Yesterday morning we left the boys with Cathy for a few hours and went off to the movies. This is only the second time we've done this in 2004, which normally could be seen as a sad indictment on how children destroy your life, but this year there really hasn't been much to lure us out to Canberra's meagre cinematic choices. Times for "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" didn't suit, so we had to choose between "Girl With A Pearl Earring" and "The Triplets of Belleville". Notwithstanding the obvious therapeutic benefits of watching what is effectively a 100-minute close-up of Scarlett Johansson, I suspect we made the wrong choice. The best parts of "Girl With A Pearl Earring" were the scenes of street life in mid-17th-century Delft, and the woman who played the matriarch of Vermeer's wife's household. But, while I could never say a bad word about Johansson, there was something about her character that didn't quite gel: I don't think it was her fault, but something failed to connect between those "knowing" looks and her apparent status as a naive, innocent servant girl. And whoever decided to cast Colin Firth as Vermeer shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a film set ever again. It is difficult to imagine anyone demonstrating less of the qualities you would expect to see in a singular, driven "artist". They would have been much better off giving that part to the butcher boy who plays Johansson's "love interest". He at least seemed to have something going on behind his eyes.
It had been minus six overnight and even by 11am the cinema hadn't warmed up and I spent most of the time shivering. I haven't warmed up yet.
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