Four Things Meme

I haven't posted for ages now. I was away of course and I'll report soon. I've also been really tired since I got back. But just to get back into the mood, I liked this meme from Julie Cohen while she waits for her baby to arrive (he's now a week late but when I saw Julie on Wednesday she was looking just great - pregnancy really suits her!)

Here we go...

Four jobs I’ve had:
1. Putty packer
2. Teacher (but I'm better now)
3. Office Manager
4. Database Analyst

Four places I’ve lived:
1. Thorne, Yorkshire
2. Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire
3. St Neots, Cambridgeshire
4. Verona, New York (sort of)

Four favourite foods:
1. haddock and chips (preferably from Andy's on Walney or Costas in Notting Hill)
2. pie, mash and liquor
3. risotto with porcini
4. gooseberry crumble with ice cream

Four films I could watch over and over again:
1. Some Like It Hot
2. Les Enfants du Paradis
3. Billy Liar
4. All About Eve

Four TV programmes I enjoy:
(actually there's very little on contemporary TV that I really enjoy)
1. Channel Four Racing
2. That thing about music with Howard Goodall that's just finished
3. Classic British sitcoms like Porridge, Open All Hours, The Likely Lads
4. Really good classic dramas like Edge of Darkness

Four places I’ve travelled:
1. Poland
2. Italy
3. Maryland, USA
4. Shetland

Four places I’d like to visit:
1. India
2. Buenos Aires
3. Hammerfest (Norway)
4. Samarkand

Four websites I go to daily:
1. Popular
2. Guardian Online
3. Death Penalty News & Updates (one of my pet campaigns)
4. Bookcrossing

I think I'm supposed to tag somebody, but consider yourselves all tagged!

Film Diary: Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977)

I'm two weeks late recording this. Hmm. Slapped wrists.

Anyway, I'm never able to make up my mind about Woody Allen. I find his perpetually neurotic trademark figure irritating. Some of his films just make me squirm. All the same, I keep returning over and over again to Hannah and Her Sisters and to Annie Hall, and possibly Manhattan, and I'm never quite sure why. It's a combination of their quirkiness and the sense that somewhere in there there's a verey profound message about life and the way people interact, particularly margins-of-the-crowd people like me who yearn to be let in. Hey, that might be it!

Film Diary: À Bout de Souffle (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)

The French Nouvelle Vague revived the Film Noir of the 1940s, running with it and transforming it into something uniquely Gallic in the early 60s. This was the film that led the way - a grainy, jittery, amoral good-girl/bad-boy romance that comes off a treat. Jean-Paul Belmondo was never better than here as the small-time car thief turned cop-killer dodging through Paris in pursuit of his girl and a debt. Jean Seberg oscillates sensuously between naive innocent and femme fatale, and together they are pyrotechnically sexy.