So last night we went to see Far From Heaven at the Watershed, what a strange film. Now I don't think that I'm giving too much away, when I say that this is a film made very much is the style of all those great old 1950's melodrama's. Now the thing is, that we tend to watch lots of old films, so the likes Joan Crawford, Ginger Rogers, Doris Day, Claudette Colbert and like are familiar guests in our house, so I think that we are pretty well versed in the nature of films that this was based on. The first thing I have to say is that the film looked absolutely stunning, the rich autumnal colours of the landscape, brilliantly mirrored by the fantastic 50's clothing which the cast were blessed with. The internal set's were master pieces of styling, even the font used for the titles and credits was brilliant. What a shame then that film did appear somewhat shallow, in it's approach to the important issues which were raised. We enjoyed the film but came away thinking that it was a pretty average Sunday afternoon film, rather than the masterpiece which some reviewers alluded to.

I've tried not to talk about the war on this site, but Orynthia and I had an interesting conversation about the reaction of exiled Iraqi's to the current situation. Orynthia's family are originally from what was Burma, now known as Myanmar. For many years, the country has been under the control of a tyrannical regime, who have crushed individual freedoms, been engaged in warfare with it's own people, used forced child labour to work on building railway lines in appalling conditions, many political prisoners have been taken, many have simply disappeared, a people's revolution after the results of the last "democratic" election were ignored was brutally put down. Oil and mineral deposits should have resulted in a rich and prosperous country, instead it is one of the poorest in the world. Orynthia's family were forced into exile in the 1960's in search of a better life. Thankfully for me as otherwise we would never have meet. We would love to visit the country of her birth, but will never do so until the regime changes. Now obviously regime change is one of the prime motivators in the current gulf war, and I'm sure everyone wants the people of Iraq to enjoy the same sort of democratic freedoms which we enjoy, so some people have been questioning why many exiled Iraqi's are so unhappy about the current campaign. Anyway we started to talk about how we would feel if Rangoon was under the same sort of pressure that Baghdad is at the moment. Some members of Orynthia's family remained in Burma when the exodus took place, certainly Orynthia's mum and dad still have many, many friends in the country and the prospect of sitting at home watching these people being bombed because of the actions of their leaders is just too terrifying to comprehend. We want the situation to improve for the people living there but how many people need to die or be displaced before the gains are outweighed by the loses?

I don't have an answer for the obvious "Well how would you remove the evil leaders?" question.