Further Inconsequentialities

When I came back to work after another bout of watching films in London the radio had been changed to Heart. Apparently there had been some kind of crisis while I was away. Not an emotional crisis precipitated by one too many shrill discussions about the economy on Jeremy Vine (it was Vanessa Feltz this week, anyway), but a crisis of reception. So it was upbeat pop all the way. Don't Stop Believing, we were urged. All very well, but try taking 'a midnight train going anywhere' in real life. You'll find that the trains all go somewhere specific. It's to do with the way the tracks are laid down.

As for the films, my occasional co-blogger Rhys will be pleased to hear that Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan has a new one out. Once Upon A Time In Anatolia is a conspicuously undramatic account of a murder investigation, giving as much screen time to (seemingly) banal conversations about yogurt as it does to the ins and outs of 'who done it'. I was gripped for the full two-and-a-half-hour running time. All the more so because, during the conversation about yogurt, a rather unpleasant yogurty aroma began to fill the cinema. Were the Curzon Soho doing Odorama now? Or were they just selling frozen yogurt?

Whatever - the trend seemed to have petered out by the time the autopsy scene came round.

I also saw Rampart, with Woody Harrelson. I mean, he was in the film, I didn't go with him (in spite of all my efforts). The screen in the Odeon Panton Street was also showing the Roman Polanski film Carnage, so that the two titles appeared one beneath the other just beside the entrance, creating a new entity which I misread as Rampant Carnage - now there's a film I'd like to see.