I have a lot of dvds lying around but I've been watching stupid amounts of episodes of The Closer online this week so I'll be getting to them soon. In the meantime I have seen a few things recently which I'll talk about here. Firstly I saw Sunrise at Campobello, which I've wanted to see for years as it was Greer Garson's final oscar nominated performance. The film is about Franklin D. Roosevelt becoming paralysed, dealing with that and trying to return to politcal life. It's one of those films which is a decent account, well acted in the main, but so obviously adapted from a stage play it doesn't really work as cinema. The acting, especially Garson and a game Hume Cronyn ensure this is elevated above what it really is, which is a quite stodgy adaptation of a very talky play.
After seeing that I was encouraged to watch a very obscure Italian short going by the title of Il sitter tre del bambino. Like a lot of films from that region, misogyny is inherent and rather strangely coming from the women themselves. This reminded me of Golden Bear winner Elite Squad in that it's so bad it's good and so consistently entertaining it's actually worthwhile. The acting is a mixed bag, while emotions are not satisfactorily portrayed the line delivery at times is perfect comedy gold. Another film this recalls is Shopgirl in that if there is genius here, it is through the set decoration - I'll never look at an avacado the same way again, nor fists and especially not teeth (in case you hadn't guessed, this whole paragraph was a huge inside joke which I think about 2 or 3 people are getting 
, worth it though, moving on...).
Due to all the 30 Rock I've been watching, I finished both series and was suffering from major Stamatina Fey withdrawal, so I decided (well felt the physical need) to watch Baby Mama. While being a very safe, middle of the road, gentle comedy, this actually is a bit unusual for the Hollywood comedy. Rather than taking 1/3rd of the run time to execute the plot set up (A successful, yet barren business-woman pays a white-trash girl to be her surrogate) this film's structure is more in quarters and it works because of that. Fey is fine playing the straight woman to everyone else's madness, Amy Poehler gets better the longer it goes, Greg Kinnear is very nice as Fey's romantic interest and Steve Martin (who hasn't been funny for at least 15 years) is horrendously atrocious as Fey's boss. So a very mixed bag, the third quarter of the film falls completely flat and has no laughs at all but they (well, Poehler mainly) do salvage it by the end. Not a very good film, but equally for the most part not a bad one.
Finally I unearthed a film I initially didn't have much of an interest in seeing but over the last few years I've been more and more drawn to it - Insomnia. I am a big fan of the American remake by Christopher Nolan and it's almost impossible to talk about this without referencing it but I'll try my best. This is about the murder of a teenage girl, with a detective dispatched into the arctic circle to solve the case with the place being daylight 24 hours a day. Stellan Skarsgård is his usually reliable self in the lead and it was nice to see Maria Bonnevie (of Reconstruction) in the supporting role Maura Tierney had in the remake (see? I've started already 
). This is a good film, very simple, roughly told and just about holds together. What the remake did was add layers of characterisation and intrigue with an Internal Affairs-subplot and smoothed out some narrative glitches, and combined with a superior cast and first rate storytelling it was made into an excellent film. This one was the blueprint and works in its own right, but this is one of the best examples of a remake adding meaningfully to an already good film.