It's been finally done: after various attempts that were embarrassing in various degrees, we finally got a good film about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. It wisely did not try to be a biopic covering their entire relationship, or even those parts that were most famous (and where the audience would have the most mental images to compare), but ( Read more... )

Remember when in my recent Frankfurt Book Fair reports I mentioned browsing through these and finding them highly readable? I still don't own the book (it's on my Christmas list), but thankfully the media has printed some choice excerpts to demonstrate what I mean.

21 April 1965:

‘E opened her bag and handed me a book. It was an old edition of ( Read more... )

The Frankfurt Book Fair is one of the highlights of year to me, but it is extremely exhausting. You could wipe the floor with me right now, and there's still one more day to go ( Read more... )

Older photo:


( Read more... )

Film: The Infidel, in which Toby Ziegler and Kalinda never meet, by which I mean their actors are in it and never share a scene. Fortunately, the film is good anyway. It's a British comedy, starring Omid Djalili as Mahmud Nasir, Muslim minicab driver and family man living a contented life until he experiences the twin blows of his son's fiancée ( Read more... )

So, Oscar nominations: What really thrills me is that The Lives of Others made it into the best non-English language film category. Mind you, I don't think it will win - even though I consider it to be the best movie in 2006 (of those I've seen) - because it's up against Pan's Labyrinth, which hasn't started here yet but which I've seen people rave ( Read more... )