General musings for the week 26th September 2010

By the time you read this I will have spent two days rehearsing for a huge sequence we are shooting in 'The-big-film-by-the-A-list-director-that-I-can't-tell-you-about'. That will start filming tomorrow and go on for another two or three weeks. In and amongst there I am also going to do a couple of days on Harry Potter (The final one) which is doing some pick-up shots soon. Apparently I'm going to be a moving portrait at Hogwarts. Exciting! If you haven't seen the new Harry Potter trailer it's here. The guy in the first sequence who is being dragged away, bruised  and bleeding is a fellow supporting artiste that I am working with called Alistair. He gets a spot in the trailer!

Big shout out also to my mother ("Hi Mum"). She celebrates a birthday this week after coming back from a two week sojourn to Spain. She played a little golf and moaned that it was too hot there, so I guess she enjoyed herself :)

On the subject of birthdays it is also my godson, Michael's, birthday this week. He must be rapidly approaching 9 years old - which is scary by itself. The whole 'age' thing tends to creep up and scare the bejeebus out of you. For example, a good friend of mine (who recently played the role of an 18 year-old on stage very successfully) is now panicking over the fact that her 'little girl' is leaving home and going to university at the age of 18. To make it worse her 16 year-old son is now taller than she is and looking at what university he wants to go to in a couple of years time. Scary times indeed.

I had to smile a little at the article on the BBC this week that was promoting the fact that people earning £100,000 a year or more are no happier than those earning the national average. In an article entitled 'The Perils of  Earning a £100,000 salary', they quote a number of people who complain that they are not really that much better off than they were when they were earning a lot less. There is, apparently, a higher cost associated with earning that much. The cars are more expensive, the holidays are more expensive and the need to 'keep up with the Joneses' costs a fortune.

My heart bleeds.

In other news the Pakistan cricketers have caused all sorts of ructions by allegedly throwing games, manipulating scores and - the thing that caused the most uproar - accused the English players of taking bribes to do the same. Surely that can't be right, I mean... It's just not cricket!

At the moment my new favourite toy is something I just downloaded from Amazon which is a speaker for my iPod Touch. It's called the XMI Mini, it's about the size of a small orange (or satsuma) and the sound is incredible. It comes with its own cable attached and lasts, apparently, 13 hours off a single charge. It also comes with a USB charger and a felt bag to carry it in. I'm going to use this over the coming few days and see whether I like it or not. On first impressions it is 'off the hook' (to quote the current vernacular) with fantastic sound reproduction from such a small unit. As one reviewer mentions 'Don't think this is absolutely fantastic, stadium filling sound, because it isn't, but for such a small unit the sound is pretty remarkable'.

I had the opportunity to revisit a newspaper article I read in 1998 this week. It was entitled 'Citizen Kane is the film of the century' and it detailed a list of the 100 'best American' films as decided by '1500 Hollywood heavyweights'. Now I don't know about you but putting Citizen Kane up there at number 1 appears to be an expectation rather than an actual rating. I find the film long, slow and quite boring. It is undeniably technically brilliant, but is it better than, say the no. 3 on the list (and my personal favourite) 'The Godfather"?

For your delectation, here's the complete list. Thoughts and comments appreciated:

The Critics Top 100 movies (As at 1998)

Citizen Kane
Casablanca
The Godfather
Gone With The Wind
Lawrence of Arabia
The Wizard Of Oz
The Graduate
On The Waterfront
Schindler’s List
Singin’ In The Rain
It’s A Wonderful Life
Sunset Boulevard
The Bridge On The River Kwai
Some Like It Hot
Star Wars
All About Eve
The African Queen
Psycho
Chinatown
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
The Grapes Of Wrath
2001: A Space Odyssey
The Maltese Falcon
Raging Bull
E.T.
Dr Strangelove
Bonnie And Clyde
Apocalypse Now
Mr Smith Goes To Washington
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Annie Hall
The Godfather Part II
High Noon
To Kill a Mockingbird
It Happened One Night
Midnight Cowboy
The Best years Of Our Lives
Double Indemnity
Doctor Zhivago
North By Northwest
West Side Story
Rear Window
King Kong (1933)
The Birth Of A Nation
A Streetcar Named Desire
A Clockwork Orange
Taxi Driver
Jaws
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid
The Philadelphia Story
From Here To Eternity
Amadeus
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Sound of Music
 M*A*S*H*
The Third Man
Fantasia
Rebel Without A Cause
Raiders Of The Lost Ark
Vertigo
Tootsie
Stagecoach
Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
The Silence Of The Lambs
Network
The Manchurian Candidate
An American In Paris
Shane
The French Connection
Forrest Gump
Ben-Hur
Withering Heights
The Gold Rush
Dances With Wolves
City Lights
American Graffiti
Rocky
The Deer Hunter
The Wild bunch
Modern Times
Giant
Platoon
Fargo
Duck Soup
Mutiny On The Bounty (1935)
Frankenstein
Easy Rider
Patton
The Jazz Singer
My Fair Lady
A Place In The Sun
The Apartment
Goodfellas
Pulp Function
The Searchers
Bringing Up baby
Unforgiven
Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner
Yankee Doodle Dandy