Blogs

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008) shown on BBC 2, and directed by Mark Herman, is based on an adaptation of the book-which I have not read- written by John Boyne. Asa Butterfield plays eight-year-old Bruno, the son of a concentration camp commandant. Jack Scanlon plays Schmuel, a Jewish child of the same age, who is interred in the camp. An unlikely friendship develops. This is the fulcrum on which the story turns. Only, for me, it doesn’t.

The Field of Blood is a novel by Denise Mina, set in early 1980’s Glasgow, adapted into two one hour features for BBC by David Kane, who also directs. The cast list comes straight from Still Game. They play the kind of reporters on a Daily rag that you wouldn’t want to meet on a dark night: hard drinking, free smoking, no good fucks who think compassion is some kind of new drink. In other words, spot on. Peter Capladi is lurking in the back...

Is Bill Nighy the new Dame Judi Dench? Any film that requires a British actor requires a Nighy in the same way that any female role requires a Dench. Stephen Poliakoff’s (2009) Glorious 39, recently shown on BBC2, had a Nighy, as did David Hare’s Page Eight. As any passing numerologist or cabbalist will tell you the relationship between 39 and 8 leaves a 7, which is the number of creation and of a pieiad. * 8 is also the number of goals that...

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This is a book written by Lucy Mathen. The first line of the introduction tells you she is a pain in the arse. I wish there were more pains in the arse like her. It tells of why she set up the Second Sight charity to help cure blindness in India. Not a penny is spent on administration - it all goes directly to benefit those in need. This is a remarkable tale and we urge you all to buy a copy of The Runaway Goat - all the monies you spend go...

Oscar winner for best foreign film 2009. Masahiro Motoki is the first link in what is perfection. He is cast as a cellist, Daigo Kobashaki, who achieves his life long ambition to play in an orchestra in big town Tokyo. Just as suddenly as success is grasped then it and the orchestra are dissolved. He is left with the realization that as a musician he is at best mediocre and he can no longer afford the 40 million yen that he has paid for his...

The Lovely Bones (2009)is based on the best selling novel of the same name by Alice Sebold. Typically, it was said to be unfilmable because the 14 year old protagonist dies early in the book, murdered by her paedophile neighbour and spends a lot of time flitting and flirting about heaven and earth with the boy she might have loved, given a chance. Unfilmable means that a cardboard set with the wind moving the props that stand in for heaven-lite...

Some books make you scowl with displeasure. Some make you taller and better looking. Some make you fall in love. Some make you forget yourself and live only with the characters on the page. This is one of the latter. It didn’t start off that way. There are a number of narrators, but essentially it is the story of Daniel Sempere’s coming of age. I could just as easily say it is the story of Julian Carex, the author of ‘The Shadow of the Wind’...

The Killing is remake of the hit TV series shown on BBC 4 (and as a must have box-set) right down to the bobbly wool jumper worn by the lead detective Sarah Lund. The woolly jumper wearer in this series is Sarah Linden (Mirielle Enos). Her sidekick Stephen Holder (Joel Kinnamen) had moved over from narcotics to homicide and this is his first case. The thing is, I can’t remember Sarah Lund’s sidekick in the original. I can only remember Sarah...