Virtual Methodist

Well, it's coming to the peak of the film awards season and in a year where every second film is in 3D the 2 most lauded are avowedly 2D, and focus on word and relationship rather than action and CGI. I haven't seen the mind-bending "Inception", nor experienced the feathers flying in "Black Swan", and I am hesitant to go see "True Grit" as I feel I would be betraying my mother who was John Wayne's No 1 fan bar none, but I have seen both "The Social Network", written and directed by the peerless Aaron Sorkin, and more recently "The King's Speech" and in my humble opinion, the latter deserves all the plaudits it has received so far, and should walk off with many effigies of Margaret Herrick's "Uncle Oscar" next week. It is essentially a powerful 2-hander, with the backing of a superb ensemble cast. For me the only disappointing performance in the whole film was Timothy Spall's Churchill which was a comple...

OK... so, for the entertainment of all three of you sad people who are reading blogs or are trawling through facebook during the Christmas break, here are the VM Awards for things out there in the real world... Starting with some of the stuff that appears in the sidebar of the blog... Best Read of the Year: This may have changed since Christmas, depending on whether I get any of the books on my wishlist from Santa, but I've vowed not to go near the computer for a week (a sort of pre-New Year resolution), so I've written this before the big day... Whilst it wasn't written or published this year, I was a bit slow in reading Stieg Larsson's " Girl with a Dragon Tattoo " but until recently it would have been my favourite read of the year, despite it's unremitting grimness... However, it was toppled at the last minute by C.J. Sansom's " Heartstone ", which was published this year, the latest in his Shardlake series which I reviewed a couple of da...