Shadows on the Wall | Seven Days

Another Seven Days in London

WEEK 523

1 6 J U N E 2 0 0 2 • B Y R I C H C L I N E

Feeling extremely lazy this week, like I don't want to do much of anything. Perhaps it's a delayed case of millennial angst or something. Maybe it's the midsummer blues. Is there such a thing? Well there should be, especially when you live in London and haven't been out of your house without a sweater and/or coat yet this year. And it's the middle of June. And it's dark and cold and rainy. And the television is taken over by the World Cup, which is lackluster and dull, even though England has made it through to round 2, without much effort, it has to be said. While the favourites France and Argentina are both on their way home. And the Big Brother house is in such a deep funk at being divided into rich and poor halves that no one is talking to each other, Sandy has gotten so bored that he escaped over the roof, and Jade and PJ were rustling under the covers (ewww!) and now hate each other.

It's just not a pretty picture anywhere I look this week. Film-wise, things brightened up a bit with the director's cut of Amadeus, which is just as brilliant although not as shattering as I remember it being back in 1984, the last time I saw it. I think that's only subsequent-viewing blues though. While the first two screenings this week were virtually unreleasable things from the UK and US, both of which had good casts and intriguing premises, but squandered them with uneven editing and general dodginess all around. Even the presence of award-winners like Julie Walters, Tom Wilkinson and Gary Sinise couldn't rescue them. Critics all around me were tutting like mad. I was rolling my eyes and praying for the dawn. The fourth film--John Sayles' new slicing-through of a small community--was pretty good but nothing special. The fifth was an unbelievable pairing of Anthony Hopkins and Chris Rock in a cop-spy adventure comedy, directed by my least favourite director on earth, and not as bad as I thought it would be. And the sixth (the second futuristic Philip K Dick adaptation this week about a guy trying to prove his innocence) restored my faith in Hollywood: a big budget effects blockbuster with an above-A-list star and director that actually works perfectly ... and then some. Go Tom and Steven!

As the week draws to a close I am relieved a bit because I've written a few pieces ahead of deadlines in preparation for my upcoming holiday. I'm coping better with hay fever than I was at the first of the week. And I'm that much closer to getting on that airplane--my first flight in nearly six months, which has to be a record for me. And so it goes.

This week's screenings...

INDEX