flashman1_2000-1

This has just shown on BBC2 here in the U.K this very night, and i'am still thinking about it five hour's later. the performances of the cast especially Benedict Cumberbatch as the young Stephen Hawking were superb. The sreenplay while somewhat fictionalized was to the point and highly emotive. The scienific plight of Hawking was simply and well told and the scenes of his horribly degenerating disease( M.N) are highly moving. My uncle died of this disease a year after being diagnosed, that Hawking has continued living with this disease for forty years is not only a testament to his will but also the passion he holds in his life and groundbreaking work. Superb! This should win awards around the world seriously and far, far better than the over praised A Beautiful Mind.Hawking truly was a beautiful mind.

All those of you who know the true story of these two giants of english poetry who complain about the inaccuracies, go to the soon to be opened Wordsworth museum at Grasmere. The ones who like truly inventive and emotional movies watch it! the performances are superb especially Linus Roache an underused actor if ever there was one, the script and the direction ARE poetry. These people were the original free thinkers before the word hippie was invented they were Libertines just like the film it's self is liberal. Why this did'nt get a general release bemuses me( made by BBC films)but the sad fact of the matter is that in this country if a film hasn't got Working Title or Richard Curtis among it's credits cinemas ignore it. Which makes my blood boil! Especially my local cinema the plaza at Workington who are as guilty as sin. Support should be given in this country for films like this, original films and not yet more working class angst or romantic middle class slush. Seek this film out by hook or by crook and sit back and let it wash through you, over you and into you.

Look every movie has flaws and i mean every, so why waste you're time watching them if you're going to sit there and pick? For me this is the best British movie since well...Trainspotting( coincidently by the same director) and goddamn it it's a British Zombie movie hurrah! it's not Mike Leigh moaning on about how depressing this country is, how bad the welfare state is and the wages are rubbbish. We Brits live in a director like Mike Leighs world everyday so we don't need to be reminded of it everytime we go to see a British film. This breaks all conventions of every "british" film of the past twenty years since Leigh,Loach et al... although admirable in their own time are now past it and getting rather boring. This movie rocked my socks off! My heart raced and then calmed and then raced again. In other words i found it thouroughly engrossing and bears up to repeated viewings and thats not just because i live six miles from where the end was shot ( Ennerdale Cumbria ). It is because like 24 Hour party people it is simply and outragiously enetertaining!!! no wonder film four collapsed. By the way i made a short at art school filmed in the lake district and with zombies. Guess they beat me to it. WATCH!!!