Liberal arts (Josh Radnor)

(Amazon UK link)

We first saw the 2012 film ‘Liberal arts’ ten years ago. I vaguely recalled that it was something to do with a university in the United States, but that was all. It was time for a rewatch.

Thirty-five year old Jesse (Josh Radnor) has just split up from his girlfriend. He works as an admissions officer in New York, but has somewhat lost his passion for life. Then he is invited to his old university in Ohio, to the retirement dinner of one of his favourite professors, Peter (Richard Jenkins). Jesse remembers his college days as some of the happiest, most productive of his life, and is eager to go.

Peter introduces him to a couple of his friends whose daughter, Zibby (Elizabeth Olsen) is a student at the college. Jesse chats to her about literature and studying, and it’s clear that she finds him very attractive. He also gets into conversation with the somewhat nerdy and depressed student Dean (John Magaro) who loves books but is desperately unhappy. He also meets Nat (Zac Efron) who is somewhat weird and New Agey, but also a good person to talk to.

Yes minister - series three (Paul Eddington)

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We thoroughly enjoyed watching the first two series of ‘Yes, minister’ with Paul Eddington brilliantly portraying the somewhat harassed government minister Jim Hacker. So after finishing series two, we moved swiftly on to the third series. It has another seven episodes plus a longer Christmas special.

The first episode, ‘Equal opportunities’, opens with Jim being interviewed by a young teenager from a local school. She asks some quite pointed questions, most of which he doesn’t really answer. His wife Annie (Diana Hoddinott) comes in to listen for a while, and the topic of women in parliament - and the civil service - is raised. Jim realises just how few women there are in senior positions, and makes a determined effort to change it.

It’s a clever and amusing episode, making a point that was probably a significant one in 1982 when this was broadcast. There are some very sexist comments, albeit bridged in a general theoretical support of women in significant roles. There’s also a rather attractive junior civil servant whom Jim would like to promote…

The English teacher (Julianne Moore)

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It’s ten years since we watched the 2013 film ‘The English teacher’. My records told me that I had liked it, on the whole, but neither of us could remember anything about it. So we watched it last night… and neither of us recalled anything from it - it was as if we were watching for the first time. Usually there’s at least a scene or character that triggers memory at some point when we rewatch films.

The opening is nicely done with a narrator telling us about forty-five year old Linda (Julianne Moore), who is an English teacher in a high school in the United States. She’s evidently a good teacher, who has excellent rapport with her students. But she hasn’t had any success with romantic relationships, and her out-of-school life is predictable and dull. 

Then one evening she’s paying for some petrol for her car when she sees a young man approaching her. She assumes the worst and reacts with pepper spray that she carries around… only to discover that she’s attacked a former student, Jason (Michael Angarano). She recalls him as one of her most talented students, who hoped to have a career as a writer. 

Doctor Who series 8 (Peter Capaldi)

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We finished rewatching Doctor Who series 7 mid-July. It was the last full series with Matt Smith, but he continued to play the title role in the 50th anniversary special, which we watched a week later, and in the Christmas special ‘The time of the doctor’ which we saw towards the end of July.

So August saw us finally starting to rewatch series 8, in which Peter Capaldi is the Doctor. This series was first broadcast in 2014, and we first watched it in 2016. I can remember that we weren’t at all sure about Capaldi as the Doctor at first, but he grew on us, as is usually the case with any new regeneration. Each one portrays the character differently. As with earlier series, we had almost entirely forgotten the storylines. 

The first episode, ‘Deep breath’, has quite a dramatic opening. In the midst of Victorian London there’s a huge dinosaur, who coughs up the tardis. This is investigated by the recurring trio, Madam Vastra, Jenny and Strax, who always manage to add both glamour and humour. The Doctor emerges, still recovering from his regeneration and very confused. Clara (Jenna Coleman) is disturbed about his changed appearance, and it takes most of the episode before she’s reconciled to him. The story starts with some spontaneous combustions, and includes a Cyborg who is harvesting human parts…

Proof (Gwyneth Paltrow)

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It’s over eleven years since we saw the 2005 film ‘Proof’, and we’d entirely forgotten the characters and the storyline. I knew vaguely that it was to do with some mathematical proof… but we’ve watched other films which included brilliant mathematical minds, and nothing seemed to stand out from this one.

We were captivated from the start. Gwyneth Paltrow is wonderful as a young woman in her twenties, Catherine, who is the daughter of Robert, a mathematical genius (Anthony Hopkins). At least, he was once a genius, but in his late twenties his mind started to go. It’s not clear exactly what the problem was - it’s described as ‘crazy’ in the film; the balance of his mind was very disturbed, anyway. 

But it’s quickly clear that Robert has just died, and that Catherine is herself quite disturbed. She is also a brilliant mathematician and is worried that her mind is going to start going, too. She imagines her dead father talking to her; it’s easy to think she might be going a bit crazy too, though she could be hallucinating due to exhaustion and stress.

Yes, minister - series 2 (Paul Eddington)

(Amazon UK link)

Having finished watching the BBC sit-com ‘Yes minister, series 1’ towards the end of August, it was an easy decision to start watching the second series. It was broadcast in 1981, starting around a year after the first series began. I remember enjoying the show when it was on television, and we acquired the full set of DVDs for all the series many years ago.  But it’s been a long time since we watched them.

The first episode of series 2, is ‘The compassionate society’.  Jim Hacker (Paul Eddington), who is still somewhat idealistic, discovers that a new hospital is fully staffed with ancillary workers and administrative staff, but has no medical staff. So there are no patients. He feels that this is a terrible waste of resources and wants to fire the people who are working there until doctors and nurses can be found. Then the unions get involved…

It doesn’t sound like a source of amusing banter, but, as with the first series, it’s very cleverly scripted. Sir Humphrey (Nigel Hawthorne) comes out with some long, convoluted explanations which must have been quite difficult to learn… and his expressions are wonderful. Bernard (Derek Fowlds) tries to balance his loyalties, and Hacker is stuck between what he believes to be right and his image with the public. 

Hotel du lac (Anna Massey)

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It’s over ten years since we watched the film ‘Hotel du lac’, and we had totally forgotten what it was about. So we decided to watch it last night. It’s not a long film - well under 90 minutes - and it was made in 1986, based on a book of the same name (though I have not read it).

Anna Massey stars as the middle-aged writer Edith. She’s been quite successful in writing romantic fiction, though she mostly keeps quiet about it; she writes under a pseudonym. She lives in the UK, but at the start of the film she’s being sent into a kind of exile, to a hotel in Europe, by a lake. 

She’s apparently committed a terrible crime, though this seems at odds with her quiet, unassuming behaviour. But underneath the drab clothes and calm demeanor, there’s a woman of passion - as we discover through flashbacks, where she has an affair with a married man. I wondered if this, perhaps, was the terrible crime. But Edith regularly writes letters to the man she loves, speaking aloud as she writes so we learn what she’s thinking - and many of them lead to scenes from previous years and months.