busker

Alexander

~ director's cut ~

Not that I *need* an excuse to post a pic of La Jolie any time I want on my own blog, but I *have* succumbed and taken out the infamous DVD.

I easily resisted seeing the movie itself and didn't expect any temptation over the DVD but one glimpse of the cover with its endearing plaintiff assurance of "Newly inspired, faster paced, more action packed" and I caved in.

I mean, what are they owning up to? That the big screen version was *lacking* in those very areas of inspiration, pace and action?

I started watching it over a light luncheon of red mullet with fennel and Pernod but the sight of dear Tony Hopkins as Ptolemy dictating Alexander's history to a scribe (and the audience) so resembled my own Sixth form classics tutor that I was instinctively reaching to hide the Vouvray under the desk, not to mention instinctively hunching for the usual thwack round the back of the head and the familiar rasp of, "Silly arse! Tiberius did no such thing."

Good to glimpse Chris Plummer slumming it as Aristotle, which reminds me: I'm sorry to hear that Must Love Dogs actually *is* a dog - Lane and Cusack notwithstanding - but I'm still going to see it just for when Diane finds out she's answered her own flamboyant dad's lonely hearts ad and declares it distressing "on so many levels".

Getting back to Paddy O'Farrell, what *is* he burbling on about those sex tapes being bad for his "acting career"? I go with CNN Money's Allen Wastler, that it's *exactly* the sort of PR he needs.

Uh oh, I've just glimpsed EW's headline about the DVD being no better than the movie. I'll have to reprise all this when I've seen the DVD all through and can post an informed assessment.