And he's never been more funny looking too.

The BBC are doing more and more of this aerial stuff. Coast and the Apprentice and that Alan Titchmarsh programme about British wildlife all do it. All to push High Definition defintion TV I suspect.

And in Britain from Above you often have this majestic shot of Andrew Marr doing his link to camera on the prow of a boat. Kenneth Clark will be turning in his grave.

I've Loved You For So Long. Kristin Scott Thomas acting in French. It's a moving drama about the relationship between sisters, the nature of parenthood, sacrifice, redemption, etc etc, set in the familiar French environment of over the top gorgeous houses, cafes, bars, a world where it's easy to find someone to have anonymous sex in hotel rooms with and everyone has 16 people round to dinner every single evening. It was one of those deeply emotional pieces that make you feel that all French films are and will always be essentially the same. People sit around discussing how knowing Rohmer helps you understand literature, and play classical piano a lot.

Well, House of Saddam was brilliant from start to end. It even achieved the difficult feat of feeling sorry for (or at least empathising with) the old monster after his sons were killed, as well as other total bastards gunned down throughout the program (like the General shot by his family).

Kristin Scott Thomas was very good in Tell No One. She was acting in French there too. Maybe one twist too many but a very good film nonetheless.

just bought the box set of absolutely , at the mo alternating between that & sledgehammer ( retro time )

Recently saw Russian film The Banishment. I loved director Andrei Zvyaginstev's first film The Return and, whilst this one isn't as good (it loses its sure-footedness a little towards the end), it certainly kept me absorbed for its two-and-a-half hour running time. The Arvo Part on the soundtrack helped.

I also recently watched Southland Tales, Richard Kelly's follow-up to Donnie Darko . It completely bombed on its release and it's easy to see why. And yet, despite its somewhat heavy-handed satire, deliberately crass casting and the sheer overload of crazy ideas and pop culture, I found it oddly compelling and, in places, visually amazing. It's one of those films with its own logic that you just have to, you know, roll with. This did become a bit problematic when battle-scarred war veteran Justin Timberlake started miming along to that Killers song recently discussed on the music thread (the "I'm not a soldier" one) but it was worth it in the end. A fascinating mess.

Today i've finished watching Ken Burns' excellent documentary The American Civil War despite receiving it as a Christmas gift. No doubt i'll keep re-watching it.

I thought Southland Tales was great. A lot more interesting, and definitely a lot more fun, than Donnie Darko.

It seemed as much a satire of Hollywood attempts at heavy-handed satire as anything - hence the bewildering film within a film stuff. And any movie that worships so devoutly at the altar of Repo Man is fine with me.

I'm hoping for a 4 hour long director's cut that restores all the original musical sequences.

Yeah, there did seem to be bits of the film "missing", as it were. There were some graphic novels released explaining the back story but I never read them. Kelly did eventually bring out a 'director's cut' of Donnie Darko which sort of "explained" it more but I personally thought it weakened the film. I don't mind filling in the blanks myself sometimes (The two films I mentioned by Andrei Zvyaginstev require a little of this and are all the better for it).

Speaking of Repo Man, I remember Alex Cox assembling a version of that for tv that restored about 10 extra minutes. Unfortunately, all the swearing was dubbed over. The word "flipping" was used quite a lot and it was also the first time I'd ever heard anyone referred to as a "melon farmer".

Speaking of Repo Man, I remember Alex Cox assembling a version of that for tv that restored about 10 extra minutes. Unfortunately, all the swearing was dubbed over. The word "flipping" was used quite a lot and it was also the first time I'd ever heard anyone referred to as a "melon farmer".

Unfortunately? The dubbing of banalities over the swearing was a superb touch by Cox and made everything even funnier (a deliberate riposte to the inane sensibilities of censors who cut too much out of films and blot out swearing to the edge of pointlessness). I'd love to see that cut again.

Yeah, now I think about it, it's the only time I can remember "flipping" being used this way in an American film (UK censors generally used "freaking"). I always assumed Cox dubbed it himself simply to avoid what happened to the tv version of "Robocop". Everyone who saw that still remembers it.

I started on The Wire last night. As in Series 1, Episode 1.

I'm in for a treat, right?

You lucky man.

You may find this helpful.

I've been watching Britain From Above as well. Marr's "dine on the grind" accent does my head in and his mouth is not only so ill-governed it looks like it is trying to escape from his face, but is grotesquely lopsided. A balanced view from that? In a chimp's cock.

But the actual footage and factual stuff is frequently amazing.

Like the tracking of the migration of individual birds which shows that they now use man-made landmarks such as motorways as guides (and have even been known to use roundabouts).

And the mountain on Skye which is so magnetically-charged that compasses are useless.

And the Luftwaffe photos of Manchester, with bombing targets marked in red pen.

The stuff about Rangers-Celtic seemed a bit misplaced and gratuitous, though. Marr encounters a football crowd and discovers that they sometimes engage in jovial banter rather than full-scale warfare, and that softly-softly policing can be more effective than riot squads. Er, right. With a few overhead shots to justify the inclusion.

I always assumed Cox dubbed it himself simply to avoid what happened to the tv version of "Robocop". Everyone who saw that still remembers it.

Oh, nothing beats the ITV cut of Aliens screened in the early 90's (I think) where, to avoid all that nasty swearing, voices completely different to those of the actors replaced the more salty language. It was so jarring, I spent most of that showing thinking 'what the fuck was that?'

Insistences by ITV's movie chief that it was Sigourney Weaver's own voice didn't wash to a lot of people who actually complained about the dumb-down effect applied to the film.