Licenced to Drive

I passed my driving test! At the third attempt. I knew could pass, as I only failed the last one on a stupid error - I sped up to 60 kph when I saw the '60' sign instead of waiting until I passed the sign. Technically speeding. Deserved to fail. But I didn't bother with any more lessons between that test and the 3rd one.

The first half went really well and my reverse park was flawless. The tester was about 15 years younger than me, which made me think "who are you to judge my driving?" Then I forgot to indicate when he told me to pull over to add the scores in the first half, and I realised there was plenty to judge in my driving.

But I passed. The chief criticism was driving too slowly. Something I need to work on, but when you fail one test for speeding you tend to overcompensate. Only driven once since getting my licence, bu I know I'll get better through the next year with practice. Claire did remarkably well in her go at being a passenger inher own car. We've both got some learning to do - fun times!

FILM: The Wrestler (2009)

Darren Aronofsky's beautiful film about an over-the-hill wrestler is painful, emotionally and physically as you watch Mickey Rourke pull staples out of his skin, lamenting his fall from greatness. Rourke is amazing as Randy 'The Ram' Robinson, living in a trailer park, estranged from his daughter, and working by day at a supermarket deli counter. The only lights in his life are the friendship he has with a stripper (Marisa Tomei) and reliving his glory days at night, on the local wrestling circuit. These are men who do it for the love of it - it being put on a leotard, sharing steroids, and choreographing some severe punishment for each other. When a heart attack prevents him from doing the one thing he loves the film becomes truly tragic, as he fumbles his attempts to reconnect with daughter and is drawn back to the ring. [10/10]

Amelie - these are a few of her favourite things

Thought I'd catch up on some things that Amelie enjoys doing. Here she is...
...reading...

...hula-hooping...

...playing tambourine...

...gardening...

...and her favourite, riding her bike!

FILM: 500 Days of Summer (2009)

A romantic comedy that aims straight for the heart of indie kids who are too cool for Kate Hudson or Katherine Heigl. The Garden State market, basically. But this is not in the same league as that funny, touching, Shins-career-launching film. Zooey Deschanel is neither interesting or likable as flighty Summer, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is more interesting but still unsympathetic as Tom, whose relationship with Summer is counted in days, and shown to the audience in non-chronological order. The supporting characters are all cliched, the 'offbeat' script is not off enough to be be funny or engaging, and referencing Belle & Sebastian and The Smiths in the script does not make it more entertaining. [3/10]

FILM: Milk (2009)

Society, and Hollywood, have caught up with the themes of sexual freedom from Gus Van Sant's early arthouse films, allowing him to give the full mainstream feel good drama treatment to the biography of Harvey Milk. Sean Penn is excellent as the warm, vulnerable and driven gay rights activist, playing his love affair with Scott (James Franco) with real humour and tenderness. Milk becomes a San Francisco councillor in the late 70s, protests against the right-wing Christian lobby, and is murdered by disturbed colleague, Dan White (Josh Brolin from No Country For Old Men, great again). Some of the recreated events seem a little cliched, and if you've seen the Oscar-winnng documentary from the 80s - The Life and Times of Harvey Milk - it lacks depth, but overall it is moving, uplifting, and beautifully acted by all. [8/10]

FILM: Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Quentin Tarantino's World War II adventure is suspenseful, funny, brutally-violent. The opening scene with Christopher Waltz as Col Hans Landa, the 'Jew Hunter' interrogating a farmer hiding Jews, is unbearably tense, reminiscent of Lee Van Cleef's entrance in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, but with Tarantino's trademark length dialogue in French. Suddenly we are jolted into humour - very dark, very funny scenes of Brad Pitt's 'Basterds' troop of American Jewish soldiers striking fear into the Germans as they scalp their way through the Nazis in occupied France.

What makes this different from other wartime adventures is the way it casts the Jewish characters as the heroes - not victims or noble survivors, but violent kick-ass warriors like 'The Bear Jew', or in the case of the Melanie Laurent as Cinema manager and Jew-in-hiding Shosanna, transforming (with a little help from David Bowie on the soundtrack) into the terrible, beautiful spirit of Jewish vengeance in an amazing scene that changes the end of the war in a way that will leave you wishing that was exactly how the Nazis did get their comeuppance. [9/10]

24 Hour Party People (2002)

Alan Partridge meets Shaun Ryder. That's your pitch right there. That alone would make this a contender for best film ever, and after several viewings it rest safely among my favourites. The diverse director Michael Winterbottom uses Steve Coogan's arrogant yet hapless Tony Wilson (in a very Partridge-like performance) as our guide through the history of Manchester's Factory Records from Joy Divison through the Happy Mondays to the closure of the Hacienda. It has amazing music in exciting gig scenes, it is surprisingly light and touching in its handling of the doomed Ian Curtis, and with its juxtaposing Wilson's local TV reporting with his rock and roll lifestyle, it is very, very funny. [10/10]

FILM: Star Trek (2009)

The reboot of the Star Trek franchise is a very clever film pretending to be a dumb action film. It is of course a very good dumb action film too - the banter, the explosions, crowd-pleasing nods to the nerds. But it is cleverness lies in having its cake and eating it - it re-writes Star Trek continuity - allowing the producers to "re-imagine" the early year of Kirk, Spock, and the 60s Trek gang - but does it within old Star Trek continuity so the fans can't complain about it - through Leonard Nimoy as Spock coming back in time and accidentally causing a shift in the space-time continuum thingy with Eric Bana, the angry Romulan (this is as close to a plot as we get). Not that I care, I was never a big fan of the original Star Trek. I'm more a Next Generation man. But I enjoyed all the nerdy touches - especially the old 'gay in red goes down to the planet, you know he's going to die first' routine. Simon Pegg isn't nearly as annoying as Scotty as I thought he would be. Zachary Quinto (Sylar from Heroes) is great as the young Spock. And seeing Winona Ryder as Spock's mum was just weird. Good fun. [7/10]

FILM: Diary of the Dead (2008)

George A Romero's fifth installment of the classic 'Dead' series of zombie films (a genre he invented and ruled for 30 years), is neither fun nor frightening. Romero's zombie films are never about the zombies. They are always more about what happens to aspects of humanity when society collapses. This one looks at the YouTube/blogging generation. The main character is a film student, rarely seen, as he is usually behind the camera coldly documenting his friends struggle to survive and occasionally being eaten, without ever stepping in to help. This makes him more than unlikeable, it makes him, and the entire premise, unbelievable. The first-person shaky-cam gets boring very quickly, the dialogue is uninteresting, and the only character that could have proved fun to watch - the mute Amish farmer with dynamite and a zombie-splitting scythe - is zombie food way too early. [3/10]

FILM: La Dolce Vita (1960)

One of those classics I'd somehow missed, Fellini's long, long film is one I found enjoyable, if not gripping. Marcello Mastroianni plays a jaded society columnist in Rome, going to parties, chasing women, living 'the sweet life' of the title but becoming increasingly disaffected and disturbed by it all, and by all his close relationships - girlfriend, mistress, father, seemingly happy friend.

The film is episodic - the famous sequence with Marcello pursuing Anita Ekberg as an international film star ends so abruptly and so early in the film you wonder if she is going to come back, or have any relevance to the rest of the film. She doesn't.

But I was interested throughout with some beautiful pieces of cinematography and some fascinating sequences. Including the statue of Jesus being carried over slums by helicopter, the dance scenes, and, best of all, the two small children who claim to have miraculously seen the Virgin Mary and cause a stampede of media and fanatics. [8/10]