Right, straight on with it, I saw The Nanny Diaries on Sky because ... well, it was on and Scarlett Johansson is usually nothing if not watchable. The tone of this is the biggest problem, it goes for cuteness (which probably stems from the source material) but it's just not funny enough or clever enough a critique of the lifestyles encountered. Scarlett is solid, Chris Evans doesn't really try and Alicia Keys doesn't have anything to do. Paul Giamatti turns up for the paycheque, but Laura Linney is the only one who comes to play, she gives a fine turn. Doesn't consistently amuse, at times it's laughable rather than funny, but it engenders enough good will to see it through to its all-too-neat conclusion. Wouldn't recommend it but it wasn't a complete waste of time.
I also caught Taken, which started its rotation on Sky this week, knowing full well this is the kind of "entertainment" that prompted Michael Haneke to make Funny Games not once but twice. Liam Neeson proved in Batman Begins he could play the legit badass and here he takes the centre of this revenge flick rather nicely. It's nothing special at all, the kind of thing that's been done before many times, but it flies by and is a decent enough watch, even if Mr Haneke would bemoan the violence as entertainment in and of itself.
Moving on I finally finished watching The French Connection. I've tried to watch this so many times, giving up 10-15 minutes in on a few occasions, and coming in halfway through on a few more. This film has two very famous scenes; Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider's "Good Cop, Bad Cop" routine and the "Car vs. Train" chase. Unfortunately I'd seen both of these more than once in my many aborted attempts, and it's probably that I wasn't particularly bothered by them and knew they were the stand-out moments of the film which prevented me from persevering with it. Inbetween it just drags and drags, very little happens, the performances are decent but don't compel and can't fill in the blanks. Don't rate this one, it's not bad, it's just the kind of film you flick to when the breaks come on when you're watching an American sport on the other side.
Speaking of which I went to see the New England destroy Tampa in the NFL's (now) annual game at Wembley Stadium and as such I missed the final part of Emma, which I watched tonight on the iPlayer. Possibly the strangest feeling having finished it is the realisation that whilst being completely miscast from top to bottom and despite being incredibly uneven in tone and questionable in approach, due to the ineptitude of the 1996 adaptations this was surprisingly watchable. Suffering from the same problem the Joe Wright Pride and Prejudice did (in the lead actress playing her too much of a cow and - maybe because of that - the actor being too nice, thus unbalancing the natural arcs of the story), but without that film's genuine entertainment value it's quite the oddity. The final episode wasn't very satisfying dramatically, certain things are skated over intolerably and the emotional investment in the characters, despite (or maybe because of) spending four hours with them is sadly lacking. All it makes me want to do is a/ read the book and b/ find Clueless on tv.