Whistling Clarabella...

This has probably been covered before, in fora and book clubs around the world. Between giggling friends, between whatever. It’s never been done by me before, and I like to think I can at least come up with something new to say, no matter how ludicrous. Or at least a new way of saying something old.

Yes, Darcy is about the most perfect hero that ever got put onto paper. Why so? What is it about such a painfully shy, aloof, socially backward old grump?

- He’s rich. Really really rich.

- He lives in That House.

- He’s handsome.

The description of him, even post-BBC, post-movie is just vague enough that people can conjure their own image of Darcy. So, it might be based on a bloke called Colin, or it might be based on Matthew MacSpooks, but it becomes something particular and singularly one’s own image of what the perfect romantic hero looks like. Unless you like blonds, obviously.

So far, so ridiculously typical. Rich and handsome. Snore. What about this:

- Darcy has a bit of the old ‘bad boy’ routine going on.

Yes, it’s well documented that girls like dangerous, brooding, dark-auraed men. But since when was this most honourable of gentlemen a bad boy? Glad you asked. Since he slagged off Lizzy and offended an entire town in one night. However, the real beauty of those bloody bad boys is this: they’re not bad, they’re just drawn that way.

Nobody actually wants a bastard. What they actually want is someone who has all the chocolatey goodness of a bad guy with all the nutritional benefits of a Jolly Nice Bloke. Like frozen yoghurt that doesn’t taste shit, for example. The Charm Of Darce comes in feeling thrilled at the dark-and-brooding before the joyful discovery that he’s actually so lovely and darlign that he’s up for sainthood. Heathcliff was actually an insane git, Dorian Gray was a depraved heroin addict murderer, Rick Blaine was a bitter, twisted fellow, Rhett Butler was a whoring gambler and so on and so on. Darcy: The cake you get to have and eat too.

The most important thing isn’t even that, though. It’s this: He loves Lizzy first. While she’s practically dunking Darcy Voodoo Dolls in boiling oil, poor little Darcy is pining away over her, fighting his own pride and judgement, the probable censure of his family, mooning over her fine eyes and in all other ways acting like a bit of a lovesick sap. He comes down on the side of lub, twu lub instead of money, familial pride and the rest, which of course also makes him romantic, rebellious and anti-capitalist. Why, he’s practically Comrade Darcy! (Except for all that money, obviously). The thing really is that he loves her first. Who wouldn’t want to discover that their True Love has been pining over them? Nice ego boost, methinks. We’d all like to think we’ve got a Rich, Handsome, Romantic, Rebellious, Pining, Brooding Good Guy lusting after us, willing to give us lots of money and a big house and a happy ever after.

The fact that he cocks it all up so spectacularly is just proof that he’s not perfect (because nobody is perfect, of course), so one can get on with him being practically perfect in every other way.

And if that wasn’t enough, he’s also forgiving of Lizzy. She really does lay into him and he loves her anyway, maybe more. There’s not a petulant female in the world that doesn’t wish for someone like that.

So, he’s Rich, Handsome, Romantic, Rebellious, Brooding, Pining, Forgiving Good Guy... and depending on your preferred version, he likes mist or lakes.

Hell, if he could sing or play the guitar too, even I’d want to marry that.

The world would be a better, happier place if we could just bottle the Essence of Darcy, force it down the necks of all newborn baby boys, methinks.

You may know that, against my own better judgement, I went to see Pride and Prejudice the day it came out. I had nothing better to do that Friday night, being stuck in London with no computer and a television in the control of my grandad. I found myself bored for the first few minutes, finding the quaintness of the Eeenglish Countryside annoying.

At the end, I left feeling horribly deflated because it was over. I went to see it again in the cinema, once when I was sick and another time with me mammy, who spent two hours watching and then at the end said "what lovely costumes and scenery" as if that was the important thing to take out of it. This is the same thing she said after Phantom of the Opera, and is understandable from her sewing perspective but hardly the point.

Anyway, I did not expect to like this film, but I'd enjoyed Bride and Prejudice well enough and wanted to give it a chance. Today it came out on DVD and I watched again. Some thoughts:

- I hate Jane Austen. I really do. I hate the way she writes, I hate the way she's supposed to be 'ironic' but isn't really. Don't try and persuade me otherwise, I have read her and it's my opinion, OK?

- I love this story. I will be honest. The story is great. Like Harry Potter, I find the writing sub-par but the story itself absorbing.

- Yes, Darcy is the perfectest character ever put on a page. Yes he's perfect and lovely and super and don't we all love Darcy?

I do like this film version better than the BBC version, I really do. That's too much of the quaint and twee and the everything terribly pretty and perfect. In the film, the Bennets really do show their stately poverty. The house is ramshackle, the furniture old and the clothes really rather worn, as opposed to in the BBC one, where they all look so fabulous that you wonder what the fuss is.

I also prefer Matthew Mcfadyen to Colin Firth, OK? I'm sure that you'll be after me with pitchforks and stuff, but I don't care. Colin Firth is a perfectly adequate actor, handsome enough and I like him in other stuff too... but he's not my idea of Darcy. I don't know that the Spooks Man is either, but perhaps I've got a picture in my head that's somewhere between the two. I suspect that all we mortal females have a picture of our own Darcy in our head. Even stone-hearted bints like me. And no, I don't miss that stupid lake scene. Big deal, people!

But the reason I like this film so much is the fact that it succeeds in a manner that most book adaptations don't: It manages to capture the point of the story, the feeling and the everything without forcing us to sit through every line of the bloody thing. It is a film of a story rather than the film of a book. It has allowed me to really like a film of a book I didn't particularly enjoy by a writer I hate. That's pretty impressive.

To end, I shall finish with a joke from Mock the Week on Friday. "Things You Probably Won't Hear At The Oscars":

And the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film goes to... Pride and Prejudice.

So, Rome courtesy of the BBC and HBO has arrived at the Cleopatra chapter. Glad to see they're not painting her as a sex-crazed vapid bint or anything... snerk. One finds it disheartening that 2000-year-old Augustan propaganda is still rife. Your girl Cleopatra was an intelligent and cunning woman.

Anyway, more important things: I finally saw the entirety of The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. Those of you who know me may be surprised that I haven't seen it through before, not least because I've had the Errol Flynn Signature Collection in my possession since it came out the same day as Episode III. Anyway, I've always wanted to devote my time and attention to it as it so richly deserves. That and I have a great and hearty dislike of Her Majesty Bette Davis. I've a few ideas why, not least that one must be either a Bette or a Joan person, and I am in the latter's camp. The stories my Flynn told of the filming of this particular picture hardly lends itself to a sympathetic rendering of her character.

So, it's not a bad film. Lushly filmed, beautiful music. Even acted pretty well. Adored Alan Hale as the Great and Legendary Hugh O'Neill, cos he always steals whatever scene he's in. Olivia de Havilland beautiful as ever, possibly even more. Errol both beautiful and devilishly charming.

Bette Fucking Davis. I know there are those of you (hey Elise!) who adore The Bette, but I swear I started getting motion sickness from watching her fidget, shake and otherwise twat about. She must have had quite the job digesting all the scenery she chewed up. Such were her histrionics that next to her, Errol 'Hardly Brando' Flynn gives a sensitive, understated performance.

More than that, there's fuck all chemistry to go along with it. Compare it to his other turns opposite Miss de Havilland, and you'll see what I mean. Still, he's beautiful and charming and all the things I have loved so much about him over the years. The nonchalant 'all things considered I'd rather be on the Sirocco' attitude most of all. All falls apart in the last scene or two, though. Perhaps it was the first thing filmed or perhaps he'd got sick and tired of Herself whacking him in the face.

But it's still a pretty fine film, and it's all in spite of Bette Davis. Bloody woman. Give me Mildred Pierce any day of the week.

Whatever, I'm off to bed.

I'm going to run the gauntlet here and say that not only have I not seen some film about some wizardy boy, I'm going to talk about a totally different one.

I saw Kingdom of Heaven on Saturday. I've been putting it off because honestly, there really hasn't ever been a remotely decent Crusades movie made in Hollywood. Not a single one.

But then again, there is Kingdom of Heaven. In terms of great moviemaking I doubt it will rank up there with any godfathers or redemptions, but it was a thoroughly decent film.

My first thought during the beginning came when I saw Spike from Coronation Street digging a grave. "Auntie Emily!" shrieked I. And then... Orlando Bloom blacksmithing.

"Are we watching the right fucking movie?" I asked. "Where's Captain Jack?"

"Be quiet!" says my dad.

After that, it got a lot better. Now don't get me wrong, Orlando Bloom can't hold a movie on his own. Without the likes of Liam Neeson (who rarely lives through his films, I've noticed), Brendan Gleeson, Jeremy Irons and even Ed Norton behind that mask, this would've been a bad film. He doesn't have that thing, that indefinable gravitas to pull off the Obligatory Pre-Battle Rousing Speech convincingly...

but having finally seen him not mooning over Keira Knightley or spouting idiotic crap written by someone who seems to be a dyslexic nine-year-old in whatever nonsense film... I can tell you that the boy can act. Maybe when he's less pretty, he'll be as great as The Neeson, if not as tall.

It was good and enjoyable. It wasn't overly anti-anyone and if not sparkling, the script at least had the sense of having been written by someone who has passed an English exam and read at least half a chapter of a book on the Crusades.

Isn't that a rarity these days?

I've finally bothered to watch Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sniff, or whatever it's called.

Last fifteen minutes were pretty marvellous. Sadly, the two hours preceeding were filled with idiot dialogue, so much CGI that it was hard to focus and enough wooden acting to replant the Amazon rainforest.

I know that my hatred of George Lucas is well-known, so I won't bore you with that. I will tell you this: I would really love to love Star Wars. I think it's a great idea and although I disliked Episode II, I at least came away understanding a bit better about Vader in the OT. I just didn't realise that the petulant teenager thing would run over into the third installment too. I would love to love Star Wars, but it's not going to happen because these just aren't very good films. The original ones suffer only from the genuinely shite and primitive technology used (although that never really stood in Harryhausen's way...) but the recent lot are just... naff. It's like they creak under the weight of what they precede, and so perhaps that's why only the last fifteen minutes of III really stood out for me. I don't know.

I'd love to love Star Wars, but it's just not going to happen. Not while I'm laughing at dialogue that's supposed to be making my eyes damp or yawning at Yet Another Effect.

Daniel 'Face Like A Block Of Granite' Craig Is To Play 007

Suffice to say that I am extremely dis-chuffed about this turn of events. It's not like it's unexpected, but fucking hell, this is the bloke who played third fiddle to Angelina Jolie's padded bra in Tomb Raider 1! Mind you, this has got me so naffed off that I'd be prepared to renege on my previous Bond-stance for the bloke in the second Tomb Raider picture...

I don't dislike Daniel Craig. He's a half-decent actor (although the last time a decent actor [Timothy Dalton] played Bond, nobody liked it) and I've liked some of his other stuff. But this is not the stuff Bond Dreams are made of. I'm not saying Bond has to be Teen!Cosmo cover material. I wouldn't want that, but is that someone's idea of a great Bond?

And they're talking about cutting down on gadgets and getting 'darker' and getting more into the character.

Firstly, I'm no geek that hates to see their beloved franchise mucked about with. I thought Die Another Day relied too much on referencing past glories and not enough on coming up with new ones. I was dangerous close to getting bored at some points during, which was a shocker. Even Moonraker isn't boring, if only because it's a great way to come up with better ways to destroy your own soul.

But you know, what do they mean 'more character'? Bond is a simple creature at heart. He likes fast cars, faster women, drinking, gambling and the occasional spot of violence. That is why we like him. He occasionally makes reference to having possessed emotion at some point in the past, but it's rare, fleeting and all the better for it. He has a great sense of duty towards his country, which is nice, but we all know he does this job because nobody else would pay him to shag and shoot at the same time. At least, nobody else would pay as well. And we all know he'd never leave Moneypenny!

Seriously, every single time they've tried to 'improve' Bond, the producers have come unstuck. Aussie!Bond and BondInSpace are the best examples of this, I reckon. The true key to Bond is keeping him much the same as he's ever been, but devising new and interesting scenarios and situations to throw him into. Having to hunt down an old pal in Goldeneye? That was brilliant. Got to save the world dressed as a clown? Not so much. Have to save the world from a madman intent on blowing up the world's financial centres with the cunning use of fish? Let me finish writing it first and then we'll see.

Honestly, I hope that this rant gets proved wrong. I love Bond, James Bond and you all know that. I don't want to come away from the next one feeling disillusioned or disheartened or bored. We love James Bond for what he is, not what people say is trendy these days. We don't want him to twat about like Vin Diesel in xXx or *snore* Jason Bourne.

But Daniel Craig? Seriously? The only way I'm getting over this is by repeating the following to myself: At least it's not Clive Owen. At least it's not Clive Owen.

And one last thing: Have the producers forgotten the real rule of casting Bond? Always pick a Celt. The Greatest, Connery is a Scotsman. The Violent One, Dalton, is Welsh. The Recent Popular One, Brosnan, is an Irishman. SERIOUSLY, GUYS! You can't get an Englishman to do it! They're either too dull (CLIVE OWEN) or too conflicted and deep. Fuck that. Get the Irish in! Somebody page Colin Farrell and have him on standby! *dies laughing* Or get Gerard Butler in. He's Scottish, rugged-scruffy beautiful, sexy as whatever. So what if it wrecks any future career he might want (Bond does that to a bloke)? I'm talking about the FUTURE OF THE ENTIRE BOND FRANCHISE!

Daniel Craig? Was that REALLY the best they could do?