Reviews

What a waste of good actors and what a poor production. This is more a Harlequin novel adaptation than a serious attempt to provide an informative yet entertaining series. Within a minute of the beginning a clumsy cog about 100 years out of fashion survives a nasty Atlantic storm. The weather clears and a Caribbean blue sky dominates. One of the imported brides has died and her corpse consigned to the sea. All of the young women have had time and space to clean themselves up (How did the Avon lady get aboard?). In my life time I have crossed the Atlantic many times but by the time one reaches the Americas in five hours one is totally wasted; turbulence or not, regardless of a first class or economy class passage. Here we see the lovely freshly made up young girls emerging from confined smelly cabin spaces to land and proceed to their allotted stranger husbands (no preview videos available). Reminds me of the modern Greek movie 'Brides' or the reality of Les Files Du Roi, young would be French brides given each a small hand box of low value jewels as a dowry by the French king to help populate New France. That at least is real history. Back to the beginning; the first shot of the ship's ensign is the Union Jack, 100 years too early it was adopted only as a result of the Act of Union between Scotland and England in 1707.

This horror show was top quality (eat your heart out Stephen King) despite is cancellation by horrific ABC channel executives. I am quite unclear why the show was really cancelled whereas some like Supernatural, were great for the first few years and is still going but at a rather boring pace in its 12th year. I Can think of several others that went on ad nauseaum, e.g. Revenge, The Good Wife and worst of all Mad Men (worth a maximum two seasons as The Affair should have done). It seems that general audiences, other than the more focused fans of IMDb's site, seem to prefer the most dreary soap operas. Let's hope that the cancellation of the show was not, God forbid, due to the Million Moms and Million Dads organizations' protests, a kind of watered down John Birch Society. Their stated aim was to protect children. If they felt so strong about the mild adult content of 666 Park Avenue then why didn't they use the feature on remote controls of modern TV sets that allow certain programs to be locked when parents are otherwise engaged. Well from the overwhelmingly good comments it seems that IMDb enthusiastic amateur critics loved the production. This was due to several features: an excellent story line, first class cast miles better than the average Hollywood lot. When we learned of the powers that be decision to can the series and wind up on episode 13 most of us IMDb fans were as if struck by lightning. The production quality was AAA+. Thanks to the producers the series was we seamlessly wound up. One assumes that if he show had not been canned the forced final episode 13 would have been aired for the last of the orphaned 23 episodes per season through 2017. Some compensation the salvaged finale of 666 Park Avenue was very well handed and brought closure to the fans. For those who want to see the series again I thought that the DVD is out from Amazon. Wrong ABC has refused to allow Amazon to put it on sale (original novel excepted). Oddly enough the DVD cover of 666 Park Avenue is downloadable from Google images.

Daniel Craig is not the best but probably not the worst of the six different James Bond role players who have chewed the scenery on the 007 stage from 1966 through 2015. I can appreciate that Bond movies, whether good , bad or indifferent, are most often box office successes. However, the best classic Bond role players ever were undoubtedly Sean Connery and Roger Moore, with Pierce Brosnan a close third. All of my favourite Bond players had several things in common. They were unabashedly male chauvinists , and in true bygone time styles the Bond beauties all seem glad to be seduced by gentle and subtle lovers and as a result do not seem to object to being sex objects (whatever that dumb politically correct phrase is supposed to mean). My three best Bond players were naturally charming, dressed well, sipped martinis, often rode continental trains and above all had a touch of good dry but spicy British humour. I cannot forget Sean Connery tossing an electric fan into the bath tub of a villainess muttering "shocking-shocking" , while at the very end of another 007 movie Roger Moore - in bed with a beautiful girl aboard a British mini-submarine built for two - receives a phone call from Maggie Thatcher who after asks him if he is satisfied with the results of his adventure says "Yes, ma'am I am fully satisfied" a Bond reply in good Carry-On James Bond style. Craig cannot help looking bored in all his Bond films, probably because he is never provided with a really good looking female side kick. His molls range from downright ugly in Casino Royale to plain Janes in Spectre. Whereas my favourite 007s seduced their gorgeous partners in a low key style and made love gently. Poor old Daniel Craig is obliged to act as a bodice ripper with female partners who appear, in modern fashion, to want instant relief from sexual pressure and little else . Without much humour a Bond action-spy movie, as in the case of Spectre, simply degenerates to a boring fantasy action feature, when unforgiving folk like myself get fed up with a piece of work exceeding two hours of sitting in a cinema , for what? Spectre begins with a bang, the exciting eight-minute opening Mexico City roof top chase, and ends with a whimper; Bond and his Plain Jane disappear into the London fog leaving a dying villain spread-eagled on the wet pavement. I should have guessed that for my taste the movie would bomb from the awful song and the appalling singer during the opening credits.

Before watching or reading this series and any reviews try to imagine yourself what might have happened in North America had the axis powers minus Mussolini's Italy won World War II. I have never read the book which is highly imaginative and no doubt excellent but the TV series is outstanding. It is pure science fiction which must always be plausible, otherwise it defaults to pure fantasy. Pure scientific fiction is not fantasy so long as its assumptions are plausible and human beings act as they normally would in our own troubled world. There is romantic love, lies, treachery and betrayal there as much as here but 'there be no dragons'. A fantasy, however, usually imposes no limits on one's imagination; fairies, hobgoblins and trips through outer space (a voyage to Mars without monsters is pure science fiction because that planet is attainable and one day In the not too distant future men and women willstep onto it. Typical of fantasies involving travel in that futuristic genre involving travel through outer space to or black wormholes to other completely different universes usually feature fantastic scaled alien monsters and fish men with human brains, or clever apes who talk, read and write along with a hodgepodge of zombies and evil spirits. The only monsters in this series are people who as depicted by a first class cast are no worse nor better than their real life counterparts. The ultimate joy for me produced by the series was the fact that it has a totally unexpected ending. I am sure that just a few of the brightest and most imaginative of the viewers may have guessed it but most, including myself won't. I am usually very disappointed if any series has a predictable ending that can be guessed by the second or third episode. The series is , however, based on the alternative universe presumption without fantasy Note I have a warning for spoilers posted here and I would recommend you not read my review or any other IMDb or Amazon opinion until you have completely watched the series from beginning to end. Pause here all ye of good faith and exit. NOT ADVISED TO READ THE REST BELOW as may contain spoilers The patient have now gone leaving curious folk who as kids liked to unwrap their Christmas presents before midnight or read the last chapter in a murder mystery before reading the preface, You may read the following where I have still tried to disclose as little as possible. Some of you might have already guessed who the Man in the High Castle is but, to my shame, I did not discover that until the final episode. The setting is 1962 when in the real world, or at least the one we know JFK presided in the Oval Office with his aides dealing with the Cuba Russian missile crisis. Instead, i th alternative past by 1962 Washington DC is no more having been completely turned to ashes by a Nazi WMD. In that reconstructed universe Senior Nazi staff regularly fly across the Atlantic in rocket planes presumably at speeds above and beyond mach 2. all that is shown of Europe is an intact Berlin and a chalet in the Alps. Life in America is rather wretched and shabby. The Nazi embassy in San Francisco are calling the shots and without their own WMD the Japanese are rather servile to them. Fashions and vehicle designs in both halves of what was omce the USA seem more appropriate to the 1940s than to the 1950s and the early 1960s that we know From the Atlantic coast westward to the foothills of the Rockies. America is run by the Nazi Reich, whereas west of the Rockies is found the Japanese Pacific Empire. In between the two empires there are uranium and other mines in a supposedly neutral territory.One typical mining town is terrorised by a self-appointed psychopath posing as a US marshal. Buses, all 1940s models, run across the country where there are numerous border patrols and cross checks points. Most of the action happens within Japanese territory and Canada is scarcely mentioned. The capital of the Nazi American Reich is New York City (one would think they would have changed its name to Neue Dresden or something similar. With San Francisco as the Japanese American capital one presumes that Los Angeles has also been 'nuked' to the ground. That is enough hopefully to spark your interest in an entertaining and thought-provoking in an unusual 'what if ' setting.

I seldom compose a review of just the first episode of a new TV series. However, this pilot was surprisingly good and I cannot refrain from some positive remarks. The usual American spy-thriller TV series are utter nonsense albeit entertaining like 'Covert Affairs' where the staff of the CIA seem to wallow in super luxurious offices. Instead, in this series, the CIA offices at Langley are shown as drab and purely functional like the bare winter landscape outside, devoid of glamour.. We are comfortably reminded that CIA agents are not allowed to carry weapons when they are operating stateside so no exciting 'bang-bang' chases likely unless the action moves abroad. There is, however, one short car chase through Manhattan which is quite realistic.

Indeed, 'Allegiance' seems more realistic than the usual American spy series. Okay there is an element of pandering to the average Fox News fed audience in reflection of New Cold War politics, so the Russians are the renewed really nasty villains with evil sadistic accents and no redeeming features. The Russian stereotypes now head the list of undesirables thus demoting the Arabs and Serbs to second and third rank respectively in degree of villainy. The ghastly opening scene shows a group of suited male Russians and one woman in an underground basement about to consign a bound but nor gagged screaming victim to a horrible death by cremating him alive in a heating furnace. Either the script writers dreamed up such a grisly form of execution or they copied a similar scene from the 1974 French police movie ' Borsalino and Co.' where the Mob cremates a live victim by serving him up as fuel for a speeding steam locomotive. The point of such a vividly revolting scene at the very beginning of 'Allegiance' is revealed during the episode. The principal characters are the family and acquaintances of a middle–aged man, Mark O'Connor, married to Katya a Russian emigrant. They are apparently enjoying a comfortable life in a fashionably renovated period town house across the East River from Manhattan. The couple live with their two daughters; a grown up Natalie and Sarah of around 12. Their son Alex has recently joined the CIA at Langley where his exceptional natural talents as an analyst and linguist are impressing his superiors at the time when a leakage of a Russian plot to stage a massive 911 like action against America has come to the attention of the CIA. They need to know the identity of the plotters and more details of the plot itself. They hope to gather most of the vital information from a female Russian secret service agent who has expressed a wish to defect to the head of the CIA office in New York. The family's supposed cosy life is about to end. The day begins with an urgent phone call from Mark who has just left an exotic foods supermarket where he has learned the devastating news that among 16 varieties of white potatoes there are no sweet white potatoes which were on Katya's shopping list. The sales woman say she never hear of such sweet spuds (my own wife bought some the other day so they do exist) . After a modicum of phone bickering Mark makes his way home. He has hardly settled in back home when the door-bell rings and……. I shall omit the rest of the exciting evolution of events in episode 1 . If the momentum and intrigue of this pilot is maintained 'Allegiance' might end among the top ten of US TV series in 2015.

My recommendation to those who have not read the novel or seen the original 1968 film version of Rosemary's Baby is to watch this TV movie first. You will have the advantage over the rest of us in being able to judge the merits of the story and the TV movie solely on their own merits. Next read the novel and when finished borrow or buy a DVD of the 1968 original. Having loved the classic Roman Polanski 1968 version starring Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes I was prepared to be very critical of this remake of Rosemary's Baby as a TV movie. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised. The 1968 cinema version ran for about 90 minutes whereas the two-part TV move is close to three hours. Too often when a producer does a remake and is given double the time of the original to fill the audience finds too much boring material that should have been cut. A case in point is the recent pointless remake for Netflix of 'From Dusk to Dawn' as a TV series. Fortunately this is not the case in the 2014 version of Rosemary's Baby as every minute is significant and adds to story and character development. Therefore the additions are interesting. The original story line of the novel has been retained but many new twists and turn have been successfully added.

Aside from an intelligent and creative further development and partial remodeling of the story the cast's performance is excellent. Gorgeous Zoe Saldana -an Afro-Latina beauty of Santo Domingo roots - plays the part of the young married woman Rosemary Woodhouse. Miss Saldana seems much younger than her actual 36 years and replaces a pallid Mia Farrow (23 at the time but she seemed much older). Saldana is an accomplished actress with faultless diction and an excellent command of the English language. The husband, Guy Woodhouse, was depicted in 1968 as a very evil looking and temperamental Cassavetes (then aged 39) who dominates his wife Rosemary. Guy, a young unsuccessful author suffering from writer's block is played 46 years later by Canadian actor Patrick J. Adams (aged 33) in his first major role as until now he was basically a TV series actor. Patrick plays the role of Guy not as an evil wife-dominating person but as a rather weak character easily led astray but a young man who has qualms when he sees what has been made to happen to others to further his ambition, whereas the Guy Woodhouse in 1968 has no qualms or misgivings at all so long as his ambitions are fulfilled, even at his wife's expense. While the 1968 Guy Woodhouse has no conscience; the young husband in the 2014 version has so many apparent inward doubts than one is almost prepared to accept that he might well chicken out of the evil role imposed on him by the Castevets.

In the 1968 version John Cassavetes was 16 years older than Mia Farrow whereas in 2014Patrick Adams is merely three years younger than Zoe Saldana so there is no apparent age difference. Given the wide age gap of the Woodhouse couple in 1968 and their virtually similar age in 2014 it is understandable that the actors have to be play their role in a different way from the 1968 movie. What was accepted in the 1960s as a dominant older husband lording it over a pretty wane child-like wife is no longer a 'politically-correct' theme in 2014. In 1969 a young Afro-American actress would have be given a role as a housemaid or an ethnic role whereas in 2014 Zoe is shown as a highly articulate intelligent modern young woman whose skin colour is immaterial. In the 2014 movie the racially-mixed but culturally equal Woodhouse couple is deeply in love with each other whereas for most of the 1968 film a loving relationship is patently absent. Most of the rest of the large cast are good French actors probably not well known abroad, but it does not matter.

The evil Satanist Roman Castevet and his wife Margaux (Minnie in 1968) are played by a deceptive too-good-to-be true Jason Isaacs, helped in the role by the actor's slightly Saturnine features and a coldly evil looking Carole Bouquet. The Castevets in 2014 are played as a suave very modern and wealthy Parisian couple in place of the rather seedy and obnoxious Brooklyn–accented Castevets portrayed in 1968. However, the same message is given; the persons who offer you help are not always your friends. It often happens in real life that a very young couple with no family in a strange town form close relationships with much older childless married persons who assume a quasi-parental role over them and are frequently the one that initiate bonding.

I had some reservations of the switch in cities where the play is enacted. In 1968, as in the novel, the setting was a Gothic and creepy building in New York City. I now realise that the City of Light can be just as creepy and Gothic as in 'The Ninth Gate'. Indeed, the location team had no more difficulty in finding a suitable creepy apartment building in Paris for the remake than had those of the short-lived TV series '666 Park Avenue' or for 'The Devil's Advocate'. Had the couple in the remake known enough French they might have realised that the name displayed on the front of the Castevets' building, 'la chimère (from Greek 'chimaera), means a fabulous beast or monster.

I am disappointed because I was expecting something of the calibre of 'Cheers; or 'Fraizer'. The main redeeming feature of this situation 'comedy' was a welcome lack of piped laughter -a live audience would have remained silent anyway. The very able youthful cast were wonderful and tried their best to make something good out of very poor material. The situation was ripe with for some real humour, which the writers seem to have ignored. One can judge the level of humour when the highlight of the pilot episode spotlights a scrawny Hollywood-Englishman vomiting into the bag of a young woman he is supposed to be dating.

Excellent, rather similar to 'Enemy at the Gates' but more believable - except for the kamikaze Soviet troops charging the Germans while completely ablaze, surely is a more folkloric event then a truthful one. Otherwise, 'Stalingrad' is a more convincing work , though perhaps less entertaining and more shocking, than 'Enemy at the Gates' whose theme was "Shoot Ed Harris the Nazi Sniper" whereas the 'Stalingrad' theme is "hold the building at any cost to stall Nazi advance".

'Stalingrad' is also more realistic because the audio is in Russian and German rather than an odd mixture of Brooklyn and Home Counties English. The same war-damaged Fountain of Youth Dancing around a crocodile (the Barmaley fountain) appears for the battle site in 'Enemy at the Gates' as well. I was interested to notice in a TV video clip of the recent Volgograd( Stalingrad) railway terminal bombing that the restored fountain appeared. 'Stalingrad' has a non-Hollywood ending, high quality graphics and computerization, and a good musical track. The cast is excellent and the script focuses as much on people on both sides as on action. It has many more horrific scenes than in 'Enemy at the Gates'. Thus, it is not for the faint hearted (worst the part where people are burnt alive in a bus by the Nazi with appalling screams and images). An advantage for foreigners like myself is the provision of clear but unobtrusive English sub-titles and thankfully no dubbing, although the translation is a bit odd at times. Both movies are rated R and last about 130 minutes, although the 'Stalingrad' movie credits seem to go on for ever.

At the beginning a newlywed couple from New York City, Scot and Taylor Dolan, seemingly deeply in love with each other, both arrive by helicopter (excuse me) at a super luxurious remote desert resort in Morocco. Scot is about 50 and one of those men who seem shabbily dressed and unshaven regardless of their expensive clothes, but his gorgeous young wife Taylor around 30 is very stylish, sexy and beautiful, looking more like a rich parisienne than a fashionable female New Yorker. After 15 minutes and an erotic love scene it become rapidly obvious that all is not well with the relationship, apart from the sex; even in bed Scot crassly informs Taylor that she came five times, not very romantic. Taylor goes outside to the pool to meet a young man called Travis they conspire to kill Scot. A desert excursion provides an excellent opportunity for Taylor and Travis to realise their plan. The next segment of the movie begins with a striking aerial view of the Toyota SUV racing down a straight and very empty well-kept highway. Shortly after Scot turns off the highway onto a dirt road. that can only be followed by the tire marks of previous vehicles. Then a car driven by Travis leaves the highway and crosses the desert to pursue them. Travis seems to be trying his best to kill Scot by sideswiping him. The 'duel' ends when both SUVs jump a series of high dunes and literally fly into a cluster of vehicles and local Arabs halted on the dirt road in front of them. This is the beginning of the longest and most crucial segment of the movie.

A decrepit local bus heavily overburdened with passengers, chickens and cargo has stopped, probably because of a flat tire while several cars and a bunch of Arabs are gathered around it. First the pursued Toyota ploughs into the bus and a parked and occupied car slaughtering several Moroccans in the process. Travis in hot pursuit knocks over several local and in trying to avoid them he abruptly turns the steering wheel whereupon his vehicle rolls over.

As a result of these accidents there are bloodied bodies everywhere. One of the survivors, the driver of the car, is critically injured by the impact with the shaft of his steering wheel fully penetrating his belly. With futile efforts he is trying to pull the shaft out of his body. An Arabic looking young woman with a headscarf is holding a baby in the back of the injured driver's car and is screaming in French for help. She and the infant are unharmed but trapped inside the car. The lover is also trapped in his vehicle but either dead or unconscious. Scot and Taylor, who are unhurt, manage to remove his body. They determine that Travis is still alive.

Meanwhile, unseen, Omar a rough looking Moroccan, stumbles from the wreck of the bus wearing handcuffs. Another local man, is badly injured as the bus has fallen on top of him and only the top half of his body appears. Omar strangles the dying man with his chains, finds the key and some other objects on him and unlocks the handcuffs. All this is unnoticed by any of the others The Arabic looking women at the back of the car holding the screaming baby turnouts to be French. Omar frees Audrey, the French woman. She removes her scarf and her long blonde hair falls to her shoulders. Audrey begins efforts to free the driver but to no avail. Omar tosses a lighted cigarette toward a gas leak from the car which soon catches fire and the driver begins to scream. Audrey and Scot attempt to douse the fire with bottles of water but Omar object saying they need the water for drinking. He takes an iron rod and smashes the driver's skull; supposedly to stop him suffering but Omar obviously has some ulterior motive in killing him. Meanwhile, Taylor is looking after the baby rather awkwardly (hardy her Fifth Avenue Manhattan style) and wants to pass it back to Audrey who claims 'it's not my baby'! Shortly after another Moroccan character Saleh sporting a woollen tuque and leather jacket arrives at the scene of the accident from behind a few rocks where he has been hiding. Now the complement of the six main characters is complete and during the rest of the movie we slowly discover the connections between them and their various murky motives which include murder, greed, kidnapping and revenge, eventually explaining why they have all arrived at the same remote desert spot. Some of the main characters never make it past the scene of the accident and the old fort nearby in the desert where they spend their last night; the rest manage to get as far as Tangiers but at the end only three have survived. Two of the survivors succeed in their original plans, mostly because they were better planners than their adversaries and anticipated their moves. The third person, shortly after arrival in Tangiers, is arrested by the police to be imprisoned in a Moroccan jail for the rest of their life for the serious crime they committed. Final Advice: When you decide to watch this movie make sure you have no distractions, disconnect your phones and the doorbell otherwise you might miss vital clues.

First of all I rate the pilot episode of 'Under the Dome' as a clear 8.0. I am an admitted avid Stephen King fan and bought a copy of the book in Picton Ontario in January 2011 during the festive season vacation. It is not one of King's best novels but it is far from being his worst. For the horror genre his works are pretty mild and I have never found them spine tingling. In general I like King's works mostly because of his style and the small town characters in them. From such an amazingly prolific writer there are bound to be some duds. I think that the all-time best Stephen King book and mini TV series was the apocalyptic 'The Stand'. Until now the most recent of King's made-for-TV movies I watched and enjoyed (having read the book) was 'Bag of Bones'. I enjoyed 'Under the Dome' as a novel but cannot recall many details, just the general situation and plot. The book version of Under the Dome contains a map of the fictional Maine town of Chester's Mill (most of the Maine locations in Stephen King novels, such as Castle Rock, are fictional. In 'Stand by Me' - aka 'The Body' -Castle Rock is moved to Oregon!) The map of Chester's Mill was helpful in reading the novel to follow where the diverse action was happening outside and inside the dome. Chester's Mill is a small country town. The two North Carolina towns where the series is shot are not unlike Picton itself so I was able to enjoy the book by a blazing fireplace in my son's rambling house and sprawling acres overlooking Maine-like woods and a lake. During the 42 minute of the pilot I watched enthralled. I do not remember enough of the book I read two years ago to tell from the pilot to what extent King may have diverted from his novel but surely the poet himself is the one who is allowed poetic license in such cases. A TV family den audience is different from a one man-reader seated by a fireplace. The action was continuous from the start and the special effects were brilliant (I would not recommend reading the sour puss and nit picking comments on this site). Unlike in many other Stephen King screen works there are no big name film stars but several familiar faces from other TV series and a few young newcomers. Nevertheless, the standard of performance is pretty good. I wonder if King himself will make a cameo appearance in the series as he has often done in others... CBS promises 13 episodes and I am looking forward to all of them purely as light entertainment.

Not a bad adaption, I would rate it a 7.0. Nevertheless, I still consider that "The Jungle Book" 1942 version in gorgeous Technicolor is rather better. On my seventh birthday I was given a Pan Book paperback entitled Mowgli Stories. The only illustration was on the cover: against a vivid dark blue and black background a naked adolescent Mowgli is depicted wielding a flaming red and orange branch in resistance to the villainous tiger Shere Khan, who has come to claim him from the wolf pack. I no longer have that book but my research indicates it was published by Pan Book's in 1948. The paperback contained all eight of the Mowgli stories in roughly serial order taken from a miscellaneous collection of stories found in The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book.

Although the movie's longer title is "Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book", it does not deserve to have Kipling's name attached to it. The Mowgli tales as Kipling wrote them are far superior to the weak screenplay of the film which diverges widely from the original and develops an entirely new set of characters. Would a late Victorian army colonel really contemplate his only daughter marrying even a refined native boy in those days? I think not.

One may forgive easily forgive the numerous careless goofs. After all it is Walt Disney stuff not a documentary about British India in late Victorian times or whether the fuel containers on the horse cart should have the word "paraffin" or "kerosene" stencilled on them etc. However, I have seen far worse gaffs in some otherwise praiseworthy Oscar-winning movies, such as"Lawrence of Arabia".

I wonder if one day somebody will make a new non-cartoon film entitled "The Mowgli Stories" which is much more faithful to them than what has been produced so far. It probably could not be contained in a time span of less than three hours and who would want to sit in a cinema theatre that long anyway? Perhaps the best way of presenting the Mowgli stories on screen as Rudyard Kipling envisioned them would be to produce an eight-episode made for TV series.

Okay, I have grouched enough. In fairness, I enjoyed the film as it stands. After all my objections why do I give it a 7/10? First the cinematography and staged scenery were good quality, second animal handling was well done and third the cast was excellent. The lead star, Jason Lee Jones was first rate, just right for the part. Several Indian commentators on this site have disliked the fact that Jason is not an Indian and they also claim he does not even look like one. This is rather a pointless objection in my view. India (without Pakistan and Bangladesh) has about 1.2 billion human inhabitants and a long history of invasion and conquests with much interbreeding. Thus there are numerous tribes, ethnics and races in India. Indians themselves display a range of complexions from the ebony black of a Tamil to the light olive skins of a Mediterranean person further north. Jason reminds me of many Bengalis I have known where slightly Mongoloid features are common. To ignore the physical diversity of its inhabitants would be to deny India's cultural, ethnic and racial diversity which makes that country so interesting. Instead, I would have thought that Indians would more likely to have objected to the way they are depicted in the movie, either as rather silly or villainous. In fairness several of the British officers are depicted as silly and/or villainous as well.

Downgrading natives was definitely not Kipling's style. In the Jungle Books and his novel "Kim" Rudyard Kipling reveals a true love of greater India and its people and culture. He was one of the few intelligent imperialists (called "Empire Builders" until well into the 1950s) who sought to understand the local cultures in whatever corner of the Empire they found themselves assigned for years. The could either isolate themselves in compounds or mingle. Kipling mingled and studied the cultures and manners of Her Majesty's exotic subjects though as a man of his day he did not commit the "sin" of "going native".

As the film is deliberately light-hearted Disney stuff bordering on comedy one could even accept John Cleese portraying - as he did in the Monty Python films and as Basil in the "Fawlty Towers" TV show- a very silly, uncouth, and highly satirical Englishman.

One final point I need to make is that in my view the movie should have been rated PG-13 rather than PG. There are some particularly ugly scenes including man eaten by a tiger, by implication only, in one instance or another explicitly mauled to death by Shere Khan. That is scary stuff for a small child. Worse are scenes of a soldier slowing sinking to his death in a quagmire, an Indian bad guy being squashed by man-trapping devices and another man drowned in slow motion. Also young children tend to become very upset if animals are hurt or killed. There is a scene where an animal is shot and depicted to be in great pain.

Anyone who cares to read the Mowgli stories (best after and not before you see this movie) will find them published in full at:

http://thenostalgialeague.com/olmag/kipling-jungle-book.html

A site dedicated to Kipling's work that is well worth visiting.

Maybe I never liked PTA because I have never found Steve Martin to be much of a comedian although John Candy tried his best. Such a story needs a good straight man as a foil as much as the one who plays the jackass. Martin's much acclaimed remake of The Out of Towners left me cold, a poor comparison with of Jack Lemmon in the original. Neither do I recall laughing as much, if at all, while watching PTA., my sides were aching by the end. Due Date may be a copycat of a worn out theme. For example, not only PTA, Robert di Niro's excellent Midnight Run comes to mind as well. Maybe I liked DD because its humour was much more European than North American and I am European after all. It all depends on what buttons the script and the comedian push on any given individual's funny bone.

Anyway, there is a definite non-puzzling story line in DD; an annoying person constantly bothers the straight man who the more straight he acts the more funny he becomes so long as that difficult role is played well. Indeed, like in PTA the straight man becomes increasingly annoying to the audience and its sympathy with the grown up infant terrible increases in proportion The truth of the matter is that the straight man would have had a hard time getting home in time for the due birth date of his first child but for the slob's offer of a lift. This morally cancels out the fact that Mr. Straight would have been nearly home by the time he is offered a lift by his Nemesis had he not met Mr.Slob in the first place. An example of how embarrassing the situation becomes for Mr. Straight is when Mr. Slob proclaims he cannot get a good night's sleep unless he first plays with himself; a bad example copied by his ugly but endearing little pug faced dog. The black comic symbol of the gaudy coffee tin full of Mr Slob's late father's cremated remains brings to mind Death as a comedy in successful movies such as Meet Joe Black, Roseanna's Grave. Last Orders and Death at a Funeral. One has to have good script writers, producers and a pair of excellent comedians to make something really funny out of Death and in this case the attempt succeeds. The is a comic film you will either enjoy immensely or hate intensely. Give it a try.

As the movie begins you are asked to imagine that in the future a virus kills 99 percent of the global population. Many centuries later a new Utopian -though autocratic- society has emerged; a "gilded cage" as it is described in which the population has remained virtually unchanged for four hundred years. I shall leave it to the viewer to find out how and why. It is not until very late that the question is answered in the movie and that one discovers why our heroine is an armed rebel. Aeon Flux is entirely fantasy material; unlike Gattaca it is not sci-fi. Therefore, if you are a sci-fi fan with no time for fantasy and you would prefer more plausible tales of the future, then pass, it's not for you. However, if you like fantasy of the anything goes style on its own merits there is no reason not to see this work of art. Those who liked the Matrix will understand. The story line is pretty thin but this flaw is more than compensated by the beauty of Kathryn Kusama's work. The movie is altogether very imaginative and full of action. The ending scene of a few Nano seconds does not make a lot of sense and was, perhaps unnecessary and out of place as the movie could have ended quite successively without it. A male audience and fans of Cherize Theron (not the only film where the blonde actress performs her role as a brunette) will gain extra pleasure from watching it and I suppose the two leading male stars may well appeal to many of a female audience too. It passed my test for a good ,although not a great, movie, as it was highly enjoyable and seldom silly.At the end of the day that's what most people want.

One cannot properly review this brilliant and exceptional TV series without spoilers. I have tried to avoid them but my best advice to the reader is stop here. Well, you have decided to go on reading anyway. Be assured I have been very careful not to reveal the plot itself.

Instead, I shall simply point out the strong points of Rubicon and why I think it is well worth watching. Remember Rubicon is the symbol of no return, the burning of bridges after one has crossed them if you will. It is derived from the name of a minor Italian stream that marked the southern limit of Gaul. In leaving Gaul behind him Caesar followed his critical and irreversible decision to cross the Rubicon and march on Rome with his legions. Exactly how such a title applies to the series is still a mystery to me so I must watch the series again it on DVD when it becomes available.

The series' own slogan is "Not Every Conspiracy is a Theory". There are no prior assumptions about a rather weakly linked chain of events that begin with a suicide of a person who at the beginning we do not know or what his motive was in blowing his brains out . The conspiracy, if indeed, there is one, may be uncovered by bringing together different pieces of evidence in a limited time without forming any hypothesis. On the way to solving or at least clarifying the problem the hero, the team leader , is beset by unexpected setbacks, offset to some extent by even less expected chance revelations and/or inspirations without prejudice. This is an intelligent person's spy tale with a non-Hollywood ending that, instead leads to all sorts of speculation.

The mostly American actors are superb, the script is well written and the music track pleasant and not annoying. This is not a James Bond or a 24 Hours fantasy, nor is it a John Le Carre film based on his novels. A small team of government analysts, all facing problems and different motives in their dysfunctional private lives, have links to the FBI and the CIA but work in a maverick way that the regular secret services cannot understand, The underfunded unit is looking into the case of a suspected terrorist and toils long hours in an obscure set of gloomy offices in a back street converted warehouse of lower Manhattan. They have to piece together a difficult jigsaw puzzle with many missing pieces in a slow painstaking way despite time being of the essence. The main characters are more than just interesting as each displays a range of human strengths and weaknesses. These are real people neither Hollywood glamor pusses nor the sort of cardboard images one too often sees in TV series. The unit shows an ability to work as a team sometimes and at cross purposes at others.

Despite its deliberate pace and sobriety Rubicon has the necessary elements of love, back biting, and treachery. Unlike most other spy thrillers it is not drenched in action but not devoid of it either. Suicide, murder and mayhem as well as love, erotic sex and betrayal are here but do not dominate. All the usual salacious stuff that turns viewers on (or off) is soft pedaled and much left to the imagination. When one thinks about it the understatements in Rubicon are more pungent than the obvious sex and gore seen in most TV today. Some viewers may find Rubicon slow at first but my advice is wait until the DVD comes out, once the kids and maiden Aunt Edith have gone to bed Try and focus on the details and lines, and exchange of remarks (the advantage of DVDs over live TV is one has the ability to pause and go back).

Rubicon was limited to one season of 13 of roughly one hour ad-free episodes. Some viewers may have been disappointed that AMC decided against a second season. However, I think the AMC folk were right. By the end of episode 13 the plot had developed as far as it could, with the hero and viewers left holding the final piece of the puzzle and wandering how it fits, although most of us will have a pretty good idea. The ending does leave the viewer in suspense but,thank God, at the end there is no Hercule Poirot smugly explaining in every detail how he came to his conclusion. it would have been clumsy to have gone on even five minutes longer than the actual final fade out.

What kind of hubris induces folk in Hollywood to dare to think that decades after they can produce hashed up remakes of great Ealing Studios movies while not even aspiring to be as least as good as the original and add elements of today's unfortunate tendency (Soviet sounding) "political correctness"? It's the equivalent of copying the Mona Lisa in a halter top and jeans and giving her a mustache. Tom Hanks' dismal remaking of the Lady Killers and now somebody thinks they can go one better with a remake of Last Holiday.

I know people who have seen and enjoyed both remakes without realising that really great originals exist. To anybody else please, please see the originals first. Spoilers are not crucial in the case of The Lady killers but the whole point of Last Holiday is the ending twist.

This movie could be rated as garbage but garbage it's not. Great movies leave me in a highly emotional state. Even if the subject is not tragic I catch my breath and my eyes begin to water. Alas, there are far too many movies that lend me the feeling that I have wasted 90 minutes or so of my life (several Oscar award winning works and box office successes are guilty as well as the obvious bombs). They leave a bitter-sour taste behind them.

Yet there are other works which do not displease but are hardly great. Maybe in essence such pieces-which render nothing more than a pleasant after taste- like a young wine- behind, are even more priceless in essence than the truly great movies as they entertain and for my money that is what the film industry is all about. Good little movies such as Scoop are carefully crafted melodramas. It is not really comedy as I for one did not roll with laughter in the aisles of my TV den . Woody Allen's humour, though delicious, is of the dry tongue-in- cheek kind. Don't miss the lines, listen carefully, easier to do with a DVD player than at the theatre.

Scoop is a predictable Nancy Drew sort of tale of foul murders, with the addition of a small degree of fantasy and vengeful ghosts. Not of the Stephen King or Hammer films ilk. There is no blood or gore, the dead souls being rowed to Hades by Charon look and act more like passengers on a London bus than shades passing across the Styx , there is even an unwritten sign : "Don't Speak to the Driver". One murdered soul accidentally discovers that by plunging into the black river he can swim back the land of the living to appear momentarily in Duncan style, not to haunt "Macbeth" but to provide cryptic clues to the doubting young American girl and her convinced Vaudeville "Dad " so they can pin the real murderer whose signature seems to be a Tarot card. By the end of the film, one realises that having succeeded in fingering the murderer there is a price that somebody among the good people has to pay.

For all that the acting is smooth, the cast is good and the leading actors and actresses are superb. Scarlet Johannsen is very good looking by today's rather dismal standards. She is basically a plain wholesome and fresh plain young woman who has such a natural attractive personality and thick-lipped sensuality that makes her beautiful. This comes through even when playing the rather nerdy role of an ungainly badly dressed and bespectacled young naïve American in London. Woody, so atrociously clad he looks like he gets his rags from the Salvation Army, plays the role of a bumbling old fool who among other things gets locked inside a secure room and trumps that by forgetting the combination which would allow his attentive co-amateur detective outside to let him out. I can imagine the parts during 1940s being played by Lucille Ball and Bob Hope respectively . -

Now the cinematography is awesome. The scenes are set in London and the Home Counties. Even a brief scene in an antique store is delicious, This brought to my mind that contrary to raves by some critics and reviewers that it is a "European-style" film (whatever in Hell that means), and despite having been produced under the umbrella of the BBC, it is really designed mainly for American audiences. The usual picture-postcard views. The old metropolis seems to glow and the perpetually grey overcast skies of southern England don't seem to matter as the constantly rains sprinkled gardens are beautiful (not that there is a single rainy day and the only fog is on the River Styx but there is little sunshine). The extras catering to the aspired American audience seem to be hired from Hollywood's Casting Center of English Characters. Did you spot the Prince Charles look alike in one of the garden party scenes?

The musical background is largely Tschaikovsky with a touch of Greig during the ending credits aside from the odd party Rumba.

This is a movie worth spending 90 uninterrupted minutes of one's life in enjoying it.

I am so glad I didn't buy this miserable work but recorded it from TV. At least I can erase the tape. Making a good science-fiction movie is always challenging and only a few such as the producers of Gattaca have succeeded. This particular movie does not even come up to the less than average standard of Sci-fi B films of the 1950s and 1960s.

Why didn't I like it? Basically it was a waste of time for the two fine lead actors Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix. The script and lines given them were just awful. Banal doesn't adequately describe them.

A married priest (Gibson) ceases to believe in God and throws away his dog collar after his wife is terribly injured and dies as a result of a traffic accident caused by a neighbour who was had fallen asleep at the wheel of his panel truck. (How the priest becomes a born again Christian seems to be the film's only theme). It does not explain his nastiness to his young son (he also has a cute little daughter). He has a grown up kid brother (Phoenix) who is a former baseball star (don't forget that last part because it's vital for the movie's end). The kid brother has moved into the barn like cottage adjacent to their Pennsylvania corn farm, after the priest's wife dies, so as to keep him company.

The Signs are the several neat circles the kids discover in the cornfield. More of them are contained in -of all things - a Sci-fi novel about alien invaders that the young son is reading. It seems all too obvious that aliens are at work because the local young hooligans are incapable of drawing perfect circles let alone carving them into the corn. The family's pet dog is apparently attacked by an alien and dies. They don't call the vet to attend to the injured dog because, guess what, as is revealed a bit later, the vet is the fellow who fell asleep at the panel truck's wheel.

Nor only is the script banal and the plot very thin and obvious but the scenes just drag on and the movie seems a lot longer than its 108 minutes with not much happening. One only catches sight of an alien bogey man during the last thirty minutes or so. Its first appearance is in a Brazilian newscast that freaks out the priest's brother who is watching the TV. The local alien bogey man later appears in vivo in the priest's family den after the family has boarded up doors and windows (remember that happened also in Hitchcock's The Birds). Indeed, the producers don't seem to have made up their minds as to whether the movies should have been a pure sci-fi or a horror movie. It succeeds in neither genre.

There is a slight twist at the end where their own alien is whacked thanks to some cryptic words the priest's dying wife utters in a flashback as Mel Gibson hovers over her body at the scene of the accident. The twist is actually quite clever and I shan't reveal it for the benefit of those who might like this movie. As in H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds and every other Sci-fi tale or movie about alien invaders, they always have a fatal weakness, if you can discover it.

The quality of the movie is not even redeemed by any exceptional cinematographic special effects or lavish period settings and costumes. As the movies is set in 2002, the adults dwelling in the Pennsylvania backwoods are either clad in Wal-Mart blue jeans and chequered shirts or in patrol officer's uniforms. The child and animal actors are good though the child actors also suffer from the poor lines given them, fortunately not the lot of the dogs who only have to bark and snarl at the right moment or the flocks of bird extras who whirl and twirl around when presumably disturbed by the alien presence. The movie might have been partially salvaged by an element of humour, but even that is missing.

I acquired a DVD of this movie about two years ago. I am usually not over fond of John Carrey. And I watched 15 minutes of The Majestic and then gave it up in disgust. Fortunately, I did not trash it or give it away.Then it seemed to be just another rather over-sentimental chocolate box design melodrama based on nostalgia for the early 1950s. I myself am quite nostalgic about my own non-American 1950s as a child but I don't generally like the stuff being spooned down my throat (figuratively speaking).

However, yesterday I noticed "The Majestic" in my movie collection and decided to give the film a second chance. Wow! It turns put to be a real gem if you can get past the first ten minutes or so. This time Carrey shows his real talent, instead of the mindless jinks he gets up to in most of the other movies I've watched him in. He is assisted by a superb supporting cast of whom only one or two are well–known outside of TV series.

Let me say initially what I still do not like about the movie. First, it need not have been so long. This was mostly as a result of too many pregnant pauses and over-stretched intimate scenes between the hero, the heroine and the old man who imagines that he is the hero's father. Second the near fatal flaw which has prevented the film achieving full marks of excellence is the awful soggy background musical sound track. It reminded me too much of that in the 1960s Peyton Place TV series. Indeed, it has overtone of a soap opera (which The Majestic is definitively not). The music track was as irritating intrusion and as awful as the canned audience laughter in an otherwise good TV sit-com. Nothing else was bad, in fact all other aspects of the movie were outstanding.

The plot partly revolves around a dilapidated and unused cine theatre in a small town on the Californian coast. It calls to mind works such as the Ealing Studios 1957 comedy "The Smallest Show on Earth" where a young couple inherit and try to revive a decrepit old theatre and Italy's 1988 "Cinema Paradiso". Also the film's small town setting calls to mind Frank Capra's 1946 "It's a Wonderful Life". But the actual plots are entirely different. The Majestic is shot in Southern California in warm evocative colours and each frame looks like a Norman Rockwell magazine cover. In contrast to the background music track the borrowed music used (for e.g. a jive dance scene) is contemporary and pleasing.

The plot involves a young script-writer producer - Peter Appleton (John Carrey)- who learns he is to be summoned to appear before the notorious Un-American Affairs Committee. Many folk in Hollywood were obliged to do so during the McCarthy "witch hunt" period where every other intellectual was regarded as a clandestine, unpatriotic, communist spy. Peter's studio bosses decide they have to can his latest work-in-progress and let him go until the matter is resolved (to get off the hook he may have to sign a statement that he renounces his alleged membership in the Communist Party and finger a list of other Hollywood personalities whom he has never met).

To drown his sorrows he and his stuffed monkey mascot have one too many drinks in the Bongo Congo bar. He then decides to take a spin along the coast road in his convertible Mercedes. But in an effort to avoid a possum on a narrow one lane wooden bridge he, monkey mascot and car end up in swift flowing river. Pushed by the current Peter bangs his head on a stone pier of the bridge and is stunned . The next morning he is discovered on an ocean side sandy beach cast up by the tide. The old man who finds him as he regains consciousness then brings him into the small town nearby for breakfast in a diner and for some medical attention to his head wound. Now this is not the first movie I've seen where somebody loses their memory nor where they are the victims (or beneficiaries) of a mistaken identity.

Will leave it at that, Peter is mistaken for a young town denizen, Luke Trimble. A GI who has been missing in action during the recent World War II, and is presumed dead since his body was never found. Luke even has a tomb in the town's memorial graveyard. Peter is incredibly like the missing Luke and is "re-discovered" by Luke's old father, who is the owner of a disused cine theatre,The Majestic, and is fully convinced that Peter is his son.

This situation is fertile with the many predictable and quite a few unpredictable outcomes which are the stuff of good melodramas. The movie's makers have fully and successfully developed such opportunities. Over nearly three hours they have neatly handled and resolved the plot and its sub-plots in a manner which would make Shakespeare himself proud of them–but for the two flaws I have already mentioned.

The film was produced by Castle Rock , which has also made a number of Stephen King based-movies including "The Shawshrank Redemption" and "The Green Mile". So it is not surprising that at least two of the main actors have appeared in other Castle Rock movies. Altogether The Majestic is a highly entertaining melodrama for a wet week end or for an evening when the fare on regular TV sucks.

Note I have tried to avoid spoilers here but the warning is in place just in case.

This was a film I watched and enjoyed during one of my rare visits to a movie theatre. Yes, I am a cultural moron and Philistine usually preferring to watch DVD movies in the comfort of my home. Unless a movie is especially panoramic or epic in nature nothing is lost by watching it on the small screen. I could have equally enjoyed Two Lovers in DVD. This little melodrama does not need a large screen. It is a simple film based on a simple but well-crafted tale, a melodramatic short story. It is also helped along by a wonderful cast. The background music is haunting and sad.

The film begins with a half–hearted suicide attempt by the anti-hero Leonard Kraditor (amiably played by Joaquin Phoenix who is one of my favourite screen actors). Leonard is the adult thirty something son of émigré Israeli parents (who make a modest living from a rundown dry-cleaning business). The parents are played by the Israeli actor Moni Moshonov and his wife (Ruth) by Isabella Rossellini who seems a bit too calm for a typical anxious Jewish mother. But that is the part allotted to her by the script and is no reflection on her acting. (Maybe the scriptwriters did not want to go over the top in stereotyping ). Leonard is the typical Mediterranean only son suffocated by kindness and intense family bonds. (At one point his parents demand to know where he has been).

There's our would-be suicidal anti-hero, single and dwelling at home with Momma and Poppa in a dingy, rather Bohemian apartment Brighton Beach, a seedy immigrant district, a backyard to America's great metropolis. Here is New York City without the glitter, glamour and excitement. It is late October or early November with grey chilly looking skies, wet and dismal. The main decor in the old fashioned apartment is a wall full of framed sepia photos of family ancestors ; Russians or East European Jews by their appearance.

One naturally asks why the half–hearted attempt at suicide with which the film opens? It is partially the hopelessness of Leonard's life, as it seems to him. He has achieved nothing and does odd jobs at the store. His fiancée has just left him because they both share a common regressive gene which would mean that any infant born to them would not survive (perhaps this brutal fact is used as an excuse by the girl to leave him). We get only a brief glance of her for about a second in the movie. She is a factor of Leonard's immediate past rather than a character. Leonard himself is clever, humorous and handsome in an unusual albeit rather shabby way, whose hobby is photography.

The essence of the tale begins after his parents invite the Cohens, for dinner with their children including a very attractive and alluring thirty something brunette daughter Sandra (Vanessa Shaw). Michael Cohen owns a much larger dry-cleaning business than Mr. Kraditor's and has his eyes on Reuben's own store. Naturally a marriage between the two families would be ideal; Reuben could have the retirement he longs for while Leonard would run the expanded business resulting from the merger.At the same time they can relax after Sandra's wedding;from the Cohen's viewpoint she has been single too long.

There is evidently a mutual attraction between the two young people , but unknown to the Cohens or his parents there has been a new development in Leonard's life that will complicate matters.

By chance Leonard bumps into Michelle Rausch (Gywneth Paldrow) in the corridor just outside his parents' home. She's a pretty blonde girl who dwells in the same shabby but genteel apartment complex as Leonard but it is the first time he has seen her close up. Michelle is single and rather older than Leonard. Her lover, a married man with kids, pays her rent. It turns out she's, spoiled, emotionally mixed up and addicted to club life, alcohol and ecstasy pills but not dumb. She is a far cry from the more attractive, caring and dependable Sandra Cohen. Indeed, Michelle can be quite callous with Leonard at times.an is using him. However, in Leonard's eyes Michelle is his own choice not somebody thrust upon him by his parents for family business reasons. It is the typical infatuation of a dusky Mediterranean male with a Baltic or Scandinavian blonde (see Al Pacino in Carlito's Way). Is Leonard making a mistake? Thereby hangs the tale and I leave it to the prospective moviegoer to follow how the tale unfolds an whether or not they like the conclusion (I did although an entirely different and alternative ending was in the cards ). Two lovers, one a crazy girl friend with awesome complications, and the other a prospective steady fiancée approved by his parents, between them and our anti-hero it's a dynamite mixture for a powerful tale.

The man is incredible I have also watched his long trek in the series he produced "In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great" and his voyages to pursue Jason and the Argonauts , as well as the Himalayan myth of Shangri-La and biblical one of the Queen of Sheba I in his "Myths and Heroes" series for the BBC.

This series is a brilliant and unorthodox cinematographic account of India (which also includes what are now Pakistan and Bangladesh) and its entire history from its prehistoric times, through its ancient civilisations, the invasions of the middle ages and the later arrival of the Moguls to the East India Company, superseded after the 1857 uprising by the ninety years of the British Raj and thence the 1947 independence and partition to the present day .

Michael Wood is truly an intrepid traveller in the Victorian mould who seems to be prepared to take all kinds of personal risk in his quest to produce this compelling documentary epic. The term "documentary" is perhaps, misleading as he has succeeded in producing a work of art much different for the usual dull, albeit informative programmes of that genre so often sat through while watching TV on a rainy day. His approach to demonstrate that history is a living phenomenon and not just something that dwells in the past. He emphasises the way that the historic past is ever fresh and present in Modern India. He walks the souks and the bazaars, follows pilgrims, cruises on the Ganges, toils up the steps of numerous mosques, palaces and temples and climbs the remotest and most difficult mountain paths in the Himalayas and struggle along jungle tracks of the Tamil south to make his points.

Culture, religions, traditions, festivals and daily life of the Indian people and its symbiotic relationship with animals of all kinds, tigers, elephants, holy cows and urban or temple simians is well covered here in a carefully crafted mosaic. He's not afraid to discus India's relatively untroubled sexual relations with an attractive high-caste Indian woman clad in a sari who has written a book in English about the Karma Sutra "It's not all about different positions" she says with a smile over a cup of tea in her garden. He also discusses the importance for Hindus of cremation with the low-caste foreman in charge of lighting the funeral pyre from a charcoal fire that has been burning continuously for 3000 years on the banks of the River Ganges (where the ashes are scattered) : "Well you see most people won't touch us. They will avoid us in the street but even if they are the prime minister when a relative of theirs dies they must come only to us, "the untouchables" as no other caste may light the funeral fire".

Mr. Wood also hobnobs with the maharajahs in their palaces. Nevertheless, he seem to greatly enjoy his long journeys across the sub-continent in shabby third-class overcrowded railway carriages whose only form of air conditioning are pane less windows and dangerously open doors. He has really spurred my own interest to plan some future trip to the sub-continent and see first hand some of the images he has so cannily projected through my TV screen.