22nd November

Nothing to say again really. Watching The Grand Budapest Hotel again. Still great.

 EDIT 30/12: Seriously, watch The Grand Budapest Hotel if you haven't already. Ralph Fiennes is terrific in it, giving a fine comedic performance*. He is also very good as "M" in Spectre, which I forgot to review but which I liked very much and couldn't really understand why some of the criticism of it was so venomous.

I can't remember if I've told the story of Ralph Fiennes I was told many years ago on the blog before. Apologies for repeating if so. My history teacher at various points during secondary school (the brilliant Mrs Furness) told us about the time that her husband, who was a TV repair man, was charged with going round to Ralph Fiennes' residence to fix his television. Fiennes was apparently at his wit's end trying to work out what was wrong, before Mr Furness concluded that he had failed to plug the TV in at the wall.

 I mention this because it's impacted on me in terms of every film I've seen Fiennes in since. For example, it was very difficult for me to get emotionally involved in the latter stages of the Harry Potter films. How did Voldemort take over the wizarding world without a basic knowledge of the importance of electricity? Frankly, Harry and the gang should have got the job done much earlier.

* I had also forgotten that the world conquering Saiorse Ronan was also in it. It's also a film filled with "blink and you'll miss them" cameos from the likes of Jeff Goldblum and Bill Murray.

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