I will just interrupt my New York memories to give my impressions of the Brit Awards.

The night was rightly dominated by the unstoppable Lady Gaga - playing everywhere in New York by the way - who won the three Awards she was nominated for. She gave a great performance of "Telephone" alone at the piano and dedicated it to the memory of Alexander McQueen then morphed into an electroVogue on "Dance In The Dark".

This thrilling performance was followed by a true meeting of minds when Fearne Cotton interviewed Geri Halliwell and Courtney Love who both agreed it was a shame Gaga didn't do something people knew.

They are both on her album you thick bitches.

Geri Halliwell also made a remarkable statement when presenting the newcomer award reminding the audience that Kula Shaker beat the Spice Girls to the award.

"Where are they? Anybody know?" she said to a stony silence.

Well, wherever they are I'm sure they are not 'writing' children's books to keep in the spotlight, you ungracious cow.

The other jaw-dropper was the performance by Cheryl Cole of her single "Fight For This Love". I use the word 'performance' in it's most loosest use. She mimed badly while doing a lame Janet Jackson rip-off routine.

God I am hoping this oxygen-thief's five minutes are counting down.

To be honest what kept me watching was the sponsor ident films of Pet Shop Boys playing a mini-concert in a fan's living room.

The first New York theatre event we saw was NEXT TO NORMAL at The Booth Theatre. It seems odd to call it that as I have been calling it NEXT TO AVERAGE ever since.I was attracted to the show as it had rave reviews from people one would have thought would be in the know as well as it winning the Tony Award for Best Score and the Best Actress award for Alice Ripley.

Well it started off badly with the news that Ripley was off - she obviously didn't read my open letter to NY blog before I left - so we had her understudy Jessica Phillips.

Now whether the cast were on a low light because of this or some other reason, but within 20 minutes I had the slow crawling sensation that this was going to be one of "those" theatrical evenings - when everyone else in the house screamed and yelled and - y'know, like, totally adored it? While I sat there wondering what had caused this chemical reaction in them when what I was watching was fairly routine and as cutting-edge and revolutionary as a revival of BLESS THE BRIDE.Dan and Diana and their children Gabe and Natalie are, at first view, a standard American family. But before long we find out that Diana is slowly succumbing to her bi-polar disorder (how fashionable) and this is sending the family into a tailspin. Dan is confused, Natalie is angry and Gabe seems to be strangely passive about it all. We are told that Something Happened and Diana needs to come to terms with this.

In I'll admit a neat plot twist we find out that the Something that Happened was that Gabe died while still a baby but whose adolescent ghost is acknowledged by his mother. When her husband and daughter confront her with this fact she regresses again and her husband allows her to have Electric Shock treatment at the behest of her new analyst after she attempts suicide.

After the treatment she returns home with large parts of her memory gone and when she finally finds out again what exactly was the Something that Happened she realises no treatment will help her - she needs to help herself. She leaves the family as the daughter who has been, like rebelling because she is hurt and angry, lets love into her life via the school spliffhead and her father allows the ghost of his son to embrace him and acknowledges him with his name, Gabriel.

I sat through all this with the same phrase clanging in my head "American Whining". The mother isn't Happy. The daughter isn't Happy, The father is amiable but evidently not Happy. The son isn't all that Happy for obvious reasons. So what? Life's a bitch - BUILD A BRIDGE AND GET OVER YOUR CHEAP SELVES!!!

Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey's score is that curious amalgam of noise which makes up a Rock score. While sitting through it's interesting moments but dreadful half-hours (thank you Mr. Beacham) I sadly acknowledged the new shift in musical singing. For a good few years, thanks to voice coach Ian Adam - all singers seemed to be trained to sing the cod rock-opera scores of Lloyd Webber and Schonberg & Boublil - didn't matter what you were singing, just hit those long notes. But now, thanks to RENT and SPRING AWAKENING, the new style is too Sing Out Loud - again, doesn't matter what you are singing - just stress those consonants and always sound Really Pissed Off. As Mme Armfeldt sings in A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC "Let's hope this lunacy is just a trend".

The show obviously triggers SOMETHING in the audiences as the one we were sitting in were sniffling at the end then treated the curtain call as the second coming - or the first going. But it left me stone cold.

I presume Alice Ripley gives an impassioned performance but Jessica Phillips seemed to be striking DRAMATIC attitudes rather than actually giving a performance - all the yearning, leaning forward motions, the tortured dragging-her-leg-behind her stance while belting out a song just drew attention to the mannerism.

I found the three male performances actually to be the production's best - J. Robert Spencer was fine as Dan, Diana's long-suffering husband but the show is so skewed in the favour of the wife that he is left to build bricks from the straw the character is given. Kyle Dean Massey as the spectral Gabe was hampered by the dreadful Strike-A-Pose attitudes as well but at least suggested an interior life and Adam Chanler-Berat was engaging as the daughter's sweetly adoring stoner boyfriend although the character was a total cypher.

The role of the daughter was also an utterly dreary cliche - a whining ANGRY teenager who feels unloved and over-looked because of the dead older brother - YAWN. It made me slack-jawed to realise that the authors seemed to find this absurd creature so fascinating. The performance of Jennifer Damiano - who was actually nominated for a Tony award for it - did nothing to help. She sang every song in The Same Emphatic Way as I have previously mentioned - imagine Avril Lavigne with a Broadway dressing room and you are halfway there.Some final thoughts - Owen and I agreed that practically all the songs for the juveniles would probably crop up on any edition of AMERICAN IDOL DOES BROADWAY as they are all so soul-destroyingly "Look At Me" hymns to self-empowerment, and finally what REALLY sticks in my craw about the show is that for all it's "groundbreaking" hype - it's conclusion has the daughter, who has bored us for the whole evening by being Angry About Everything, solves all her problems by putting on a pretty dress and going to a high school dance with her stoner boyfriend.

And it gets worse... the cast assure us at the end - all dressed in matching bright colours - that in the end there is "Light".

Gee thanks... and to think I found that out as well at the end of STARLIGHT EXPRESS.

Constant Reader I am returned from the colonies (and Colony Records).

Owen had the same event that made me flee to Barcelona last year so this time we went west! The Algonquin welcomed us back to it's historical portals - it was as good as ever but we had nagging problems with the damn room - dodgy television, recalcitrant heating... just enough to make it annoying. The staff were very helpful however and the relaxed elegance of the place was as seductive as ever... and Matilda the hotel cat appeared just when I needed to stroke her!

We flew British Airways - and all I can say is whoever is doing the catering these days should be shot. It was hidjus. By the way, we had a security check at the gate where our hand luggage was searched and a body search. Coming back? Nope. The inference of that is slightly worrying.

It's been nearly two years since we were in New York so we noticed a few changes - notably the new TKTS booth in Times Square with the florescent red staircase above it which is ideal for that all important scenic shot - also it's great that the Times Square section of Broadway is now pedestrianised. A brave decision as I'm sure it pisses off a lot of drivers but it makes for a more stress-free area.
Of course it ain't all good news - the closure of the massive Virgin Records store was keenly felt - it was the perfect solution for killing time before or after shows as it stayed open til all hours. The service was usually naff but it was my purchase point of choice! For the first time ever I returned without a single cd - and had to fall back on Barnes & Noble and Borders for my dvd shopping - I didn't even make double figures!! "But you went to Colony" I hear you cry... yes I did but I never feel comfortable there as it is almost designed to stop browsing.

My urge to keep America's economy afloat was diverted into clothes buying - unknown for me! I had packed for cool weather - it was bloody ARCTIC! So layers were needed, my packed three t-shirts, three shirts, two cardigans and jumper needed some serious back-up. So thank you Gap, Donna Karen, Timberland and Tommy Bahama for your merch.The Red Flame on 44th again had the honour of feeding my hunger for omelette's and bagels with a smear but we also visited some old favorites - Balthazar, Pigalle, Niko's, Chelsea Grill - with the best of dinner companions.We revisited some old favorites - Battery Park and the Top of The Rock. Not too many galleries visited - the Metropolitan again was just too overwhelming in size - and sadly the Museum of The Native American wasn't with a majestic building with most of the exhibition spaces closed.

I'll blog about other experiences soon... as soon as I can persuade myself that it's over.

An open letter to the collective Broadway casts of NEXT TO NORMAL, HAIR!, FELA!, A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC and SOUTH PACIFIC... turn up and be fablus.

To the people of New York... don't go stupid on me.

To Matilda the Algonquin Hotel cat... be present at all times.

To the waiters of New York... earn the bastard tips.

To the shopkeepers of New York... start selling dvds and cds.

To you, Constant Reader... be patient.

As Isadora said "Adieu mes amies, je vais a la gloire"!

This week Owen and I made one of our infrequent visits to the Old Vic to see David Grindley's revival of John Guare's SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION. This is it's first London revival since 1992 when Stockard Channing repeated the role she originated on Broadway and later went on to recreate in the film version. It's rare that a performer gets to achieve this but hers was a remarkable performance. Truth to tell, time has caught up with the play's action but it still rattles around your head days after seeing it.

Guarre based his play on a real-life occurrence when he was told by friends that a young, well-spoken black man appeared at their door unannounced claiming to be a university friend of their children as well as the son of Sidney Poitier. Later he read that the same man, David Hampton, had appeared in several homes doing the same thing, had milked thousands of dollars from the families and had been arrested for fraud. Guare used this case as the basis for a play exploring the possible reasons behind his actions and the light it shone on race and class in the America in the 1980s.

His lead characters are Ouisa and Flan Kittredge, well-heeled Upper East Siders and seemingly prosperous from Flan's job as a private art dealer for wealthy anonymous patrons. One night, trying to woo an investment from a wealthy South African, they are interrupted by the arrival of Paul, bleeding from a knife wound, claiming to be a friend of their children at university and asking for help after being mugged. Any anxiety is mitigated by him knowing so much about them and their kids. He also tells them he has nowhere to stay as the plane his father is flying in on has been held up until the next morning... oh and his father is Sidney Poitier. Soon he has charmed them into letting him cook for them and regales them with stories of his father's next job - directing the film version of CATS.Flan and Ouisa give him a bed for the night - but not before their South African prey has promised them the money they were after. Their pleasure of their new house guest is tarnished only when Ouisa checks to make sure he's awake to meet his father's plane - and finds he has sneaked a male prostitute into the room. Both are thrown out.

However Ouisa is haunted by the visit - even more so when their friends say they have also been visited by the stranger who has fed them the same line - and taken the cash offered. Ouisa and Flan set out to discover exactly who he is...

Although Guarre's play is in itself a bit of a flimsy affair, he has written a fantastic role in Ouisa. She gets all the best lines, is the most rounded and the only character who has any sort of a dramatic arc. Starting off the play as a brittle NY socialite, sardonic and snobbish, she ends the play genuinely shaken by her experience - realising how removed from life she is. She also is able to see that Paul and her husband aren't that dissimilar - both chasing money to keep their lives afloat.

Although she missed the natural warmth and charisma of Stockard Channing, Lesley Manville played the role well. Her dry, wry, wit sparkled at the start to be slowly replaced by a rueful sadness and she handled Ouisa's big moments well. She fully deserved the cheers when she took her bow.

Anthony Head played Flan with his usual elegant flair but sadly I felt that Obi Abili didn't have the acting skills to fully bring Paul to life. This character has to charm the audience as well as his upper-class prey and Abili's over-the-top delivery prevented this. I saw Adrian Lester play the role opposite Channing and he was excellent. I think one of the problems is that Guarre himself seems to have an ambivalent view of Paul. The play skews him to be some sort of deus-ex-machina in the Kittredge's lives - showing them how empty their lives have become - but then this anti-hero stance is undercut by the effect his machinations causes on the lives of a young couple he leeches off in Greenwich Village. They were played by Sarah Goldberg and Luke Neal in the best supporting performances of the evening.But then it's this ambiguity that does leave the play and it's themes bouncing around in your mind afterwards. The upper class are shown to be as much in thrall to celebrity as is the man who is trying to crash that lifestyle and although so much of the play has dated - the duped families could now easily check to see whether Sidney Poitier even had a son using the Internet! - I can see why Grindley would think it right to revive now with it's ideas of celebrity being seen to be a way up the social scale, the upper classes putting their ideas of race to one side when confronted by a personable black man with a university background and the precariousness of basing your life on the marketplace.
A special mention to the curved Rothko-like set of Jonathan Fensom which was always visually arresting. David Grindley's production moved along at a rare old clip and it was hard to believe that so much could be covered in 90 minutes.

Guare himself had his own problems with David Hampton. He attempted to win over some of the play's takings when it opened on Broadway and was arrested but not charged for leaving threatening messages on Guare's answerphone. Hampton gained a celebrity of sorts but not the one he most craved. He died of an AIDS-related illness aged only 39 in the early 2000s.

I have been a right gad-about recently Constant Reader!

Last Thursday Owen escorted me northwards to his hometown of Newcastle so we could see Buffy Sainte-Marie at The Sage in Gateshead. See.. I thought it was in Newcastle but no... cross any of the 725 bridges crossing the Tyne and you are in Gateshead! Endless fun.

The Sage is an odd old thing... designed by Norman Foster, the building is hardly organic to it's surroundings and looks like it was modelled on a collapsed loin of Pork. However, it appears to be popular and it's two auditoria stage a mixture of classical, folk and pop concerts.

We were staying at the nearby Hilton and as night fell on the city and the river, we had pre-concert drinks with O's brother and wife. Yes, finally meeting the in-laws, and it wasn't half as traumatic as I was expecting! We then high-tailed it over to the lozenge-shaped Hall One of The Sage for herself... Buffy Sainte-Marie.Buffy was indulging her UK fans with a mini-tour supporting the release last year of her new cd RUNNING FOR THE DRUM. She was backed by a band of three Native American musicians who go by the rather dodgy name of Gathering Of Flies but they energised Buffy's sound with muscular playing. The sound in the hall was a bit off but the audience, after a rather subdued start, were soon on message and she left the stage to a standing ovation.

After the show Buff did her usual meet-and-greet in the foyer and bestowed grace on the faithful - even the most 1970s hungover fans! It was all a bit special for Owen, seeing his favorite singer about 10 miles from where he first discovered her music back in the 1970s, so I can forgive him being a bit awestruck in her presence... it was me who found out she had wanted his e-mail address! So we hung around for the queue to vanish and she got her wish!
The next morning it was time to explore the Newcastle town centre... but not before a rather intense snow flurry hit us just as we were crossing over the Tyne Bridge... not many places to hide up there!

After that we meandered through towards the Toon centre with Owen showing me *his* Newcastle. I liked the town centre but all that Georgian dark grey stone brickwork can get a bit drear. It was certainly built to show off wealth. We visited the Laing Art Gallery which has a couple of pre-Raphaelites along with works by Cezanne and Reynolds and Owen communed with John Martin's SODOM AND GOMORRAH - a painting that Cecil B. deMille certainly would have approved of...One thing the Geordies love more than anything else is to shop! There seemed to be shopping centre after shopping centre - we even lunched in a shop called Collectibles, beloved by the mams of Newcastle. Afterwards Owen showed me the delightful Central Arcade which houses the music shop where he bought his first Buffy album back in the 1970s.Time was moving on though and we had a train to catch...

...because on Saturday we were seeing Buffy Sainte-Marie again, this time at Shepherds Bush! Yes for me it's Madonna... for O it's Buffy!!

It was a shock to see Shepherds Bush as an all-seated venue - I presume the stall seats were being held in place by the regulation sticky floor. One thing else.... it was FREEZING in the auditorium. I swear to God... the people seated in the side sections looked like two rather miserable bus queues.... all sat in coats and hats. Absolute madness.

However Buff soon got the crowd warmed up. Massive ovations greeted each of her songs and again, the material was enlived by the muscular playing of the three musicians on stage with her. Like seeing Chris Clark, Brenda Holloway and Mable John last year at Hammersmith and Jazz Cafe, it was good to see Buffy ruling the roost on a noted "pop/rock" stage.Favorite songs were "No No Keshagesh" which had some serious drum-thumping, "Fallen Angels", "Cho Cho Fire", "He's An Indian Cowboy At The Rodeo" where pop meets pow-wow, "Until It's Time For You To Go", "Soldier Blue" which I bought as a single all those years ago, "Universal Soldier", "Up Where We Belong" with the auditorium lit up by the glitter ball above the stage, "Little Wheel Spin And Spin", "Darling Don't Cry", "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee" and "Starwalker".

Afterwards it was time for another meet-and-greet in the foyer and getting the balloon-like Owen back home! I hope Buffy has taken from this mini-tour how much she is appreciated here and she doesn't leave it so long before visiting again.

All last week I had it in mind to go to the National Gallery to see the exhibition of Spanish religious art THE SACRED MADE REAL so when did I go Constant Reader? On it's last day on Sunday afternoon of course *rolls eyes* Despite the inevitable throng I am glad I made it.

What do you do when it looks like you are losing your market? You give them something more sensory - when television made inroads into cinema attendance, Hollywood came up with 3-D and Cinemascope... when everyone started downloading films Hollywood came up with...er... 3-D.

As the Protestant Reformation swept Europe, the Spanish Catholic Church made a decision to give the worshippers a more tangible experience. They started to commission both sculptors and painters to work together to bring a new hyper-realism to religious imagery - giving the churchgoer a lifelike rendering of Christ, the Madonna and the Saints to confirm that the faith was real.

Strictly governed by both Church doctrine and the separate Guilds of painters and craftsmen, the works were first sculpted from wood then handed over to the painters to polychrome - painted in many colours - as close to lifelike as possible.

It was the curator Xavier Bray's intention to place these sculptures next to known works by artists such as Velázquez and Zubarán to show how the painters who are known to posterity used the techniques of the polychromed sculptures for inspiration. He certainly succeeded.

Although the exhibition space of 6 rooms was relatively small the marvelous sombre lighting and placement of the exhibits made for a powerful experience.

Time and again I had to refer back to the guide just to double-check what I was looking at - the Madonna attributed to Juan Martínez Montanés' is made all the more breathtaking by the painting by an unknown artist of her vestments, the combination of which makes you want to reach out and touch her silky robes. Placed next to Velázquez' portrait of The Immaculate Conception you can immediately see the connection - especially when you read that the artist had studied in the workshops of the artist Francisco Pacheco in Seville.

Pacheco's own artistry is illustrated in the life-size representations of the Saints Francis Borgia and Ignatius Loyola the founder of the Jesuits. These were designed to be able to be dressed in vestments for different religious events so all the artistry was concentrated on the hands and head. One can only imagine the awe these figures generated in the Jesuit brothers who commissioned them, especially as Montanés modelled the one of Loyola from his death-mask. They are beautifully crafted and have a heightened realism thanks to Pacheco's use of an egg-white varnish to make Borgia's eyes glisten and the small glass tears sparkling on Loyola's face. Who knew he invented Glam Rock too? Their cassocks were genuine material that had been coated in glue to give them a leathery, long-lasting quality.

Montanés is also represented by a monumental sculpture of Christ on the cross which - along with all the other works centering on the Passion - offers no redemption, no idea of any passion in fact. Just torture and death. These were made to shock the viewer at the gruesome ordeal of one man for one's sins, to believe you have to be able to almost smell the skin. Next to this sculpture was a massive painting of the crucifixion by Francisco de Zubarán which was originally in a niche above an altar in a small chapel usually viewed through a grill. Zubarán was obviously so familiar with these polychromatic statues that his minutely-detailed painting, when viewed through the grill, was often mistaken to be a real statue.

Zubarán's astonishing artistry was also shown in two remarkable paintings of St. Francis of Assisi. In one the monk is seen clasping a skull as he is lit by a shaft of light from above while the other has the Saint standing in a rapturous state, his eyes case upwards to Heaven. Over 200 years after his death, the Saint's tomb was re-opened and it is reported his body was found standing by itself in an immaculately preserved condition. Zubarán has portrayed this in his rather frightening painting.

In the same room there was a small devotional statue by Pedro de Mena who for once did the sculpting as well as the painting. Twenty years after Zubarán painted his full-length portrait, Mena copied the Saint's upright posture but made the image all the more startling by using glass eyes during the construction, the figures teeth are made from ivory and real hair was used for the eyelashes. It was genuinely eerie.

Mena was also represented by three other remarkable sculptures: Mary Magdalene meditating on the Crucifixion, Christ as the Man of Sorrows and the Mater Dolorosa - all three were powerful works, demanding attention and unable to avoid. The gruesome Christ figure was riven with huge drops of thick blood and, while walking around it, I was genuinely shocked to get eye-contact with the averted gaze of the figure. The Mater Dolorosa was a distillation of pure grief.There are a couple of heads I should mention!

There was a wonderful head of Saint John of God sculpted and painted by Alfonso Cano which would have been used, like Montanés' Loyola and Borges, as a construct to be dressed in vestments so only the head and hands would show. It was a captivating study of humility and piety. The other was Juan de Mesa's frighteningly real and anatomically correct sculpture of John the Baptist's severed head - half-closed eyes, bloodied lips, open windpipe, the works. "Saw"? Bring it.
Finally there were two works of Christ by Gregorio Fernández as unavoidable as they were thought-provoking. The first presented a life-size beaten and whipped Christ which shows that anything Mel Gibson could inflict on Jim Caviezel in THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST, Fernández had shown over 380 years before. Again this sculpture was paired with a painting by Velázquez of the scourged Christ slumped at the whipping post being visited by an angel and a child representing the Christian soul. The angel gestures for the child to look at Christ's whipped and torn back - what Velázquez could only hint at, Fernández can show in full detail.

The second work by Fernández was truly the most jaw-dropping. Again a life-size figure of Christ but now after the Crucifixion, lying dead on a shroud. It was a work that challenged you to look at it, again seeming to ram home the idea "this happened, this was real".

Before multi-media there was Fernández! In his depiction of the dead Christ he used glass for the vacant eyes, the horn of a bull for the chipped and discoloured fingernails and even going so far as to paint the bark of a cork tree red and use that for the thickened, dried blood on the shattered knees. But for all it's gore, it was a marvel to behold - the artistry in the rendering of the shroud and the loin-cloth was extraordinary and the figure was truly remarkable.

Like so much in this exhibition, once seen... never forgotten.

RIP Jean Simmons

It was with sadness today I read of the death of Jean Simmons. Although she never seemed to achieve a career-defining role, she made the transition from teenage to adult roles with ease and joined Vivien Leigh and Elizabeth Taylor in becoming one of the most successful English actresses working in Hollywood films during the 1950s.

Her early British films saw her working with some of the finest directors: from her eye-catching cameo in Anthony Asquith's THE WAY TO THE STARS to her haughty, tantalising Estelle in David Lean's GREAT EXPECTATIONS, from her bewitching Indian dancing girl in Michael Powell's BLACK NARCISSUS to her fragile Ophelia opposite Olivier's HAMLET for which she was nominated for an Academy Award.

Her Hollywood career found her working with Otto Preminger in ANGEL FACE, Joseph L. Mankiewicz in GUYS AND DOLLS, George Cukor in THE ACTRESS and William Wyler in THE BIG COUNTRY.

She also made a big impression in three big costume epics as the doe-eyed love interest: THE ROBE with Richard Burton which was the first film shot in Cinemascope, Michael Curtiz' THE EGYPTIAN set during the upheaval of Akhnaten's reign and Stanley Kubrick's SPARTACUS with Kirk Douglas.

Along with Vivien Leigh, her delicate portrayals usually hinted at darker undercurrents and as she moved into the 1960s she played characters usually unhappy in marriage and wanting more from life. She married twice - to Stewart Granger and then director Richard Brooks who directed her in ELMER GANTRY and THE HAPPY ENDING for which she was again nominated for an Academy Award. Both marriages ended in divorce. Although her later years were troubled with an alcohol addiction, she continued to work in television and the occasional film role.

Jean originated the role of 'Desirée' in A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC in London at the Adelphi Theatre in 1975 after playing the role in an American tour and in fact, it is her performance that I prefer out of the three available cast recordings. Her dry, bittersweet vocals suit the songs to perfection.

Well here's a thing... Kate Winslet is taking on MILDRED PIERCE, the role that won Joan Crawford her Academy Award for Best Actress in the 1945 film.

She is following up her award-winning big screen roles in THE READER and REVOLUTIONARY ROAD with an HBO mini-series based on the James M. Cain novel.

Director Todd Haynes will be able to be truer to the spirit of the book then Michael Curtiz was in 1945 which was as compromised by the censorship of the day as Tay Garnett was when he filmed Cain's THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE in 1946.

However I have always felt that ratcheted up the sexual tension - I'd rather watch Lana Turner and John Garfield sizzling up the screen than miserable Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange.
Cain's hard-boiled stories also included the source for a third classic film noir, Billy Wilder's DOUBLE INDEMNITY.

MILDRED PIERCE however is more about sexual jealousy and class. Mildred is a housewife with two daughters who will do anything to give them a better life. Her blinkered devotion to her eldest daughter Veda leads not only to the break-up of her marriage but also to hiding the fact that she is working as a waitress as her daughter would consider it beneath them. Through a lucky break she opens a chain of restaurants and attracts the attention of a rich playboy who she marries to give Veda the social circle she craves.

Soon however, Mildred realises just what a viperous serpent she has been nurturing...

Yesterday evening Owen and I went to the filums... well we found ourselves on Oxford Street just as the rush hour was about to kick-in and we fancied a sit-down. We decided SHERLOCK HOLMES would do to chew popcorn and slurp Pepsi Max to.

I have so far managed to avoid the oeuvre of Mr. Guy Ritchie - apart from SWEPT AWAY on dvd... oh and his his video for WHAT IT FEEL'S LIKE FOR A GIRL.

I had heard it was not your run-of-the-mill Holmes film but that isn't necessarily a bad thing for me. I've never been a fan of Conan Doyle's creation - that olive-arsed, stiff upper lip, "Elementary my dear Watson" shtick is something I've always found enervating and can usually manage about 20 minutes of any Holmes film. I would hazard a guess the only proper one I have ever sat all the way through is Hammer's THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES and I have seen the two Sherlock Holmes vs Jack The Ripper films A STUDY IN TERROR and MURDER BY DECREE. Despite my worst fears I must admit to the fact that I was never bored by it - didn't have a clue what was going on for most of the time and most of the Ritchieisms I found jarring - but I was never bored as it moved along at a rare old clip - I suspect because if it stopped for any period of time it might just collapse in on itself.

Robert Downey's Holmes certainly breaks the mould. Scruffy, petulant and seemingly hung-over most of the time, he is a striking contrast to Jude Law's Watson - prissy, reserved and stiff-upper-lippy. The storyline involves Watson about to marry his sweetheart Mary and moving out of 221b Baker Street which results in the two men having snitty squabbles which reveal that they borrow each others clothes. This has got the Holmesians in a right old tizz along with Downey's quote that he sees Holmes as a "butch homosexual". Oh please... if you could all just get over your cheap selves. It's just another of the "let's mess with the fanbase's heads" and nothing else. Like... who would have thought a few years ago that Downey would be such a box office draw? This and the forthcoming IRON MAN 2 should consolidate that and does indeed show that F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous line about there being no second act in American lives to not always be the case. He certainly carries the film here and is rarely offscreen - he might be a bit slappable at times but he does draw the eye. Maybe a few years ago, when he was being touted as the Next Big Thing, Law would have been cast as Holmes but he is a slippery fish on screen and works better here as the 2nd male lead. How odd it is that he can hold his own on stage in a lead role but in a screen lead role he just becomes transparent. The film is stolen by the wonderfully malevolent turn by Mark Strong as Lord Blackwood, a nasty toff who indulges in Devil worship and who despite, being confirmed dead by Watson at his hanging, seemingly rises from the dead to continue his evil work. Thank God he does! He has a real screen presence and his murderous lord pervades the film with a dark mystery that you wish for more of. Kelly Reilly and Rachel McAdam play Watson's fiancee and Holmes' criminal femme fatale to absolutely zero effect. They might as well have just sent their frocks on.

However the film bubbles with eye-catching supporting performances - James Fox brings a whiff of old-school frock coat acting in his few scenes as Lord Blackwood's father, Robert Maillet makes a very big impression - well he 7' odd - as Blackwood's chief assassin, William Houston makes a good impression as Constable Clark and Bronagh Gallagher has a fun cameo as a Gypsy fortune-teller. There is another impressive screen performance too from Eddie Marsan as Inspector Lestrade, making you wish he had some more scenes as he brings real weight to this negligible role. Philippe Rousselot's cinematography is suitably impressive. The fine production design by Sarah Greenwood presents an over-populated Victorian London which is dominated by Tower Bridge being constructed that provides the stage for the rather anti-climactic climax. However the look of the film reminded me of how FROM HELL gave a better image of London as Victorian charnel house (mental note to self: most watch that again soon). Jenny Beaven's costumes are also fine - and a particular word of praise for the excellent crowd wardrobe work by Andrew!

Hans Zimmer's score is intriguing and irritating by equal measure which also sums up Ritchie's direction. Although he keeps the traffic of his stage moving along swiftly I felt certain hallmark touches to be annoying - do we really need a totally superfluous scene showing Holmes to be Victorian London's best bare-knuckle fighter? Mind you one touch definitely caught my attention - when Holmes visits Lord Blackwood in his death cell - putting one in mind of a frock-coated Hannibal Lechter - he finds him reading aloud the passage from Revelations that Madonna used in her track THE BEAST WITHIN.

Hmmm...

Back in the day when I worked in Flashbacks, one of my more interesting punters was Richard Lancelyn Green who was a noted scholar, author and archivist on Conan Doyle and all things Holmesian. On the way home I wondered what he would have thought of this new lease of life for the character. However we will never know as he was found dead in 2004, garotted by a shoelace and a wooden spoon. The Coroner delivered an open verdict but it was reported that he had been telling friends that he was being harassed by an unknown American after he had tried to stop the auction of Conan Doyle letters which he claimed had been meant to be bequeathed to the British Library.

If ever Sherlock Holmes was needed it was then...

Since December I have done the occasional day working at the Oxfam in Walthamstow, working mainly in the book department.
It's good to get my shop retail skills back up to speed and needless to say I have bought a couple of books that I have found on the stock shelves.

However my award for book of the year goes to the following:


I think that's a trifle harsh.