or asking him. It's a pet peeve of mine that in foreign films English characters are reduced to cockney and "posh" (which doesn't really exist) and it was a lovely touch. Jude is a talented actor, especially with a great director and I thought he was so natural here, he's very atmospheric in that he's got a natural chemistry with his surroundings (his scene later with Chan Marshall - Cat Power - is probably my favourite in the film for their body language which perfectly recalls that of former lovers and the certain level of intimacy that dictates).

After we leave the Jude section we get into the David/Rachel section. All I can say is "Arise once more, Lord David of Strathairn" - the man is just ... words fail me - spectacular/awe-inspiring/incredible* here (* = delete as applicable). I want to run the FYC campaign for this film because if they focus on David then an oscar nomination is totally do-able. His performance is like Hal Holbrook's in Into the Wild, but magnified immeasurably because he has so much more to and so many scenes which are absolutely killer. It's a monumental turn and about as good as supporting performances get. He's the goods, the bollocks, the absolute man and so is Wong for getting this performance out of him. Rachel on the other hand is, by the role's nature, very over the top and I was not enjoying her at all but her gigantic scene (calling it "big" doesn't do it justice ) more than makes up for that - the best thing about this is I've never seen Weisz anything like it so she's definitely in character.

After them we move on to Natalie Portman's section and she is a strange one. It's a very mannered performance but it's a "fun" one which will either annoy the hell out of you or delight you. For me it did a bit of both, I started off thinking "eck" but by the end I liked her. Norah is the glue that holds all of this together, Wong doesn't give her much to do as she has a passively written role but I do think it suits the story as the people she comes across reflect back on her character. There are a couple of moments where she seems strange or out of character but they happen early in the Jude section where she's pining and the very occasional moments of childish petulance are thankfully only random mis-steps, which is completely understandable as she's never acted before. That she can hold the screen with people like Jude and Natalie and not be completely blown off it (and add great moments to Strathairn's godly turn) speaks volumes to her natural talent and Wong's ability with actors.

This is a very self-referential film, like for example Bergman's penchant for naming characters Vergerus, Weisz is called Sue-Lynn, an obvious reference to the previous Wong character played by Maggie Cheung. What I think of this is that My Blueberry Nights it is to Wong Kar-Wai what Rhapsody in Blue was to George Gerswhin - there are little pieces of everything he's done (and in Gerwshin's case, everything he'd ever do) and it blends together so perfectly. Like Shostakovich's "D-S-C-H" motif (which represented his name in notes), there are thematic motifs which are Wong's soul and it just wouldn't be *him* or have any of his heart or appeal without them.

So if you like Wong's films then unless you're a complete philistine it's impossible not to like this film too. If you don't like Wong's films then this will represent the zenith of everything you dislike. Again, it's like a woman. If you naturally don't go for, say busty redheads, then you don't go for busty redheads, there's nothing you can do about it, you'll always prefer other types of women. This particular woman, My Blueberry Nights, is everything that defines my "type" and it was an experience spending time with her. If she's your type too then you cannot miss this and if you're not familiar with this kind of woman then she's a perfect place to discover if she is your type or not.

I've been trying to think of what I will be referring to this as in the future and I think City of God II : The Berlinale Files has a nice ring to it. This just won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival ... and I have no idea why. It's basically, if I were pitching it, Serpico meets Full Metal Jacket, done like City of God. Now, I loathed City of God, I thought it was very well made but the inherent misogyny and glorification were just anathema to my sensibilites. This is the other way round, it's a bit of a hack job because it tries to use the same style but has none of the brio or vibrancy of Meirelles's storytelling but there's more weight to the story.

The problem is though, the story at times is laughable. We open the film with policemen going into the slums to collect a pay-off from drug dealers. Two straight cops are following them and end up shooting someone - all hell breaks loose. Here is the script from that point :

"Go f--k yourself dude!"
"No one invades the hood, bitch!"
"Wanna mess with us, motherf--kers?"
"We'll f--king kill you!"

- A chase ensues

"Oh s--t, we're screwed!"

- Finally the cops are cornered

"F--k!"
"We're going to die, man!"
"DUDE! We're going to die!"
"Keep shooting, bro!"
"Oh s--t!"
"F--k! we're f--ked! Dude!"
"We're going to die, man!"
"No compadre, stay calm would you?"

As you can see, this is so laughable it's as if it was a 14 year old boy's attempt at dialogue after buying his first hoodie. This is the trouble, the film then goes back and for the next hour tells you everything up til that point (the Serpico section) then afterwards goes into BOPE (the special section of the military police) training and beyond (which is the Full Metal Jacket part of the film), but there are frequently hilarious moments stemming from the awful writing. The training sequences in Full Metal Jacket were really funny because you laughed along with R. Lee Ermey because how he was belittling the trainees was so amusing. This though, rather than laughing with, you laugh at because it's just so pathetic.

The basic set up is that BOPE Captain Nascimento is leaving the job due to stress and he has to get a replacement. The two most likely trainees are Neto and Matias, one having the feel for the streets, the other the intelligence. What it ends up being is a portrait of the decline of character in doing the job. At one point in the training Nascimento exclaims "In order to wear this skull you need to have some character" - oh that the screenwriter had heeded the advice of the lines he wrote. That's because if that's where you're going with it (and that is ultimately the point of the film) then you HAVE to show detailed character throughout the film and frankly he doesn't do that. All we know about Matias is he doesn't know if he wants to be a lawyer or a cop, he has a poorly drawn relationship with a girl (played by Fernanda Machado, the only bright part of a consistently dull cast), is "honourable", then situations lead him to be less so. It doesn't help that the acting is barely competent and can't add any nuance to what's not there on paper, but it's very fragmented and not a well constructed arc.

So this is a sort of freak show - it has delusions of grandeur yet is a hack job, it has pretensions of importance but is risible - but it's so amusingly crap it's actually consistently entertaining so I can't give it a throroughly bad write up. It's trash, but fun trash because you can laugh at it so much. It has none of the undesirable over and undertones of the film it aspires to emulate, but none of the zest or originality.  The acting, bar Machado, is uniformly poor and the narrative not particularly interesting but it does talk a good game, it is on an interesting subject (corruption, primarily the general police, but eventually individual moral). This is a so bad it's (almost in the realm of being) good film and I think it's hilarious it won the Golden Bear. It's *just* about recommended, its target audience is guys under 30 and I cannot imagine anyone else being into it unless they really, really liked City of God to the degree they don't mind the bastardisation of it.

Right, as the countdown to My Blueberry Nights continues, I'm clearing my back-log of things to talk about. First up is something I watched over a week ago but I did it in two halves and forgot about it. A Good Year, by Ridley Scott, starring Russell Crowe. To begin with, Crowe's accent is ... well, how shall I put it? "Interesting" to say the least, he's supposed to be English but that is a new one for me. This film suffers what so many of these rom-com types do in that it just takes such an incredibly long time for them to get the plot going - a good 30-40 minutes is wasted before it even gets mildly entertaining. So after the write-off that was the opening third of the film, once in France and Marion Cotillard shows up, the film picks up too.

It gets quite funny, Russell is very unusual for him here, usually he's all brood and presence but here he has to rely on a pompous arse charm to get him through the film. It's weird for him but it works I suppose. Scott, as ever, has it absolutely beautifully shot, the thing is gorgeous to look at, he also completely wastes Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi which I was not amused by in the slightest, she deserves better. This isn't anything new or revelatory but it's a nice enough little film that gets more entertaining as it goes.

I've been a fan of Krzysztof Kieslowski ever since I first saw Three Colours White on Channel 4 at some point in the mid-90s. Gradually, through a variety of sources I've seen a lot more of his work and now having seen The Scar (his non-documentary feature debut) I've seen all of his non-documentary films. This is not very "Kieslowski" and it, in conjunction with Amator forms the bridge between his love of documentary coming out of the Lodz film school and the period in the 1980s when he really began to express himself as an artist.

This is simply told and nicely acted. It's not tremendously interesting visually, but it seems clear Kieslowski was at a point of his filmmaking where for him truth and politics were more important than more superifical artistry. It follows the mismanagement of a local factory and how a high ranking party official goes about trying to make a success of it. Sub plots involving his past with the town and his relationship with his daughter are only mildly interesting but are pretty isolated and don't gel together entirely satisfactorily. In the end it is a minor work from a true master, but fascinating to see where he came from.

Less fascinating was Elementarteilchen (Atomised), a German effort. It has quite a few familiar faces (Franka Potente, Martina Gedeck, Moritz Bleibtreu, etc.) but it's a mess. Very little going on, not much insight into the topics, lazy, relying on kink for interest, it's just flat out boring and at times extremely funny (especially Bleibtreu, who is barely competent as an actor at the best of times). Won't even bother with the plot, it's not worth your time unless you desperately want to see the woman from The Lives of Others get her breasts out while being shagged from behind by multiple people in an orgy-club. That's about as interesting as the thing gets.

Well this is a follow up of sorts to Le Placard, which I talked about earlier in the week. There are quite a few films that follow the character of François Pignon (normally played by a different actor each time) and this is the latest. This is an extremely funny film, utterly hilarious at times and while it has a cast littered with recognisable faces from Virginie Ledoyen and Kristin Scott Thomas, through Dany Boon and former Pignon Daniel Auteuil the two central roles are taken by lesser known people, namely Gad Elmaleh as Pignon and Alice Taglioni.

The plot set up isn't too complicated but it needs a bit of explanation. Daniel Auteuil and Kristin Scott Thomas are married but Auteuil (who is the CEO of the company his wife is the majority shareholder in) is having an affair with a Supermodel (Taglioni). Pignon is, in this incarnation, a parking valet and he happens to be passing Auteuil and Taglioni as they have their photograph taken by a paparazzo. To cover his affair Auteuil tracks down Pignon (who has just proposed to Ledoyen and been turned down) and offers him money to play the role of Taglioni's boyfriend to put his wife off the scent. So the supermodel (who has waited for 2 years for Auteuil to divorce his wife and is blackmailing him for 20 million Euros to go along with the pretense unless he leaves his wife before the end of the month) moves in with the valet and they must do everything they can to make it as convincing as possible.

Taglioni and Elmaleh are the centre of the film, which is quite brilliantly written. It milks some truly hilarious situations but most of the gags and funny moments go to the supporting cast. Both Alice and Gad do very nice, thankless work as the "straight men" in this comedy as Auteuil and Boon (Pignon's fellow valet and housemate) in particular reap the bulk of the comedic payoffs with both their characters expressing frustration at the situation.

This is such a fun movie, so accessible, it's right out of the centre of commercial French cinema and apparantly a US remake is already on the way. I can see why because the situations and comedy are so universal for practically any western country. That latter point though is why it's so disappointing this delightful little gem hasn't even been released in this country. I cannot imagine anyone thinking My Best Friend (starring Auteuil & Boon and released theatrically here last year) would have more appeal than this. Regardless, this is a lovely film, extremely entertaining and it should be impossible for the Farrelly Brothers to mess up. If it's even half as good as this one it'll be well worth the watch.

Over the past few days I have been worrying about the prospect of seeing There Will Be Blood. I have never been the greatest fan of Paul Thomas Anderson, I've liked some of his films and admired his ambition as a director but have never loved one of his works. On the contrary Daniel Day Lewis could be my favourite actor working today but I was not as fond of him in Gangs of New York - the last time he received the amount of praise from critics and industry awards that he has been receiving in the past few months for the role of Daniel Plainview.

The set up of the plot is Day Lewis is an oil prospector who is approached by a young man (Paul Dano) offering information about a place with oil in exchange for money. Day Lewis checks it out and finds oil there and goes about acquiring the land. There are two points of interest to the plot, one being the relationship between Day Lewis and his boy and the other between Day Lewis and a local preacher Paul Dano (playing the, we assume, twin brother of the one who brought Day Lewis to the town) who tries to mould things to his advantage.

In the end, the film is one of two things : it is either an overblown drama with serious issues vis-a-vis tone or it is the most utterly dull comedy known to man. This is because it is stretched out so much and when the payoffs come ... they're so over the top it's actually amusing. Day Lewis is very good for the most part, but when the big scenes come calling, he can't save them - he tries his best to imbue them with a semblance of quality but they fall down and are quite literally ridiculous. Dano is flat out poor, he is completely unbelievable as the character, all you see is an incompetent actor trying to act and he sucks the life out of every scene he's involved in.

The score, by Johnny Greenwood (who I have admired as a guitarist for well over a decade) is overbearing and intrusive, the script has some truly horrible lines at times for the characters to deliver which are impossible to do so without eliciting laughter from the audience. The narrative is steeped in inertia - it sputters and goes one direction then the next - it's a mess. In the past I have greatly admired Anderson's ambition - the opening 10-15 minutes of Magnolia is just bravura filmmaking of the highest order - but here he seems to have ditched everything interesting about him as a storyteller (both as a screenwriter and director) and created a very low key excuse to make a movie with Daniel Day Lewis.

The climax (oh that it were a climax, rather a pedestrian limp over the finish line) of the film is the only thing that stops Day Lewis giving a truly excellent performance. It's not his fault, but the grandstanding to which Anderson pushes him and complete lack of any semblance of restraint shown spoils what had not been his best work, but a first rate performance. What remains is a performance which is very good indeed and the *only* reason to see this film. I couldn't possibly think of anyone I could recommend this to, I would have no idea who or what kind of person this would appeal to. Day Lewis ensures this retains enough curiosity value to deem it worthy of at least watching but I could never imagine wanting to watch this again.

"I don't know how to begin..." is the way Norah Jones starts her song The Story, on the My Blueberry Nights soundtrack and it's perfect for what I'm feeling after watching La Antena. My initial thought is that XXY had better be one of the finest films of the decade, otherwise I am going to be extremely annoyed at Argentina for not sending this utterly magnificent little film as their submission to the oscars.

So because of this, while I'm a little reluctant to do it as there's only the first 10 minutes of the film and it may leave you dying for more with no way (other than downloading) of seeing it, I'm going to link to youtube as I could sit here all day typing and I don't think my words could do the visual style of this film justice. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=872BQvIWrjA - there's the opening of this utterly superb, quietly amazing little film, which is an absolute delight. Just marvellous, see it any way you can.

In late 2005 I asked someone to buy me a copy of 2046 for Christmas. I'd heard things about it and wanted to see it but wouldn't shell out to blind-buy it myself. Instead, when it came to christmas, the person buying had obviously seen a tie-in link when getting it and had bought me it's "prequel", In the Mood For Love as well, which I'd only heard of in reference to 2046. So I figured, given as it was Christmas Day, I'd gotten up early to open presents and wasn't doing anything until lunchtime, I may as well watch them in order. About 10 minutes in I realised I'd seen In the Mood For Love before.

It's an iconic image, Maggie Cheung walking to get noodles in slow-motion with the Shigeru Umebayashi's waltz accompanying it but that was when it clicked. Many years previously I had seen Fucking Amal (Show Me Love) on BBC3. I was in my 2nd or 3rd year at University and I stumbled across it about 10 minutes in and was mesmerised. The problem was my two housemates had told me earlier they wanted to watch something and the film went on 5 minutes beyond their programme's start time. So while trying to explain it's a good film without "it's about 15 year old Swedish lesbians" sounding truly pathetic I gave up and let them watch their thing.

About a year later, I discovered that Film Four (which was still a subscription channel back then) was showing it as part of a double bill chosen by Mike Figgis so I paid the £6 to have the channel for the month *solely* to video this Swedish film. I cannot recall whether In the Mood For Love was the other half of that double bill or not, but it was on regularly that month and one night I watched three-quarters of it before going out. I had really enjoyed it but completely forgotten about it as I had no frame of reference to remember it as anything other than "that chinese film with the red curtains".

Now that had happened to me once before at University. In my first year I had recently moved from my shared room in an old oversized house to a proper block with a single room with en suite and kitchen so I was living as high on the hog as Leeds University halls of residence allowed. LATE one night I had, completely unplanned, finished watching something on Channel 4 and they advertised a film coming up next. It was Chinese, very cool and I enjoyed it tremendously but the only thing I could remember for certain about it years later was that there was a rip-off of a Cranberries song over the end credits. Having recently re-discovered In the Mood... I was trying to find out what this other one was so I entered the lead singer of The Cranberries' name into IMDB and looked for foreign sounding films. I found one from 1994 and clicked on it and it said "Directed by Kar-Wai Wong" which prompted an "OF COURSE!!!" from my lips. It was Chungking Express.

So Wong and I have a history, he lingered in the corners of my mind with my loving him dormantly, needing a spark to allow me to remember. It turned out later when talking to a friend about this that she swears blind we had tried to see 2046 on its theatrical release but the only place that was playing it was a former porn-house and they'd screwed up the advertising. Since then I've re-acquainted myself with the stuff I knew and have also rented and bought as many of his films as I can. I even have a download of Fallen Angels but it has French subtitles and I need to find some English ones to go over the top of them.

So the fact that in T-MINUS148 HOURS 32 MINUTES AND 5 SECONDS his new film My Blueberry Nights is playing at a preview in Birmingham is kind of a big deal for me. I even ignored everything about the Cannes Film Festival (something I usually follow with intense interest) last year as I wanted to know as little about the film as possible (although subsequently I'm aware it didn't get the greatest reception) to the point I've even avoided watching the trailers for it (which is impressive seeing as twice they've come on when I was in the cinema). I do though, curiously have a copy of the soundtrack (sent to me by a fellow Wong devotee) and can probably name less than ten things I know about the film.

So even though I am seeing Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood tomorrow (and should have an entry on it promptly) - I don't care at all because there's only one thing on my mind and that's Norah Jones and her evenings of blueberry. The prospect of it sounds as divine now as it did when I first heard about it.

Well I finally finished the BBC's 70s adaptation of Anna Karenina - quality, quality stuff. Stuart Wilson as Vronsky got good towards the very end, I have no complaints whatsoever about the series, all the cast contributed well and it stands up very well today. It doesn't have the artistry of the finale of the Vivien Leigh version but it is SO much better than that film was as it has the time to tell more than half the story.

I managed to catch Art School Confidential online the other day, which I wanted to see mainly because of Terry Zwigoff (who made the wonderful Ghost World a few years ago) and also because I liked Sophia Miles in Tristam & Isolde. She doesn't have much to do here and obviously it was never going to live up to Ghost World (it's written by the same guy as well) but I still liked it. Bit messy towards the end, little bit predictable but funny enough throughout to keep me entertained.

Now, I also saw what can only be described as one of the finest screen debuts - it may not be big in many other countries but Stella is considered a classic in Greece and it launched the film career of the irrepressibly magnetic Melina Mercouri. I'd seen her before in the likes of Topkapi and The Victors, but most notably in Never on Sunday, for which she was BAFTA and Oscar nominated and won Best Actress at Cannes. In this film though she may be even better.

The set up is very simple (and VERY Hellenic ) - Melina is a dancer who all the guys want but she bolts at the first sign of marriage. To begin the film she's seeing a very nice guy but she soon gets her head turned by a local footballer who is the epitome (in both positive and negative ways ) of Greek masculinity. It's nothing revelatory, it's a very simple film but despite being a tad predictable it's told about as well as anyone could have. I'd seen director Mihalis Kakogiannis's work before in A Matter of Dignity, which I really thought was fantastic. Stella isn't *quite* as good but it's not far off and much though I loved Ellie Lambeti, she's not as good as Melina is here.

It just has to go down as one of the finest debuts it is possible to name, she's utterly brilliant. Someone equally brilliant, but who took a lot longer to quietly get people to realise is the French actor Daniel Auteuil. Over the past 15 years he has done absolutely everything and when thinking about the most complete actor in the world, he is the obvious answer. He can do it all - comedy, drama, modern, period, biopic, art-film, commercial, thriller, action, any combination of the above and do it all to a standard so high it's actually amusing.

He has no parallel in foreign cinema, he has 12 Cesar nominations (French Academy film awards) and 2 wins, won a BAFTA for Jean de Florette, won Best Actor at Cannes for The Eighth Day, 2 European Film Awards (for Caché and Un coeur en hiver) and critics awards in France too. So it is not a couple of great performances, he's been consistently recognised by a wide range of award-givers and these only scratch the surface of the man's versatility and talent. The only person in awards terms who can touch him is probably Sean Penn (who has won Best Actor at AMPAS, BAFTA, Cannes, Venice and Berlin film festivals) but Penn doesn't have the range Auteuil does or the artistic success in obviously commercial ventures.

One of those commercial ventures was the extremely successful Le placard (The Closet). I literally cannot believe it hasn't been remade because the subject is so universal. Basically, Auteuil plays a boring divorcee who is about to be fired from his job. In a fit of despair he contemplates suicide but is talked out of it by his new neighbour who suggests that if Auteuil pretends to be gay then he will save his job as the company (a condom manufacturer, no less) couldn't risk the negative P.R. Hijinks ensue.

This is a very funny, consistently laugh-out-loud film. The supporting cast are all spot on (especially Gérard Depardieu as the bigoted, homophobic rugby coach in Personnel) and the film whips along at a cracking rate. It's a short film but is very pacey and while not high art or unexpected it's extremely entertaining and well worth the watch.

I've never read any of the versions of D.H. Lawrence's novel on this, I'm a huge fan of his poetry but I've never got much beyond that. I've not really been interested in any of the film and tv versions of this before (I saw a