A February Sunday

One advantage of being on light duties or "therapeutic work" as my doctor calls it, is that I can do some of the things I've wanted to do but never got around to. Last Sunday was bright sunshine after overnight snow, so i crunched off across the fields to the small Friends meeting house, to the weekly Quaker meeting for worship. I've always been around Quakers, and have great respect for them, though I did find on peace actions in the eighties that some of the old lady pacifists were in fact some of the fiercest people you are ever likely to meet. I've been to meetings for worship, but mainly in big cities. Here the meeting is held in the upper room of an old building that used to be a barn - i suppose it was a hay loft or some such. The beams are old and low, so it's easy to crack your head. The focus of the room is not an altar, or a candle, or a picture, but a huge woodburning stove, crackling merrily. Chairs around the edge of the simple room accommodate the dozen of us who turn up. Outside we can hear the bleating from the farm mother and baby unit, with new lambs and protective mums not sure whether to approach the gate because we are going to feed them, or stay back because we might do them some harm. An hour of silence, broken by a few well chosen words, and then hot coffee and flapjacks. Then a walk back, the sun still shining, and home at 12.

Flicks in the Sticks

As if guided by an unseen hand, i entered the Little Pub with the Big Brewer, in order to partake of a little refreshment, and my eye was drawn to a pile of leaflets. The Borderlines film festival offers a tempting programme of films, in locations that do not require motorway travel or train journeys. In village halls and local independents, we can see them all - well, lots of them. Come to the Welsh borders and see the films your multiplex won't be showing.

Up In The Air

Oscar nominations announced today, including one for Up In the Air as best picture. Good for them! It richly deserves it, in my opinion. Corporate America is the main course, with a side order on love, romance, commitment and the devastating effects of unemployment upon the individual. So not bad then. George Clooney was great, and the two female leads equally good, in different ways, with Anna Kendrick having the edge as the naive psychologist way out of her depth in the world of big business. No-one would believe the cameo role given to Sam Elliott, but I just love listening to his voice, even for just a couple of lines. Lots of brilliant touches by Reitman, using real life talking-head interviews with unemployed American workers to hammer his points home. Right at the end of the credits is a song sent in to the director by an unemployed man who thought "perhaps you might be able to use it in your film".

We thoroughly enjoyed it, but watched it in an almost empty cinema on a Thursday night. several of those leaving were scratching their heads and muttering. When I read the caption in the listings mag produced by the cinema, I could see why; "a comedy drama about a man who is obsessed with getting ten million air miles". Did the person who wrote this watch the film first?

Moans on TV news about the fact that there are ten films nominated for Best Film, including some that "hardly anyone will have watched". It helps if the film is properly publicised so that people can make informed choices about what they are watching; not everyone soaks up all the radio and newspaper reviews like us. And it helps if the film is on somewhere near where you live; to see Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll I would need to travel to Bath or Leicester (over one hundred miles); to see The Road I face travelling to Birmingham or Cardiff (about eighty miles). Yes, I will see them eventually, in an independent, or in great digital projection in a local village hall in about twelve months time. Is that really 21st century cinema at its best?