You Cannot Be Serious!!!

Friday I worked too hard at the office, and after a long week I was feeling totally knackered. So back home for a curry and a well-deserved bottle of plonk. As Christmas has left us pretty skint, it was nothing out of the ordinary, but then it you do have to do the ordinary, you might as well get the best ordinary you can. In my book, anything by Gérard Bertrand fits this bill. His Classic Corbières (6.5/10), a spicy blend of Syrah and Mourvèrde, always hits the spot (and comes in at a decent price to boot). Just look for his tell-tale Gaelic cross at the top of the bottle. Someone should tell him about that website though as it's total cuckoo.

Bodil had been on at me to rent Match Point by Woody Allen for some time, despite my protestations that it wasn't very good (I'd caught it myself on a lonesome night in London). Still, today I caved in and got it out for a second viewing (it does have the delectable Miss Johansson in after all). As much as I am a confirmed fan of Woody Allen, it's hard to know where to begin in describing just how wrong this film is. The characters are wholly unbelievable, the things they say unreal, the way they look ridiculous, and the jobs they have cannot exist anywhere except in a parallel dimension. Not only that, but the shots of London itself are so trite you suspect that Allen must have got a substantial back-hander from Visit Britain to plug Ye Olde Englande. In one scene there is not only one but two Mini Coopers driving by in the background - one of which has a union jack painted on the roof. The only thing missing was a man in a bowler hat. The final death blow to this film is that the story doesn't even begin until about the last twenty minutes of the film, when you realise that you are about to drift into some familiar Allen-cum-Dostoevsky territory, in other words the morally confused world of the unpunished murderer. The acting (if you can call it that) is so flat and wooden throughout you have to wonder if they have all just wandered in en-mass from the stage of a dubious Harold Pinter play and forgotten to change styles. Dreadful (3/10 - and that's being generous). Not even Scarlett can save this turkey. Match Point? You CANNOT be serious!