I shan't sleep now, shall I?

Hence I am sitting up banging out another review. The detox is going so well -I'm fitting loads of films in around talking about diets and planning exercise sessions , which I then miss due to an important episode of America's Next Top Model. I see Claudia Winkleman is back on too, on Film 2011, but she's idiotic. The guy on the show really knows his stuff, but his mother's not Eve Pollard and he doesn't have the glamour of a fringe stretching from ear to ear in a pompadour. Claudia loved Black Swan and yer man did not- I think I can see it from both angles.

Ballet films are tricky- they must have either proper dancers unknown to all but the initiated in the audience or stars like Anne Bancroft in The Turning Point, or Natalie Portman in this case. No-one was wanting a repeat of the frenzy of The Red Shoes, now were they? Thus you must expect a lot of lame shots of the necks and shoulders of a bankable star, or watch them nancying about in pale pink wrap cardigans, with their feet sticking out at right angles. Natalie Portman told Grazia magazine she was, at times, 'delirious' due to the training she had undergone but you still have to make an effort to overlook the knowledge that she couldn't possibly be really doing all that leppin' about en pointe. Still she had a lovely bun and had lost loads of weight; every little girl knows Ballet is as much about the look of the thing as the dancing. She was positively emaciated in this and really rather bendy. Therefore I would suggest you go to see on a full stomach, were it not for its content. It was gruesome.
So I'm afraid it has joined the ranks of those films forever remembered in my family for an unfortunate audience reaction-I leapt from my seat, recoiled in horror and exclaimed loudly, albeit involuntarily. Very feeble, compared to Uncle Gordon's prolonged and extremely audible gagging when a scarf was stuffed into Paul Newman's mouth in The Prize. My mother's best friend The Brick had a belter when Henry Fonda had his heart attack in On Golden Pond and Katherine Hepburn struggled with his pills. The Brick was so involved she leaned forward and yelled 'Under his tongue, put them under his tongue!'
Black Swan is not only horrific but is what my mother and The Brick call 'near the knuckle'. This means rude. I confess I had me scarf up to me face when the swan got herself involved with a very sexy lezzer rival. And that wasn't the worst of it , believe me. I checked this film's rating: 15, so be warned. You must also be advised regarding French actor, Vincent Cassel, he with an eye on either side of his face. How he attracted Monica Bellucci is beyond me. Anyway, he has a very showy role in this , as the Dance Director or something, so he gets quite a few snogs , silly accent notwithstanding. Barbara Hershey plays the possessive mother and somehow was the main catalyst for the horror of it all crossing over to high camp humour, which I feel, was not intentional. Honestly, I didn't know whether to heave or hoot.
It was at this point I realised that there is a tradition of actors winning great plaudits (Natalie Portman already has the Golden Globe) for good acting in bad films. You may remember Jessica Lange in Blue Sky or Hilary Swank in Boys Don't Cry. You don't? That's because the only twit who saw it after the Oscars was a girl like I, who feels that Black Swan will only be remembered for its central performance. Natalie was very, very good here-it was positively harrowing watching her tiny bosom heaving in torment over xylophone ribs. The film itself, however, was simply bally bonkers.

Reviews, as promised by I

My detox has reached an extreme stage. I have bought Christmas food items on sale, for the love of God. Lunch consists of Port and stilton topped off with Marc de Champagne truffles. I must be celebrating the end of Christmas as it was, like everyone else's, fraught with tension in the home. I do not know of a 'quiet' Christmas. Mine was straight from the set of Whatever happened to Baby Jane?, only each thought herself Joan Crawford and the other Bette Davis. I got my wish of living within a film, however the horror genre was not what I had in mind. It was shaping up to end like The Shining but settled down to an individual struggle against impossible obstacles, akin to The Shawshank Redemption.
Best thing for it is a bit of fluff such as Love and Other Drugs with Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway, distinguishable as one of the few romantic comedies in which you are not sure what's going to happen, that boy may not get girl.

The film is set in 1995 which allows for a few cheap Viagra jokes as Jake plays the part of a medical rep pushing it, when first it appeared. My interest in Viagra extends no further than wondering how so many emails offering it can end up in the inbox of a nice girl like I. Furthermore, Jake was on 'my list' (of famous men to run off with) until I saw the scenes in which he crept about in the nude, clutching a cushion to the, em, affected region. Well may he have the body of Michaelangelo's David ;I'm right off him now. I was already irritated by the women falling at his feet in the early scenes; later there appeared to be some sort of orgy. It was all very retro-sexist. The actor playing Jake's brother was too obviously cast just for laughs; improbably ugly, short, fat and charmless. The producers seemed to be channelling Carry On Anything fused with Roman Britain, with a touch of Pillow Talk chucked in.

About Anne : she had long dark curly hair, intended to suggest a bohemian nature and not King Billy, as I had to keep reminding myself. I say now that she is very likely to be Oscar nominated as (a) she played a sick person and (b) she didn't get one the last two times she was nominated. She was very good indeed in this-she may have thought she was in a different film altogether. Mind you she was also extremely nudey for a lot of it, really her and Jake's clothes pretty much fell off as soon as they clapped eyes on each other. Best have Bromide in your tea before you go to see it.

You can have propah Earl Grey, milk in first, before you see The King's Speech and you can be confident that the characters will remain fully dressed in delightful period costumes. (Of course no one will go with you if you say 'period drama'- I know someone who says 'I'd rather have my period' ) Anyhoo, I turned up keen to see Helena Bonham-Carter with the bad Queen Mother teeth, much commented on by Auntie Doris on the occasion of Charles' and Diana's wedding; 'Och, look, she has hardly a bar in the grate.' But no, false teeth would have inhibited her cut glass accent, as clipped and brisk as Celia Johnston in Brief Encounter. It made most of what she said very funny, the best example of which was when the overfamiliar australian Speech Therapist, unaware that she was the Duchess of York, told her to 'pop back another day and I'll take your details.' She replied quite witheringly, 'May husband and I nivah discuss owah pehsonal lives and we dewn't POP'

Guy Pierce did a great turn as Edward, Duke of Windsor, as did Timothy Spall as Churchill (he has clearly gone up in the world, after a long spell in the demi-monde) and it was so good to see Anthony Andrews-I have been quite worried since Brideshead. Colin Firth is likely to be nominated for an Oscar, for reasons very similar to those regarding Anne Hathaway , funny enough. He's come a long way since Bridget Jones, especially in the sense that he looks less uncomfortable these days. Have a look; when he's snogging Bridget, it's excruciating to watch. He's much better off with a period sort of peck on the cheek or that unmoving lip-pressing thing, exemplified in Brief Encounter. Lucky he's too old to have been considered for Love and Other Drugs, I am quite sure neither of us could have coped.

The new Barry Norman, that is I

I figure I will be needed after 10 breathless weeks of Claudia Winkleman on Film 2010 came to a sudden end. Besides you will be attending the cinema so much more during your detox. I mean, instead of your detox. You say to yourself; 'Self, you are a hog and a beast and must cleanse your system' (or other such terms which should be uttered by a posh plumber). You read several encouraging articles about oats, you learn how to pronounce 'quinoa' and you purchase some sort of leesurewear in the sales, in black, so that you will look thinner and sexier in your imaginary gym visits which have increased in your head to 5 times a week, at least.
 Then you decide you may as well just 'get rid' of all the unhealthy items in the kitchen prior to starting a blameless regime. This results in a dinner of teeny sausages wrapped in bacon, chips roasted in goosefat, accompanied by several unidentifiable dips and chutneys and followed by peaches in brandy and all the chocolates you left because you didn't like them when you had a full choice. Oh yes, you were cavalier and cocky on Christmas morning when you had most of a Selection Box for breakfast then considered your first drink of the day. Now you are desperately unwrapping orange creams and marzipans to eat alongside your quadruple Baileys-all that cream in it; it must go!
The next day, still queasy, you abandon all thoughts of depriving yourself, as you decide you are hovering on the brink of a dangerous depression, purely because you have had to get up in the dark and go back to work, where they haven't even had the decency to finish off the tin of Quality Street. People keep holding up all the blues and reds, demanding suspiciously 'What's this one?' then eating it anyway. You join in, consoling yourself with lame plans for storage in the empty tin and realise that your detox will simply mean you will be going to the pictures instead of the pub.
You must see The Tourist with Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. All the other actors are only in it because of them presumably-it can't have been the script-and you don't want to be left out. There is no other explanation and very little script anyway, just a lot of helpless staring at Angelina. The woman no longer looks human and minces about in cream pencil skirts and elbow length gloves, smirking, while purporting to be undercover. She meets Johnny who isn't wearing well, or may have had his face padded beneath an unflattering curly bob, all too reminiscent of one's own hairdo circa '95. They are chased by a few Brits who ought to have known better. Johnny overpowers one while handcuffed and Angelina rescues him in a speedboat and a very becoming hooded cloak. I always wear mine when I'm out and about on the Marina, spying and whatnot.
All this takes place in Venice and therein lies the explanation. Angelina and Brad must have fancied rocking about the Lido with the kids and having a few laughs of an evening with Johnny and Vanessa Paradis. I can see no other valid reason for choosing such a project. I can just picture them hoping the kids would get along. Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, I read, wants to be a boy. Best-looking little girl in the world and this is her dream, I kid you not. Hello magazine is always absolutely accurate and adored by the famous-they just repeat what the slebs say verbatim. This is why the questions are usually along the lines of 'Joan (Collins), what makes you so fabulous?'  Furthermore Hello had revealing photos of this wee person. I do hope a few playdates with Lily Rose Depp have discouraged Shiloh from running about in brogues and military jacket, insisting on being addressed as 'John'.