Entertain, amuse and insulate
Went to see Good Night, And Good Luck (watch that comma!) and even though it was exactly as I expected it to be, I was not disappointed. George Clooney is clearly one of the most interesting and talented men in Hollywood right now, and powerful too. I hope "they" don't take him out. This, as I expect most people know, is the story of Edward R Murrow and the CBS News team's idealogical battle with "the junior Senator from Wisconsin", Joe McCarthy. It's in black and white, and, as one dimwitted and isolationist reviewer described it (and this was supposed to be a criticism), it's a load of men sitting around smoking and talking. (This same "critic" observed that Clooney is no great shakes as a director, when - hmmmm - the exact opposite is patently true.)

It's small and focussed and conversational, doing as Murrow did, which was not to take sides exactly, just encourage debate in a climate when that very thing was discouraged to the point of outlawed. I know that most of the great speeches are word for word what Murrow himself said on air - and at an industry dinner thrown in his honour in 1958 - so we must laud him for much of the movie's power ("We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home"). But David Strathairn gives the kind of honest, low-key performance that never feels like a performance. It's done with vivid period detail, and though the camera moves, fluidly, like a modern one, it works, as if we're eavesdropping on history.

It's not an Oscar-winner, as I've suggested before: too small, too quiet, lacking in sufficient emotion to win over the Academy, but we should be grateful that it's nominated, and that Clooney, as actor, director, producer and writer, operates in these troubled times.

By the way, Nick Cotton was in the cinema for the same showing, on his own. (Alright, the actor John Altman, if you must.) I never met him when I worked on EastEnders, but I did write words for him to say. He passed me twice in the corridor outside and looked at me both times, as if we knew each other. I wanted to say to him, "Hello, I killed your son," but that might have freaked him out without preamble.

The 1.35 matinee showing of a film about newsmen in shirtsleeves talking to archive footage of congressional hearings is not one where you're going to get pesky kids who came in by mistake. However, there were two blokes who insisted on eating the noisiest crisps all the way through it. How can people intelligent enough to want to see this film also be so thick? At one point, I thought Nick Cotton was going to tell them to pipe down. The look on their faces would have been worth the price of admission.


Police state latest
Went into John Lewis to buy a linen basket. Whilst paying for it with a credit card and getting the slip of paper needed to go and collect my goods from the customer service bay, the sales assistant asked for my surname and postcode. I gave him both, then did a double take.
"Why do you need my postcode?" I enquired.
"I don't know," he replied, pulling the sleeve of the next assistant along. "Why do I need his postcode?"
The second assistant, older than the first but clearly not in charge, asked the next bloke along: "Why do we need his postcode?"
The third assistant explained that it was required to get in to the system. "Even if we paid in cash?", we enquired. Apparently so. This seemed unlikely. "You have to do if for TVs and videos," he reminded us. (This is true, but that's because you have to have a TV licence to own a TV, and also, brown goods can be used to launder money. I was only buying a laundry basket. This struck me as amusing.) He explained further that "some techie" probably programmed it in. My wife asked what would happen if, hypothetically, we refused to give our postcode. He assured us that he couldn't sell us the goods.
The lady next to us at the counter said, "It's the Big Brother state."
We intend to find out if it is indeed John Lewis policy not to sell goods to anyone who refuses to give over their postcode. I wish now that I had not given it, to see what would have happened. Watch this space.