Category: Film

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

27/7/2014

Wuthering Heights is another nineteenth-century literary classic that I had seen in adapted versions for film and TV but had never actually sat down to read. I am so glad that I finally got round to it, because this is one of the most extraordinary books I have ever read. Like her sister Charlotte’s equally great novel Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights is without any shadow of doubt not only a literary classic but also a compulsive page-turner. The language is only very occasionally archaic and, like all the best writers, her vocabulary is accessible, so a dictionary is rarely if ever required to read this book. I am filled with nothing but awe and admiration.

The 1939 film with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon, directed by William Wyler, only really concentrates on the romantic relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff, and avoids getting involved with the book’s dark heart. Wuthering Heights is a powerful study of the destructive force of jealousy and bitterness. It is an incredible achievement, because Emily Brontë, through her main male character Heathcliff, manages to create a man/fiend who is at once both the book’s anti-hero and villain. He is a dark, brooding monster, slowly consumed by his own rancour, taking it upon himself to torture and destroy those who have wronged him. However, his thirst for revenge is never sated, and the reader is appalled by the scope of his hatred. Yet, tormented, vengeance-driven fiend though Heathcliff is, the quality and psychological depth of Brontë’s writing somehow always manages to keep a tiny part of the reader on his side. Something in us always yearns for him to find redemption.

Emily Brontë wrote Wuthering Heights under the pen name of Ellis Bell. It was published in 1847 - just a year before she died of tuberculosis. She was only thirty years of age at the time of her death, and never knew the success her one and only novel would go on to achieve. At first, it received quite mixed reviews - hardly surprising, I think, when you consider the book’s underlying sense of amorality, and the Victorian values it clearly challenges. Emily Bronte was born on 30 July (a day before my own birthday) - so she’d be a hundred and ninety-six this week (me, not so much!). I have no doubt people will still be reading and enjoying her novel in another two hundred years and more - and let’s face it, that’s more than can be said of just about every book that has ever won the Man Booker prize.

Happy birthday Emily Brontë. Thanks for writing such a monstrously brilliant novel!

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From Gorseinon With Great Fondness

4/4/2014

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Sometimes on long car journeys my wife Judith and I will pass the time by listing our ten favourite film comedies or ten best books etc. I think I’d definitely have to include a Sean Connery outing as James Bond somewhere; perhaps on a list entitled Favourite Action Movies or Favourite Movie Characters perhaps. I haven’t seen all the Bond movies by any means, but I have seen at least one or two from every actor who took over the role, and I don’t think, in my own undoubtedly biased view, that anyone has played Bond with more flair or panache than Connery. The only Bond films I own on DVD are the Connery ones and I personally adore From Russia With Love best of all.

As I’ve written before on this subject ( Double - Oh - Fifty ) I thoroughly enjoyed every one of the early Bond movies, which fired up my boyhood imagination. Throughout the Sixties all the local cinemas in the UK remained mostly intact although constantly haemorrhaging more and more audience to television. We didn’t have the luxury of revisiting a favourite film on video, DVD or by streaming on demand back then, and the local ‘flea-pit’ provided an opportunity to revisit some older films. If me and my chums wanted to watch a more recent film then we had to get a bus into Swansea - and pocket-money didn’t always stretch to this. I spent many a contented evening at the long-since closed Lido, Gorseinon, watching James Bond in thrilling double bills. When we watched Bond our attention was completely taken up. However, when the film was bad, or truly dire, as many of the B movies in those days were, our attention wandered. If not engaged by what was happening on screen, we sometimes turned our attention to vacating our cheap 1/6d (7p) seats and outwitting the ageing, torch-wielding, gruff-voiced usherettes who guarded and patrolled the 2/6d (12p) seats in the Circle like a marauding army of Welsh prop-forwards. We generally failed in this objective and were told to either behave ourselves or get booted out, but it never went quite that far. After all, we were some of their best paying customers, us and the older boys and girls always found necking in the back rows.

What is it about From Russia With Love that makes me rank it so highly? I don’t know, I simply love its stylishness, the location work in Istanbul, and its wonderful set designs, particularly the one for the chess tournament. I found Lotte Lenya and her poison-tipped shoe jaw-droppingly wicked as a small boy - actually, I still find Rosa Klebb a bit scary! Robert Shaw provided Bond with an adversary who is in nearly every way his equal. Of course, when Bond catches him ordering white wine with red meat (or is it red wine with fish?) - he rumbles him immediately - Bond knows that no British gentleman would ever make such a dreadful faux pas! Tee hee hee! Yes, very snobbish and quite, quite, silly, but greatly entertaining. It is the film where we are introduced to SPECTRE boss Ernst Blofeld and meet Desmond Llewelyn as Q for the first time. The theme song, sung by Matt Monro, comes at the movie’s end but to my mind ranks as one of the best ever. It has a simple but strong plot and the series is still building the formula that comes to full fruition in its next serving, Goldfinger. I think I like it best though because it has an edge, a grittiness that from Goldfinger on simply becomes ‘Bond style’ - nothing feels like it is simply a set piece yet. Throughout the film you sense that the love interest Daniela Bianchi (whose beauty I recall used to make me feel somewhat ‘strange’ as a small boy) and Bond are in a lot of danger and you feel genuinely concerned for them.

I found this interesting quote from Richard Roud writing in the Guardian at the time,”... the film is highly immoral in every imaginable way; it is neither uplifting, instructive nor life-enhancing. Neither is it great film-making. But it sure is fun.”

Just imagine what the same writer might have said if they could have taken a peek into the future at what was to come?

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Catching the 3:10, Gregory Porter and Other Stuff

27/3/2014

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I completed the first draft of the new book I’ve been working on a week ago. It’s massive and will need to be savagely reduced, but then that’s the way I like to work. I plan to spend a few weeks attending to some other stuff that needs my attention, then will return to it with a refreshed eye. I was ordered not to do very much this week by my wife Judith. I guess she knows the signs of when I’m tired far better than I do! I generally only realise I’ve reached the point of exhaustion when I sense an overwhelming desire to collapse to the floor and weep - I’m so lucky to have a partner who knows what I’m like and generally warns me off long before I actually reach this point. It was a good week, and I felt seriously proud when a friend whose opinions on any kind of literary offering I highly value, contacted me to let me know just how much they had enjoyed Niedermayer & Hart. He took the time to write and send an in-depth analysis of what he’d liked about the book. My tail hasn’t stopped wagging since!

On Saturday evening we watched 3:10 to Yuma - the original Glenn Ford, Van Heflin film of that title made in 1957, as opposed to the Russell Crowe, Christian Bale 2009 remake. They are both good movies, with faultless performances from both sets of leading actors, however for me it’s only the ’57 film that deserves to be hailed a classic Western. The earlier version lacks the extremely dark post-modernist ending of the later film. The short story upon which both scripts were based was penned by Elmore Leonard, which I haven’t read but most certainly plan on doing. Judith remains keen on watching any kind of cowboy film and has recently been observed by myself (still nursing some very grave suspicions - see earlier post Could the Aliens who Abducted my Wife Please Return Her!) at bedtime excitedly turning the pages of a compendium of short stories entitled The Giant Book of Western Stories. Weird, huh?

On Sunday we went to see the extraordinary jazz singer Gregory Porter at the Assembly Rooms, Tunbridge Wells. He possesses one of those rare voices that isn’t really definable, no matter how many adjectives can be strung together to assist with this purpose. But I think if you’ve ever heard him sing you’ll know immediately what I mean. The wife and I don’t really typify your regular jazz lovers, but then Gregory Porter doesn’t typify the regular jazz singer. I’ve heard him described as a ‘Jazz’ singer who possesses a ‘Soul’ voice. I suppose both of us have a deep and abiding fondness for classic soul and perhaps this is why he appeals so much. His aura as a performer radiates great warmth, which is not an inconsiderable feat at the Assembly Rooms, as this is not a venue that could ever be classified as intimate. Apparently, Porter, who grew up in California, planned to be an American Football player but his plans were scuppered by a shoulder injury. It’s hard to believe that someone with such incredible vocal talent might have considered a career in any other field. It’s also difficult to understand why Porter, born in 1971, has taken all this time to receive anything like the recognition he deserves. We first saw him on the Jools Holland show and certainly hope to see him again whenever he tours the UK. The four musicians supporting him were equally superb and deserve mentioning too: pianist and music director, Chip Crawford, drummer Emanuel Harrold, bassist Aaron James, and alto saxophonist Yosuke Sato. It was a tremendous evening. I highly recommend listening to this man, take a look at the Gregory Porter website where you get the opportunity to hear a few tracks. Enjoy!

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The Stinker!

20/3/2014

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What is ‘a stinker’? Well, in my own personal definition it’s a play or film that is so bad you wish your name could be erased from any association with it. Every actor has a stinker or two (or three) lurking somewhere, much like the proverbial skeleton in the closet. I recall my father, who never minced his words, coming to see some scenes from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure early on in my training at RADA. The production was really awful “Don’t act ... feel the moment ... let the words play the scene” the director had implored us every time our survival instincts kicked in during rehearsals and we tried to raise the thing out of the doldrums. Dad, after watching my performance, exclaimed later in private in his honest Welsh valleys unvarnished way, “RADA training! That was the worst thing I’ve ever seen on a flippin’ stage in my life!”

He was right of course. However, the thing about being in ‘a stinker’ is that the performer has to go on and do it again the next night. And I wasn’t yet ready to acknowledge and accept it as ‘a stinker’. I think I may even have waffled on about the underlying esoteric significance of the scenes and what we were trying to achieve. “Rubbish!” Dad reaffirmed.

He was right.

The College Principal, a marvellous man by the name of Hugh Crutwell, blamed the director and vowed that the man would never set foot in the Academy again, which I don’t believe he ever did.

That was my first brush with ‘the stinker’. I met a few plays later on in my rep days that were pretty undistinguished. The thing is, whilst rehearsing ‘the stinker’ you and the rest of the cast endlessly reassure yourselves that you’re doing something really important, yes different perhaps, but most definitely very worthwhile. However, when the curtain finally comes down on the last performance and you see the same relief you feel inside clearly etched on the faces of your fellow performers - you know then, without a shadow of a doubt you’ve been involved in ‘a stinker’! You head for the bar and commiserate with your colleagues. As you weave your way (often unsteadily in days past) towards your theatrical ‘digs’ you feel like a great weight has been lifted from your being!

What made me raise the subject of ‘stinkers’? For my wife’s birthday this year, one of the presents I gave her was a box set of Sidney Poitier films. In the Heat of the Night probably ranks as one of our all time favourite movies: great title song, title singer, script, acting and direction - a tick in every box! So imagine how delighted we were to finally have the chance to watch its sequel They Call Me Mister Tibbs for the first time. Oh dear! You can probably take every single item in the list above and replace the tick with a thick red line. Every performance and every throw-away line was delivered like it was a Hamlet soliloquy. Everyone, including Sidney Poitier, looked really bad; the car chase just looked silly; the reasons behind a character’s speech or actions seemed to make no sense whatever at times; a foot-chase with Poitier hunting down a bad guy looked like out-takes from a Naked Gun movie; the cast, tried and trusted paid-up members of the acting fraternity looked like veterans of a bad daytime soap. Ed Asner, an actor I generally admire, was lousy in two categories, for his performance and his terrible wig. Poor ol’ Sidney Poitier - the ignominy of landing himself in ‘a stinker’ after playing the same character in such a great classic. I did wonder for a moment if someone by the name of Max Bialystok was the movie’s Executive Producer.

But like I said at the top, nobody in the performing arts can elude ‘the stinker’ forever. My father-in-law, himself an actor of some distinction in his heyday, once told me a story of his own regrettable brush with an ill-fated production. It was his first major appearance in London’s West End. He proudly took a box for his family and friends, booked a table at the Savoy for afterwards and invited his cousin the British Ambassador to Moscow to the first night. It is easy to imagine his chagrin when the audience began boo-ing the performers whenever they appeared. The only good thing that came out of the night, he informed me, was that the show closed immediately.

Yep, ‘a stinker’!

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Captain Phillips

20/2/2014

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We watched Captain Phillips last weekend on DVD. It came as a Valentine’s Day gift from the wife, but even though it was my present I let her watch too! Actually this was a movie we’d heard from reputable sources was very good and planned to catch it at the cinema. Unfortunately by the time we were able to get ourselves along to a showing the film had closed locally. We probably would have enjoyed viewing it on a big screen - instead of on our TV (not even state of the art fifteen years ago when it was new!) but, whether seen in the cinema or viewed on a smaller screen at home, the film really doesn’t disappoint on any level.

It’s based on true events, and while I don’t assume that anything I watch in a movie is absolutely the way things actually unfolded, its non-stereotypical portrayal of the main characters, particularly the bad guys, in this Somali pirate story is definitely thought-provoking. By the final scenes of the film you actually feel a certain sympathy for the antagonists, themselves at the mercy of oppressive and violent tribal warlords. The sense of extreme danger and the threat of sudden incontrovertible violence is sustained right throughout the film. Yet, this film doesn’t contain very much actual violence, and for once there’s no square-jawed action hero on board to save the day or dodge the bucketloads of bullets that generally keep coming his way and always miraculously miss him! You get the feeling when you see this film, the right feeling to my mind, that violence is ugly and disgusting. It’s got a 12 Certificate in the UK, and if I had a twelve year old child I’d be more than happy to take them along to see a film about a terrifying ordeal that doesn’t in any way glorify violence.

Tom Hanks is on top form in the titular role and Barkhad Abdi as the main pirate Muse is equally excellent and doesn’t look in any way intimidated to be acting opposite such an old experienced hand as Hanks. The direction from Paul Greengrass, whose work I only know from the Bourne films, is very classy.

I can highly recommend this movie if you haven’t seen it already.

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Darby O'Gill and the Little People

16/1/2014

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The only thing I vaguely remembered about the film Darby O'Gill and the Little People was the banshee. The portrayal of this supernatural terror appears to have scared the living daylights out of those of us who were taken along as quite small children to see the film by our loving parents. I don't think I slept very much for several weeks and the slightest howling of the wind at night for some years afterwards sent me burrowing under my bedclothes, in the hope that any marauding banshees would mistake the mound I made for blankets. On my DVD it classifies the film as universally viewable with the warning "Contains very mild fantasy horror" - not at all how I would have described it at the age of five! Which makes you wonder about some of the extremely graphic images small children can so easily be subjected to these days - however, perhaps that subject is best left for another blog-day.

I purchased the DVD as a stocking-filler for my wife as a little joke - a 'size-ist' one I shamefacedly admit. Judith is 5' nothing and before I get a bad reputation here, let me reassure everyone - gentle jibes about her diminutive stature by my son and I are countered by her assertion that although short, she is "perfectly formed", and we are assured by her that nature compensated by providing her with a massive brain.

Judith is only seven months younger than me and also recalled being scared out of her wits by the banshee. It was the only thing about the film either of us remembered - must've permanently scarred us! Tee hee!

I already knew that it was the movie reputed to have introduced Sean Connery to Cubby Broccoli and the James Bond series. Connery and Janet Munro charmingly supply the love interest; whilst Albert Sharpe as the eponymous Darby O'Gill and Jimmy O'Dea as King Brian of the leprechaun kingdom provide the banter and antics that make this comedy such a pleasure to watch. You won't find any CGI in this little jewel, just some excellent use of 'forced perspective', good models, props, nicely turned-out sets and matte painting. The script by Lawrence Edward Watkin based on the stories by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh is very witty. I believe Ms Kavanagh wrote the stories in two volumes, Darby O'Gill and the Good people and Ashes of Old Wishes and other Darby O'Gill Tales - I must try to dig them out and read them sometime!

The film is directed by Robert Stevenson, a Disney stalwart, with Old Yeller, The Absent Minded Professor, The Love Bug and Bedknobs and Broomsticks to name just a handful of his many films for the company.

Apart from the few bars of a calypso he manages in Dr No, I believe it's the only time I've ever seen Sean Connery sing on screen, although I did know that he was part of the male chorus in the West End production of South Pacific.

Darby O'Gill and the Little People is truly family entertainment, regarded by many as one of the Disney Studios' finest films, and I can't imagine anyone not enjoying it. However, I should mention the appearance of 'The Death Coach' - I probably didn't see this at all when I was five because I still had my eyes shut after the banshee! 'The Death Coach' - flippin' 'eck! Make for the bedcovers!

This is quite simply lovely stuff - enjoy!

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Do They Mean Me?

4/12/2013

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There's a moment in one of my all-time favourite comedies Young Frankenstein, when Friedrich Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) is locked in a room alone with the monster he fully believes to be a vicious brute. He naturally fears for his life and all he can think on the spur of the moment to say is, "Hey there, good looking!"

The monster (Peter Boyle), with a forehead like the landing strip on an aircraft carrier and not exactly much of a 'looker', is completely thrown by the remark and looks over his own shoulder to see if someone else is standing behind him, who the good Doctor is talking to.

Sometimes being a writer feels just a little bit like this for me. It still surprises (but mostly just fills me with delight!) when folk I don't actually know, who I haven't had to bribe, blackmail, or pay large sums of money to, tell me how much they actually like one or other (or both) of my books.

Do they actually, honestly, really mean me?

Back at the end of August, Simone, writing a review on behalf of The Orchard Book Club, a group of self-confessed book adorers, left a review on the Goodreads site entitled I absolutely loved, loved loved this book! for Niedermayer & Hart. Simone had read the book on her Kindle. A couple of weeks back, Simone's friends ordered a copy of N & H from my website for her birthday and asked me to write a message in it for her - something that I was of course more than happy to do!

This afternoon, after completing my writing for the day, I checked (as I do every day) my emails, website, facebook page, tweets etc. Simone had sent me a tweet to say thanks for writing in her book, and another to say how much she couldn't stop stroking its lovely cover! See, I said the Orchard Book Club are a group of totally unabashed book adorers!

Anyway, this blog wishes Simone a very happy birthday and many, many, happy returns of the day!

And finally, I'd just like to say how grateful I am to all you avid readers out there who have taken the time and trouble to sit down and say what it is about either of my books they like. It not only means a very great deal to me personally, but good reviews always encourage renewed interest which in turn (hopefully) improves sales. If it weren't for people like you, my books, without the weight of a publishing house and publicity machine behind them, would have reached a tiny audience of mostly friends and family and by now would almost certainly have pretty much sunk without a trace.

If you haven't seen this short clay figure animation, made by my son Tom Johnson to help to launch Niedermayer & Hart ever before - then you're in for a little treat. Enjoy!

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Having a Laugh!

20/11/2013

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I laughed like a drain at the brainless antics of Ron Burgundy and chums in Anchorman, felt Gaylord Focker's pain through Meet the Parents and its (first) sequel, thought I'd actually split my sides when I first watched the zipper accident in Something About Mary. All these films and many others I've laughed at and enjoyed immensely. Like a great number of other folk it seems, I'll watch just about any comedy that has Ben Stiller, Will Ferrrell, Danny McBride and several other forty-something actors who make their living acting out the gamut of male adolescent neuroses and fantasies. However, I've recently experienced some pangs of dissatisfaction with the 'single flavour' that Hollywood dishes up as mainstream comedy, complete with obligatory feel-good ending.

I felt this discontent most particularly when I watched Old School recently - a film I'd always heard was excellent and had wanted to watch for ages but had never quite got round to seeing. I was given it for my birthday this summer. The film clearly owes a debt of gratitude to late Seventies classic Animal House, but in my view it wasn't a patch on this. It had all the usual ingredients: a likeable cast, lots of mayhem, bad behaviour and general silliness, but you know what? I really couldn't believe in it - neither in its plot, nor its characters. And that's the point I'm trying to make: comedy isn't solely about getting the right mix of ingredients - i.e. a certain number of gross-out moments and silly visuals - effective comedy relies on situation, character and plot. However preposterous the antics become, I actually can believe in male nurse Gaylord Focker's need to impress his future in-laws; I am equally convinced that thirteen years on, Ted hasn't been able to eradicate prom date Mary from his mind; I can even suspend my disbelief and plug myself into the surrealist Seventies universe inhabited by the cast of Anchorman. It's an odd observation but I generally only really notice the bad language in a film when it's there simply as an ingredient. There are almost certainly just as many gross moments and 'F' words in There's Something About Mary as there are in Old School, yet it was only the latter film that struck me as being coarse.

Okay, so I'm not within the age demographic these films are targeted at, and I appreciate their producers won't be losing a jot of sleep over any thoughts of mine, and while this type of movie continues to make money at the box office, I know they'll keep right on making 'em! But don't you occasionally ache for a piece of finely-crafted feature film comedy: some of the Lemmon/Mathau collaborations for instance, about people in realistic situations with everyday dilemmas to resolve?

I found myself thinking along these lines when along popped Up In The Air (2009) with George Clooney (or rather plopped - being a rough approximation of the sound it made as it found its way into our supermarket trolley) leading a very solid cast. The film, based on a novel by Walter Kirn, was co-written and directed by Jason Reitman. Reitman also directed Juno, a comedy about teenage pregnancy that I've also seen and very much enjoyed. Up In The Air is the kind of sophisticated comedy that doesn't have many laugh out loud moments (if any!) and causes more smiling than laughter. George Clooney is superb and plays a not wholly attractive character with great skill. The film didn't fail for me on any level. The ending is better than 'feel-good', because we have witnessed the main protagonist go through a series of encounters and experiences that have altered his perception of the world. It's a film that stays with you, and one I'd definitely recommend.

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Art and Gravity

13/11/2013

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Over the past week my wife and I have had the pleasure of visiting our local cinema twice. The two pieces of work we saw had relatively few things in common: they were projected onto a screen; they were well crafted; they were both excellent. However, that's about it as far as the similarities went!

The first was The Habit of Art by Alan Bennett in the NT Live season. This was an encore performance - so not exactly 'live', as it had been recorded a few years back. And I am so glad we managed to see it. Anything written by Alan Bennett is always worth seeing in my book, and it was lovely to see the late Richard Griffiths in what must have been one of his last stage performances. He played the poet WH Auden in the latter years of his life and the play culminates in an imagined meeting between Auden and his estranged friend and former work collaborator Benjamen Britten (Alex Jennings). The play is very funny, yet touching at the same time. The structure Bennett has chosen for his play is fascinating, because he has set the piece in a rehearsal room. The real actors are portraying fictional actors in a rehearsal space, preparing to put on a play about an imaginary meeting between Auden and Britten. The stage manager, whose task it is to take charge of the 'run through' on the instruction of its absent director, is played with great warmth by Frances de la Tour. The play was directed by Nicholas Hytner and the supporting cast, many of whom are familiar faces in the NT repertory, were all very accomplished. All round a superbly crafted piece of theatre.

Our second visit to the Tunbridge Wells Odeon a few days later was to see Gravity. This has only just been released in the UK, stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, and has quite deservedly received nigh-on a hundred percent perfect notices from all its reviewers. I tweeted shortly after watching it that it is the first 3D movie I've seen that I actually really liked. I normally find the rigmarole of wearing the glasses and waiting for the next bit of 3D action to make me go 'Oooh' or 'Ahh' simply annoying (my wife has implied on occasion that I'm a 'grumpy old man'! To this I say - Hurumph!). However, I'd never seen a 3D movie before that totally engaged me from its opening to closing credits. Although I'm sure this movie would have done so in 2D too! Its stars are both excellent, particularly Bullock, who is on screen for about ninety percent of the picture. The dialogue is sparse and lean, the CGI effects are truly astounding, yet it's the human story (another thing in common with The Habit of Art!) unfolding before our very eyes that really commands the audience's attention. I can't imagine Sandra Bullock not receiving an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress for this, and it may well prove a fruitless year for any other film actress about to put in a career best performance. It was directed by Alfonso Cuarón, who I suspect will be up for an Oscar as well. And I daresay the film will be nominated in several other categories too. This is definitely a movie worth seeing on a cinema screen as it is truly spectacular.

So all in all a week when any personal requirements for mental and visual stimulation were met most satisfactorily.

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Birthday Cache!

7/8/2013

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All my birthday presents were spot on this year, all well considered items I truly liked. I'm pleased to say, there wasn't even one dreadful tie, despicable pair of socks, or that most feared pressie of all, the 'thing' that has literally 'done the rounds' until its packaging is too bashed and no longer presentable enough to be offered as a 'first-hand gift'. Undoubtedly it is doomed to end up back in the Charity Shop where it probably began its life - who knows, perhaps they can refit it with a new box there and send it back out on the road again for another few thousand miles!. You know those films that never manage a cinema release and are labelled 'straight to DVD' - well I reckon there are probably gifts like that too, things like Foot Spas; Bread Makers; Odourless Deep-Fat Fryers; Golf Ball Shaped Digital Alarm Clocks; Crepe Making Machines; Fat Free Grills; Fizzy Drink Dispensers - it would be far easier for all concerned if they were stamped on their box at the time of manufacture 'Straight to Charity'.

Anyway, I didn't get any of these (he says gloatingly)! Apart from a few items of clothing I really liked, I received a bumper stack of books (that were already on my wish-list) and DVDs - either things people already knew I loved and would like to own, or things they knew I hadn't seen yet but definitely wanted to watch. I was particularly delighted to receive a copy of the 1953 film Valley of Song. It starred Clifford Evans, Mervyn Johns, John Fraser, Maureen Swanson and was directed by Gilbert Gunn. The film itself was based on a stage play called Choir Practice by Cliff Gordon. I kicked myself each time this film was dusted off and shown on British Television over the years - not because of the film itself, but because my grandfather George Martin Thomas, who ran a tiny General Stores just a little way up Alan Road from Llandeilo railway station (which became the station of the fictional village Cwmpant in the story), is an extra in one of the railway scenes. The film itself is whimsical and rather charming, a comedy drama that belongs to a far gentler age than our own. However, it is still very entertaining and engaging - marvellous to see some great British character actors like Rachel Thomas and a young Rachel Roberts in action. The story is simple and revolves around a feud that is unwittingly started by the recently returned to the village new choir master (Clifford Evans) when he gives a coveted role in the annual oratorio to someone
unexpectedly. The film is relatively short, just 70 minutes long, and is very amusing.

It was fun also to see a very young Kenneth Williams delivering just one line, and an equally youthful Ronald Lewis who plays the part of a non-speaking youthful miner, part of a singing foursome. As a young actor recently out of drama school, I had the great pleasure of working on a stage production of Alan Bennett's Habeas Corpus with Ronnie at Plymouth Theatre Company nearly thirty years later.

And did I spot my 'Dadcu' you'll be asking? Not sure. My wife shouted out, "That's him!" - unfortunately she did this in every railway scene (approx 5 or 6) and I firmly believe he's only in the one! I think I'll have to run the thing again, slow it down and use the recently discovered zoom button on my remote.

Couldn't have done that on VHS! Aren't DVDs great?

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