Yeah, I saw that. Football (which I presume they both hate) seems to be one of those things that Mitchell & Webb seem to be able hit square on the head.

He Kills Coppers (from Jake Arnott's book) on ITV tonight was brilliant.

I think that's the first time I've used the words brilliant and ITV in a sentence is a decade.

DVDs

See How They Run 2002 (Embrassez qui vous voudrez)

Interesting, but quite over the top in its portrayal of intertwined cross-generational disfunctional relationships. Good cast though, especially the women (Carole Bouquet, Charlotte Rampling, Karin Viard)

Waking Life

Enjoyed that one, as a fan of Linkleter. The medium (animation based on film) is interesting and lends itself well to the narrative theme and dreamlike tone.

Mr and Mrs Smith the 1941 Hitchcock flick, not the silly one with Brad Pitt. Robert Montgomery and Carole Lombard in a very unusual Hitch, along the lines of a classic vintage American comedy. Very entertaining.

Together Swedish movie that's a bit similar to Elementary Particles (Elementarteilchen) in its critical view of the impact of baby boomer hippy lifestyle on families and offsprings, but very different approaches. The Swedish approach is realistically plain, the German one overly dramatic (SPOILER -could you possibly conceive a more dramatic death for Christiane?-)

Big screen:

Fritz Lang's Metropolis, with live piano accompanist. It's quite a treat to have discovered that classic in the right conditions.

Buster Keaton's College, and General, also with live accompanist. College was with the Octuor de France, a top flight chamber ensemble on tour. Very playful score, with ukelele, whistling and barber shop bits meshed with some more traditional bits and instruments like the french horn, oboe and viola. I can't recall enjoying a movie that much in a theater.

Anita O'Day: Life of a Jazz Singer Great new documentary on the life and craft of this immensely talented and interesting American singer.
http://anitaoday.com/documentary.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuzWegDm2HY

Michael Clayton Fairly entertaining, good cast (esp Tilda Swinton) but the storyline is a bit over the top. The kind of movie that would be good to watch in a year or two on a chinese website.

And a bunch of movies on such sites, including Juno, Darjeeling Express, Squid and the Whale, and a few other White People current and future classics.

Has anyone watched 9th Company ("Russia's Full Metal Jacket")? I recorded it the other week and haven't got round to it yet. From the snippets it looks like a paint-by-numbers mix of Full Metal Jacket (training brutality) and Rambo, First Blood Part 2 (the simple-minded characterisation of screaming mujahideen hordes) but with the novelty factor of Russian tanks and helicopters thrown in.

Has anyone watched 9th Company ("Russia's Full Metal Jacket")?

It's on telly tonight. Don't ask me where or when, but i dimly remember a still of it in the Guardian guide which I was gazing blurrily at over breakfast

I watched Der Untergang (Downfall) a few weeks ago. I assume a lot of you have already watched it, but if not, I seriously recommend you do.

Another film I watched recently is Good Bye Lenin. Another subtitled German film, about a Communist woman who wakes up in post-wall Berlin, while those closest to her try to shield her from the truth.

Is it obvious i'm learning German?

Is Good Bye Lenin any good? I bought it about two years ago and still haven't got round to watching it.

Downfall is excellent.

Yes it it. I downloaded it with a torrent originally, but enjoyed it so much that I bough the DVD legit.

Both funny and touching in parts, I recommend it anyway.

Good Bye Lenin is GREAT. Really good.

If you're learning German - how about Requiem (fantastic performances, about the same story that inspired The Exorcism of Emily Rose), or Sehnsucht (I really liked this because it was about how ordinary, ugly people have deep grand emotions too, which I think is rarer than it sounds).

Put me down as another fan of Good Bye Lenin.

Obvious German film but worth mentioning as often as possible is The Lives of Others.

QUOTE:
Skins. Imaginative, unpredictable, full of terrific jokes, sexy but above all really heartfelt. Even to point out that it doesn't patronise its audience would be a bit patronising. The best UK drama of recent years.

I've never disagreed more with anyone on TV, ever. I watched this last night for the first time in ages and it was just as shit as it was when I was first attracted to it by the C4 hype machine. Unrealistic toss.

Last night I watched episodes of My Name is Earl and Arrested Development. I was disappointed that he'd been banged up, but the execution was great. I do wonder if it can be sustained over a whole series though. Speaking of the latter though, surely it's the most underrated comedy of the last decade? Absolutely fantastic performances from pretty much everyone, particularly The Fonz.

QUOTE:
I've never disagreed more with anyone on TV, ever. I watched this last night for the first time in ages and it was just as shit as it was when I was first attracted to it by the C4 hype machine. Unrealistic toss.

Well, steady on. But I have to admit that last night's Skins was the worst of the series so far. What's usually so great about it is that it's innovative and fantastical - it takes place in a heightened, dreamy parallel universe - and, at the same time, it's emotionally very serious and convincing. It's real without being realistic, if you will. Last night's - which was written by a 23-year-old rookie, rather than 45-year-old showrunner Bryan Elsley - had several scenes that really were bad, and none that were breathtakingly good. Skins is usually stuffed with the latter. I would say watch it again next week - next week's plays it very straight - but, well, if someone told me to watch another episode of something I hated, I wouldn't, so fair enough if you don't. But "the C4 hype machine" has never done Skins any favours - particularly when it started, the trailers and ads for it were wildly misleading, making it seem smutty and cheap, which it isn't. A lot of people criticise it for being smutty and cheap, which just makes me think they've only seen the trailers and ads. (Not you, Liq, obviously. You just saw a duff episode.)

I just find it very cartoony, which isn't a quality I'm a fan of. There's just something really smug, north London and dare I say it, very Guardian. It grates on me, particularly as I can't see any relation between their adolescent years and mine or anyone else's I know. It's almost as though the writers are transplanting all their adolescent longings and missed opportunities on screen.

Ah, see, yeah it is cartoony, but I think underlying that are universal truths. Fundamentally it's about people who are nominally young adults but have no idea how to function as grown-ups, which is pretty much yer all-encompassing teen emotion. All the characters are lost souls fighting big problems they're not equipped to deal with, so I don't think it's smug at all - its total lack of smugness is what I like. I don't understand why it's Guardian-ish at all.

Yeah, crazy stuff happens, but apart from that being fine because, y'know, it's fiction, you have to look beyond that. To take a small example: the kids often go to clubs, raves and house parties, which are much bigger, much druggier and much more frequent than they were for me and my teen friends - but without exception these events are wild, scary things where someone always gets the fear and someone else suffers some kind of emotional catastrophe. That resonates with me. Another cartoonish thing is the way all the mums and dads are hammily played by famous comedians - but that's done to emphasise that the parents are, to the kids, distant, alien figures. All the cartoony stuff has a point above and beyond being funny, which it usually is.