DVD Review: To the Manor Born (BBC, 1979)

To the Manor Born is a fantastic sitcom set in the heart of the Somerset countryside in the south-west of England, featuring romance, class rivalry/snobbery and the trials and tribulations of a rural, mostly farming community.

The acting is sensational: it stars Peter Bowles as Richard de Vere, the new owner of Grantleigh Manor, and Penelope Keith as Audrey Forbes-Hamilton, the exiled former Lady of the Manor, now living in the lodge down the road by the main entrance.

Most interestingly for me, the series was actually filmed at Cricket St Thomas estate, a wildife park for most of the past 30 years, just 2 miles from where my father came from and where I spent many happy holidays back in the 1970s and early 1980s. It is a Georgian mansion designed by Sir John Soane and stands slightly above the valley of the River Cricket - no more than a stream in its entire course where it reaches the River Axe just down the road. It is now a Warners holiday park but still maintains the wildlife park. Brilliant.

To the Manor combines lots of comedy with romance and we can all guess how it will all end up despite their apparant hatred each other.

The writer, Peter Spence, has done a magnificent job. Apparantly he used to live on the state before he wrote it.

Film Review: Punch-drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA 2002)

This is a strange and ultimately disappointing Adam Sandler vehicle about a socially awkward yet successful businessman who has problems with women - seven over-bearing sisters and a mad, vengeant woman from the phone sex line company. Also, there is some bewildering love interest from the beautiful and beguiling Emily Watson (the only reason I hired the film from the library).

From the two Adam Sandler films I've seen to date - the other being the excellent Anger Management - he is seriously typecast as a nice but shy guy, the sort who is too embarrassed to ask out a woman. In Punch, there is a bizarre psychotic element added whereby Billy Egan (Sandler) goes around smashing up bathrooms ("restrooms" in the ridiculous American vernacular) and windows. I ended up pacing through the second half of the film at 16x on the DVD player.

No matter what film I watch, I always try and find what I like to call a "Shot of the film", a shot which demonstrates great artistry from the director and which might also add some symbolism to the subject matter. Most competent directors are able to produce one or two.

In Punch, the Shot of the Film is when Billy has been virtually frogmarched around his sister's place for an evening dinner along with the six other sisters and a number of other guests. Naturally, he cannot cope with the situation. Then comes the shot of the film: Billy takes refuge/sanctuary in another part of the house and the director Anderson frames Billy against a backdrop of a Welsh dresser type of wooden display cabinet complete with display china dinner plates and some silver, glasses, etc.

This is the shot of the film! Why? Because it sums up Billy's situation - he is hemmed in, totally on display at this social event, just like a Welsh dresser display cabinet full of plates, all for people to watch and admire.

Emily Watson is great! She's so alluring, lovely accent and a sort of quirky, unusual attractiveness. Just like in Angela's Ashes and The Life and Death of Peter Sellers.

DVD Review: The Lost World of Friese-Greene (BBC, 2005)

This BBC film is a fascinating documentary looking at a series of recently uncovered touring films made in 1925 by Claude Friese-Greene, a British pioneer of film. Colour film, too, using Friese-Greene's own colour system.

The documentary is presented Dan Cruickshank, a very personable and brilliant presenter, known to all regular viewers of UK History and various other satellite/digital stations.

The film shows how Friese-Green set out on his journey by car - a 1920s Vauxhall - from Land's End in Cornwall to John O'Groat's at the tip of Scotland. Dan Cruickshank follows the same route - indeed, in the same make of car - and has early stops at Lamorva beach, Plymouth, Dawlish and a host of other places in the Westcountry. Sadly not Exeter, though Friese-Greene must have passed through.

Cruickshank meets a whole variety of people along the way, many of whom were in the original film itself as children.

What's also interesting is the almost total lack of traffic along the way, in 1925. There were 600,000 cars on the road back then, about 40 times less than now. There were only 1,200 petrol garages and the ones that are shown - always a BP garage (with their Union Flag signboard back then) - are real gems. They were considered any eyesore at the time but would now be seen as antiques.

There is no talking in the original Friese-Greene films, just a series of rather annoying captions, such as the one ridiculing the Welsh accent, during the stop at Cardiff. At Cardiff, the great football team of the time (who finished second in Division One in about 1923, and won the FA Cup beating Arsenal in 1927 at Wembley) are introduced.

A brilliant film.