An afternoon at the cinema

In my business if you’re going to a screening it’s clearly a work activity but it’s hard to make an outing to the cinema sound professional.  However in the quietness of August I am trying to see some matinees and afternoon ‘screenings’ to catch up a bit.  So it was straight back to the 1970s to see the remastered re-release of Barry Lyndon.  I had never seen it before but I have indelible memories of Marisa Berenson’s salt and pepper wig from a picture spread in the Sunday Times 50 years ago.  

I loved it, beautiful of course but it was the tone created by Kubrick that made it feel modern and fresh.  It wasn’t intimate, Ryan O Neill was barely charming, it felt like a life viewed dispassionately from above but it carried you through for over three hours.  There was a laugh out loud performance from Leonard Rossiter near the opening, who seemed to be in a different film.  He had funny bones that man. 

Did a long script meeting with A from the office which was periodically interrupted by my Mum’s carer phoning from a neighbour’s house as the electricity had gone out and there is no phone signal in that pesky village.  She couldn’t find the (mysteriously hidden) fuse box which intend to paint bright pink.  Thankfully V managed to dispatch our electrician who arrived from Farnham just as he was preparing to leave for his holiday.  He knew it was a mission of mercy.   He said the (very old) microwave has to go! 

V made fresh basil pesto from a huge bunch from Waitrose and we had it with pasta and roast tomatoes.  Very delicious.  Caught up on a couple of eps of the Lena Dunham show which I’m enjoying.  I think.