busker

Lurve, Actually

Which I watched with Anna, enjoyed the DVD, with all the special features:

• Director Richard Curtis' fascinating discussion of the music
• Commentary by Grant, Curtis, Firth, and the talented and 2-B-watched young Thomas Sangster (whose absence might have enabled more entertaining and laddish chatter)
• Deleted scenes that for once actually added to ones understanding.

A DVD I've decided to buy.

Memorables:

• Liam Neeson's wonderful acccent. (I also have a Neeson tale: my darling elder daughter spent her gap year away from Seattle in London, where she got a job with Habitat. Enter a customer whose name she just could not get. In the end she had to ask him to spell it - "I thought he looked a bit puzzled" - as her fellow shopgirls stood at a distance gawping.

  "L-I-A-M  N-E-E-S-O-N," enunciated the tall shopper.)

• The utterly amazing and loveable Bill Nighy who is the spitting image of our pal, Terry Davies of Wandsworth Road
• That guitarist in the pulpit at the wedding? How could he be anything but the real thing with the name of Jont Wittingtomt?
• Ra-a-ther fancied the blonde in the Wisconsin bar scene, name of January Jones, no less.
• We'll definitely hear more of the songbird chickadee that Sam/Thomas was so painfully in love: Olive Olson. Watch that name. She will be big.
• Hugh Grant - perfect. And that speech:

  "I love that word relationship. Covers all manner of sins, doesn't it? I fear this has become a bad relationship, a relationship based on the President taking exactly what he wants and casually ignoring all the things that really matter to ... (deep look at Martine McCutcheon) ... Britain.
  
  We may be a small country, but we're a great one, too: a country of Shakespeare, the Beatles, Sean Connery, Harry Potter, David Beckham's right foot ... David Beckham's left foot, come to that.
  
  A friend that bullies us is no longer a friend and since bullies only respond to strength, from now onward I'll be prepared to be much stronger ... and the President should be prepared for that." ... Bedlam.