George Clooney for President?

Some Wednesday mornings I take time off for a cheap visit to the local senior screen at Tower Park's cinema. It only costs £3 and we oldies get a hot drink and a biscuit before the film. I usually meet a friend or two there and we go somewhere for lunch before heading home, so it almost makes a complete day off for me.

The film today was The Ides of March, in which George Clooney is campaigning to become the American Democrat's Presidential candidate. he also co-wrote and directed this great film about the backsniping and winners and losers of such a campaign, with small but tragic personal stories fitting into an enormous jigsaw with an overall theme of disillusionment.

The gorgeous Clooney appears whiter than white, while his flunkies (mostly less than gorgeous, although his deputy campaign manager, Stephen Meyers, is played by a younger and very personable Ryan Gosling) sort out the dirty tricks that will get him into pole position without harming his image. I won't tell you all the story as it would spoil it for anyone who wants to see it, but for anyone wondering, the female interest is played by Evan Rachel Wood.

Go and see it if you have the opportunity. It's very well done.

A Japanese Western

This is quite a turn up for the books. I actually got my hubby interested in one of my projects this week. It happened like this.

I followed up an ad on the JustMarkets newsletter and was asked to submit some sample material on Akira Kurosawa, who was a Japanese film director with an international reputation. As part of my research I ordered a VHS of one of his old films from Amazon. It arrived yesterday.

When hubby asked me what it was, I was able to tell him it was called Seven Samurai, and it was the film that inspired the making of The Magnificent Seven, one of his all time favourites. So we sat down and watched it together this evening.

The story is virtually the same if you substitute cowboys for samurai and Mexican farmers and bandits for Japanese farmers and bandits, but Kurosawa's film was made in black and white in 1954, while the western version, directed by John Sturges, came out in full colour in 1960. The plot has been reused a number of times since, even the computer animated, A Bug's Life of 1998, is reminiscent of it.

This research has taken up quite a bit of my working week, which has also been eaten into by things like GP surgery visits, sorting out insurance and payments for our holiday and preparing the house for a viewing by potential buyers (sadly, still no takers).

The readership that the sample writing was for is 13 to 15 year old students in Taiwan who need shortish, simple or compound sentences in basic American English using words from a supplied list. Not so easy. Anyway, I finished it and sent it off and now have to wait to see if I get the lucrative assignment I'm hoping for, which might be to continue writing about this film director.

If not, the research won't be wasted. I'm half way into a different piece on him that I will showcase at Constant Content.