Blood Diamond - true story or Hollywood exaggeration?

This film is brilliant. I had no idea what to expect, apart form a diamond thriller across Africa, and what I got was a conspiracy/civil-war/family/love extraodinaire of the quality of The Constant Gardener or Hotel Rwanda. Leo is fab as an ex army diamond smuggler with a heart, and there is some nice work from David Harewood as the evil one-eyed leader of the rebel force, but the real performance comes from Djimon Hounsou as Solomon Vandy. Being ripped away from his family to work the diamond mines of Sierra Leona, his story to find the enormous pink diamond he buried and re-unite with his family is heartbreakingly sad and exquisitely told. And it makes you want to do something to help, which is always the mark of a good movie. It changes you, and so it should.

Tooting Bec Common

I live in Balham. And when I want some open spaces, I have invariably headed up the hill to Clapham Common, or wandered over to Wandsworth common. But all this time I’ve been missing out, because a stones throw from my flat is the great expanse of Tooting Common, complete with lido. This common is a fantastic place to cycle around, and an even better place to go for lazy Sunday afternoon strolls, taking in the duck ponds, the fabulous array of open spaces, and the hidden paths. I think come summer, I may even brave the lido, although I have a feeling that during the four days of summer we will probably get this year, it may be fairly busy.

January Blues - the cure!

Is it just me, or does January bring with it a deep sense of glum? I’ve noticed this for a few years now, and really want to do something about it. I think it’s because we spend most of the last few months of the year looking forward to Christmas and the New Year, so when that’s over we have nothing to look forward to in the New Year itself.

So, I’ve hit upon a solution. I know, I know, I am truly innovative. The solution is this: to survive the January blues, we need a focus for the first few months of the year, and instead of making this exercising or eating less chocolate, I have decided to make Valentines into a party day, so it stands proud in the calendar, holding its head up with the like of Easter and Christmas. And this doesn’t mean you have to be in a relationship to celebrate it either. You just throw a party for family and friends, and dance the night away. Perfect!

House Price Collapse - what house price collapse?

I live in Balham, or to be more precise, I rent a poky one bed flat above a shop on Balham High Road. And I like Balham. A lot. It’s friendly, has great bars, good shops, lots of parks near by, and a nice ambience. I like it so much that I am considering buying a property there. And, rubbing my hands together for the past six months in anticipation of the house price fall, I’m still waiting for anywhere affordable to come onto the market.

I keep hearing about how dreadful the housing market is, how house prices have dropped by 30 percent in the past year, and I’m not seeing it happening in reality. Flats that were over £300,000 this time last year are still over £300,000. Maybe it’s yet to hit the gentrified London suburb of Balham, and maybe when it does I still won’t be able to afford to buy somewhere where houses are at a premium. Maybe the house price collapse means nothing for me other than watching the already rich become richer and the already poor become poorer. And maybe I’ll have to start looking outside of Balham for my first buy.

How do you eat cheap????

I have a real dilemma at the moment. No matter how hard I try, I cannot seem to make a big enough dent in my food bills. I still end up paying way over what I want merely to eat a square meal in the evenings. It’s actually cheaper for me to buy a ready meal than cook fresh at the moment. I think it’s because although the whole economy has taken a downturn, and we are now surviving on less money, the big supermarkets around me (Sainsbury’s and Tesco) aren’t reflecting that in their food prices.

I bought some chicken the other day, to make a stir fry, and I ended up spending about ten quid for a meal for two, not including drinks. I’m pretty sure that it was healthier than a takeaway or a ready meal, but it was significantly more expensive doing it myself. And in these times, money’s a real pressure. The Chinese over the road from me, for example, Yang Chen, in Balham, does a great special chow mein for £3.60. With prices like that in the takeaways, where’s the incentive to eat at home. Unless it’s beans on toast every night!

Could you eat an elephant?

Flicking through the channels last night, I came across a program called ‘could you eat an elephant?’. Obviously, I’m watching this, it sounds amazing! Tracking two chefs across the world as they partake in some of the more peculiar living creatures that we humans eat, we were taken to an Italian Castillo, where some old men were eating pecorino crawling with live maggots, Vietnam for some top to tail eating of a cobra, and Africa for some big ole elephant.

This was reality TV at its very best, and completely addictive. However, the two guys who were trying these foods fell well short of the mark by refusing to eat rat, dog, horse, monkey and, crucially, elephant! There were only eight things for them to try. It was pathetic to listen to their posh, prude, English prissiness when looking at the creatures they weren’t prepared to eat, and smacked of enormous hypocrisy. If you’re prepared to eat a cow, a sheep or a pig, why should you morally object to eating any animal. Surely, when you set out to make a program about all the animals we eat, you should commit to eating all the animals that were on offer. They made the British people look like idiots. Snooty idiots.

So, could I eat an elephant? Well . . . . No, absolutely not!

August: Osage County - theatre at it's best!

I recently went to the National Theatre to see a production brought over from Broadway called August: Osage County. Not the most brilliantly titled play, but don’t judge a play by its title. This is awesome.

Centring on the disappearance of the patriarch of a Southern American Country House, a gripping and brilliant family drama unfolds which demands comparisons to Tennessee Williams. Leaving behind his drug-addicted and cancer-riddled wife, and a housekeeper, slowly the family come to give support. Out of this seemingly innocuous setting explodes a drama of high tension and nail-biting twists, all set in the one house. With knockout performances and a wonderful dolls-house set, this is one of the best shows I’ve ever seen, and makes going to the theatre completely worthwile.

The Reader - a challenging film or repetitive manipulation?

I went to see The Reader last night at the Clapham Picturehouse (where you can now purchase tickets from the bar – a good tip if there’s a long queue). Starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes, it’s a film of muted brilliance, posing some decidedly interesting questions and doing what all good films should – making you re-assess your beliefs.

Winslet plays an ex-SS guard Hannah Schmitz who now works on the trams in Berlin. Into her life projectile vomits a young Fiennes (played with extraordinary freshness by the young actor), and there begins a passionate affair, for him a sexual discovery, for her a desire to be read to. When we later find out that Hannah was responsible for the death of 300 Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz and takes the fall for her fellow guards due to an embarrassment about her illiteracy, the film takes on a new depth of moral probing. We both pity and detest the institutionalized, ill-educated yet honest Schmitz, and watch her demise with empathy. It is very cleverly done, and yet, somehow, I couldn’t help feeling disappointed that this interesting film descended into a holocaust blame movie, and with it all the associations we all have with that time. The long, over-emoted latter scenes involving Fiennes are too indulgent and the suicide of Schmitz too easy. We lose the interesting heart of the film, which is the tormented love between a young, intelligent boy and an older, disturbed woman.