Friday 24 October 2008

Was David Crichton a War Hero?

The title of this post is the heading from an email I keep getting from Genes Reunited. A few years ago I added some of my late family members to the site, but then a couple of years later, I decided to take them off. I discovered that you can't delete entries from Genes (or at least I couldn't) but you can change the names. So I changed the names, and now I get emails about people I made up. The bitter twist of fate is that my grandfather was very far from being a war hero, so the question, had they got his name right, would have been pretty hilarious, at least for those of my living relations who know the story. He was a very brave and strongminded man, in his own way, but it was always in his own way rather than anyone else's.

Anyway. I started the Pinwheel again on 4mm needles but I haven't ripped the first one yet just in case I decide to go back to 5mm needles.
I'm quite a bit further on now from when I took this picture. At first I didn't need markers because it's so easy to se where you should do a YO, but now that the spaces between the YOs are getting longer, it's easy to forget while staring at the television screen.

I watched The Music Box, Judith, and thought it was very good. Thanks for the recommendation. One of the things I liked about it was that the heroine wasn't very sympathetic, or at least I didn't think so. Her repeated hostilities towards the prosecution lawyer seemed ill-advised. But she did the right thing in the end, showing that you don't always have to be likeable to be a good person.

Jessica Lange
doesn't seem to make many movies, but I dare say if I lived with Sam Shepard on a ranch in Montana, I wouldn't be very interested in going to Hollywood either.

I also watched Married Life. I don't know if this got a cinema release in the UK, and I don't think it got a UK release on DVD because I watched it on a Region 1 DVD, but it's well worth watching. I got my wires crossed and I thought it was going to be a fairly serious film, perhaps about the end of a marriage, an Ordinary People or a Squid and the Whale - although I was hoping it wouldn't be as painful as Squid, which left me squirming for days. In fact it's a Hitchcockian drama, done as an hommage to Hitch and Douglas Sirk. I liked it better than Far from Heaven, which I found anachronistic, self-important and dull.

It's about a man who wants to leave his wife for his girlfriend but thinks that might be too much for her to bear, so out of kindness he decides to kill her instead. They are Chris Cooper and Patricia Clarkson: Pierce Brosnan and Rachel McAdams are in it too. There is a delicious moment when you realize that nobody in it is telling the truth to anyone else, ever. After that, it's great fun. Chris Cooper is wonderful (but I probably didn't need to tell you that, because he always is) and everybody else is too. At first I thought Pierce Brosnan was being a bit stodgy but then I decided that was deliberate and it fits perfectly with the film.

Mentioning Patricia Clarkson reminds me, I saw Lars and the Real Girl recently and I liked that a lot too. If you tell somebody what it's about, they start to look at you oddly, so I won't, but what it's really about is acceptance, and letting people work things out at their own rate, an antidote to the culture of 'moving on'. A very moving film, which stayed with me as long as Squid, but much more happily.

Here's a new puzzle. Even I could do this one.

Click to Mix and Solve

3 comments:

Knitting Linguist said...

I love your pinwheel blankets, and your movie reviews! There always seem to be more that I want to watch than I have time to watch, alas...

Judith said...

Glad you enjoyed the Music Box. I love the PinWheel Blanket. I have made a few usually in cream wool/acrylic mix yarn with an edging of multicolour so it suits all babies! You can go to town on an egding either adding it on sideways or knitting out. I did one with bell frilling and a picot bind off, it looked lovely but took a long time.

Cinders said...

HI helen, thanks for leaving a comment on my blog. I dont know which is worse pain or exhaustion. the 'fatigue' drives me mad esp when its the wipe out kind. Thts why I always admire your beautiful lace. My brain cant think to knit lace!
I love the pinwheel blanket. I want to know how to knit a smaller pinwheel so I can knit a bolster cushion for my heels.

I've seen the music box. I really enjoyed it. I was up in the night as my hip was giving me jip so I watched an old black and white caled St martins with Bing Crosby and Ingrid bergman. I love old black and white films.

take care