(no subject)

In a freak display of generosity, the Waterstones in Lynn has the radio series of the Lord of the Rings on CD for £46, which is probably a little over half normal price. Not very fetching packaging, but still a worthwhile product.

If anyone wants it picking up, please let me know. NB, I already have a copy, so I have no desire to acquire another due to someone deciding they can't afford it after all...

Films

Something I saw in HMV yesterday (and which I have since forgotten, which rather proves the upcoming point) get me thinking about the short shelf-life of supposedly "all-time classic" films. To give a couple of examples:

i) I was just listening to some of the soundtrack to The Piano, prior to chucking the tape out. I can remember when The Piano came out (in, I think, 1993) - I saw it at the University film society, which was full of tearful women gushing about it striking a blow for emancipation, and chin-stroking men nodding in fervent agreement, in the hopes of getting an "empathy shag". The Piano was alleged to be a real epoch-making film when it came out, yet who remembers it now?

ii) watching an episode from the second series of The Fast Show, I came upon a skit of Forrest Gump (called, with cruel accuracy, "The Cute Disabled Man") - another example of a film which was supposed to warm the cockles of the world's populace forever and a day, yet now is almost forgotten, a tape at the back of the box in the world's understairs cupboard.
Actually, if one were to be brutally honest, that goes for most films with Tom Hanks in them, mainly because, in his desperate attempt to be seen as the Vanilla Generation's answer to James Stewart, he is such an utterly forgettable actor.

Even Dances With Wolves has gone the way of all flesh, by and large...

In the end, I guess it says something depressing about the quality of most film-making of the last 20 years. Compared to The Godfather Parts I & II, Cabaret or Taxi Driver, the "serious" films of the last 20 years barely register a blip, just as the blockbusters of today pale beside Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Maybe the time of renewal for these films is yet to come (although in the case of Forrest Gump, it needn't hurry on my account - and as for bloody Titanic...), but I suspect they were just a bit pants.

The only film of the 90's I know well that seems to have held its critical acclaim, despite having crept out with very little fuss in the mid-90's, is the Shawshank Redemption.