FILMS
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.
Most of the usual cast are back for the sixth - and darkest to date - episode of this popular film series.
Five of us went to see it: four enjoyed it, the other one went to sleep.
Well...it ain't a film for a four year old.
My enjoyment was slightly tempered by some glaring departures from the J.K. Rowling original.
Slimy accountants apart, why did film director David Yates choose to make substantial alterations to a bestselling author's work?
I would put it down to him being an arrogant bugger, but I believe he speaks highly of me.
A couple of weeks ago the often irksome Jonathan Ross interviewed Emma Watson (Hermione Granger) and behaved himself sufficiently not to ask too many lewd questions about her private life.
She has changed little over the Potter years, is still brightly intelligent, blessed with innate common sense - the two don't always go together - and seems destined for a succesful life long after the curtain has fallen on the final Potter film.
Meantime, with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows being imaginatively split into Part 1 and Part 2, we should be seeing her on screen until at least 2011: later than that if Warner Brothers play the same daft release game they played with The Half-Blood Prince.
Collateral.
I like Tom Cruise (no matter what weird religion he may espouse) and this 2004 film proved again what a fine actor he is. Good guy or villain he delivers the works.
Here he is the villain; Vincent, a contract killer. The hero is cab driver Max, perfectly played by James Foxx, who is forced to take part in the killer's plan to make several hits around L.A. in one night.
The result is a thriller on a par with The Long Kiss Goodnight.
Thoroughly enjoyed it.
TELEVISION.
New Tricks.
The same reliable crew (Redman, Armstrong, Bolam and Waterman) are halfway through series six and show no sign of flagging. So far we have had stories about a murderous monk, a duplicitous American airforce chief and a cunning control-freak husband.
All have been totally watchable .
Shows what can be done with regular airing, reasonable story lines and fine actors.
Wimbledon.
I found the cat Shadow asleep and when I woke him he was devoid of poem.
"That's not like you," I said. "Once the heavy servers and the ball boys...girls...children...whatever...have done their stuff you're usually full of rhyme."
"Well it was Federer again, wasn't it," he grumbled. "OK, so there was the big serving much improved Andy Roddick and a final that went on forever, but in the end Federer won and he doesn't rhyme with anything.
"I talked it over with the boys on the roof: none of us could find a rhyme for Federer or Roddick."
"Didn't the Centre Court's new retractable roof come to mind?" I asked.
"Nothing rhymes with roof, either, other than goof, hoof and poof," he said sourly. "Anyway, I lost the muse."
I might have commiserated had he not immediately gone back to sleep.
Golf.
He seemed to be sleeping again when the British Open finished at Turnberry.
Eventually Tom Watson was beaten by Stewart Cink.
(Praise be, not one newspaper carried the headline Cink Sinks Watson.)
Suddenly I became aware that a Shadow eye had opened.
"Ol' Tom didn't manage it then," he said.
"I thought you were asleep," I said.
He stretched: "Na-a-ah, I was just giving me eyes a rest. I heard Peter Alliss and the rest of 'em rabbiting on."
He thought for a few seconds. "How old are you?" he asked.
"Seventy eight, " I replied.
"Just think," he said, "If you'd been a professional golfer the whole bloody world would have been told that a thousand times between the 16th and the 19th of July."
He really had been awake.
Columbo.
When it comes to a thousand times, I'm sure Peter Falk's Columbo repeats must well exceed that number. Today it was Janet Leigh and John Payne in the 1975 episode Forgotten Lady. She played Grace Wheeler Willis, a former star of musicals, much admired by Columbo's wife.
According to Columbo, in their early days together Mrs. Columbo dragged him to see all of Grace's films.
Halfway through, the thought struck me that Mrs. Columbo must hate her husband with a passion.
Everybody she admires he eventually arrests for murder.
No wonder she refuses to be seen with him.
Single-Handed.
A new police kid on the block, this time a Garda one, Sgt. Jack Driscoll (Owen McDonnell) working in western Ireland.
Last night we saw the first of a three parter and it was uncomfortable viewing.
I was reminded of a friend of mine who, some years ago, was offered a police job on one of the Channel Islands: he declined when it turned out that outside the holiday season he would be expected to turn a blind eye to certain (locally regarded as minor) law infringements.
Jack Driscoll finds himself in something of the same predicament. He has taken up the post of senior police officer in the area where he was brought up.
His conscientious approach to the job is hampered by the fact that his father, the popular previous holder of the post, was an 'us and them' copper quite prepared to ignore anything that might embarrass his cronies.
There is a disturbingly insular and faintly incestuous atmosphere about it all.
Damned good television though.
HOME.
A reasonable reason for a late post.
At the beginning of the second week in July I was stricken with the squits; easier to spell than diarrhoea.
I know it sounds like an old bloke's attempt to outdo the advert where a red-haired woman with strange eyes tells her mates she's passing hard lumps - (Could that be why she has strange eyes, d'you think? No matter.) - but this attack put me in bed for a couple of days, took a couple of weeks to clear and was caused by the food poisoning bacteria Campylobacter.
Don't know how I came by it. Could have been from a portion of fish and chips. Never will know now. Didn't care to gather evidence.
One thing is for sure: I have never had it before and I never want it again.
ps. At the risk of an indelicate reply, where is that advert coming from?
Unsolicited e-mails.
Lately my Inbox has been the casual target of people writing in Arabic. At least, I assume it's Arabic. No idea what they want.
They could be trying to sell me a carpet.
They could be attempting to recruit me into al Qaeda.
They could even be proclaiming a fatwa against me.
Normally I just delete such stuff and empty the deleted items folder, but two have appeared again this morning and for the first time I have opened them.
As you may have gathered, they didn't explode.
One was a short message from Святослав Панфилов which I did not keep and the other was from Новикова Лида which I thought I might publish but the attempt went haywire.
(Monitored by that contradiction in terms, an Intelligence Agency?)
Needless to say I have not the slightest idea what any of it is about.
I would rather not be responsible for somebody in the Middle East having their hands, head, or unmentionables chopped off but, what the hell, how many fundamentalists read this?
So if anybody else out there gets unsolicited Aladdin, Ali Baba, Sinbad messages and can translate them into English, even if it's very rude, please let me know what they say.
Oh, if the senders are seeking support for the young woman who could be flogged for wearing trousers, they need look no further. I am on her side.
Religious bigotry is crap and its perpetrators are crap artists.
Whatever their religion.
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