12 Monkeys
17 Girls
127 Hours
2 Days in New York 2012
2 Days in Paris 2010
2001 A Space Odyssey
360
A Beautiful Mind
A Bridge Too Far
A Few Good Men
A Single Man
A Perfect Getaway
A Serbian Film
A Very Long Engagement
A.I.
Absolute Power
Adaptation
Airborne
Air Force One
Airplane 1
Airplane 2
Albert Nobbs
Alex Cross
Alpha Dog
American Beauty
American Gangster
Amorres Perros
Amour
Anchorman
Andy Warhol's Bad 1977
Andy Warhol's ******* 1964
Andy Warhol's Eat 1964
Animal Kingdom
Annie Hall
Anti-Christ
Apocalypse Now Redux
Apollo 13
Arachnophobia
Apt Pupil
Armageddon
Babel
Backdraft
Bad Company
Bad Education
Badlands 1973
Barton Fink
Basquiat
Before Night Falls
Being Flynn
Beneath Hill 60
Beyond the Black Rainbow
Billy Madison
Biutiful - Spanish
Blade 1
Blade 2
Blade 3
Blade Runner Final Cut
Blades of Glory
Blood Work
Blue Valentine
Breach
Broken Arrow
Born on the Fourth of July
Boyz in the Hood
Bullet
Bulworth
Brothers
Caddyshack 1 & 2
Career Opportunities
Carlos The Jackal The Movie
Carne by Gaspar Noe - French
Cashback
CB4
Charlie Wilson's War
Chelsea Girls 1966
Cherry
Chinatown
Ciao Manhattan ft. Edie Sedgewick 1972
Cinema Paradiso
City of God
Clear and Present Danger
Closely Watched Trains - Czech
Contact
Corpse Bride
Courage Under Fire
Crazy Stupid Love
Dark Shadows
Dave 1993
Daybreakers
Days of Heaven
Dazed and Confused
Dead Presidents
Defiance
Desperately Seeking Susan
Despicable Me
Detachment
Die Hard Quadrilogy
**** Tracy
***** Harry
Django Unchained
Dogtooth - Greek
Dogville
Doubt
Dracula, Bram Stoker's
Dragonheart
Dream House
Drive
Drop Zone
Dumbo
Dune Extended Edition
Ears Open, Eyeballs Click
Easier With Practice
Easy Rider 1969
Edward Scissorhands
Empire of the Sun
Encino Man
Enter the Void by Gaspar Noe
Eraser 1999
Eyes Wide Shut 1999
Face Off 1997
Fallen
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Fight Club
Fill the Void
Fish Tank
Fitzcarraldo
Five Minutes in Heaven
Flickan 2009 - Swedish
Flubber 1997
Folks!
Forbidden Planet 1956
Fracture
Friday 1995
Friday After Next 2002
Frost Nixon
******* Amal - Swedish
Full Metal Jacket
Funny Farm 1988
Funny Games
Fur- An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus
G.I. Jane
G.I. Joe Retaliation
Gangs of New York
Gangster Squad
Garden State
Get Rich or Die Tryin'
Ghostbusters 1
Girlfriend
Girl, Interrupted
Glengarry Glen Ross
Gomorra - Italian
Great Expectations 1998
Greenberg
Grindhouse Death Proof
Grindhouse Planet Terror
Groundhog Day 1993
Grumpy Old Men
Grumpier Old Men
Gummo
Gus Van Sant's Last Days
Half Nelson
Hannibal
Havoc
Haywire
Heartbreak Ridge
Heat
Hell on the Pacific 1986
Hesher
Hitchcock
Holy Rollers
Hook
Honey I Shrunk the Kids
Hyde Park on Hudson
I Am Curious Blue
I Am Curious Yellow
I Heart Huckabees
I Stand Alone by Gaspar Noe - French
If Looks Could **** 1991
I'm Not There
In Bruges
In The Line of Fire
Inglorious Basterds
Inland Empire
Innerspace 1987
Innocence
Interview With the Vampire
Jacob's Ladder
James Bond - Diamonds Are Forever 1971
James Bond - From Russia With Love 1963
James Bond - Goldfinger 1964
James Bond - Never Say Never Again 1983
James Bond - On Her Majesty's Secret Service 1969
James Bond - Thunderball 1965
James Bon - You Only Live Twice 1967
Jane Eyre
Jeremiah Johnson 1972
JFK
Joe Versus the Volcano
Johnny English 2
Julien Donkey-Boy
Juno
Just Cause
Kapringen aka A Hijacking - Icelandic
Ken Park
Killing Season
Killing Them Softly
Kindergarten Cop
Kingpin
Koyaanisqatsi
Krippendorf's Tribe
Kiss the Girls
La Vie En Rose
Last Night
Last of the Dogmen
Leon: The Professional
Leonard Pt. 6
Les Miserables
Lie With Me
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Lions For Lambs
Little Children
Lord of the Rings Trilogy BR Extended
Lord of War
Lost Highway
Love and Other Drugs
Love in the Time of Cholera
Love Liza
Lovers of the Arctic Circle
Mad Max 1979
Mad Max 2 1981
Mad Max 3 1985
Major Payne
Malcolm X
Man on Fire
Manhunter
Maverick 1994
Meet Joe Black
Melancholia
Menace II Society DIrector's Cut 1993
Mesrine 1 Killer Instinct - French
Mesrine 2 Public Enemy - French
Milk
Minority Report
Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol
Mister Lonely
Money Train
Moonrise Kingdom
Moulin Rouge
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
****** By Numbers
Munich
My Sassy Girl 2008
Naqoyqatsi Life As War
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
National Treasure Book of Secrets
Never Cry Wolf
Never Let Me Go
New Jack City
New York I Love You
Night on Earth 1991 - Italian
Nixon
Not Fade Away
Notes on a Scandal
O Brother, Where Art Thou
October Sky
Olympus Has Fallen
Ondskan - Swedish
One False Move
Out of Africa
Outbreak
Palmetto
Paris Texas Criterion 1984
Passenger 57
Paths of Glory 1957
Perfect Sense
Peter Pan
Philadelphia 1993
Pinocchio
Pirate Radio
Platoon 1986
Pleasantville
*******
Project X 1987
Proof
Quiz Show
Rabbits
Revolver
Robocop Trilogy
Robot and Frank
Rolling Stone's Gimme Shelter
Romance and Cigarettes
Romeo and Juliet 1996
Sahara
Saving Private Ryan
Schindler's List
Searching For Bobby Fischer
Secretary, The
Seven Years in Tibet
Sgt. Bilko
Shame 2011
Shine
Shooter
Shopgirl
Sid and Nancy
Sin City
Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow
Skyfall
Slackers
Sleepers
Sleeping Beauty 1959
Sleeping Beauty 2011
Sleepy Hollow
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Somewhere
South Central
Sphere
Spread
Spy Game
Stand Up Guys
Stay
Summer Hours - French
Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Synecdoche, NY
Syriana
Talk To Her - Habla Con Ella
Taken 1 & 2
Takers
****
Taxidermia
Tetro
Thank You For Smoking
That Thing You Do!
The Adjustment Bureau
The Age of Innocence by Martin Scorcese 1993
The Bad Lieutenant - Port of Call New Orleans 2009
The Basketball Diaries
The Beach 2000
The Believer
The Beverly Hillbillies
The Black Dahlia
The Blue Lagoon 1980
The Book of Eli
The Boxer
The Constant Gardner
The Conversation
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Darjeeling Limited
The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight Rises
The Day of the Jackal
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
The Fifth Element
The Flock
The Flowers of War
The Fountain
The Getaway
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo 2011
The Golden Compass
The Good Shepherd
The Good The Bad and The Ugly
The Goonies
The Green Mile
The Grey
The Help
The Hudsucker Proxy
The Hurricane
The Hurt Locker
The Ice Storm
The Ides of March
The Illusionist
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
The Impossible
The Informers
The Invasion
The Iron Lady
The Island of Dr. Moreau
The Jackal
The ****
The Killer Inside Me
The Kingdom
The Legend of Bagger Vance
The Lost Boys
The Lost Boys The Tribe
The Lost Boys Thirst
The Machinist
The Mask
The Man Who Fell to Earth 1976
The Master
The Mechanic
The Money Pit
The Naked Gun 1
The Naked Gun 2
The Naked Gun 3
The New World
The Pelican Brief
The Place Beyond the Pines
The Prestige
The Queen
The Raven
The Reader
The Red Balloon
The Right Stuff
The Road
The Rock
The Rocketeer
The Rules of Attraction
The *** Diary
The Saint
The Shawshank Redemption
The Silence of the Lambs
The Skin I Live In - Mexican
The Soloist
The Talented Mr. Ripley
The Thin Red Line
The Town
Transformers Trilogy
The Tree of Life
Tron Legacy 2010
The United States of Leland
The Usual Suspects
The Way Back
There Will Be Blood
There's Something About Mary
Three Days of the Condor
Three Kings
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
To the Wonder
To Rome With Love

Tombstone
Total Recall 1990
Trainspotting
Trash Humpers
True Lies
Two Lovers
Two Weeks in September(Brigette Bardot) 1967
Tyrannosaur
Unbreakable
Uncle Buck
Unforgiven
Unleashed
Unstoppable
V for Vendetta
Varsity Blues
Vertigo
Vicky Christina Barcelona
Videodrome
Virtuosity
Wag the Dog
Wake Up Ron Burgundy The Lost Movie
Walkabout
Wall Street 1987
Wall Street 2010
Wanderlust
Water World
Wayne's World 1 & 2
We Are The Night
War Witch
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Weekend by Jean-Luc Godard - French
Weekend 2011
West of Memphis
What Doesn't **** You
What's Eating Gilbert Grape
When Harry Met Sally
Where the Wild Things Are
White House Down
White Material Criterion 2009
White Oleander
Who is Harry Nilsson?
Wolf 1992
Womb
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
Zardoz 1974


Documentaries & Music Videos


BBC - Life in Cold Blood
BBC - Planet Earth
BBC - Rolling Stones Crossfire Hurricane
BBC - Great Bear Steakout
BBC - Ice Age Giants
BBC - Insect Worlds
BBC - Life on Earth 1979
BBC - Lost Cities of the Ancients
BBC - Operation Snow Tiger
BBC - Penguins: Spy in the Huddle
BBC - Polar Bear: Spy on the Ice
BBC - Richard Hammond's Miracles of Nature
BBC - The Life of Birds
BBC - Wonders of Life
David Blaine Collection
**** Proenke Collection - Alone and Solitude, The Frozen North
Encounters at the End of the World 2007
Nanook of the North
National Geographic Wild Kingdom of the Oceans Giants of the Deep: Whales
Shine A Light - The Rolling Stones
Vladimir Horowitz - Der Ietzte Romantiker
Vladimir Horowitz - Live in Vienna 1987
Vladimir Horowitz - The 1968 TV Concert
Whale Adventure with Nigel Marvin

It was their first time, their first time ever. Of course neither would admit to it, and neither knew, about the other that is, that they had never done this before. Life had sheltered them, and they had sheltered from life.

Their biographies put them in their sixties. Never mind the Guardian magazine proclaiming sixty to be the new fifty. Albert and Sally were resolutely sixty – ish. To be fair, neither looked their age, but then they had led such sheltered lives, hadn’t they. He had a mother, she had a father, and that pretty much wrapped it up. They had spent respective lives being their parents’ companions, then carers, and now, suddenly this. This intimacy, and it being their first time.

When their contemporaries were befriending and marrying and procreating, and home-making and care-giving and child-minding, and developing their first career, being forced to start a second, overseeing teenagers and suddenly being parents again, but grandparents this time – with evenings and some weekends allowed – Albert and Sally had spent their time writing. They wrote poetry in their respective spaces, at respective tables, in almost solitude, Sally against the onslaught of TV noise as her father became deaf. Albert had the refuge of his childhood bedroom and the table he’d studied at – O levels, A levels, a degree and a further degree, and a little later on that PhD. Poetry had been his friend, his constant companion, rarely fickle, always there when needed. If Albert met a nice-looking woman in the library and lost his heart to her, he would write verse to quench not so much desire of a physical nature, but a desire to meet and to know and to love, and to live the dream of being a published poet.

Oh Sally, such a treasure; a kind heart, a sweet nature, a lovely disposition. Confused at just seventeen when suddenly she seemed to mature, properly, when school friends had been through all that at thirteen. She was passed over, and then suddenly, her body became something she could hardly deal with, and shyness enveloped her because her mother would say such things . . . but, but she had her bookshelf, her grandfather’s, and his books (Keats and Wordsworth saved from the skip) and then her books. Ted Hughes, Dylan Thomas (oh to have been Kaitlin, so wild and free and uninhibited and whose mother didn’t care), Stevie Smith, U.E. Fanthorpe, and then, having taken her OU degree, the lure of the small presses and the feminist canon, the subversive and the down-right weird.

Albert and Sally knew the comfort of settling ageing parents for the night and opening (and firmly closing) the respective doors of their own rooms, in Albert’s case his bedroom, with Sally, a box room in which her mother had once kept her sewing machine. Sally resolutely did not sew, nor did she knit. She wrote, constantly, in notebook after notebook, in old diaries, on discarded paper from the office of the charity she worked for. Always in conversation with herself as she moulded the poem, draft after draft after draft. And then? She went once to writers’ workshop at the local library, but never again. Who were these strange people who wrote only about themselves? Confessional poets. And she? Did she never write about herself? Well, occasionally, out of frustration sometimes, to remind herself she was a woman, who had not married, had not borne children, had only her father’s friends (who tried to force their unmarried sons on her). She did write a long sequence of poems (in bouts-rimés) about the man she imagined she would meet one day and how life might be, and of course would never be. No, Sally, mostly wrote about things, the mystery and beauty and wonder of things you could touch, see or hear, not imagine or feel for. She wrote about poppies in a field, penguins in a painting (Birmingham Art Gallery), the seashore (one glorious week in North Norfolk twenty years ago – and she could still close her eyes and be there on Holkham beach).  Publication? Her first collection went the rounds and was returned, or not, as is the wont of publishers. There was one comment: keep writing. She had kept writing.

Tide Marks

The sea had given its all to the land
and retreated to a far distant curve.
I stand where the waves once broke.

Only the marks remain of its coming,
its going. The underlying sand at my feet
is a desert of dunes seen from the air.

Beyond the wet strand lies, a vast mirror
to a sky laundered full of haze, full of blue,
rinsed distances and shining clouds.


When Albert entered his bedroom he drew the curtains, even on a summer’s evening when still light. He turned on his CD player choosing Mozart, or Bach, sometimes Debussy. Those three masters of the piano were his favoured companions in the act of writing. He would and did listen to other music, but he had to listen with attention, not have music ‘on’ as a background. That Mozart Rondo in A minor K511, usually the first piece he would listen to, was a recording of Andras Schiff from a concert at the Edinburgh Festival. You could hear the atmosphere of a capacity audience, such a quietness that the music seemed to feed and enter and then surround and become wondrous.

He’d had a history teacher in his VI form years who allowed him the run of his LP collection. It had been revelation after revelation, and that had been when the poetry began. They had listened to Tristan & Isolde into the early hours. It was late June, A levels over, a small celebration with Wagner, a bottle of champagne and a bowl of cherries. As the final disc ended they had sat in silence for – he could not remember how long, only from his deeply comfortable chair he had watched the sky turn and turn lighter over the tall pine trees outside. And then, his dear teacher, his one true friend, a young man only a few years out of Cambridge, rose and went to his record collection and chose The Third Symphony by Vaughan-Williams, his Pastoral Symphony, his farewell to those fallen in the Great War  – so many friends and music-makers. As the second movement began Albert wept, and left abruptly, without the thanks his teacher deserved. He went home, to the fury of his father who imagined Albert had been propositioned and assaulted by his kind teacher – and would personally see to it that he would never teach again. Albert was so shocked at this declaration he barely ever spoke to his father again. By eight o’clock that June morning he was a poet.

For Ralph

A sea voyage in the arms of Iseult
and now the bowl of cherries
is empty and the Perrier Jouet
just a stain on the glass.

Dawn is a mottled sky
resting above the dark pines.
Late June and roses glimmer
in a deep sea of green.

In the still near darkness,
and with the volume low,
we listen to an afterword:
a Pastoral Symphony for the fallen.

From its opening I know I belong
to this music and it belongs to me.
Wholly. It whelms me over
and my face is wet with tears.


There is so much to a name, Sally thought, Albert, a name from the Victorian era. In the 1950s whoever named their first born Albert? Now Sally, that was very fifties, comfortably post-war. It was a bright and breezy, summer holiday kind of name. Saying it made you smile (try it). But Light-foot (with a hyphen) she could do without, and had hoped to be without it one day. She was not light-footed despite being slim and well proportioned. Her feet were too big and she did not move gracefully. Clothes had always been such a nuisance; an indicator of uncertainty, of indecision. Clothes said who you were, and she was? a tallish woman who hid her still firm shape and good legs in loose tops and not quite right linen trousers (from M & S). Hair? Still a colour, not yet grey, she was a shale blond with grey eyes. She had felt Albert’s ‘look’ when they met in The Barton, when they had been gathered together like show dogs by the wonderful, bubbly (I know exactly what to wear – and say) Annabel. They had arrived at Totnes by the same train and had not given each other a second glance on the platform. Too apprehensive, scared really, of what was to come. But now, like show dogs, they looked each other over.

‘This is an experiment for us,’ said the festival director, ‘New voices, but from a generation so seldom represented here as ‘emerging’, don’t you think?’

You mean, thought Albert, it’s all a bit quaint this being published and winning prizes for the first time – in your sixties. Sally was somewhere else altogether, wondering if she really could bring off the vocal character of a Palestinian woman she was to give voice to in her poem about Ramallah.

Incredibly, Albert or Sally had never read their poems to an audience, and here they were, about to enter Dartington’s Great Hall, with its banners and vast fireplace, to read their work to ‘a capacity audience’ (according to Annabel – all the tickets went weeks ago). What were Carcanet thinking about asking them to be ‘visible’ at this seriously serious event? Annabel parroted on and on about who’d stood on this stage before them in previous years, and there was such interest in their work, both winning prizes The Forward and The Eliot. Yet these fledgling authors had remained stoically silent as approaches from literary journalists took them almost daily by surprise. Wanting to know their backstory. Why so long a wait for recognition? Neither had sought it. Neither had wanted it. Or rather they’d stopped hoping for it until . . . well that was a story all of its own, and not to be told here.

Curiosity had beckoned both of them to read each other’s work. Sally remembered Taking Heart arriving in its Amazon envelope. She brought it to her writing desk and carefully opened it.  On the back cover it said Albert Loosestrife is a lecturer in History at the University of Northumberland. Inside, there was a life, and Sally had learnt to read between the lines. Albert had seen Sally’s slim volume Surface and Depth in Blackwell’s. It seemed so slight, the poems so short, but when he got on the Metro to Whitesands Bay and opened the bag he read and became mesmerised.  Instead of going home he had walked down to the front, to his favourite bench with the lighthouse on his left and read it through, twice.

Standing in the dark hallway ready to be summoned to read Albert took out his running order from his jacket pocket, flawlessly typed on his Elite portable typewriter (a 21st birthday present from his mother). He saw the titles and wondered if his voice could give voice to these intensely personal poems: the horror of his mother’s illness and demise, his loneliness, his fear of being gay, the nastiness and bullying experienced in his minor university post, his observations of acquaintances and complete strangers, train rides to distant cities to ‘gather’ material, visit to galleries and museums, homages to authors, artists and composers he loved. His voice echoed in his head. Could he manage the microphone? Would the after-reading discussion be bearable? He looked at Sally thinking for a moment he could not be in better company. Her very name cheered him. Somehow names could do that. He imagined her walking on a beach with him, in conversation. Yes, he’d like that, and right now. He reckoned they might have much to share with each other, after they’d discussed poetry of course. He felt a warm glow and smiled his best smile as she in astonishing synchronicity smiled at him. The door opened and applause beckoned.

Mischa Barton
Was given a headstart
On Dolly Parton
In a sackrace


And Won.