cwaters80

You might think that the world's oldest existing animated feature would be primitive and crude, but Reiniger's Prince Achmed is stunning and ageless.

The stills do not do it justice, you have to watch it in motion to see how much work and love Reiniger & co. put into it. The film is immaculately detailed, touching, and wonderfully brought to life with delicate movements that say so much using so little. If you see this with a good score, it is a very pleasurable experience indeed.

This is not just for scholars of animation, it stands on its own two feet as a work of real beauty, even in the modern world. Its mature and stylised visuals make it still feel fresh today, in the same way that good classical music does. It stands outside time, moments of wonder captured forever.

Highly recommended.

Saw some horrible reviews for this little curiosity and decided to give it a go, and was delightfully surprised by how well it works. It's a really nice low-key, off-beat little Christmas special. I loved watching it, and wished I'd done so at a more seasonal time.

I'm guessing the low scores are mostly from people who were expecting a tightly-scripted laugh-a-minute Bill Murray vehicle, but that's not what this is at all. As you'd expect from Sofia Coppola, it's a sort of mash-up of Lost In Translation and a Bing Crosby special from the 1970s, keeping the nice songs but replacing the saccharin with something sadder and more soulful.

It's not going to be for everyone, and clearly isn't ever going to be a mainstream hit, but if you've ever had to spend a Christmas far away from friends or family then this might be the film for you.

(Spoilers) This is a sumptuous banquet of beautiful locations, good acting, a lovely soundtrack by the legendary A.R. Rahman, and it plays out more-or-less the way you would expect and want it to. The actors know exactly what they are doing, particularly Helen Mirren and Om Puri, who both start out bombastic and brutal but let their guards down convincingly.

However, as some people have noted, the most surprising thing in 'Hundred-Foot Journey' is its very great resemblance to the 2007 animation 'Ratatouille', with many themes, scenes and even one or two lines bearing an uncanny resemblance. For example, Hassan is basically a composite of Ratatouille's two main characters, awkwardly falling in love with the rival female sous-chef while also becoming a rising star of the kitchen with his unorthodox cooking style, delivering a dish for a critic which is vital to preserving their good rating. On a personal level, the scene where Hassan tastes the sea urchin in the market in India is very similar to Remy's tasting of the various cheeses, both finding a moment of clarity and epiphany, suddenly knowing for sure that their destiny lies with food.

Other themes too, such as outsiders feeling they should never mix in each other's worlds, then discovering and accepting the advantages of integration, are present in both films. (It is perhaps possible that the writer of Ratatouille wanted to explore immigration, integration and racism metaphorically, whereas Hundred-foot was more willing to deal with it directly.)

While many children's films are adapted from serious grown-up works, it is downright bizarre to see this happening in the other direction. It isn't a bad thing though, Ratatouille is good and worthy of influencing others.

(And before anyone mentions it, the novel that 'Hundred-Foot' was based on was published in 2010, three years after Ratatouille's release in 2007, so Ratatouille definitely came first.)

On the downside, though they're not carbon copies, it is very hard to shake the feeling that this is a live-action remake, and consequently anyone who has watched Ratatouille is going to find very few surprises or twists in Hundred-foot.

Cuffs is a bit unusual for a police drama, it mixes a fairly light tone with some quite serious story lines. It's realistic and fast-paced but it generally isn't gritty. There's a lightness that reflects its summer-in-Brighton setting.

Once you watch several episodes back-to-back, you start to notice how the focus isn't on the crimes themselves but the people who deal with them. The characters' backgrounds and personal situations develop over the series, and by the end we can see changes in how they relate to each other. It's not a soap, but it has the same idea of presenting characters we can relate to in various ways and finding ourselves attached to them, and that's what keeps you wanting more. The episodes also make connections between the disparate characters and crimes in a way that you wouldn't expect, overlapping one theme with another. Some of these connections are a bit "blink and you'll miss it", but when you re-watch this comes across quite well.

The cast work very well together, it's a good and balanced ensemble. The interplay between Moffat and Hawkins for example really makes us feel they have been working together for ages, it feels very natural when they have to help each other with problems outside work as well. Prager and Moretti's police constables are another good "double act", thoroughly enjoying their job despite having very different personalities.

Paul Ready deserves a special mention for his portrayal of DI Kane, a very strange man indeed who is simultaneously harsh and vulnerable. His is perhaps the most intriguing character of all despite having relatively few scenes, because Ready seems to be able to give all of his lines a depth beyond what they are on paper, as if there is far more unspoken than spoken. At first he seems not to care, but the indifference turns out to be an obsession with doing his job as well as he can despite his difficulty with socialising. He makes us want to know what makes him tick, and hopefully there will be a second series where we find out more.