I see you shiver with anticip.....

This morning was awful. I got my act together and determined to watch a film to cheer myself up.

Question is, what? Lets put it this way, I knew what I wanted to watch. Can you guess, folks? Unfortunately, I don't have my own tv, and watching the same film three times in two weeks smacks of borderline insanity. If it weren't for my family...

Now a few months back I saw Rififi, and at the time it made a big effect. I kept thinking "What if I never see a film this good about a diamond-heist-gone-awry ever again?". This was the reasoning behind recording The Asphalt Jungle, which was also in black and white. Anyway, I recovered eventually and the film remained unwatched on the video.

Time passes, I discover there is another great movie along those lines, watch it, love it and get hit by "Hang on, surely there can't be three movies this good about a diamond-heist-gone-awry?" Enter The Asphalt Jungle, still patiently waiting to be seen. So I wound the video back and discovered the beginning had been partially wiped over by somebody else.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Lesson learnt: you can only ever see a film for the first time once. And there is no way to get around it. No matter how hard you try.

By gum I was cross. I was pretty irritable beforehand, but this really made me mad. Anyway, I rather halfheartedly pulled Run, Lola, Run.

Thank-ee goodness. It was just what I needed to run the stress out of my system. I've wanted to see this ever since hearing the theme tune, which is jolly exciting let me tell you! It's very exciting, fast paced, and totally great.

My mother hates whizzy cinematography, films where the camera won't stay still. She would have left almost immediately. It's part music video, part advert, part computer game. Lola has twenty minutes to get 100,000 marks to save her boyfriend. Now that's what I call high concept.

There are animated scenes, black and white, slo-mo, speed-up, scenes in red, cut screens, wipes, fades, dissolves - somebody has had a lot of fun with their editing suite. Lucasitis! But for once it doesn't feel superfluous. To quote some info cribbed straight from imdb, in a 71 min film they use 1581 transitions. That's an average shot length of 2.7 seconds. makes a nice contrast with all those tortuously long edits from Alien.

To start with it's disorientating, but priceless when everything falls into place. For example...the first time round she almost kills someone taking the safety catch off the gun. Second time round, she's learnt. This is what I mean by video game - you try to beat the level, you get killed, you learn and try again. She knows the bike's been stolen. Every time, things are different. Minor ripples result in one woman joining the church instead of winning the lottery. It actually reminds me slightly of a script I wrote once; but for once, the similarity didn't annoy me. Have I mentioned the music yet?

All in all, this'll go in the same box as Moulin Rouge - some people are going to hate this on account of the visual style, but if you get into it you'll adore it. There's a layer of whimsy propelling the plot which may annoy some people, but not me and not all 'em folks who put this on the imdb top 250. And it's equal to what I imagine a good dose of ecstasy to feel like.

Best of all, it entirely cured me of my apathy and I managed to zip through all my jobs for the day in about ten minutes. And it gave me the edge I requred to climb out of the window and jump about my own height onto gravel with bare feet when I got trapped in the toilet instead of sitting around lamely for an hour until my family came home and let me out (the handle's stopped working from inside, so if you shut the door you can't get out).

And it was such a boost, that when mum and sis finally did return and told me I had an hour to get ready, I actually had the drive to sort out two costumes and my tea within twenty minutes.

I hadn't told you, had I?

We're gonna see the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Properly. The way it was meant to be seen. Going to one of these, as has been one of my dreams for as long as, oh, forever. I couldn't find a proper costume in time, so I'm just going as a random Transylvanian in pink slut-wear. It's gonna be great. It had better be great.


PS - last night we played the movie game again, and guess what? Not only did me and my sister win both times, but the diretor card that came up was WARNER HERZOG! It's become a bit of an in-joke, really, especially now he's taken over the position as "Favourite Director (of whose filmography I've actually seen zilch)"

Still, playing with my sister is tiring. One day, i'll be on a team with someone where I can say "Lawrence of Arabia" instead of two minutes of "David Fall? David Jump?" in reply to the best possible clue - "First name, like as in Goliath, second, what you shouldn't do over a cliff..." and