49 Days. Another Film

I ran for an hour and twenty minutes at lunchtime. So I am back at the point of endurance I had reached before the calf strain the best part of two months ago. This is not going to be easy. Stating the bleeding obvious.

I've been distracted by rather too much food and drink since getting back from Anglesey and have briefly neglected the blog because it felt like my stomach would not let me get close enough to the keyboard. There is one remnant of that Welsh sojourn which I should record and that is the film that I watched on my last night there. I had somehow managed to put off seeing Amadeus for thirty years. I had even bought the Director's Cut DVD a decade ago so my intentions were good. I have no idea quite why the time had never been right to open the case. Film lasts too long? An ingrained suspicion of films that scoop lots of Oscars? I only need to say Titanic to explain this latter prejudice. Well anyway I got around to it on Thursday evening and the conclusion - very,very good. Tom Hulce as Mozart is even better than he is in the seminal National Lampoon's Animal House and anybody who knows me will know that I will fight the man who disputes that movie's place in the pantheon. Misogyny and puerility do have their place after all. Back to Amadeus - this is a film which belies its theatrical roots and expands onto the big screen as a compelling study of the troublesome nature of genius. 9/10 and one that will cause me to revise that list of my top fifty films, when I can find it again.