Richard and Judith are off again

HOPE you all have a great time at the Sydney ASOPA bash. Sorry we can't be
there but had to delay this year's o/s jaunt until after youngest
granddaughter's 1st birthday.

So, NO MORE E-MAILS (not even a reply to this e-mail, thanks) until the end
of next month.
This laptop will be going into its case at 5 pm and linger there until our
return.

Cheers and best wishes: RICHARD & JUDYTH

Father Of My Children (M)

Richard Jones sent his latest movie review:

GREGOIRE Canvel seems to be a successful, if harried, Paris film producer with a loving family.

But all is not as it seems with Gregoire (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing). In order to produce edgy, arthouse films his film company struggles constantly with the demands of pushy directors.

One particular Swede regularly hassles Gregoire and places extra strain on the production company’s overworked staff.

Then there’s the seven-figure sum the producer owes his bank, plus the fact film funding agencies won’t extend any more credit to his firm.

And on the way home for a family dinner with Italian-borne wife Sylvia (Chiara Caselli) and their three daughters he’s pulled over for speeding.

He really should also have been booked for speaking on his mobile phone while driving, but that’s conveniently overlooked.

The second half of Mia Hansen-Love’s movie focuses on Sylvia and 15-year-old daughter Clemence (Alice de Lencquesaing) as they try to deal with their changing circumstances.

Meanwhile Gregoire’s other “family” -- the staff at his film production outfit -- are struggling, too, and it all falls to him to sort things out. 

Butchard Gardens, Vancouver Island

by Bill Bohlen

On our recent tour of Canada and Alaska, we visited the famous Butchard Gardens near Victoria on Vancouver Island. It was summer and a glorious day, here is a little film I cut of that great garden

BOHLENS IN CANADA

Bill and Diane went on a Scenic Tours jaunt to Canada and Alaska last month. The tour was very well organised and the accommodation pretty swanky.

The Empress Hotel in Victoria.

Butchart Gardens in Victoria.

The Sea to Sky Highway from Vancouver to Whistler. A very scenic drive.

They swung from Peak2Peak in a gondola at Whistler.

To find out more about this fantastic gondola ride - CLICK HERE

Enjoyed the magic scenery at Lake Louise in Alberta.

Emerald Lake

The famous Banff Springs Hotel was their home for a few nights.

Inception (M)

Richard Jones sent us his latest movie Review:

Inception (M)

WE all dream, with some of our reveries scary while others are fuzzy, warm and full of fluffy white clouds.

Imagine, then, a time not so far in the future where there’s a technology allowing us to enter and control our dreams.

So-called lucid dreams: the types in which we are completely aware we are dreaming.

In Christopher Nolan’s new film Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an inception expert. He’s able to steal ideas and secrets from the minds of his subjects by entering their dreams.

It’s something of a double-edged sword for Cobb. He’s haunted by the memory of his dead wife (Marion Cotillard) who continually infiltrates his own dream scapes.

Unaware of this problem businessman Saito (Ken Watanabe) hires Cobb to break into the innermost recesses of a rival, the heir to a business empire.

Saito wants Cobb to plant an idea in the brain of Fischer (Cillian Murphy) which will result in the collapse of his corporate world.

It’s an elaborate and costly form of industrial espionage, but Saito is prepared to foot the bill.

Cobb, however, can’t do the planting of an idea without a skilled team. He assembles a group which includes his regular assistant Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), set designer Ariadne (Ellen Page) and an identity forger (Tom Hardy).

Nolan lets the story unfold in a quite complicated way. He plays with the concept that his characters could be in their own real world, somebody’s else’s mind or perhaps a fantasy of their own making.

Be warned, though. This is a film like Hidden or even 2001: A Space Odyssey you’ll want to see more than once.

But the first viewing is amazing enough as we try to work out just exactly what’s happening among the many layers of consciousness.

The Bohlens are traveling in Canada and Alaska

A postcard from Canada where Bill and Diane Bohlen (Speakman 62/63) are traveling by coach, train and cruise-liner. 

Greeting everyone

Richard Jones latest review - The White Ribbon

THE WHITE RIBBON (M)

TWELVE months before the start of the First World War, a chain of horrific events unfold in a small German rural village.

The local doctor (Rainer Bock) is thrown from his horse and badly injured after his mount trips on a wire stretched across a road, a farmer’s wife is killed in what appears to be a work accident and her son holds the baron (Ulrich Tukur) responsible.

Still, the village’s orderliness continues to be disrupted. A barn is burnt down, an intellectually disabled child is bashed and the pet bird of the Lutheran pastor (Burghart Klaussner) is impaled upon a pair of scissors.

Tension in the village escalates. There’s not only mystery but also malice abroad. Who is responsible for these ongoing accidents, dramas and even fatalities?

Director Michael Haneke’s stark black and white imagery outlines for us an almost feudal world, one of class bullying, authoritarianism and resentment.

The women, even the village midwife, are clearly second-class citizens while the children are required to unswervingly obey and follow the lead of their elders.

Haneke, director of French mystery Hidden, is a master of creating intrigue and subterfuge. So much so that as with Hidden, I will have to see The White Ribbon a second time to catch up with all its subtle nuances.

Incidentally, The White Ribbon was Germany‘s entry in this year’s Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. That particular Oscar went to the Argentinian movie The Secret In Their Eyes, but having seen all three I firmly believe the south American film should have run third to The White Ribbon and France’s A Prophet.