Midnight in Paris

Last night I went to see Woody Allen's new film, Midnight in Paris. Halfway through it occurred to me that this was the first time I had seen one of his films on the big screen. It was a really great film, and very funny. But it upsets me that Woody is now too old to star in his own films. As a leading man he was anti pseudo-intellectual (the cinema queue scene in Annie Hall is the classic example) but you knew there was a lot going on underneath the surface. He possessed an intellect that was unpretentious and able to laugh at the world in a knowing way. Owen Wilson can't quite pull this off.

Halloween mask... or, if Woody and Serge Gainsbourg had a love-child

McCartney

Old Paul McCartney pencil portrait. He got married again yesterday.

Gig Fridge

This is the fridge I decorated with gig posters at my old flat. Everyone should decorate their white goods.

Sadly, it died soon after this picture was taken.

Highgate Cemetery

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways.
The point, however, is to change it.

Yesterday I went to Highgate Cemetery to see the grave of Karl Marx. I'd always wanted to go after seeing Mike Leigh's High Hopes. The film is about a couple called Cyril and Shirley. Shirley wants kids, but Cyril can't reconcile himself with the world in which he lives, and feels he doesn't want to create a new life when some have too much and some have so little. They visit Karl Marx's grave. It's a beautiful scene because Cyril says so little. He doesn't need to because Leigh knows the viewer can imagine what he's thinking for themselves. The scene really stuck with me even though I saw the film a number of years ago.

The cemetery also contains the grave of Douglas Adams, where visitors had left pens in the ground in tribute...


And the painter Patrick Caulfield, whose headstone (designed by himself) gets straight to the point...


It was a lovely day, and made me feel quite emotional, not least because I had Cemetery Gates by the Smiths stuck in my head all the way round..


So we go inside and we gravely read the stones
all those people all those lives
where are they now?
with loves and hates
and passions just like mine
they were born
and then they lived
and then they died
seems so unfair
I want to cry