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john-703
I love poetry, art, walking with the dogs in the beautiful local countryside; an area of hills, green meadows, with a canal and river running close by our home. Canal boat holidays are wonderful.
Of the holidays we've had we most enjoyed Morocco, a very exciting destination, and excellent value from Britain. Madeira was very pretty, and we had a marvellous Caribbean cruise, during which we were lucky to see the green ray, the last emerald flash of the setting sun at sea (and title of a favourite film by Rohmer) at Aruba. We found Turks, Greeks and Canadians especially friendly.
My heart is in Japan, land of my hero Mizoguchi the great though neglected director.
My favourite books are:
The Wind in the Willows, The Little Prince, House of the Spirits, The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, Life of Pi, Tom Jones, Jacques le Fataliste, The Nature Diary of Opal Whiteley, Madame Bovary, Manon Lecaut, Master and Margarita, Evening Clouds (Shono), the tales of Kenji Miyazawa, and Borges' short The Garden of Forking Paths. I intend to catch up with novels i'd neglected for films.
My favourite artists; Vermeer, Turner (one of England's greatest geniuses) and Hiroshige.
Music: not my strong point. Elton, Amalia Rodrigues (Portuguese fado singer), Sibelius..
My teenage heroes were Elton John, Muhammad Ali, Welsh Rugby player Barry John and Pakistan cricketer Majid Khan. I've long been a fan of Fred Astaire.
I would officially qualify to play for India, assuming i'd been good enough!
I spend too much time on websites, but at least very little time now on TV. The News tends to get me annoyed, and i can be annoyingly opinionated, a loony leftie-liberal. Since childhood, i've been a hopeless listaholic. This may be a sign of deep insecurity.
I've done some writing on films for a World Cinema company in Britain, and recently gave up Social Work after too many years in that stressful, unloved job. We're intending to move to a fresh start abroad- Portugal most likely.
Reviews
Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948)
Marvellous period romance
From the (strangely neglected) master of romantic period confections- Max Ophuls-, an exquisitely beautiful and poignant tale of a teenage girl (played by Joan Fontaine) in late 19th century Vienna who falls in unrequited love with a concert pianist (Louis Jourdain)...
The sets, lighting, smooth gliding camera, costumes, subtly matched musical accompaniment and delicate but aching emotion make for something quite wonderful; it's a film of supreme elegance and extraordinary luminous fragility, a tiny hidden jewel box filled with moonlight.