Nobilangelo

The portrayal of the cryptographic effort is fine enough, but the impression one gets from this overly-romanticised movie is that without Alan Turing's invention of what we are told was the precursor to the computer World War II would not have been won, and that his orientation was responsible for his genius, and therefore both must be held high. That is historical bunkum. The truth is that the machine he invented, which was called the Bombe, was an electromechanical device that was created to crack the Enigma codes, which indeed it did, but the far more complicated Lorenz codes were cracked by Colossus, which really was an electronic computer, and was far superior to the Bombes, and it was it that was the true precursor to the modern computer, It was invented by Tommy Flowers, whose genius surpassed that of Alan Turing, because he managed it without access to an actual Lorenz machine, unlike Turing who was provided with an Enigma machine. Flowers just worked out how the Lorenz worked from a 4000- character mistake made by a German operator. Enter 'bombe and Colossus' into Google and read the Wikipedia article to get the facts straight. Turing had some input into the Colossus machine (ultimately there were ten of them at Bletchley), but to pretend that he was all-important in the winning of the war is an overwrought notion of events wilfully twisted to make a point consistent with fashionable present-day propaganda. We would have won the war without Turing; with most of the world against him Hitler's over-reached lusts were unsustainable; and there were other people of genius. Victory might have taken longer and killed many fewer people, although we cannot know that for sure despite the claim made in this film , but there were many clever minds and strategies from many people that gave the Allies victory (the invention of radar, is one of many examples). If any one person at Bletchley is to be singled out above all others it should be Tommy Flowers, not Alan Turing. Turing was a genius and valuable, yes, but Flowers surpassed him. But Hollywood cannot make out of him a politically-correct song-and-dance-act to the tune of current ephemeral memes.

An excellent movie. I first saw it long, long ago on television, it stuck in my mind, and in the years that followed I often thought of it and wanted very much to see it again. But I could not remember its title or any of the actors who starred in it, so could not find it on IMDb.

After long searching all over the Internet, using all sorts of keywords, and following many wrong trails, I finally stumbled across a site where someone like me had wondered what it was called and someone else put a name to it: A Flame to the Phoenix. At last!

Then, again after much searching, I found that it had been put on DVD, albeit not by anyone major, and the transfer was not of the very highest quality. But the prize is now in my library. And it is even better than I remembered.

It is an excellent evocation of Poland in 1939 before Hitler invented an excuse to rip its heart out and the Second World War began. A fine cast, mainly sterling British actors, do an excellent job.

Wonderfully impossible; impossibly wonderful. One of my all-time favourites. A true 10/10.

What more can be said? Nothing.

But IMDb's software insists on a minimum of ten lines of text for reviews, which means I must expand a perfect review into something less than perfect, and say that this is a uniquely imaginative romance. It is powerful yet tender, it is filled with profound yearning, it takes hold of you on many levels.

It is definitely not for the unimaginative, or the unperceptive. Only hearts of stone would not be deeply moved, but every romantic soul will sigh over it forever.

This production of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake by the Ballet of the Kirov Theatre in St. Petersburg is superb. Yelena Yevteyeva's Odette and Odile perfectly capture the white and black of the two personalities. From her first magical entrance to her last moments she is wonderful. She *is* Odette; she *is* Odile. Makhmud Esambayev's Rothbart is brilliantly evil. The chorus work and the solo dancers (especially in the astonishing Spanish dance) are everything one could wish for. I can watch this performance over and over and over again and never tire of it.

(I wish IMDb would list it first and foremost under Swan Lake, as here, with 'aka Lebedinoe ozero' secondary, which it is also listed under here, so that English-speaking people will find it easily on that search.)

This production of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake by the Ballet of the Kirov Theatre in St. Petersburg is superb. Yelena Yevteyeva's Odette and Odile perfectly capture the white and black of the two personalities. From her first magical entrance to her last moments she is wonderful. She *is* Odette; she *is* Odile. Makhmud Esambayev's Rothbart is brilliantly evil. The chorus work and the solo dancers (especially in the astonishing Spanish dance) are everything one could wish for. I can watch this performance over and over and over again and never tire of it.

(I wish IMDb would list it first and foremost under Swan Lake, with 'aka Lebedinoe ozero' so that English-speaking people will find it easily on that search. To make matters more confusing it has been issued by a German DVD production company under 'Swan Lake'.)

Derek Jacobi is superb as the unforgettable Mr Pye. The island setting is equally unforgettable. Brilliant from first to last. Mr Pye's battle with his angelic self, his attempts to overcome what at first he sees as an unfortunate side-effect of it by becoming devilish, the wonderful denouement, and the quirky, Peake-ish scenes along the way live in the memory. I only wish the BBC would release the whole series on DVD. I would love to be able to see it again and again every so often. When it first screened, that evening was a definite 'do nothing else', just settle down and indulge the look forward impatiently till the next episode the following week. It was one of those shows that you wonder about before the first scenes roll, continue to wonder about as they do, then find yourself caught up in and immersed in.